There is finally some light showing from the end of the tunnel in regard the COVID-19 pandemic, but even after all of this is over, the hard work will not stop for the United Kingdom’s care workers.
The ever-growing competition in home care and service business has forced home care agencies to ensure that a top-level client experience is established with each and every customer.
However, the time-consuming details that come with running a home care agency and providing quality care to every patient leaves very little time for home care marketing activities.
Therefore, we have compiled some useful tips and tricks on how to market your care home business venture to the right people, at the right time, and in the right place.
Care home marketing ideas
The Coronavirus pandemic has been so harsh to health care workers in a wide range of different businesses, so we want to first of all express our gratitude towards what those front-line workers have been doing for this country and want to offer all the help we possibly can to the care home businesses across the UK.
Carers are key workers and each and every day they risk their lives for the betterment and wellbeing of other people, this is something extremely admirable. With this thought in mind, every well-run care business deserves to be noticed by as many potential customers as possible, so try to ensure that yours is doing its bit to market itself efficiently.
Get the ideas flowing for your Care Home business
Whatever your end goal may be for your business venture, you always have to be prepared to put the work in along the way to get there. Marketing your company in the right way is always a sure-fire way to gain more customers and enhance your ventures’ overall reach.
Care Home businesses rely heavily on getting patients through the door, this is after all the main goal of the business model, but to do that you need to make sure people are actually aware of your business venture. If they don’t know that it even exists, there will be no chance they’ll have any knowledge of any of the finer details that make it unique.
Below you’ll find a list of marketing ideas which have been specifically developed with care home business ventures in mind. Feel free to utilise these in your own way, or simply allow them to ignite some inspiration for ideas of your own.
Think about how you appear to clients
This is more of an overarching principle than it is a marketing strategy, but you’ll want to stay consistent in the way that your business appears to clients and customers. What you don’t want to do is post some half-hearted posts to drive consumer engagement levels, get discouraged by no likes or comments, and go “what’s the point?” and let your content go stale.
Staying consistent can easily be achieved by creating a content calendar that outlines what you’re posting each week and what the content should look like. At the same time, you’ll want to be consistent with content and frequency, you’ll want to be consistent with branding. Make sure every piece of content has some sort of visual uniformity for brand recognition and it follows that same tone.
If the independent business you run has a vastly different theme on its website, social media channels, LinkedIn profile and marketing emails, it may come across as quite confusing to its audience. This doesn’t just go for the way things look either, it is also about the language being used within your promotional content and across the board as a whole.
Promote the uniqueness of your Care Home
A great way of telling whether or not your unique selling point is being effectively communicated with your audience is if they can identify what it is right away. Maybe you offer free delivery regardless of the price of an order in the UK. If that’s your unique selling point and people don’t understand that before they make a purchase, you need to find a way to start communicating that idea better from this point on.
People should be coming to your business for the unique selling point, as well as the products and services you have to offer to them. Make sure you’re using social media, digital marketing and everything else we have mentioned above to push it forward. It is your job as the owner of the business to communicate this message, so get to work on doing just that.
If you’re having a tough time spreading the word about your business venture’s unique selling point, then you should likely consider utilising your social media channels, online blog and email chains in order to make this clearer to your target audience.
Carers are now needed more than ever before
Care services and professional workers in the health and social care industry are needed more than ever before, especially with the current Coronavirus pandemic that’s sweeping the world by storm. They’re classed as essential workers and rightly so, though this means they need even more support both mentally and financially than they did previously.
This funding option is suited to care service businesses of all sizes, so whether you own a small or large business, you won’t be let down by our product. Our care worker finance is a type of unsecured business loan, which means it’s a flexible funding option for you. It has no requirement to secure any personal or business assets against the loan. This makes it easier for you to acquire than a normal loan.
Facing difficulties marketing through the global pandemic?
Small businesses in particular can quickly run into financial troubles if they aren’t careful, making it difficult for them to survive in many instances. One useful way of saving money and trying to get through the trying period of the Coronavirus pandemic is to cut out the costs you don’t necessarily need. Marketing isn’t essential while your business can’t function properly, so switch out your current plan for word-of-mouth messaging and focus on the health of your company.
The future will only be important to your independent business if you manage to make it there, so don’t go spending your last penny on something that isn’t essential to your business at this current time. Remember that when the pandemic finally comes to an end, you’ll be able to revert back to your previous marketing strategy and start making some real cash once again.
Have you considered these potential strategies?
There are endless ways that you can go about marketing your care home business to the largest audience possible, though these may be some of the most relevant options available to you right now.
Direct Marketing –
Targeting well-qualified prospects with a direct promotion and a strong offer. Ideally, direct marketing is integrated with direct sales to maximise response.
Branding –
Creating awareness and developing a reputation through advertising, PR and other online and offline media in an effort to attract the right clients. This can be useful to care business ventures, as they are clearly heavily reliant on having a great reputation, which they can show off to potential cliental.
Relationship Marketing –
Cherishing prospective audience members and clients to educate, build trust, and make your home care business even more desirable to a widened audience than it was before.
Marketing to influencers –
Focusing promotions on individuals who already have a relationship with the audience you want to reach and using the influencer to create sales opportunities. This could be a great way of making a larger amount of people suddenly more aware of the work going on in your care business.
Content Marketing –
Using educational, thought-provoking and informative content to obtain new customers or raise engagement levels throughout your business. Content marketing can make your business look like a well-informed platform to caregivers and those in need of care work at the very same time.
Avoid the use of stock photos
Most of us these days either a- own a mobile phone or b- know and/or can approach someone who does. These cell phones have an inbuilt camera, some of sufficiently high quality to match a portion of the professional purpose-built cameras. Our point? Well, our point is that the most of us have access to a decent quality camera, so why utilise a stock photograph when you can make your own and add a uniqueness to your work?
All you need to do then is take some incredible photographs of your home. In the event that you’re not a decent picture taker, why not do a little examination into what makes a decent photograph. It might likewise be a smart thought to investigate some different homes with similar success levels to that of your goals and perceive how they have set out their photography.
In the case that you’re utilising photo of staff individuals and residents, ensure you have checked every one of the legalities in regard to using the photographs. It is often best to use friends and family members in your imagery to be sure that you’ll dodge any potential issues here.
Consider unsecured funding if you’re in need of financial help
If you believe care home business venture could benefit from a short-term boost of funds, then invoice finance for domiciliary care solutions are likely the best option for your venture’s situation. The option of an injection of short-term capital could be chosen for many reasons by business owners. It may be because you need to stabilise your company after a rough period, such as a dry sales month, or just that you can see ways to advance your company that are just a little out of budget.
The short-term unsecured business finance is far easier to make repayments on than other shorter-term options, this is because there will obviously be less payments to actually make, and the loan itself will normally be for a much smaller amount.
Choosing an unsecured funding solution from Invoice Funding is a great opportunity for care homes to upgrade their business model or make quick fixes they need to make in order to ensure the future is bright and to maximise cash flow.
It’s important to remember that making regular updates and upgrades to your venture can keep current customers enthralled and excited to make a connection with you, but also attract newcomers to your care company, presenting you with new avenues of income and funding.
Read more: Private Ambulance Business Finance
Seasoned professional with a strong passion for the world of business finance. With over twenty years of dedicated experience in the field, my journey into the world of business finance began with a relentless curiosity for understanding the intricate workings of financial systems.