FREE marketing and sales ideas

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Writing Powerful Marketing Plans.

Either marketing plans are a powerful census building tool, or, they are a complete waste of time. Even if you paid $85,000 for a marketing plan created by a top marketing firm with precise information, perfect direction, and ingenious strategy – it can still flop miserably. I believe the most important element of a marketing plan is simply doing the action steps of the plan and recording the results. Desire, ambition, and fortitude make marketing plans powerful. Those are the attributes needed to move the marketing or sales people to do the work. Marketing plans are usually a complete waste of time when the action steps are not completed. I’ve seen organizations spend many thousands of dollars on professionally researched and written marketing plans, and not have the internal drive to follow through with the action steps. A marketing plan is worthless - unless you want to reach the goals enough to do the work.

I have a simple structure for marketing plans. Its based on four questions; where are we at now? (Situation analysis) Why? (Situation analysis) Where would we like to be? (Goals) How do we get there? (Action steps) Write your marketing plans so a sixth grader with a short attention span can read it for the first time and understand where your coming from, where you’re going, and exactly what you’re going to do step-by-step to obtain your goals.

The situation analysis needs to briefly explain your current situation. It should answer the questions...
- Who are your existing and potential customers?
- What do your customers generally want, need, feel, believe...?
- Does your prospective customer know about you? (Aided and unaided recall)
- What is your present and prospective customer's image perception of your facility?
- How is your customer satisfaction?
- How is your products/services appeal, according to your customers?
- What is your facilities long term direction?
- What is your specialty?
- What is your inquiry rate history?
- What is your inquiry to sales ratio?
- What is your census history?
- Who are your competitors and where are are they strong and weak?
- What are your opportunities?

Remember to keep it short. The people that read this plan will want to read it from cover to cover in 10 minutes or less.

Outline the big picture. What is the distant vision for the company. You should be able to find this in your companies business plan. How will the marketing efforts help the company reach their goal? Break the big goal into small steps. Create a marketing plan for the next three months. What are your goals for the next three months? Will your goal help you to reach a larger step goal? Make sure your goals are measurable and time specific. (For example: Goal #1, Maintain or surpass 45 inquiries per weekly by June 9, 2003.)

Next, identify your action steps for the goal.
- What things are you going to do to realize your goals?
- Who needs to be involved and what does each person need to do?
- What is the timeline?
- What resources are needed for the action steps?
Write each task or action step that you are personally responsible for in your day planner, with a deadline for completion.   Finally, the most important part of the plan, do the action steps.

For action step ideas that will help you build census read,
“Easy, Inexpensive Ideas For Increasing Census”

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Building Census With Little Team Support.

Long-term care organizations seldom provide sufficient census-building support. There seems to be little time or energy to be marketing focused with all of the pressures exerted by the - crisis of the day, compliance issues, staffing challenges, and budget cuts. Most facility leaders plan to start markeing offensives when they have a more stable environment. And that day rarely ever comes.

Long-term care organizations are famous for setting unrealistic workload expectations. Consequently, most long-term care employees assume that high census means more work, problems, and greater risk - with little, if any, benefit for them.

Administrator’s are usually unwilling or unable to build a dependable back-up sales team; to allocate appropriate resources for marketing; to persuade the nursing staff to extend it’s capabilities to expand care services; to limit the duties of the marketing and sales staff; or to provide unwavering support for marketing, sales, and census. There is usually only one person, the Admission Coordinator, responsible for bringing in millions of dollars of revenue each year. Yet, that person is drowned with other tasks, like endless paperwork, resident satisfaction, dining assistant, night manager, committee member, and so on…

Having sufficient time to build and maintain referral sources is the real challenge. Intense time management is essential to effective census building. Disruptions and less important work has to be limited. I suggest building a volunteer or employee system that enables the marketing/sales people to get out of the facility to focus on marketing/referral network building two or more full days a week. A staff back-up team will be needed to cover the time when the marketing/sales person is out of the building. Learn more about building a staff admissions back-up team in the “SALES” tutorial.

