The type of referrals that you don’t pay a dime for and have a close rate of 110%. Yes, please.
I doubt you need convincing that your senior living business needs a solid reputation and brand within the local community to get those valuable word-of-mouth referrals.
Unfortunately, it’s the hardest marketing initiative to undertake, as it requires consistency, patience and strategy to pull off, especially online.
Luckily for you, we’ve created a guide to help you manage your online reputation.
Your street cred is on the line
What Makes Up "Online Reputation"?
Online reputation refers to the overall perception others have of your company and the care you provide based on information they can find on the Internet. Including searches on Google, images the see, videos they watch, social media mentions and more.
In the senior care & living industry, online reputations are much more critical than your average service based business. Customers are making big decisions and are spending large slices of their life-long retirement.
Because of this, they are gathering all they can about what others have said about you before they pull the trigger. So let’s get control of all the working pieces of your reputation:
- Reviews on your Google My Business profile.
- Reviews on websites. (A Place For Mom, Caring.com)
- Social Media mentions and reviews.
- Features in local web articles or blogs.
- The look & feel of your assets like your website and social media profiles.
- Listings in key directories & care finders like www.careavailability.com
Where Do You Start?
The first thing you can do is make sure that you claim your listings and enter your business into directories for visibility. Being in front of customers searching for you is critical to your success.
Here is short list of actions you can take if you haven’t already.
- Create and optimize your Google My Business profile.
- Setup your social media profiles, even if you won't use them all.
- Register your business with local directories.
- Register your business with national directories and niche directories.
- Sign up for Google alerts with the name of your business and get notified with brand mentions. https://www.google.com/alerts
Faster than a hospital discharge on a Friday
How To Get An Avalanche of Positive Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Now that you have a foundation of locations accross the web that mention your business name we now have the opportunity to put them to work by collecting reviews, but how?
It’s easier than you think. Collecting reviews for your senior services shouldn’t be laborious nor should it be awkward.
At Greatness Digital, we use a custom approach with each business, which you’ll need to do for yours.
Understanding the right time of asking for the review is important to increase your chance of success.
Additionally, we set our clients up with a review page on their website by which we can send out our review links from. This ensures that each person that clicks your link has the opportunity to review you on the platform they choose and it can catch those pesky negative reviews before they are a problem.
We all know that people are 10x more likely to seek you out and leave a negative review than a positive one.
Hardest part of senior care...the families. 🙂
How To Avoid Negative Reviews 😡
The biggest fear of most of our clients is that they will get those dreaded negative reviews.
They could be from a past coworker that left abruptly.
That family that was completely unreasonable or over-reactive.
A competitor disguised as a reviewer that is sabotaging you.
What can you do to fight all these things? Appeal them all?
In our experience, the best way to achieve an overall awesome 4+ star reputation online is to bury the inevitable unhappy customers with an avalanche of positive ones. (of course appeal reviews that are blatant violations as well.)
*Bonus tip: Ask community partners & friends to give your business a review. Their review may not describe your service but if they’ve interacted with your company, they can describe that encounter and leave a review. 100% legit.
Go straight to the busiest streets online
The Most Popular Places To Gather Reviews
You can gather reviews on any popular senior care website, however some are better than others if you want the most eyes on those reviews.
Here is a list of place that we would recommend you focus your attention on:
- Google My Business (a clear winner for #1)
- Your business website.
- Yelp
- Caring.com
- APlaceForMom.com
- SeniorAdvisor.com
- www.bbb.org (Better Business Bureau)
Auto-pilot reviews?
Want To Take Your Reputation Management To The Next Level?
It’s no longer a question of whether a company should or shouldn’t put effort into their online reputation.
Boomers and their adult children are leveraging the internet to find senior living and senior care on a daily basis.
If your retirement community or senior care company, big or small, is ready to engage our professionals to intentionally bring in an avalanche of positive reviews and take advantage of the lead generation benefits, check out our Reputation Management services.
