Home Care Marketing Reimagined: Effective Strategies for 2024 and Beyond
Ready to revolutionize your home care agency's marketing game? We'll guide you through an array of marketing strategies, ranging from in-person to online, and even how to effectively manage your organic and bought leads. Hear about the indispensable role of a solid online presence, and gain insights into the marketing trends to watch for in 2024.
In our second segment, we shift focus to goal setting and KPIs, taking a closer look at how these can drive your business towards desired outcomes. We dissect an example of a grand yearly goal, demonstrating how it can be simplified into achievable targets. Plus, we chat about some ingenious marketing techniques - think themed gift bags to leave a lasting impression on potential clients. We don't stop here, we move on to discuss the considerable roles of sales, marketing, recruitment, and retention in achieving these goals.
Continuing our journey through effective home care agency management, we discuss the crucial tools and strategies for increasing efficiency and maintaining a successful home care business. You'll learn about the importance of effective scheduling, caregiver retention, and how to manage referrals using a CRM platform. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of SEO and the long-term commitment it requires, and even give you a sneak peek into the future of online marketing. To wrap up, we express our gratitude for your time and support, and look forward to hearing about your successes in 2024!
Home Care Marketing Reimagined: Effective Strategies for 2024 and Beyond
Ready to revolutionize your home care agency's marketing game? We'll guide you through an array of marketing strategies, ranging from in-person to online, and even how to effectively manage your organic and bought leads. Hear about the indispensable role of a solid online presence, and gain insights into the marketing trends to watch for in 2024.
In our second segment, we shift focus to goal setting and KPIs, taking a closer look at how these can drive your business towards desired outcomes. We dissect an example of a grand yearly goal, demonstrating how it can be simplified into achievable targets. Plus, we chat about some ingenious marketing techniques - think themed gift bags to leave a lasting impression on potential clients. We don't stop here, we move on to discuss the considerable roles of sales, marketing, recruitment, and retention in achieving these goals.
Continuing our journey through effective home care agency management, we discuss the crucial tools and strategies for increasing efficiency and maintaining a successful home care business. You'll learn about the importance of effective scheduling, caregiver retention, and how to manage referrals using a CRM platform. Furthermore, we discuss the benefits of SEO and the long-term commitment it requires, and even give you a sneak peek into the future of online marketing. To wrap up, we express our gratitude for your time and support, and look forward to hearing about your successes in 2024!
Welcome to the big event with approved senior network. This is our annual year-end webinar and, of course, as soon as we scheduled this, I got a little sick and so I have just this much voice, so I'll be powering through my part of this. So I apologize for the weird voice, but I don't feel as bad as I sound. I promise it's major. It's just a little cold. So we're going to go ahead and get started.
Speaker 1:You want to go to the next slide? Sure, we're going to introduce ourselves, but just kind of on a housekeeping note, if you could keep your lines muted, we will leave plenty of time for questions and there's also a chat. So if you prefer to stay quiet and you just want to add a little question to the chat, you are more than welcome to do that, and we will go through the chat questions. I would recommend we're going to take about halfway through. We're going to stop and ask if anybody has any questions and that will be a great time to unmute your line or just put something in the chat, and we'll just go through the questions in the order that they are in there. So, dawn, you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Sure, Hi everyone, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for coming to our annual big end of year event. This is the second one that I've been at and I really enjoyed myself last year. I've been looking forward to this. I also want to thank you for what you do every day with the seniors out there. It's really important work. It's not easy work. People stay in this industry because they care. So I do want to pass that on and thank you for all that you do all day long for all of the seniors nationwide.
Speaker 2:I come from a home care background. I have been in home care for close to 20 years. I worked at a franchise in the beginning. I was in sales for about seven years and then moved in as the operations manager for the last three or four years. I was at that company for about 10 years. We were the number one company nationwide. More recently, I was at an independent home care company. I was hired to increase the private pay side of the business. Just under four years we got to about 3.5 million in private pay. So I understand what you're doing. I've been in recruiting, retention, sales operations. I understand it, I know it's a challenge and we're here to help you today. We'll pass it on to Valerie.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pass it on to Lisa, because I'm the least important in this world, lisa.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Lisa Marcellet. I know quite a bit of you here, I see, but I have been in home care, I think about the same as Dawn. I was in home care for almost about 20 years. So I have done every single thing in home care, because I don't think you can just stay in one lane in home care ever, because things just change all day long. And then I was in newspaper back when it was really super duper cool before the internet killed it. So I was in marketing and home care. So I love what everyone's doing. I get excited when I see leads coming for you guys and when I get to talk to you about home care. So thank you guys all for everything you do and for being here today. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1:All right, and I'm Valerie Van Boeven. I'm a registered nurse and the co-owner and founder of Approve Senior Network. We've been in business since 2008. And I think I have probably played in every role you can imagine in health care, all the way from discharge planner to ICU nurse, you name it. I've been in houses. I put newspaper down on the couch so that I could actually sit down on a clean place. I've done everything you can imagine in every environment you can imagine, and so I understand all the way, from the caregiver perspective all the way up through the operations perspective, and it is not easy. But, like Dawn said, we're here to make life a little bit easier and we hope that in 2024 we can continue to make your businesses and your business life a little easier. So stick with us through 2024. And with that we're going to go ahead and get started.
Speaker 2:Okay, so today we're going to cover what's working for home care agencies now in-person marketing strategies, kpis and essential measurements. You need to know your numbers. Online marketing strategies, what's predicted to work better for 2024, and bringing it all together for full circle marketing. Okay, what is working for home care agencies? I found through the years that the successful home care companies that I've worked for, I've worked with, they, don't rely on just one marketing strategy. I really you know I have. I meet with a lot of new home care owners too in the very beginning, and a lot of them will say, well, I'm just going to think I'm going to do Google ads Maybe that's what their strategy is and they expect, like, the jobs are just going to come in and they're going to sit there and Google ads is going to take care of everything. You really need to mix up the marketing strategies. There isn't one strategy and one strategy alone that is going to bring in the business, and so I would say that the top three marketing strategies that have been successful for me, that I see that other successful marketing home care agencies are using, are the in-person marketing. We call that business development. We call it community involvement. Number two organic leads which come from a strong online presence. That involves your website, blogging, newsletters, social media and SEO, and then buying some leads as well. So those are the three marketing strategies that I have used, that I have worked with successful companies that they are using to bring in some private-pay business. So first we're going to talk about the in-field sales and marketing business development side.
Speaker 2:Through the years I have found these are the top five categories places that you can go to bring in some private paid business for your home care agency, sniffs, skilled nursing facilities, rehabs even the SNFs that have both short-term and long-term side and a straight rehab that is just rehab. People are there, they rehab, they go home. Hospitals are a great place. They can be hard to get into. Smaller hospitals are a great target. Independent living, assisted living, and then I kind of categorized all of these here together Hospice, home health, senior centers, group homes and adult daycare. All of those are as good as well. I feel like they're a great combination together.
Speaker 2:Maybe I don't know that any of those kind of stand out on their own. At least they haven't for me. I would say number one to get to that 3.5 million, I would say a big chunk of that was skilled nursing facilities. We want to get in there and build those relationships and get all their business, everybody that's discharging In-person marketing. I wanted to just kind of share what that looks like.
Speaker 2:So you know when you're out marketing and we're going to get into KPIs and goals but you're seeing 40 to 50 stops a week. If you're doing your business development, you're marketing full-time, it's 40 to 50 stops a week. You see everybody every eight to 10 days. It's not enough. Then, if you're going back every eight to 10 days, the way that you should be, it's not enough to just leave a brochure every time or your business cards. I'm sure many of you have been told through the years I know I was I already have your brochure, I got it. You know like that's it, I don't need anything else, I'm good.
Speaker 2:You have to bring in other things. You're not going to get a face-to-face every time you come in. Part of the marketing business development is proving you are a reliable person. Your company is reliable. You're consistent. They can count on you. You do that by coming in. You're not going to get a face-to-face every time. You shouldn't expect a face-to-face every time. You should see me seeing everybody face-to-face at least once a month and in between you're leaving behind things. We are really great at that piece of it. You're busy and you're out marketing and you might be a creative person, but when you start getting really busy, the creativity goes right out the window and you're rushing to get things done. You've got stuff in the back of your car. I mean, I've been this person. We help a lot with the lead behinds, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what this in-person marketing looks like. This is a handout, a lead behind for January.
