Valerie VanBooven's Marketing for Senior Service Providers

Sen Claire McCaskill Photo

Check out this website I found at facebook.com

Claire McCaskill Senate Hearings on Reverse Mortgages in St. Louis. Nice photo opp but she didn't know what she was talking about in many cases and was super good at adding spin to her "remarks".

Posted via web from Marketing Elder Care and Marketing Senior Services

Claire McCaskill Senate Hearings on Reverse Mortgages in St. Louis

Claire McCaskill Senate Hearings on Reverse Mortgages in St. Louis. Nice photo opp but she didn't know what she was talking about in many cases and was super good at adding spin to her "remarks".

Claire McCaskill Senate Hearings on Reverse Mortgages in St. Louis. Nice photo opp but she didn't know what she was talking about in many cases and was super good at adding spin to her "remarks".

Posted via web from Marketing Elder Care and Marketing Senior Services

Replay: Webinar- Referral Sources for Elder Care Marketing and Senior Service Marketing: Reaching out to professionals outside of the healthcare system for referrals!

Hi, if you missed last week's incredible referral webinar, you are in luck!

The replay and the handouts are all posted at: http://www.screencast.com/t/pj3O1LHwwhW

That's right, I'm not emailing handouts to everyone, because you can download them right from where the video plays
at http://www.screencast.com/t/pj3O1LHwwhW

Here are the details of the webinar if you missed it the first time around:

Referral Sources: Reaching out to professionals outside of the healthcare system for referrals Get acquainted with the OTHER people in your local area who will gladly send referrals your way! Learn how to get other busy professionals interested in what you have to say. Door openers and options that work to build your referral list. Learn what to give your new referral source so that they WILL remember you! Learn how to enter into some joint marketing that lends credibility to every ad you place in print.

For more information on all of our marketing strategies visit:
www.ltcsocialmark.com - Social Media Marketing Program (Done for You)
www.myseniorservice.com - All the FREE STUFF
www.ultimateseniorservice.com - Our newsletter and marketing CD
www.ElderCareMarket.info (our blog)
www.TheLTCExpert.com (Valerie's site)


 

 

Posted via email from Marketing Elder Care and Marketing Senior Services

Testing Posterous!

So I've run across a new great tool, or so it says it is--- called Posterous. Now let's see how this simple email shows up in all of the right places.
By the way, if you are an elder care or senior service provider, nothing beats having access to all of the cool info at http://www.MySeniorService.com
Thanks!
Valerie VanBooven RN BSN

Posted via email from Marketing Elder Care and Marketing Senior Services

Billy Mays has died, he was found dead this morning by his wife

via examiner.com

I can't believe it! This is really strange.

Posted via web from Marketing Elder Care and Marketing Senior Services

Another Voice on Internet Marketing for Elder Care and Senior Service Providers

In this installment I will discuss a few ideas about Internet marketing.

By Tom Day                www.longtermcarelink.com

I am by no means the expert on Internet marketing, but I am using it successfully. The National Care Planning Council has achieved our growth primarily through using the Internet. As far as I can remember, we have never spent a dime on hiring salespeople or using traditional media advertising strategies. Our primary website -- www.longtermcarelink.net -- receives about 800,000 hits a month from roughly 60,000 visitors a month -- almost all from search engine searches. We currently have a Google page rank of 6. We are ranked by Alexa at around 500,000. People find us through approximately 16,000 keyword searches a month. At least 15 of these keyword searches are common public search engine inputs for long-term care issues and bring up our site in the top three returns on a Google search.

In September, we will have a brand-new version of www.longtermcarelink.net and expect this will increase our traffic and our business by 20% to 30%. We are already in the process of redesigning our state council websites and this has brought increased traffic as well.

Our other 20 websites are also popular for certain keyword search strings and come up in at least the top five searches on Google for these categories. In addition, we maintain another 83 websites for our veterans benefits consultants. We are adding 6 or 7 new websites a month. A year from now, we will have well over 180 websites generating leads for our members.

Our websites are designed to produce requests for help from the public. The number of these requests has doubled or tripled every year. As an example, the search category that attracts the public to our primary website on the aid and attendance benefit is currently producing about 10 to 20 requests a day for all of our veterans aid and attendance consultants. The volume of these requests has quadrupled over the past two years since we started offering this service.

I'm sure many of you are well-versed in strategies using the Internet to attract new business. I will share with you a summary of some of my observations on Internet marketing.

Using a Website to Establish Your Credibility

When someone contacts me about our services, I go to that person’s website. If I don't get a URL or recognize a domain from their email, I will do a Google search until I find a website. If there is no website, I will go to the specific search links that reference that particular person to learn as much about that person as I can. Sometimes, a website will give me an idea of who people are and what they do and give me some confidence in their services. I would like to think I'm not alone in this behavior. I believe more and more that the public is doing this or will be doing more such person-specific Internet searches in the future.

