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Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
The Hybrid Marketing Strategy for Home Care Success
The most successful home care agencies don't choose between digital marketing and in-person relationship building – they master both. This comprehensive strategy session reveals why combining these approaches is essential for maximizing private pay revenue in today's market.
The digital landscape has transformed how families find home care. Even when receiving professional recommendations, 95% of families will research your agency online before making contact. Your website, Google Business Profile, and online reviews create critical first impressions that either build trust or send prospects to competitors. However, digital presence alone isn't enough.
Social workers and discharge planners at skilled nursing facilities won't refer vulnerable seniors without face-to-face relationships. These healthcare professionals need to trust not just your company, but the people behind it. Building these relationships takes strategy, consistency, and typically five to seven meaningful touchpoints before referrals begin flowing.
The webinar dives deep into specific tactics for both digital and in-person marketing success. You'll discover how AI is changing search behavior, why your website must communicate your value proposition in seconds, and the importance of strategic route planning for marketing professionals. The expert panel shares insights on everything from effective leave-behinds to the best times to visit different referral sources.
Perhaps most importantly, you'll learn why private pay marketing requires sophisticated systems for lead conversion and relationship continuity. With conversion rates typically 20% lower than Medicaid services, agencies need structured approaches to transform inquiries into clients and maintain relationships with referral sources.
Whether you're a home care agency owner wearing multiple hats or managing a dedicated marketing team, this session provides actionable strategies to boost private pay inquiries and revenue. The future belongs to agencies that master this hybrid approach – creating digital credibility while building meaningful in-person relationships that drive consistent referrals.
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
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I'm Valerie Van Boeven. I'll let you guys introduce yourselves, because I didn't put that in here. I'm Valerie Van Boeven and I am the co-owner and founder of Approved Senior Network and I'm the digital marketing arm of this company, and I'll let you two amazing ladies introduce yourselves.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm Dawn Fiella. I've been with Approved Senior Network now for about three years over three years. I have a background in home care. I've been in home care for close to 20 years. I've been an operations manager, I've been sales. I've done a lot. Done all of it. I love to grow the private pay side of the business. This is exciting to me. We're going to talk about those in-person strategies today and how to get your private pay revenue up and what that looks like. So I'm super excited to be here. I'm glad that you guys have joined and can't wait to get started. Annette, Okay.
Speaker 3:Hi everybody. I'm Annette Ziegler. I've been with ASN a little over a year. I too I've had 20 plus years experience in 13 years in senior living and then almost eight years in home care as a community marketing liaison manager, and I am the sales trainer here at ASN. I teach the sales training classes. I was out in the field, pounded the pavement and I just I love being on this part of it, helping everybody be successful growing their private pay business. Welcome, I'm so glad you came today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got more and more people piling in back here, so that's great. Yes, welcome everybody. So we're going to talk about home care marketing that converts, and this is a combination of things that we have, we do for our clients, things that we've learned over the years and stuff that we know can help you as well, why you're here. So you're doing all the right things, but you're still not seeing enough private pay inquiries. I think everybody would say pretty much, give us more private pay, wouldn't you say that's right, ladies?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, that is the name of the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Give us more private pay, 24 hour clients, all right. So that's what we're going to talk about today how to combine some tactics that will get you there. So what you'll learn today a proven hybrid strategy to boost referral. So online visibility, that's me building a strong digital presence that attracts qualified leads and establishes credibility before the first contact. In-person outreach strategic, face-to-face relationship building with referral sources who influence private pay decisions, that is, annette and Dawn. And then conversion and continuity transforming inquiries into clients through effective follow-up systems and maintaining relationships. So bringing it all together the online stuff, the in-person stuff, and then converting those folks into clients folks into clients.
Speaker 2:The reality in 2025. Yeah, the reality in 2025 is that families search online first. They may have a loved one in a skilled nursing facility. They might get a referral from somebody in assisted living or independent living. They're still going to check you out online, and that's just the way it is. If it isn't coming from a referral source, they're still going to check you out online, and that's just the way it is. If it isn't coming from a referral source, they're going to go online and do a home care search. They're going to go online. They're going to look at your Facebook. They're going to look at your Google business profile. They're going to look at your reviews.
Speaker 2:You have to have, in today's day and age, a strong online presence. It's just. You just can't. You have to. It's just definitely necessary. The other piece of this is referral sources, except in-person contact. So if you think that you're in home care and you're going to pay Google pay-per-click whatever a month and put your feet up on the desk and get a bunch of business in the door, it's not going to happen either. This is about the combination of the two. They have to marry. You have to have the online, you have to have the feet on the ground. That's what's working in 2025.