Speaker 2:I like with the lead behinds. I like to celebrate the holidays. I like to celebrate some of the healthcare you know acknowledgments, nurses' day, those kinds of things. I like to tie in our services to what's going on. I think that that's really good. You want to remind them that you're there, you want to be consistent and you want to share something about the holidays. Remember, you're not trying to get a referral. I mean, the end of the day, that's what you want.
Speaker 2:But you can't go in with the mindset of I need referrals from this SNP. It needs to be. I'm building a relationship with this person, I have a strong foundation and because of that they're going to start referring. That's how you get consistent referrals. Will you get a one and done if you just come in and you're thinking about the referral and that's all you really care about? Probably. But you want consistent referrals. You need a relationship in which maybe you're doing bedside sitting in a SNF, that that social worker is comfortable calling you, texting you, bringing you into her office and saying, hey, I got complaints that your caregiver was sleeping on the job last night and that you can bounce back from that. That's a relationship. That is what the goal is. You need that to get consistent referrals. So this is an idea. This is something that we've put together in our mastermind with our clients. If you're a client of ours, you're in a mastermind meeting and we create all of these handouts. We do two or three a month.
Speaker 2:This one says let us help you bring in the new year with less read missions the fact that you even know about read missions, what they are. It is a hot topic at the end of the year for the SNFs and hospitals because guess what? Their corporate office is saying hey, you, you need to reduce your readmissions rate. All of you, all that needs to come down in 2024. We help with that right. If someone goes home with home health, home care, their readmission rate goes down drastically. So that is why it's important to talk about this. And what better time than the new year? Because they're hearing it from the upper, from the corporate office anyway.
Speaker 2:And so you attach this to a bag and you can put these 2024 New Year's glasses. They're going to wear them New Year's Eve. They're going to wear them all around the facility we have. You know, we give you the Google link, the Canva link, the Amazon link. We make it really, really easy. These are a little bit more expensive eight pairs for $18.99. We try to keep things at $1. We also had cardboard glasses that were $1. So some of our clients follow this to the letter, some take pieces of it and go from there. Another idea that we had was here's to a pop in New Year. So happy to be popping into the New Year together, and you attach some popcorn to it and you've got your links here. We also in January. I'm just trying to give you a whole full month, so you know what this in-person marketing looks like.
Speaker 2:It's Glocko Mo Awareness Month. This is all about keeping your vision and we're talking about how the caregivers are trained and understand the safety risks of eyesight loss. So we're bringing our business expertise how we can help, into the Glocko Mo Awareness. That's the best kind of leave behind that you can have. We have some eye masks here, some bracelets. You put it all in the bag here with your little, your leave behind and off you go. If you don't get to see them face to face, you're left this for them and they know that you had stopped by.
Speaker 2:This one is Eat Well, fill Well. Our caregivers are trained in special diets, preparing nutritious, healthy meals. We can create a meal plan. Again. This is celebrating that we're going to be eating well. Right January, everybody sets up their New Year's resolution I'm going to be healthy, I'm going to go to the gym, and so I'm going to eat well and our caregivers can help with that. So we're tying in what's going on with our service lines and there's some great ideas here these brown bags and some cuties. Or if you're going to a doctor's office or a SNF and you want to treat everybody, you know a fruit tray, fill it up with some fruit and leave that there behind. So that gives you. Lisa. Did you have a question? Comment?
Speaker 3:Yes, I sure did. So we have a question in the chat, and so one time a month, face to face, is how often for the leave behinds.
Speaker 2:So you're going to go every eight to 10 days, and so if you don't have a face to face, you're leaving something behind. And if you get to see them face to face you get to hand it to them. But monthly you want to see their face and in between that it's every eight to 10 days.
Speaker 3:And then I would also just put make sure that you follow up with that person, let them know you left them something, either text or email or whatever it is. Just let them know. Hey, I left something with you know, suzy, at the front desk, or whatever. Just let them know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always texted or called or emailed. I just left something for you because that little item they may never see it if you don't and the follow up that tells them you're going to follow up with them about their patients too. But everything that you're doing is proving your reliability and your consistency. And it might seem odd, it might seem like this is like a lot. I'm telling you it works. It definitely works.
Speaker 2:Last year Social Work Month National Social Worker Association they put their own theme together. Last year's theme was social work breaks barriers. So we just played on that. We got like a little hammer breaking glass. And then you know, kit Kat, break a break a piece of the Kit Kat bar off right and ice breakers, and this little hammer tie the hammer to the outside of the bag and off you go, fill it up with Kit Kat's and ice breakers. So it's not hard. It's not difficult when you're buried and super busy. It's hard to come up with creative, fun things that are going to stand out. That's what we do. So we take care of all of that for you and you can just take this and run with it and we give all the links and everything.
Speaker 2:And I think this is the last one, september was, is fall month, fall prevention month. It's also the season of fall, so we kind of played on that and it says just like these socks, our services can help to prevent falls. Here are the non slip socks. You put them in the bag, tie this around the bag and you're good to go. And we have a stress ball turkey for Thanksgiving. Don't be a turkey and stress over discharges. We can help you. Again, we're tying together. They do stress about discharges and how we're the solution. This stress ball I actually did use this. They get it out of their desk every year and it's sitting on their desk. It's got my logo and phone number on the little tissue in the back, so this was a great handout as well. All right, so we're going to get into goal setting and KPIs, don can I just just to follow up to that question.
Speaker 3:So you know, I guess and this would be depending on where you are but the question is who should you leave the read behind? For this is the first time you've ever been there, and so you know who would be the first initial contact. So if you could just maybe touch on who you were talking to us, so it depends on where you're going.
Speaker 2:So and you need to think about what, what you're saying in your message All of these have Google links so that you can edit them. This because it's discharges. This would go to a hospital. It would go to a SNF. When you're in a hospital, you're looking to talk to the case managers. They're usually RNs. Keep that in mind. I once gave a case manager who was an RN a happy show worker month, a little gift, and she told me she's a nurse and so that didn't go over really well.
Speaker 2:So I'm giving you a little heads up. So, nurses, case managers are usually nurses and that's usually hospitals, in the SNFs. It's going to be a social worker. If you're going to independent living, assisted living, you would want to reword this. You wouldn't be talking about discharges, because that would make sense for them and assisted living. You're looking to talk to the director of nursing and independent living. It's usually just whoever you know is in the office. Usually it's probably the sales person, who's you know getting people to come into the building to live there. So you know. You're going to change the wording based on wherever you're going and I hope that answered the question. Yeah, okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So goal setting and KPIs. So, first of all, what is a KPI? It's key performance indicators. They're critical, key indicators of progress toward an intended result. People get goals and KPIs kind of mixed up. So the goal is the outcome you hope to achieve and the KPI is the metric to let you know how well you're doing towards that goal. So what KPIs should you be measuring to reach your goals and how often should you be reviewing them?
Speaker 2:So let's just do a random. I want my annual private pay billing to be $700,000 a year when you're working with goals, you want to break them into smaller bits and pieces. They're easier to manage when they're broken down. So my quarter billing goal would be $175,000. And my weekly billing run rate. I'm just going to divide the $700,000 by 52 weeks, my run rate would be $13,462. So the way that I kind of ran my KPIs and marketing and goals and all of this good stuff, I really feel like it comes down to three main departments, three main people in a home care business that have a lot of control over this billing, one being your sales and marketing. Two, scheduling, staffing, client services they're called all different things throughout the home care industry and then recruiting and retention.
Speaker 2:So our run rate again is $13,000. We are trying to get to this annual goal. So basically what you do is you set up your KPIs. These are real KPIs that I use to get to that $3.5 million and I'm going to meet with each department or each person each week. So if we're looking at sales and marketing, a full-time sales and marketing person should be making 40 to 50 stops a week. Of those 40 to 50 stops, 15 to 20 of them are face-to-face Number of referrals from your field efforts.