Winning marketing and sales support from your staff is important for your census building success. For more information on selling census to your staff read, “Easy, Inexpensive Ideas For Increasing Census”.

To Purchase the “Easy & Inexpensive Ideas For Increasing Census Revenue” coaching tutorial click here…

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Ideas For Effective Brochures & Advertising

Many long-term care marketers tend to rely too much on brochures. The brochure won’t make the sale. The brochure won’t become personally involved with the customer or build trust with the customer. The brochure won’t discover the customer’s specific problems, frustrations, and fears. The brochure won’t personally demonstrate how your facility can give the customer peace of mind for their personal challenges. Sales work is a separate, powerful part of the admission process that should not be allocated entirely to your brochures or ads. When a prospective customer calls, don’t make it your goal to send a brochure. Rather, get them to visit you personally so you can sell your services. I suggest putting more emphasis on your sales effectiveness than you do on your brochure. To learn more about enhancing your sales effectiveness, read the “Sales” tutorial. Click here to order the "Sales" tutorial

What you can expect from your brochures and ads is to build awareness, enhance image, promote your specialty, generate interest, inform, and ultimately get a phone call or visit. Your customers are moved by emotions. I suggest appealing to your customers’ emotions via your copy and visual elements. Sell the positive effect you’ll have on prospective customers in your brochures and ads. Show them how you will help them find peace of mind. Tell them the story of how you’re going to help them. Tell them why you’re different that your competitors. Find multiple ways to promote your specialty. Don’t worry about writing too much copy. People in need are interested in valuable information. Give it to them. I recommend hiring a professional photographer who is familiar with long-term care. Professional photographs can powerfully tell your story. I also suggest hiring a graphic designer who understands marketing. Your ads and brochures need to sell. They need to spell out what you’ll do for the customer. The more you know about selling long-term care services, the better your ads and brochures will be. The coaching tutorial on sales will give you valuable insight on how to improve your sales efforts.

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Building a dominant brand

This is idea #5 from the coaching tutorial “Easy and Inexpensive Ideas For Increasing Census Revenue”

Become known for one thing, and one thing only. When you read the names of these products or organizations what thought usually comes to mind: Heinz Ketchup - thick; Rolex watches - wealthy; Starbucks coffee - premium; Energizer batteries – “keeps on going”; and the Mayo Clinic – leading experts. Each of these companies has become famous for one thing that is of value to their customers. Also, did you notice that each of these companies has top-of-mind awareness recall? Meaning, they are usually the first company or product that comes to mind when you think of their industry or product catigory. For example, if I asked you, “name the first ketchup that comes to mind?” what would you say? Most would say Heinz. Each of these products or organizations has created their business around one simple, powerful concept.

Create a unique specialty for your facility that will be of value to your customers, and make it difficult for your competitors to copy it. After you’ve identified what one thing your facility will be known for, then you need to build it internally and be committed to the specialty for the long run. You’d never hear the Rolex Watch Company say; “this year we’re the cheap watch for everyone”. That would destroy their specialty image and credibility.

When your facility is actually different than all of your competitors, when your niche is a real value to your customers, and when it’s truly unique, then you can tell the world your story. This is where a media budget comes in handy. You can talk to the vast majority of your target market in just a few days if you have money allocated for advertising. If you don’t, it will take longer to make your prospective customers aware of your distinctiveness, but you can still do it.

Businesses with specialties are typically more effective and profitable. I suggest developing and promoting a specialty to help make your admissions work easier. Specializing works. Being known for one thing is a powerful marketing concept because it’s easier for prospective customers to associate your business with just one thing. Most businesses try to be too many things to too many different people. Standing out amongst your competitors as a specialist will win sales and market share. It’s crucial that your facility’s uniqueness is of value to the majority of your customers. This idea came from, “Easy & Inexpensive Ideas For Increasing Census Revenue”.

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