Speaker 2:And now let's introduce another layer of this. Ai search is changing everything. There's voice search, ai assistance. They're influencing senior care searches, and so that's requiring another level of new optimization strategies beyond just traditional SEO, and so I'm glad you're here today so you can learn all about this. We've been doing the AI piece for a while now, valerie. We show up, our company shows up on AI. Now it's super exciting. They call me. I asked you out GPT and you came up, so she was way ahead here. I'm just gonna share some of that with you two today.
Speaker 2:So, private pay problem what is the problem? There's lots and lots of. How do we get that revenue in the door? So, the private pay problem there's three kinds of things. It's a high trust threshold, right. It's in person. That social worker in that still nursing facility is not going to refer your company without seeing your face. It's just not going to happen. They're not going to take this fragile senior who's been here for two weeks recovering from hip surgery and just oh, here's a brochure. They have to know somebody from the company. They have to understand who you are, what you stand for and that you really care. It's not about making money for you. It can take five to seven touch points before they make a decision on who they're going to use to refer the private pay clients. It could take them some time to also decide. Yeah, you're the company and those touch points are face-to-face. They're Google business profile, they're your website. Like it's not all just face-to-face, it can be. Sometimes, if it's a referral, they're still going to look at your website though, so it's a high trust threshold, both online and in person.
Speaker 2:It's harder to convert private pay than it is Medicaid. Obviously, they're paying Medicaid. They don't pay for it, right? So the conversion rate's 20% lower for private pay than it is for Medicaid, and so you have to have more sophisticated marketing strategies for that reason. And then agencies are relying on one channel, and that is a huge mistake. This is where we see the biggest failure with the companies that come in and they become our clients. They have been relying on one channel, either online or the feet on the ground, and that's it just doesn't work. You have to be doing both well in order to get those private pay referrals, referrals, revenue coming in the door.
Speaker 1:Oh, visibility, online marketing and, before I go any further as we go through this presentation, if you have questions, just put them in the chat. Let's see, here I'm going to say hi to everyone. Hi, here is chat, so you guys should be able to see that, all right? So if you have any questions, just put them in that little chat and we will certainly answer your questions. Just go ahead and type out the whole question or whatever it is you need and we'll hang. We'll get it to all of them, I promise.
Speaker 1:Visibility and online marketing Credibility starts with your digital presence. So we've been a digital marketing company for a very long time. We've created hundreds, if not thousands, of home care websites in 18 years. So if there's something we know about home care, it's how to build a home care website or home health care, and we've done a few senior care websites as well that are not quite in the home care genre. They are more like senior living. We've done a few senior care websites as well that are not quite in the home care genre. They are more like senior living. We've done a few of those, but 99% of our clients fall into home care and home health care mostly non-medical home care, I never really know how to change the slide. So, key tactics for online these are the things that we know are some of those important pieces.
Speaker 1:Your website, which isn't listed on here I think it's just the overarching importance is having a professionally built website. We see a lot of websites that home care agencies maybe did themselves a few years ago when they were first getting started, and just really never went back and addressed or touched or did anything with. And we also see websites that were built professionally, but maybe the content is different. The people that appear on the website no longer work there. It's time for a refresh, it's time for a change and no matter who builds your website or how it's built, technology changes so fast that we always tell our clients listen, three years from now, you're going to need a new website. So if your website is a couple of years old three years old if it's a Wix website, if it's a Squarespace, if it's a Google website and it's not built professionally, hosted on a fast server and all that you want to really think about what your online presence is bringing up compared to your competition. So, besides that, your Google business profile is extremely important. Having your Google business profile up to date? It's not. It seems like there's not a lot you can do with a Google business profile, but if you really look hard, there's a lot of things that Google doesn't tell you that you can do with your Google business profile, things that you can add, stuff you can do that makes it stand out.
Speaker 1:Again, they play, they have the rules. You can only do so much, but you can do some things that really help it, like weekly posts, service-specific photos and response to every review. I don't care if it's a five-star review or a one-star review. I do care. But for five-star reviews, I don't care if they leave text or not. If they don't say anything, but just leave a five-star review, thank them anyway.
Speaker 1:If they leave a one-star review and it is truly a client and you truly can identify who they are based on their story, then you want to stop and think about how you're going to answer that. Don't answer in anger, don't answer in remorse, don't answer quickly. Let it sit and think about it and have somebody else with a. Maybe that's not right, not you? Think about how to answer that with a good response that is professional and not emotional. Okay, and if it's not a client. If it's a caregiver who is leaving you a bad review, then you need to report that as a conflict of interest and typically not always, but usually Google, within a week or two, will take that down. If it's a someone who got fired, someone who is mad about something else, whatever it is, you can say conflict of interest. They weren't really a client or a user of your service. So respond to every review Local SEO service pages.