Speaker 2:If you're doing this consistently, this is not going to happen January 3rd, right Like this is going to take a while. It's three to six months Usually. You should be getting five to seven referrals from these field efforts that you're making when the service inquiries come in, because we're not just looking at all field stuff for sales and marketing. I had my sales and marketing people take the service inquiries when they came in. I also had them sign the jobs. They need to be at a 70% booking ratio. That means out of every 10 phone calls that come in, 7% of them should be booked and maybe not just calls the referrals too, if they're going in and they're going to go see somebody at a SNF and try to get them signed up. Assessments they should be at a 90% signing ratio. And then number of new jobs sign four to six. Some of this four to six sign jobs are going to come from your online presence and from the leads that you're paying for as well, and so this is what it takes from this department or this person to get to the 700,000 in billing, and you're going to look at this weekly. I have found through the years, when you shine a light on something and you're checking it out every single week, it gives you time to react. If this person's only hitting 15 stops week after week after week, you're probably not going to hit your goal. So this needs to be looked at every single week during your meetings with this department or this person Scheduling and staffing. They need to be able to do three to four quick starts a week.
Speaker 2:A quick start, my opinion, is something that's going to start within 48 hours, probably closer to 24 hours. We need to be open to be able to do this. They need to have some open time, some open caregivers to have this flexibility. Or maybe you have a lead caregiver. A lead caregiver is somebody that you have. You're paying them maybe 20 hours a week, whether they work or not, and they are just ready to go. You tell them you need to be available seven to seven on these days. That doesn't mean you have a child that needs to be taken to daycare. It doesn't mean you're running to the grocery store and you need to come home. This means you're available, and I promise you they probably will work all the hours that you've told them. They help you to be able to do these quick starts.
Speaker 2:The reason we need to be able to do quick starts there are emergencies. The other piece of it, though, is these social workers will test you. I'm sure everybody's been tested right. They throw a quick start at you. They throw a transportation only. They throw a weekend. They throw something difficult the first couple of times because they want to know you're really gonna come through for them. You're the real deal. So we have to be able to start these three to four quick starts.
Speaker 2:You may not even have that many jobs a week right now, but at some point, if you're starting four to six jobs a week, even maybe a couple more, you're gonna have. Some of those are gonna be quick starts, especially if you're working with social workers in a SNF or a hospital. You need to be staffed out 48 hours ahead during the week and 72 hours on Friday. So what does it mean to be staffed out? I know that a smaller company and I know this because I've hired people that came from a smaller company when they get a job Monday through Friday, they staff the whole thing like right out the gate. Everything is staffed. When you're in a larger company, that's not usually how it works. Usually what happens is you staff maybe Monday, wednesday, friday, and then Tuesday, thursday get staffed and then the weekend gets staffed, and so that means then that you have open shifts all the time. There's just some open shifts on the board. You're also gonna have call-offs and vacations and things like that, but I'm talking about new jobs coming in mostly. So on Monday, when everybody closed shop for the day, you should be staffed through Wednesday. Everything should be staffed through Wednesday, and that should happen 50 to 70% of the week. This allows for you to handle call-offs. Maybe you come in Tuesday morning. On Monday, you should have been staffed through Wednesday. You come in Tuesday morning. There's five call-offs. What if you're still staffing for Tuesday night or you're still staffing for Wednesday. Now you're trying to deal with call-offs. It's just too much. So try to get staffed out 48 hours ahead during the week and on Fridays, get staffed through Tuesday as much as you can. This will allow you to do quick starts and it will also allow you to handle your call-offs more efficiently and effectively. Percent of missed shifts I didn't realize what a big deal this was, and when you're a smaller company it may not be as big it could deal as you start to grow and you get bigger.
Speaker 2:I am a big advocate of looking at the live view in Clear Care Well Sky. That live view that was like my Bible. I looked at it on Monday and I was watching those billable hours and I was hoping they were gonna go up. And then I always look at the week ahead. What's next week looking like? Is next week smaller than this week already? Then we gotta do something now to get that going. But what I was finding as I was looking at this every single week all week long, is it was dropping and dropping and dropping as the week was happening and I'm like what's happened? Are people dying? I don't understand. How could we drop a hundred out, like what's happening.
Speaker 2:And what I found out was the scheduling team would call when a caregiver called up and they would say would you like a replacement? So we need to work on language because we were losing so many billable hours this way. It should be your caregivers out we're working on a replacement, your caregivers out. Our lead caregiver is on her way. I know that's hard to say when you're the actual scheduling person because you have to make it happen, but please work with your schedulers on their language. They should not be asking do you want a replacement? Because a senior is always gonna say no. And what's that adult child going to say? What are they gonna say when they find out mom and dad went without care? And they're gonna say to you don't ask them, they need the care. They're always gonna say no. So you're also gonna upset your adult child and your billable hours are gonna go down. So take a look at that percent of miss shift. It should be less than 10% of your total shifts. There should not be a reason that you're losing a lot of billable hours because of miss shifts. Again, those lead caregivers can definitely help with that as well.
Speaker 2:Increased client hours based on needs by 10 to 20 hours. Now, this is a larger company. I still think there is room for this. If you have a caregiver going maybe Monday, wednesday, friday to see a client, your caregivers are talking to your schedulers all the time. They care about the client, they're concerned, they're worried when nobody's coming tomorrow. I'm here Monday, wednesday, friday and nobody's coming Tuesday. And when I come on Wednesday it doesn't look like she ate anything, it doesn't look like she showered, it doesn't look like she even got up out of the chair. They're worried, they're concerned. They call the scheduler. The scheduler should then call that adult child and get Tuesday scheduled. For God's sakes, if the caregiver's worried about it and they're there day in and day out, we have to be working on that side of it and the adult child is definitely expecting that that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So scheduling does have some power to increase hours based on needs. I don't think they should go out there really nearly. Oh, let's increase everybody. It needs to be done based on needs. Lost clients this again is less than two to three a week. If you're smaller, it's not gonna be quite that large. I think we need to do whatever we can to save a client. I think we need to be listening.
Speaker 2:Scheduling has so much to do. They're so busy with fires and all the things Expecting them. To like to save a client might be a little hard for them because they're just living in the crisis place, right. But if the caregiver's been late two or three days in a row, guess what? Somebody's probably upset about that. If the caregiver has called off three times this week, somebody's probably upset about that. Train your schedulers to get your marketing person who will ever sign that job up, to let them know. Hey, I just wanted to let you know, mrs. Ms caregiver, she's been late three times this week. You might wanna check in with the family and put it back to the person who signed them. That is who the adult child loves. That is who the adult child trusted enough to sign it for services. So get them back involved and let them help you keep these jobs. Don't wait until they're so upset that they've already quit. Give them, give the marketing people enough time, enough notice to know so and so may not be happy. I better just check in. So no, you don't wanna lose clients unless they've died. They've gotten better. Try really hard not to lose them because of quality issues.
Speaker 2:Number of caregiver shout outs sent to HR. So this is a two prong. I have two reasons for this. One the schedulers have had it with the caregivers and the excuses I used to always. Maybe her grandma really did die. Maybe that hardly happened. Her grandma died eight times this year. I mean, this is what I would hear. So they've had it with the excuses. They don't believe the caregivers. So one I want scheduling to see the caregivers and notice the caregivers doing something good. So I want them to be looking for that. Number two your caregivers need shout outs. You're gonna retain these people. They need to hear that they're doing a great job. They're heart people. They need to be recognized. They need to know that they're doing a good job and they need to know that you know that they're doing a good job. So every week, my scheduling team scheduler would need to give me three to four shout outs, three or four different caregivers letting me know what they did. That was so wonderful so we could add it to our newsletter or whatever it was we were gonna do on social media so that they would be aware.
Speaker 2:Recruiting and retention refresh the ads at least once a week. When you write your ad, it's here and every day, as people are writing ads, you're moving down and you're moving down and you're moving down. Ads need to be refreshed weekly, moved back up to the top. Number of caregiver leads coming from the ads. If you're going to be signing four to six jobs, you probably need to hire four to six caregivers, and you know it depends what kind of jobs and the hours and all of that. There's a lot of variables but in general that's the rule of thumb. This may have changed a little bit, but what I've seen through the years is this number just continues to split in half. If you have 16 to 24 caregivers coming in from ads, out of those 16 to 24, four to six will probably get hired. So if you need more than four to six, you're just gonna keep doubling these numbers. So the number of caregiver leads coming from ads 16 to 24 a week. Number of caregiver interviews then would be eight to 12 and number of caregivers hired would be four to six. So that's all recruiting retention.