I realize that social networking websites can serve a similar purpose. Quite frankly, I am older -- a baby boomer -- and I don't feel comfortable registering for a social network site to find out about someone. Somehow I think this more of an activity for people in their 30s or younger. These people are not our target market. It is either the older folks or their children who are in their late 40s or in their 50s. My personal opinion is having a website is more effective than using social networking sites to tell people about you.

I believe there is a trend for the public to rely on Web searches for an unknown individual to check that person out and to try and get an indication of that person's credibility. I know this isn't fair and might not even be true, but I often judge a person's ability by the design of that person's website. A crummy looking website gives me a negative feeling about that person's abilities. If I have this feeling about websites, then perhaps others may as well. I might not be alone in the way I relate people to their websites. Here are some of the things I look for when I land on a website. I could write pages on each one of these items. There is simply not enough room to do this here.

· professional and pleasing design

· intuitive and easy navigation of the site

· generous content on a number of pages

· clear message of the services provided

· good biography of the people offering the services

· compelling sales message why I should use the services

· third-party endorsement by being a member of one or more recognized organizations

Using a Website to Establish an Identity and a Presence in the Community

It seems that everyone in business has a website. Those who don't have a website are likely at a disadvantage to those who do. I think it is getting to the point that the public expects any organization offering services to the community should have a website or that person or company might not be considered to have an identity or a presence in the community. The lack of a website may result in losing some new business that would have been created had there been a website.

Using a Website to Attract Search Engine Users

There is no possible way I can go into the issues of search engine optimization and some of the strategies that are currently in use. This would involve pages and pages of discussion. The National Care Planning Council’s services include designing websites for you that incorporate most of these principles. Here are some of the issues that you need to be aware of when optimizing your website for Internet searches.

· awareness of your Google page rank

· anticipating the keyword searches

· using your website statistics to improve your site

· implementing other common strategies for search engine optimization

· optimizing keywords without violating search engine guidelines (violation could result in your removal from the search engine index)

· providing lots of relative content

· frequently updating

· generating links from sites with better page rank

· placing articles with links to your website all over the Internet

· effectively using blogs in conjunction with your website

Pay-per-Click

We don't use pay-per-click (such as Google "adwords") because we don't have to. We get sufficient traffic from search engine placement. I tried it in the past and was not satisfied with it. At some point in the near future, I intend to try it again to see if it can augment the number of public requests for services at a reasonable cost.

If you have the bucks, then pay-per-click can bring in requests for your services immediately. Search engine optimization takes time and effort but pay-per click is quick and dirty. It can also become expensive. I wonder if Google doesn't give preference on search engine placement to those people who buy its advertising services.

Using Email Lists

We have always used email campaigns to grow our business. This has been very effective. Compared to direct mail, the cost is insignificant. Our marketing systems include extensive instructions on how you can use email campaigns to your opt-in recipients to promote the veterans aid and attendance benefit.

If you are interested in marketing support to promote the aid and attendance benefit, give me a call at 800-989-8137 or send me an email at Tom@careUtah.com.

Tom Day

Director, National Care Planning Council

http://www.longtermcarelink.net/a13consultant.htm

Send me an e-mail if you don't want to hear from me again on this subject.

Seniors as Entrepreneurs: Their Time Has Come!

Great article at business week about seniors opening their own businesses and getting back in the mix:

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2009/sb2009068_927403.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_top+small+business+stories

Economic volatility plus more boomer retirees have moved the starting age for startups and led to a surge of senior-run businesses.

"In recent years, the number of individuals starting their own businesses during what is usually considered the "retirement years" has been rising, according to economists and small-business observers. And so has the age at which they are starting their own ventures: According to the nonprofit AARP Public Policy Institute, in 2008, 21% of the self-employed were between 55 and 64, while 10% were 65 and older. Of course, not every self-employed senior is an entrepreneur, but experts believe the stock market's recent brutalization of retirement accounts will prod additional older Americans to start their own businesses. "
 

If you market elder care, or market senior care services, but don ' t understand social media marketing online, this might be why.....

If you don't understand how social media marketing fits into your current marketing plan, and how it changes the way you might traditionally look at Return on Investment, here's an article that I think explains it precisely. I proper social media marketing plan is not an option moving forward. Those who survive an economic turn down are those who plan effectively and for the long haul....and that means starting TODAY (ok yesterday, but it's not too late)
Valerie
PS Register for the Power Marketing Conference for Elder Care Entrepreneurs and Senior Service Providers at http://www.powermarketingconference.com

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media

February 20th, 2009 | by Tom Smith
Original Post at: http://mashable.com/2009/02/20/big-brands-social-media/

Tom Smith is the founder of Trendstream, a research consultancy that specialises in providing research and consultancy on social media, web and mobile. He formerly worked as Head of Consumer Futures at Universal McCann.

