Canopy IQ: Reaching Top Prospects and Increasing Occupancy Rates

Canopy was founded with a core mission: to provide ad agencies and marketers simplified access to best-in-class advertising technology. Our toolkit includes geofencing, programmatic display advertising, campaign optimization, audience targeting and more. In addition, our in-house team of subject matter experts specialize in data-driven solutions that are explicitly designed to amplify custom marketing campaigns for our valued partners.

In this day and age, media buyers and digital marketers of all shapes and sizes must interact with customers and prospects across a dizzying expanse of channels and devices. The challenges and opportunities facing the Senior Living sales and marketing community are especially complex due to a rapidly shifting consumer landscape and the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 health emergency.

The contents of this white paper are specific to two distinct but interrelated subjects: the importance of identifying and targeting “High Potential Visitors” and the emerging digital footprint of America’s unprecedented Baby Boomer cohort.

Strategic Planning: Capabilities and Considerations

The vast majority of new and existing customers undergo a rigorous, extended consideration phase when it comes to selecting highly considered goods or services.

This assessment is especially applicable with regard to identifying the right Senior Living option for a family member or friend.

High potential prospects located in a primary area may not be “in-market” for a Senior Living community for an extended period of time. Furthermore, prospects who do experience a life-changing event that initiates a formal review of Senior Living communities may take months or even years to finalize their selection.

Activating a sustained advertising strategy targeting high-value prospects undergoing a lengthy consideration phase has always posed a significant strain on cost-effective budgets and resource allocation. The disruptive effects of COVID-19 have only exacerbated these challenges. In addition, managed care selection has long been considered one of life’s most emotional processes, so marketers must approach prospects in a respectful and deliberate manner.

The single most pressing challenge for Senior Living Sales and Marketers is two-fold: maintain and grow occupancy rates. Achieving this goal requires advertising budget optimization across a lengthy research and consideration phase while simultaneously remaining top-of-mind among the high-value prospects in their primary market area.

At Canopy, we believe the most effective solution to this challenge is how to identify which combination of digital marketing technologies and applied analytics can be used to identify high-value prospects who demonstrate online intent signals. These intent signals are based on a combination of data points, which include browsing behavior and the comparison of competing senior living communities in their primary market area, among others.

With that in mind, Canopy has identified five key steps to help meet the strategic challenges facing Senior Living providers. Each step includes specific components of a systematic approach we call Canopy IQ™:

Step One

Identify the most coveted prospects in your primary market area. Not every senior in your market is a prime candidate for your community. Financial considerations may limit your market to those who qualify. Therefore, it’s best to focus your marketing spend on prospects who can qualify. Driving pre-qualified prospects to your website allows your sales team to spend more time and resources nurturing leads who are more likely to actually become residents.

Canopy IQ™ partners with SenioROI to acquire the most comprehensive primary market data for your community. Through SenioROI’s proprietary multi-compiler consumer database research, Canopy is able to provide marketers with clean, de-duplicated targetable prospect address records. This includes only prospects themselves, but records of the Adult Children of Elderly Parents (ACEP) and Family Ties lists which connect marketers to the adult children – or influencers – of their prospects.

These “Adult Children of Elderly Parents” and Family Ties lists have proven to be especially effective for assisted living and memory care campaigns.

Step Two

Focus your online advertising budget on high-value, pre-qualified lists of prospects rather than diluting your ad budget on a wider audience that may or may not qualify as a prospect.

Addressable Geofencing is the process of loading single-family residential address list and drawing virtual geofences along the plat lines of target properties. All mobile devices seen entering and leaving those geofences can be targeted with display advertising, pre-roll video, or in-stream video ads.  Driving prequalified list impressions through Addressable Geofencing is a highly cost-effective tactic, especially during COVID-19.

Mobile devices identified in these virtual geofences can be tracked to a specific “conversion zone”. These conversion zones can include your community (or communities) as well as those of your or even your competitors.

Programmatic Display Discovers and Targets Online Browsing Behavior

These tactics allow marketers to serve ads to prospects who demonstrate “intent signals” based on their online behavior. Intent signals provide a wealth of measurement and analytics which can guide diverse provider options, including independent living, assisted living, or memory care options.

As prospects research relevant topics on websites, such as “retirement communities” “caring for parent with Alzheimer’s Disease” or “best senior living community in my area”, those devices are identified as being “in market” based on keyword and search criteria.