Speaker 2:Caregivers will stay.
Speaker 2:You can get them to stay 90 days.
Speaker 2:They're gonna stay for a while.
Speaker 2:How do you get them to stay 90 days?
Speaker 2:You pay attention to them. You talk to them. You talk to them at least once a week, their first 90 days. And talking to them is not can you work Saturday? Where's your TV? We need your CPR updated. That is not talking to them. Talking to them is how did your first shift go? Are you enjoying your clients? Is there anything I can do to make your job easier? That's talking to them. That's retention. So once a week at least, they need to hear from your office. We have a retention program where it's automated. It's wonderful. You can do it on your own though. You can call them, you can text them, you can email them. They need to hear from you at least weekly. After that, after the 90 days, they should be hearing from you at least monthly, plus a birthday, plus an anniversary. And hearing from you again is not can you work on Saturday? That's not retention, that's we're very much, and I hate to say it because I'm guilty of it myself.
Speaker 2:We started Home Care Pulse. We could not wait to get our caregiver surveys. We were so excited about the caregiver surveys and they came back basically saying you only reach out to me when you want something, and you know what? It was true. It was true, the only caregivers that heard from us were the problems. Those are the people that heard from us, so keep that in mind. We've got to take care of them. Without caregivers, you don't really have a business. So you take these KPIs and you meet with each department every single week. Their KPIs are listed here. What they've actually done is listed here. This is your weekly run rate. As you're adding your weekly run rate here, this number is getting bigger and you need to get to 175 and four quarters over. You can see here there are little shorts. It's supposed to be 13,000. They're at nine right here. So what are they gonna do? What can they do? They can start trying to get some 24 hour jobs. There's things you can do to increase this. So that is how the KPIs look.
Speaker 3:Question yes. Question on the. So if you go back to the slide before the sales and marketing, so if someone's been there let's say been with the company five, even 10 years would this change so?
Speaker 2:to increase this because I've had that one marketer really can't do more than 40 to 50 stops a week if they're also signing jobs, so you just hire more people. So if you wanna get over the 700,000, you would hire another marketer.
Speaker 3:Okay, this question is that is exactly if the person's been there over five or 10 years, how do the KPIs change, especially if hitting millions in sales?
Speaker 2:I don't think that this changes, because I've been using this for almost the 20 years I've been doing this. They don't really change per person. You just start adding more marketers.
Speaker 3:Adding more people.
Speaker 2:You add more people and that's how you get into the more millions. We started with the last company I was with. We started with me, and then we hired someone about six months later and we hired another person. We were hiring marketers and of course, you also then need to probably hire more schedulers and recruiting as well to keep up with it. Are there any other questions? And then Valerie will be up for all the good online stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you have any questions about the in-person sales and marketing, now is a great time to ask those questions. You can put them in the chat, you can unmute your line and then we're going to move on. I see a question.
Speaker 3:Someone's saying so. Salesperson can only get to 700k and then you essentially have a salesperson.
Speaker 2:It depends on the kinds of jobs that they're signing. If they're all 24s, it's going to be way, way above that. I used to have part of my KPI as out of the signed jobs to need to be 24s every week. Right, we were doing that for a while. That might be something you want to think about, because to get some 24s in the mix, your billing goes up. It's going to depend on the kinds of jobs you're going after and the kinds of jobs that you're signing. Absolutely one marketing could get you way above the 700,000, but you're going to need some 24s in that mix. Those 24s are going to have to stay because a lot of them will sign up and they're here for two weeks and then they drop off.
Speaker 2:I had my marketers would look at their personal live view. They each had their own territory and they would be tagged in clear care so they could see their own live view. I would tell them it looks like your billable hours are going to drop next week. What are you going to do about that? You have two 24s that are on hospice. You better get out there and start looking for some new 24s before the inevitable happens, because it does. I mean, it's just the way that it is. If they're signing 24s, absolutely they can get you over the 700,000. You can add that as a KPI. You've got four to six sign jobs. I want two of them to be 24s, but then you need to help them. How do they get a 24? That's a whole story.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other webinar, but the relationships are going to be key for that for sure.
Speaker 3:Here's a good question. What do you think are the most valuable in-service topics for us to deliver to SNFs In their eyes?
Speaker 2:I love the 20 questions to ask a home care agency because you are, you're educating them and you can call it a lunch and learn and you're educating them. You're also talking about how wonderful your company is. The questions are questions that you would answer favorably. Are your caregivers 1099 or W2? Do you drug test? If you drug test, then make that a question. It places doubt in the social worker's mind about your competitors. It's a form that they're actually going to give to their patient so they can call other companies and compare apples to apples.
Speaker 2:That has been hands down my number one handout for any kind of lunch and learn or anything that I'm doing. I also like to educate them and you could do an in-service about what happens after discharge. We know they don't know. How would they know? It's mind blowing to them, I mean, when I say to them I came back to the home and the fall was still there. They spilled coffee, the phone was on the floor, the aftermath was still there. They don't understand what happens and how emotional and how hard it is when they get home. The first three to five days are super challenging. When someone comes home, senior, comes home from the hospital, they're disoriented. There's a lot going on Educating them about what happens after they come home has been very powerful too.
Speaker 3:Then I think there was one more when we send that, do we send a replay out? Yes, okay, so just if we can include the KPI Excel doc or something like that will we be doing that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can do that.
Speaker 3:Maybe we can do the comparison too, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's everybody's favorite Questions to ask a home care agency. I'm going to show you an example of how you can use that on your website too. Oh yeah, is a 700,000 for private pay or long-term care insurance? The answer is in. Any combination of that is fine. Any combination of however you can get to 700,000. Yes, all right, are we good for now? Okay, all right. Online marketing for more home care clients All right. So I'm going to say this A Proof Senior Network has been a lot about the online marketing that's been our forte for many, many years.
Speaker 1:But we have always said even though we weren't the primary teachers of such that in-person sales, marketing and networking will never go away. And I cringe and have pain in my heart when, even though that's the product that we've sold, that someone's relying strictly on online marketing to make or break their business. I know in my heart that that is probably not going to get you where you need to be. It really is about having a presence in your community in whatever amount you can make that happen. Maybe you can't afford to have a full-time salesperson right now, maybe you're the only one, maybe it's just you and your husband. You're in your wife, you and your son or daughter running this business. That's okay, but whatever you can do to get out there is better than nothing at all. You need to make stops.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about online marketing and combining those two together. The important piece of this is that you're online and you're in-person marry up. At some point You're in the same area. They're kind of disjointed, but we want them to come together. So we're going to talk about website SEO, your blog, your newsletter, your social media, and inside of social media, everybody asks well, what's really important? I really like Twitter X, whatever it is. No, you need to go where your demographics are. Where are your people? Your people are still on Facebook, linkedin, they still use your Google Business profile, tiktok, instagram and YouTube. They are kind of in the mix there.
Speaker 1:But I will tell you, oddly, some of you love TikTok. Some of you secretly love TikTok Sort of a secret guilty pleasure for me. There are a lot of older people on TikTok. Weirdly, tepa Snow, if you know who Tepa Snow is dementia educator. She's not a spring chicken, she's a wonderful person, but she teaches dementia care, training, right, and she has a million followers, I think, and it's the skits and the stuff that she does and the educational pieces that she puts out on TikTok, on TikTok. So there is room for you there.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's keep going. Let's go to the next slide. Let's talk more about websites.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, strong online presence your organic presence is so important. Yes, you can do Google ads and, yes, you can be at the top of first page of Google. There are so many challenges with that. In the home care market, google ads is not where I would direct you first. Do we do it? Yes, do we want to direct people in that way? No, Because your organic presence meaning people are naturally finding you on Google is the most important thing.