Social media continues to grow globally in terms of adoption, usage, interest and impact in a massive way. It’s undeniably changing the way that content and information work particularly in terms of the publishing of consumer opinion. This has transformed the way that consumers relate to brands and the way that brands should operate, driving direct interaction, transparency and a more consultative approach.

However, we still operate in a system defined by the old media world and consequently big brand involvement is still in the main tentative and sporadic. From my experience of trying to get big brands to embrace the social revolution, there are a number of reasons why they have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement can deliver:

1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more; it is a completely different approach to interacting with consumers and customers. Of course, you can advertise in a social media environment, but the true return on investment comes from developing communities, creating content to be shared, and talking and listening directly with consumers.

2. It does not fit into current structures: True social media falls somewhere between marketing, PR, communications, content production and web development. No one is quite sure whose responsibility it is and who should ultimately deliver their organisation’s social media strategy.

3. Communities and content are global: Users of social media connect, consume, and share content globally with little care for international borders. Marketing and PR departments and objectives are set up nationally or regionally. Very few organisations have a truly international structure and perspective.

4. Social media needs a long term approach: To build community, distribute content, or get people actively involved in an application takes time. Marketing and PR work on short time frames and are wedded to sets of individual campaigns or short term objectives. Social media is not a campaign, it’s a permanent approach.

5. No guaranteed results: You book advertising and it’s guaranteed to work. For, example you book a web campaign on page views and you keep going until you reach your goal. This is what advertisers call a push medium, i.e. you choose when people see it. Social media is a pull medium; usage and interaction is totally dependent on the user choosing to do so. If it’s not relevant or lacks creative brilliance it will not work. This makes it hard.

6. The metrics are new: Companies are used to the big numbers of advertising, but these numbers are different. Advertising is measured in booked exposures, i.e. page views, while social media is measured in direct interactions, i.e. number of friends, number of views or number of users. These numbers will always be smaller, but not necessarily any less measure of success.

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How do big brands take the proper approach to social media?

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Fundamentally, it is about putting in place the right organisational structure with a social media department, which is responsible for a company’s long term approach to open their companies up to consumers and have a permanent social media presence. They should also work with marketing and PR to make sure that advertising, product development, research and communications all fit into the social media picture and all aspects of the company and the product are socially optimised. Certain forward thinking organisations, such as Intel and Ford, have already done this and this is the approach that should be followed.

Marketing Home Care: Have You Ever Thought About a Niche in Internet Communications? Or....

I found this article in the New York Times online. Interesting take on seniors using the internet to stay connected, especially those who are homebound perhaps, but able to easily communicate and contribute given the opportunity. I would encourage everyone to read this important article. Which gives me an idea---I think we just found our next territory exclusive program for home care providers and maybe even some reverse mortgage professionals out there.

Boy, you aren't going to want to miss this Fall's POWER MARKETING CONFERENCE. It's only June and we are almost sold out, so get off your duff and get registered. Your competition might be there....hmmmmm. www.powermarketingconference.com

Online, ‘a Reason to Keep on Going’

 Here's the link to the original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02face.html?_r=2&ref=technology
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: June 1, 2009
Like many older people, Paula Rice of Island City, Ky., has grown isolated in recent years. Her four grown children live in other states, her two marriages ended in divorce, and her friends are scattered. Most days, she does not see another person.
FAR FROM LONELY Paula Rice, 73, had been “dying of boredom” before discovering social networking sites. She spends up to 14 hours a day on the sites.  But Ms. Rice, 73, is far from lonely. Housebound after suffering a heart attack two years ago, she began visiting the social networking sites Eons.com, an online community for aging baby boomers, and PoliceLink.com (she is a former police dispatcher). Now she spends up to 14 hours a day in online conversations.

“I was dying of boredom,” she said. “Eons, all by its lonesome, gave me a reason to keep on going.”

Marketing Elder Care: Know Thy Customer- Free PDF Chapter on Digital Body Language

I received this email today, and I did click through- well worth my time. So much so, that I thought it was worth sharing this with all of you!

Download it and read when you have time. Remember, it's about forming relationships and establishing authority, credibility, and trust.

http://img.en25.com/Web/Eloqua/eloqua_eBook_chapter4_v4-1.pdf

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The Internet has fundamentally altered buyer behavior - the way prospects identify, understand, evaluate, and buy products - forever.

Download this complimentary chapter: The Profile of the New Buyer
Marketers must accept this buyer behavior evolution and learn how best to interact with resourceful prospects that gather information and reviews via search engines, social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter), and blogs.

Download this complimentary chapter and learn how to:

• Successfully interact with and influence this new breed of buyers


• Read prospects' digital body language


• Cost-effectively nurture relationships with "not-ready-to-buy" leads


• Download your complimentary chapter from Steven Woods' New eBook: Digital Body Language!