Your community’s ads are targeted to those users on any subsequent website that serves display advertising. Display ads drive clicks to your website. Site visitors are then “cookied” and can be followed throughout the web via Site Retargeting ads, keeping your community top of mind for your prospective residents.

Geofencing The Competition

Geofencing technology allows marketers to identify and target ads to mobile devices based on their geographical location.

Devices identified in the geofences can be targeted with display ads. They may be targeted while in the virtual fence or for up to thirty days after leaving the fence regardless of their subsequent location.

Devices identified in geofences can also be developed into audiences for targeting across

social media channels. This data is invaluable when it’s applied to audience segmentation and buyer personas.

Step Three

While you are going to drive significant online traffic by applying these tools to your marketing efforts, it’s likely that between two to five percent of your website visitors will actually convert in the form of a contact form fill or phone call.

It’s critical that you measure the effectiveness of all of your online marketing efforts by analyzing the website traffic that didn’t convert. Were those visits legitimate site visitors researching and considering your community? Are your online marketing efforts producing quality traffic? Are you seeing overall conversions on your website improve over time?

Ultimately, the aggregate data you analyze will play a major role in helping you track online campaign effectiveness and nurture your site visitors so they convert.

Geofencing and Programmatic Display advertising campaigns can effectively target potential prospects for your community. They can also attract job seekers, bot traffic and random site visitors. With those factors in mind, how can you best determine if your online advertising tactics are delivering interested senior living community shoppers?

We deploy a website analytics system developed by Lead InSite to answer that specific question. Lead InSite analytics provides the opportunity to identify site visitors – based on their on-site behavior over time – as High Potential Visitors.

So what defines a High Potential Visitor?

Potential prospects will visit specific pages and absorb a variety of content on a community’s website that distinguishes it as a potential prospect. For example, when someone visits a Memory Care landing page, they’ll likely review everything from floor plans to amenities, read testimonials and more. If the content is compelling and relevant to their search criteria, you can discern what separates a qualified from an unqualified lead.

It is no surprise that a prospect can spend a long time researching and considering which retirement option is right for them. As discussed previously, comparing and contrasting the competitive landscape for top independent living and assisted living communities often requires a lengthy consideration phase. Valued prospects can begin their “investigative journey” several years prior to settling on an actual decision. Savvy marketers begin making an impression on prospects years before they anticipate the prospect will be ready to take action. Given this multitude of factors, it’s imperative that marketers utilize the full scope of attribution reporting and analysis to leverage hyper-targeted leads.

Multi-Attribution Reporting

Lead InSite technology identifies and catalogs every site visitor to your website. Website behavior identifies which site visitors are High Potential Visitors. By recording every visit to your site, Lead InSite will distinguish and report on a variety of attribution metrics comparing organic visits to paid advertising visits. Display ads will often lead to brand awareness that in turn drives organic online search or clicking on a Pay Per Click ad. Without accurate attribution reporting, marketers would give credit to the organic or Pay Per Click ad for the visitor and miss the critical impact of the display ad completely.

Nurturing your High Potential Visitors so they convert

The entire point of online marketing is to attract top prospects to your community website and encourage them to contact you and set up a tour. Lead InSite technology offers Prompture, a technology that guides and nurtures High Potential Visitors so they fill out a contact form, call or schedule a tour online. With this technology, providers can identify what your audience is most interested in, and what compelled them to return to your site.

Step Four

Occupancy rates are never static. You need sophisticated marketing campaigns that are cost efficient enough to last the marathon not the sprint.

Invest more of your ad budget into actual advertising rather than extra fees and unnecessary costs that sap your advertising dollars of their reach, value and influence.

Canopy offers sophisticated marketing tactics, diverse subject matter expertise, and strategic partnerships with top senior living experts in the industry. When you combine these tools without monthly minimums, contracts, or proprietary website builds that eventually hold you hostage, the end result is powerful.

Step Five

Work with a team of digital marketing strategists who function as an extension of your marketing campaigns. Ultimately, you’re in charge of the marketing message for your specific community and you know what sets your value proposition apart from the competition. Regardless of the number of communities you are responsible for, each one deserves a custom, market specific strategy and approach rather than a cookie-cutter marketing plan.

When combined, the five steps detailed above will help you gain market share and serve your valued clients by offering them a differentiated product and the commitment to see it through to the finish line.