Speaker 1:And in order to have that happen, you have to have a very fast, well-built website, so a grade A website, and you have to convince the search engines that you're an expert in your industry in your local area. So not only are you an expert in companion care, personal care, 24-hour care, part-time home care, full-time home care, but you also have to convince them that convince Google and the people looking at your website that you are an expert in St Charles, missouri, in St Louis Missouri, in O'Fallon Missouri, in Dardine Prairie, missouri. Little bitty towns, big towns. You need to spread out your visibility over your entire territory that you can serve. So when someone searches for home care in St Louis, missouri, google will show the websites that get the most traffic, that talk about everything related to home care, that talk about St Louis and give the user a good experience. Google wants the mobile experience what you see on your phone to be excellent. So if your website takes 10 seconds to load, 3 seconds to load, 5 seconds to load, it's not going to show your website because that's not a favorable experience. It needs to load in one second or two seconds on your mobile device and we can test that anytime. But that's what we go for. That's what our websites do. Google is not going to show a website that gives a poor mobile experience. So we need to make sure that's all awesome. Okay, convince search engines that you're an expert in your industry in your local area.
Speaker 1:You do this with content and a lot of it. So it used to be and some of you may still have this on your websites that a website would talk about the services that you offer and it would be a little, a little bulleted list of and I can do it in my sleep lighthouse keeping light laundry. It would be errand running grocery shopping, a company to MD appointments. I mean, I could go through the list. You can go through the list. Personal care would be bathing, dressing, grooming. You know we can have our bulleted lists.
Speaker 1:But when you write an entire page or your web developer writes an entire page that talks about the advantages of home care, answers the frequently asked questions about home care, that talks about why personal hygiene is so important, especially when we're seniors. That talks about why bathing, dressing, grooming is an important piece of personal dignity. And when you fully write that page out to talk about personal care, google says you know what? Not only is this great content, but these people know what they're talking about. They're talking about a trusted authority in home care, because they took the time to explain and answer the frequently asked questions about what personal care is, what activities of daily living are, and so for you all out there, that is really super boring. Nobody wants to sit around and write a whole page on that. So what we started doing a couple of years ago is writing all that content for our clients. So when someone comes to us for a website, we professionally write all of the pages of their content for them, because it's much easier for us to do it and we know that it has to be written in long form in order to have any opportunity to rank. These days, each service line needs to have its own page. So we do that. We write 1000 to 2000 word pages for each thing companion care, personal care, 24 hour home care, dementia care, whatever you name it. We do it For blog posting.
Speaker 1:This is something that is important that I don't think a lot of people really understand. When you put a blog post on someone's website, when we as a company or you as your individual put up a blog post, it needs to be unique to you, and so there are lots of organizations out there in marketing companies that will send out an article and say post this on your blog, it's excellent content, and they're right, it's excellent content. But it's excellent content for 300 people, for 300 home care agencies or 200 home care agencies or 100 home care agencies, and they're all going to post exactly the same thing and Google is going to be like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that 200 times. I'm not going to, you know, rehash that and make. That's going to be a bad user experience.
Speaker 1:So when we blog post for our clients, it doesn't matter if they have two different offices that we're blog posting for in two local communities, or if it's a franchise or whatever it is. Everyone gets a unique piece of content every single time. We don't double up, we don't duplicate. We make it unique to not only to their website, but also to the locations and territories that they serve. It's very important, and we've been doing that for 15 years. We don't post the same article on anyone else's website and we have probably 200 clients across the country or more, and each person each week gets their own content, and that is one of the most important things I can tell you that needs to happen. Local SEO is super important. We do that, and you have to be consistent.
Speaker 1:Consistency is the key in any of this. Whether you're marketing in person, right, or you're putting some content on your website, you can't just do it once and say, well, that didn't work for me. It has to be a consistent effort, and my guess is that the first thing that is easy enough to forget about is what your online presence is doing for you, because it's hard to understand it and you don't want to take the time to write stuff. You're not a writer. You're a homeowner or marketer of a home care agency. You didn't sign up for this to write dissertations, so that's why outsourcing that to a reputable agency that deals with home care every single day and has for 15 years is an easier choice than you writing it yourself. However, you can do that, and you should so, if you have your own website and your own blog and you're able to contribute to it, my recommendation is put it on your schedule. Do it once a week. It will not hurt you, it can only help you. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:So website builds and blogging. Businesses that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not, and it enables you to better convert traffic. It allows your business to establish authority in your industry. Trust and authority is probably the two biggest words and the two most important words that you can establish, not only with your in-person marketing, but also with your online marketing. So, blog posting, your social media presence, the newsletter that goes out from you all of those things should not only match. They should be branded well, but they should also be educational in nature and they should exude trust and authority.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter if you opened your home care agency yesterday or 20 years ago. You are now the expert in home care, in elder care issues, in senior care issues, so make that happen online as well. So what you see on the screen here is an example of the top part of a newsletter and their Facebook page, and you can see that we change the images just a little bit, but they are the same image and the branding is the same, and so that flows through with all of their marketing materials. So online they have the same thing on their website that they have on their Facebook page, that they have in their newsletter. It's a brand identity the right colors, the right imagery and the right fonts and all of that. So branding is a huge part of this.
Speaker 3:Can you speak on improving the Google experience when using a website that's a franchise, a franchise website?
Speaker 1:So, if you are part of a franchise, and how can we improve Google experience if we use a franchise website? Okay, well, that's really part of your franchisor's responsibility is to make sure that when they have choose a person or a company or agency to build the website, that they're choosing one that has all of this in mind. And that's challenging for those of you who are franchise owners. Franchisees you have to. You know you can't have your own website, and typically we know this and you have a website built by the franchise. Or now, the good news for all of you who are franchise owners is that you're you're, you are part of a huge machine. You are part of a giant website. So your little website piece, your local one, is part of a much bigger one. So if you were to look at like Homestead, for instance, if you were to do an analysis of how many backlinks Homestead or assisting hands, or touching hearts, or visiting angels, or any of them that they have they have a giant amount of backlinks and authority and because their websites are huge behind the scenes, so that gives you the advantage from an SEO perspective You're part of a much bigger organization, your website's part of a much bigger website, and so you get a lot of benefit from that. As far as making the websites move faster, and to you know, that's a huge part of the build behind the scenes. It's also imagery is an issue. So, for I was just analyzing a website that's not a franchise website today and they have a moving video and they have, you know, all these big giant pictures on their homepage, which is really pretty, but it slows that website down to crawl and there are ways to overcome that. So it's really up to your franchise or to help, you know, move that needle as far as speed, and it can also have something to do with hosting. So those are the important pieces. We have a snipping tool. Who's kept the snipping tool? So I hope that helps, but you also have a lot of opportunities to move the needle yourself. What is your Google business listing, say? Are you posting to your Google business listing on a regular basis or is it automatic? Are you posting to Facebook? Are you posting to LinkedIn? Have you done a TikTok video ever A YouTube video? Any of that? There's lots of ways you can move a needle on your own as well. All right, newsletters we have a sample here and then social media. According to platform statement, 72% of Americans use at least one social media platform and 53% share of social media users use Facebook. It remains the number one use social media platform. Facebook is growing older by the day. As far as the demographics, it is where you want to be. You'll notice your teenagers don't necessarily use Facebook, but they're probably on Instagram, tiktok, twitter maybe, I don't know, but Facebook is where grandma and grandpa look at pictures of kids and your neighbors look at neighborhood issues and things like that. So Facebook and LinkedIn is for your professional to professional networking and it really helps marry up that online and that in-person networking that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Okay, buying leads you know what you can buy leads. Everybody's going to tell you a different story about buying leads. There are a lot of lead platforms out there. I will tell you that if you do a little research and you read the fine print, about 75 to 80% of the home care lead websites that you're going to you think that they're independent or they're different. They're all owned by the corporation of a place for mom and that shocks some people. They're like. No way. They're all owned by the same. Yes, absolutely, they are Different web you know aging assist or the ones that are not currently owned by a place for mom are, I think, karenhomescom and maybe one other big one. But the rest are all owned and if you look very closely at their privacy statement or their terms of use or terms of service, you'll be able to identify who owns that, who really owns that lead website.
Speaker 1:So if you're going to do that, you have to be fast on the draw and you need to be a good closer. So if you're going to buy leads, number one you have to be on top of it right now. You have to be the first one to call text email. You have to be the first person because, as you all know, unless you're buying exclusive leads and even then we're going to get calls from five to 10 other home care agencies. So you have to be number one. You have to establish yourself as an expert and explain why you're the resource families are looking for and then follow up, follow up, follow up. And I will also tell you that if you're going to buy leads and they're coming in on the weekends, you need to follow up fast, and a lot of them are going to come in on a Saturday evening or a Sunday evening after hours because somebody is discharging from the hospital or somebody is just now not at work all day and able to sit down and actually do some research about home care, and they don't know what websites they're on. They don't get it. They think that they're on a really great website and it's probably just agingcarecom or whatever it is, or a place for mom, and so they're researching and they're filling out forms. So you need to be prepared to answer those calls or answer those lead forms on the weekend as well. It's tough, it's really tough, but there are people who swear by them and swear that this is how they get the most business ever. So everybody's different, but you have to be fast and you have to be a good closer to use to buy leads.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about your website. A lot of folks want to know, like, what should my website look like in 2024, 2023, moving forward? What kind of website should I have? And that's tough. Everybody has their own opinion, everybody has their own wish for their website. So we have done a gazillion different ones lately and I wanted to kind of show you that Now it's hard to imagine what these really look like unless you go to them. I put the link here.
Speaker 1:If you go to our website, asnwhomcuremarketingcom, and if you go to forward slash website dashboard folio, you can. If you put your mouse over one of these websites, it'll scroll for you so you can actually see the whole thing. You can see the top to the bottom. It'll scroll slowly so you can kind of see what a homepage would look like. But these are just some of the recent ones that we've done.
Speaker 1:You can go to the next slide, and what's also interesting is that you all know just as much as I do that the same stock imagery has been used for 15 years on websites, and we have to stop doing that, and so these images that you see in front of you, especially the two at the top, are AI imagery. These people do not exist and we have been able to use a program there's many out there but we've been able to become experts in generating AI imagery that we can use on an entire website, and you will never know, even in 4K, that these people are not real. They are absolutely stunning images of folks in different situations medical, non-medical, helping someone at a sink, at a bath or helping a group picture, if you need that, pictures of caregivers all kinds of diversity, so AI may have its pros and cons. I know that the good thing about AI is that the imagery is getting better every day, and if you're tired of looking at the same pictures of the same people, I often want somebody to do a show like where are they now? Because there are people that we have used in pictures for years and I'm thinking to myself I wonder if they're alive because they've been. They were old 15 years ago, anyway. So these are some AI pictures, one more, you can keep going, and this is another one. So, yeah, these are also. Actually. I recognize probably three of these I recognize as stock imagery, but the one at the top right, I believe, is an AI photo. I'm not sure, but we again different color schemes, different ways.
Speaker 1:People love their website to look different, and so we've been able to do that, and it's tough. It's tough to slice and dice home care in a different way. So I just wanted to show you that being different is possible, but also having a super fast website that loads really well on desktop and mobile. All of these are a great A. All of them 100% across the board. We test them all the time and they get an A rating. Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1:Okay, don, talked about 20 questions to ask a home care agency before you hire them. Haha, here it is. So I am not a big fan of pop ups. I don't know about you. However, we have done a test with a few of our clients to try and increase the I can't call it a lead, but to increase engagement on their website, and one of the things that we put together for them is a PDF that's branded to them with their logo, their colors and all that and put that as a pop up on the website.
Speaker 1:Now, we don't make it an annoying pop up. It goes away and it doesn't come back. If you click the X, it doesn't keep asking you but first name, last name, email and postal code. We don't always ask for postal code, but in this case this client has a couple of offices that are pretty far apart, so we are asking their postal code so we know kind of which office should answer If there's a question. And when people ask for this, then you have them captured to you know, send them a quick follow up with the actual PDF attached and that's automated. So an email goes out to them that tells them. You know, we're so happy you're here. Welcome to BrightCare or wherever your name of your home care agency is. Thank you so much, and here's your PDF download.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions, please call our office and they receive that and then you can add them to your newsletter list and or drip cam, hey, or whatever you want to do. So we automate all of that and it really does help. Also, in the bottom right hand corner of this screen you can see have a home care question. Text us here. There's a couple of different options that we've been able to implement for clients that all come from the same CRM, all come from the same place, and this is a text. They can enter some information. If they click on that, it opens up like a small form. They can ask a question and put their name and email address in and boom, our client is texted immediately. This person is asking a question on your website and they can go in and answer. We also have live you know live chat back and forth on a website If our clients want that. Now the challenge there is you need to have somebody kind of monitoring that, and that's hard to do during the day when you're in a busy office.
Speaker 1:Kim Lee asks isn't it better to use real photos we've taken of our own caregivers and clients, with their permission, of course, and Kim Lee, it is absolutely better to do that, no doubt about it. I would love it if everybody had the time and money to do a professional photo shoot with caregivers and clients and those caregivers never left and you could use their images forever and ever and ever. That is the best thing to do. However, it's not always feasible and sometimes when a caregiver leaves a home care agency, depending on how they left or the relationship with the agency, they don't want their picture on that website anymore. So it is really a great idea and I wish everyone would take the time to do that, but you also have to kind of consider what might happen if that agent, if that caregiver, leaves, or that staff person that was with you for so many years, or if the client passes away. Is it okay to still use their photo? So all of it's great If you don't have that kind of time. Ai imagery is beautiful and it represents the message that you really want to put out there in a nice way. Okay, I see. Okay, studies Everybody wants to know.
Speaker 1:Should I do SEO? Is SEO valuable? The answer is yes, it is. It is a long-term play. It is not a short-term. I'm going to put a website up and I'm going to be number one everywhere for the rest of my days. When you put together a brand new website and you have long-form written content, you've done everything right. You are going to have some excellent results over time. But when you continuously add to that and you add more town pages and you add more long-form content, you're going to have a much better result over time. So SEO should be a long-term commitment and it should not be something that you're told oh yeah, we'll have you number one in the next two weeks. If somebody's telling you that, they might have some weird way to get you there, but as soon as you are not with their services anymore, you're going to tank. So this is a long-term commitment for these folks.
Speaker 1:So let's look at a Northern Virginia. Any of you who've ever experienced Fairfax Virginia can you go to the next slide? I know that Northern Virginia, fairfax, arlington those areas in Virginia are some of the most crowded, complicated home care markets in the nation besides Florida and New York. So they're a really competitive hardcore. And so the first thing we did was make sure for this client that their website had an A rating on speed, both on mobile and desktop, so you can see those results right there, and then you can keep going. So once we know we've accomplished that goal, the next thing we want to do is try to get them to where we want them, which is for the town of Fairfax, virginia, to get them to the first page of Google. So if you look at the slide I look at the right-hand side of the slide where you see all the keyword phrases you can see that on March 1, there's a column there for March 1,. That's when we started. That's where they were. And then if you look at their position on November 1, which is the next column over, you can see how they've improved over time.
Speaker 1:Some of these keyword phrases are very long tail, meaning not as many. They're not competitive. Home care for cancer is not a competitive keyword phrase, we all know that, but they're very. This person's website has a lot of disease processes that are addressed on their site, so we wanted to make sure that we included those keyword phrases here. Everybody's different, so anyway, but the most competitive keyword phrases are on here as well. So you can see that, even though this person does not have an office in Fairfax Virginia they do not have a presence in Fairfax Virginia. They're on the first page of Google for everything on this slide, all the way down to companion care at home, they are number eight on the first page of Google and you can see from March to November how many spots they've come up for all these keyword phrases. It's not perfect, it is a science and it's like putting a puzzle together, but we do a very good job of making sure that our clients reach the goals that they're looking for. So those most competitive keyword phrases at the bottom are still a work in progress, but boy, they're close to that first page, so they will get there. Keep going.
Speaker 1:This is another client. This client is also doing all of our programs and monthly SEO. Their office is in a small town outside of Philadelphia, so let's take a look at their speed rating Again. They have an A grade rating on both mobile and desktop for speed. Once we have that achieved, then we're going to look at from August one to November one, how did we do so? Malvern is the town that they're in, which, again, is a small suburb outside of Philadelphia and because they have a presence there, it's pretty easy to get them to the first page of Google. So you can see that they're number one. They went from not being number one in most cases to by November. They're like totally dominating that entire area.
Speaker 1:For Malvern, every keyword phrase we later added in getting paid to be a family caregiver so for those of you who do Medicaid waiver and you know that people ask all the time how do I get paid to care for my family member? That's a big deal in some states, especially Pennsylvania, new Jersey and others, and so we just added those recently. That's why you don't see anything for August. But we wanted to get them to the top. That was our next project was get them to the top of Google for those keyword phrases getting paid to be a family caregiver Okay, you can keep going.
Speaker 1:Westchester, westchester is there. How do we say Westchester? Westchester is another town that's really important to them. So we started measuring this one on June 28th and they literally had no presence, no presence at all, and I can't see what the results are because my head's in the way. And by November so July, august, september, october they started getting some page one ranking for after hospital home care, 24 hour home care, veterans home care. You can see that they're still moving up and this is why I tell you this is a long-term commitment. Six months is a good timeframe for this, but look at the presence they have now versus the presence they had when we first started. Zero to first page results is amazing. Okay, keep going.
Speaker 1:Exton is another town that they wanted to show up for Again, no presence except for veterans home care. In the end of June, and by November, they had first page results all the way down through in home care in Exton. Now, that may not be a super competitive town, but it was one that was important to them, so it was one that we made sure had some great rankings. You can keep going. All right, this is Omaha, nebraska. This client is in all of our programs and SEO is one of them a big one for them. You can keep going. So they have an A rating for mobile. They have a rating for desktop and mobile, and then for Omaha, this is their big one. Now, this is only a month's worth of data. They've only been with us for a month. Their website went live in the beginning of October and now it's November and we ran this ranking so you can see they had zero presence. Their website had no presence in October but by November they are now first page of Google for companion care, personal care, respite care and moving up for the other ones. So I haven't run those today. Let's be today. We're getting to the end of November, so I'm sure those have changed again, but that is literally one month's worth of results For Lincoln, nebraska. Now remember, these folks serve the entire state of Nebraska. So for Lincoln they had no visibility and then by November 3rd they were number eight on the first page of Google and then they had some second page results. So if we were to run this today we would see even better numbers than we saw back on November 3rd. Keep going.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the CRM a little bit. For those of you who know us, you know that we offer, where our clients all have access to a CRM, so customer relationship management software, and we essentially give that away fully loaded for marketing and sales with our programs. I don't know why we give that away, but we do. We give it away and it's not well Skye, it's sales and marketing CRM and we use that platform and we help and teach people to use that platform to organize their sales message, to organize their sales people, to get their newsletter out every month, and we take care of that for our clients. It can do just about anything you want it to do, including scheduling appointments, recruiting. It will do all of it and most of it's automated, so you never have to remember all those automated messages you'd like to send, like the follow-ups from your in-person sales and marketing. You can set it and forget it in some cases. So home care leads, home care data, home care sales it replaces a lot of other things that you might be doing on a spreadsheet right now, so you can keep going.
Speaker 1:Referral management for home care. So when Dawn came on board with us, we set this up so that and it's hard to see this screen, but there's a video on our website that goes through this close up so you can see it and when you have a suite of referral sources that you wanna go see and you wanna make that plan for the week, you can set it up or we can set it up for you so you can see all of your referral sources. You know who you visited last, you know what leave behind, you've already left, or if you've had a face-to-face with them in the last month, yes or no. You know all of that because we set it up in here and if you enter the data correctly, then you can see and schedule your week every single week without having to guess at who you've seen or where you've been or thumb through that notebook that you have in your car. You can do it on your phone and you can do it in person, or you can do it on your desktop. So either way, you can manage your referral activity and if you are a home care agency owner who has salespeople, you can also help your salespeople by monitoring you know and helping them plan their week. So if they're not an experienced salesperson or haven't been around for a while, it's great to use this platform to organize and make sure you're hitting all of your referral sources. And, dawn, if you have anything to add to this, you're welcome to add to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, here's an up close and personal. Look at that. What am I sending? My referral sources as a follow-up? So if you look at this, you can see this is all demo. This is not real. You can see that we have our referral sources listed here and we also have a rating on these referral sources, kind of in the middle, and that rating tells us this person is definitely a refer, this person probably isn't a refer, or this one I'm not really sure about yet. And if you rate your referral sources, you also know what level of importance they are in the grand scheme of whom I'm gonna see this week.
Speaker 1:Right, some of these you need to work on and some of these you know maybe they're already a great referral source and you still need to see them. But if you got somebody you're working hard on, you can tell by looking at this. I like the extra notes that are in here. Test two kids and, as a soccer mom kind of in the middle there, likes chocolate, very picky about caregivers following directions. So if you are thinking about what Jared needs, when you drop off something you know he likes chocolate, leave him a Kit Kat bar or something I don't know. But you know, if you have a few extra notes, you know that you're gonna ask Mary about her two kids and how soccer going when you see her next time and she'll be like how did you remember that? But it's because you took an extra note and it's in your system and you know she's a soccer mom.
Speaker 2:I like to the CRM because you can keep track. If you're seeing 40 to 50 people a week, you're gonna forget what you did last time. So it has the ability, over here, way on the right, to leave what happened last time or what I need to do next time, and you can also set up tasks. If you're gonna go back every eight to 10 days and this is how I train myself people you read the note before you go in. From last time, you leave a note for yourself for next time and you create a task eight to 10 days from now so you don't forget to go back. And then there is a glance of all the tasks that are needed each week and you just check them off as you're getting them done. So it's a really effective and efficient way. You don't forget to go see anybody and nobody gets missed too.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely. All right, let's talk about what fully loaded means. We set up the CRM as a fully loaded CRM so that you don't have to think about what you're going to send to your referral source or to a new client lead that might come in from a consumer. So what happens is we have what we call drip campaigns and there are emails and texts that can go out anytime you want them to go out, and we teach you how to use them and we show you what to do to set them up to be. We'll set them up for you, we'll make them automated or you can just pick a template and send it out to your referral source really quick. All the names are filled in, all the blanks are filled in and you don't have to worry about what it says. It's already done for you and it's already set up in there. So we do all of this setup for you and we show you how to use it and then, if you want us to automate some of it, we absolutely can do that. All right, lead management. So when your leads come in whether they're organic searches, professional referrals, google ad leads, facebook leads, instagram leads, tiktok leads, in-person marketing leads all the leads should go into your CRM and when they do, then you can organize them, send them certain messages. If you have different salespeople hitting different territories, you can divide your leads up by territory if you want, by salesperson, if you want. If you don't need to do that, that's okay too.
Speaker 1:You can go to the next slide. This shows you what a lead looks like so we can set it up, so you can see who they are, what situation they're currently in and if you already have an appointment with them. So, natalie Fern she actually filled out a form on our website. There's her phone number. We can see that Jane Doe is her mother. That would be the client's actual name and Natalie is Jane Doe's daughter and Jane is living alone at home. Yes, we have an appointment and we know that she needs one person assist to get up from a chair. So those are the things that we know right off the bat. And then, if this were live and we clicked on Natalie's name, we could open it up and see even more information about Natalie and Jane. So all your leads are here. You can see what's happening with them, any additional notes, anything that you need to know before a person goes out to do their first assessment, or when they're assessed, they do the assessment online.
Speaker 1:And then we have client email drip campaigns as well. So if somebody comes to you from your website, fills out a form or they do an inquiry, then, boom, they're set up in motion with emails that go out. About every three days they get a different email and that email is customized to you. We help you write them. We have a template that we follow, but we can fill in the blank with your services, your needs, your logo, your phone numbers and whoever it is that they should be contacting, so we can write those for you or you can write them yourself and then we put them in the CRM and as soon as somebody fills out a form, they are set up to receive those. So if you can't get a hold of them for some reason or they didn't pull the trigger, you're still checking in on them, seeing if they're okay for the next 30 days, and they're also gonna receive your newsletter unless they wanna opt out which is always available, and unsubscribed is always available.
Speaker 1:Online chat to text I talked about this a little bit, so this is kind of a closer look at it. If you have this on your website. The person can click on it, they can see that they're able to leave you a message. They just fill out this little form and boom, just like that, you're texted, or whoever in your organization is responsible for a following up, that lead is texted. This can be added to any website. It doesn't have to be one that we built, and it's just a little line of code that you add and boom, it's there. So we make sure that our clients are notified by email and text immediately if someone fills out this form, or any form for that matter, on their website, and then that you can follow up with them instantly. The other option that we don't show here is live chat with someone on your website in real time, with a real person, but again, if you're not there watching this all the time, you're gonna miss them anyway. So most of our clients prefer this option, where they're texted and selling.
Speaker 1:All right done for you custom newsletters, email, drip campaigns and marketing campaigns. For those of you who are too busy to do all this yourself, don't have the time to be a prolific writer or don't wanna write that dissertation. This is what we've been doing for 15 years. This is the actual service that we started out doing and have done all these years. It's still one that everybody wants. You know. I've talked to many a home care agency owner that says, yeah, we know we need to send out a newsletter. I'm telling you, those newsletters, if they're done right, they really do work well. Stay in front of your audience as often as possible, and so all of this being done for you is super helpful. I will say, though, that your engagement and your involvement in anything that you're doing online is still important. Still important for you to be involved.
Speaker 1:These are some of the newsletters that we send out. You can see that some of our clients are really good about sending in company news, so they go to the Alzheimer's Walk, or they have a cool thing they did for Halloween, and they send in pictures and we publish them in their newsletter. The most opens and clicks that you will find in any newsletter that we send out and we've sent out thousands and thousands and thousands of them over the years is the contributions that our clients make. So every time they're at a community event, every time they go to a networking event, every time they're supporting a nonprofit, those are the articles that get clicked on the most. The rest is all educational content, which is great, but your involvement and your contribution just sending us the picture and a little blip about what you did is all it takes. And people are engaging with that newsletter. That's trust and authority. Keep going. These are just a few samples of some of the social media posts that we put together that gets sent out. We do custom social media posts for each and every client.
Speaker 1:Most of the information comes from your website. We throw in all of the healthcare holidays and celebrations, as well as all of the federal and national holidays. We have Canadian clients, we have US clients and so, depending on where you're located, of course we'll switch it up if you're in Canada, but for the most part we hit all of the healthcare celebrations and anything else that might be happy celebration for you. Let's see what else do we have here. Oh, the user friendly notifications. So your calendar, your Google calendar, outlook calendar, will sync with the CRM's calendar. You can use this like Calendly or a Pointlet. You can get text reminder notifications out to people that you're interviewing.
Speaker 1:If you're doing recruiting program, it'll do all of the automation for recruiting. It will also do all the automation if you have assessments set up. If you're going into the house for the first time and you wanna make sure that that family is notified and reminded that you're on the way, all of that can be set up inside the CRM and it'll do all of it for you and everything's available on your mobile device and capturing new leads with integrated web forms. So if we do do a website, if we do create the website, this doesn't isn't every client, but when we create a website, all of the forms that are on your website are also part of the CRM. So every lead that comes in goes directly into the CRM. All the automation's already set up. They're sent a happy year here, welcome to ABC Home Care. And all of the contact information is emailed to them instantly the thank you for filling out a form on our website, a text to them letting them know someone will be in touch right away. Everything is automated from the very instant a person fills out a form on your website, so you don't have to worry that no one's following up. It does it for you. Then the human needs to intervene, but we've got you covered. Whether it's 2am or 2pm, you, they will always receive that information from you very quickly.
Speaker 1:Okay, next, oh, pipeline management. So some of our clients really like to have a sales pipeline. So they have their leads that come in. Are they a hot lead or are they someone to follow up with? Are they a Medicaid leader? They a private pay lead? Do they have long-term care insurance? So we do have a whole pipeline set up for you. If it's something that you really like to see, you can put all your leads in a pipeline. We'll set it all up. All you have to do and it's automated for the most part All you have to do is tell us what you wanna see. We'll go through, we'll onboard your staff and you can have your pipeline set up in there with all of your leads that come in.
Speaker 1:And we also have an automated review program. So, for those of you who have ever tried BirdEye or one of those expensive review programs, our review program is the same thing, but it's all inside of the CRM and it works the way you want it to work. It can be automated, but it can also be an individual request for a review and we take that very seriously. It's a very good program. It works really well. You decide who it is you wanna review from. You put their information in or we'll do it for you. And boom, it sends them a little text in an email requesting a review. It's a very nice set of automation and it'll keep track of who's actually left your review, who hasn't, who needs a follow up, who has an issue, all of those things. So it's great, and this is the online marketing strategy for 2024.
Speaker 1:This is what I recommend, whether you do it yourself or you hire it out. Two blog posts per month at a minimum. Your company news should be some of that. You need to have social media on all of your social media platforms on a regular basis. For us it's every day, monday through Friday. You need to have follower or traffic campaigns on Facebook very low budget, but it is important. Your images should be branded to you, so anything you're posting on Facebook should have your logo, your branding. Your electronic newsletter should go out monthly without fail, and that's what our clients love is that we always have a newsletter and it always goes out.
Speaker 1:You should have your automated drip campaigns, set up your review program, and right now we do a weekly free home care marketing mastermind for our clients, so it's not weekly, I should say it's every other week, every other Friday, don, lisa and I get on Zoom call and they share all of their in-person sales and marketing strategies every other Friday with our clients and people love it and they listen to it after they attend live. It just depends on where they are in their working life. Anything else you guys wanna add, lisa or Don, cause I think we're getting to the end here. No, unless there's questions. Yeah, if anybody is. Yeah, any questions for online marketing or in-person either way. Anything we missed. Yeah, some other questions, so I came in a little late. I was tied up in the meeting so I don't know if the pricing was addressed.
Speaker 1:If not, or if it was, how much is it? We will happily send anyone who wants pricing individually. We typically don't share that on a live public webinar, not because we don't want to share it, but because your situation is different than the 50 other people that are listening right now or the 100 other people, and you may need something different than what they need. So what we'll do is I will send out the replay to everybody who signed up and if you want to talk to Don, can you go to the next slide, don? Yes, I hope you wanna talk to Don or any one of us. All you have to do is go to our website and asnhomecaremarketingcom. If you go to forward, slash Don F, you will see her calendar there. You can set up a meeting with her. She'll share everything you ever wanted to know with you and more and all of her insights.
Speaker 1:But knowing who you are, where you are in your business life, if you're a startup versus someone who's been in business for 10 years versus someone who has a very competitive territory like Miami, or you're in West Windermuk in Nevada and there's no one there, those are the things that we need to know about you before we can make a good recommendation. We don't recommend the same thing to everybody. It really depends on who you are, where you're located and what your current business situation is. We wanna know about you before we make that recommendation. I think that's important, thank you. That makes sense, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else have chat questions or wanna unmute your line? I think we have some people that have joined us late and they're about an hour late for whatever time zone they're in. So if that's you, we will be sending out the recording to everybody so you can watch it from the very beginning. So if you feel like you may have missed something, we are gonna send these out to everybody who registered.
Speaker 2:I do see a commission question that came earlier. So what percent of monthly sales would be the commission part of pay? So basically there's, of course, salary. I really didn't want the salary to be really high because I don't want people to get complacent, so a big chunk of the income should come from commission. We typically did like a 3 to 5% of whatever they signed for the first year and it's nice to do that.
Speaker 2:And if you think about it, a 24 is higher commission than a smaller job, and my marketing salespeople wanted to keep their available numbers out, so much because of the way their commission was structured. They would go visit their 24s every week. They would bring them flowers. They would just come in and check and say hi and then go report back to the adult daughter. So for the first year it was the first it was 3 to 5% of the billing per client that they sent. So it helps them to stay in the fold too. If scheduling does need them to go check on somebody, or the caregiver has been late three days in a row this week, you better check in. They're more willing to do that when there's some commission tied to it as well. So it worked, for that's how we did it, and now we're going to go back to the last year and we're going to look at the other six.
Speaker 1:Any other questions? I think that's just about it. There were lots of great, lots of great information this meeting. Thank you, so much. Thank you, ms Dean. Appreciate it. We do appreciate that this is our big year end, so I hope everybody has a great 2024. And if we can be of assistance to you or help you in any way throughout 2024, please let us know. Thank you so much, everyone, thank you.