Speaker 1:So we always put on our clients' websites some form of local content. Now most of our clients are in an enhanced SEO program, so that means they get neighborhood, local towns, local city pages and they get pages sometimes that are specific to their service in that town. So some of our websites go really deep not only the place where they have an office, but also pages for all the little towns around them that they'd like to serve, and then also having local testimonials. So it's nice to know if Mary D leaves a review. If you know who she is, it's nice to marry that up with what zip code she lived in so you can answer her by saying hey Mary, we're so happy that you were able to. I'm making this up, obviously, and it's not great, but we're so happy that you and your mom really loved our home care services. We love serving the people of Ellisville, missouri small town, and are so glad that we could be of assistance to you or something like that. So there are ways to help. When you answer those testimonials, there's ways to mention those towns and really get more bang for your buck that way.
Speaker 1:Schema and AI audit this is totally nerd stuff. Schema is the behind-the-scenes code that Google sees, that ChatGPT sees, that all your AI folks see. When Google looks at your website, they don't see the pretty front page. They see the code that's behind the scenes. They see the ugly part that you never see page. They see the code that's behind the scenes. They see the ugly part that you never see. And so it's important when someone's building your website that all of those words and codes and things that are behind the scenes actually mean something and they're not just this image goes over here, and that you really need good SEO behind the scenes, and that takes a professional to do. Some web designers will build you a beautiful, gorgeous website, but they will do no SEO. They will do no schema code. They basically just rely on a plugin. We do not do that because we know how important Google, how important that schema code is to Google. So local business markup, that's code. You'll never, you don't have to know what all that is, but that should be behind the scenes of your website. And review schema. So if you have Google reviews, those reviews need to be in code behind the scenes of your website so that Google sees how awesome you are.
Speaker 1:And then voice search optimization. That's a tough one. I would suggest to try this If you have an and I'm not gonna say it too loud If I would suggest to try this If you have an and I'm not going to say it too loud if you have an Alexa in your life, she'll answer me. If you have one or something like it, maybe a Google one or whatever you have ask the question hey, alexa, what are the home care agencies closest to me? And see if she can answer you or if Google will answer you and find out what they have to say or what are the best home care agencies in my area. It'd be interesting to see if you show up in that list.
Speaker 1:And then reputation management it is hard I understand In health care and especially in home care. This is a fairly private service. No matter why people are getting home health care, non-medical home care, no matter why it's coming into the home, people feel very private about that. But I can't tell you how important it is to ask for that review and we might get into this a little bit later but you need to definitely ask for the review when the person is happy and if you know in that moment that the person is happy, ask them right now for that review, because when I know that tomorrow when that caregiver is 10 minutes late, they're not going to be happy, do it in the first week or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from my experience early on, early on yes and yet that's exactly right Reputation management.
Speaker 1:All right Visibility. In-person outreach.
Speaker 2:Before we go to that, I think we have a question. Oh okay, yes, go ahead. Annette, you can read it. I'm afraid you touched the screen.
Speaker 3:From Diane. She is asking is ADA accessibility important to have on a website?
Speaker 1:Yes, ADA accessibility is on, should be on every. Think about it this way. Everyone, every company, should have ADA accessibility and think about the population that you all serve. Can you explain what it is? Yeah, oh yeah, ada accessibility is Americans with Disabilities Act.
Speaker 1:So ADA means that there's a little, and I don't have an example of this on my screen right now, but there's usually a little person in a wheelchair or a little star or a or something on your website. People can click on it and they can change the color of the screen. If they're colorblind, they can change the visual, make it black and white If they contrast all the things. Yeah, they have low vision. That's especially important. If they are hard of hearing, then there are little, I guess, cues.
Speaker 1:Most folks that are hard of hearing already know how to do this, but it will visually change it so that it's easier to read. But it will also or, if they have no sight at all, it will read the website to them. It will skip the pictures and read the text. So there's all these little things that say skip to text in the code and it will just read the important parts of the website to the person. So anyway, yes, you should have ADA on your website. People have gotten sued for not having ADA on their website, so please make sure that you have ADA on your website. Also, you should have a cookie warning or a cookie permission little pop-up thing. You will see that on our website. If you go to asnhomecaremarketingcom, you will see both of those things on our website. Yes, thank you for asking.
Speaker 2:We have another question. Vaughn, who was a client of ours before, is asking if we've changed process. He was with us. Traffic wasn't what he wanted, and it's not any better with a new vendor. Ron, I don't know that. You were in our programs, though.
Speaker 1:A website alone isn't always an outlet, valerie, she's the online person. Yeah, web traffic. So let's talk about that. This is again one of the reasons why we're doing this type of webinar, which talks about website or your online presence married up with your community and in-person presence. Right now, what we tell people is that when they come on board with us, do you have someone who's in the field? Is it you? It might be you if you're a small company, that you're in the field, that you're marketing and you're out there talking to skilled nursing facilities, referral sources, you're involved in community events. So what we have found is that if you're not getting a lot of web traffic out there, first of all, that may be different now than it was back then, but if you have someone who is willing to post on your social media, who is willing to send in company news so that it gets posted on your blog, all of those things work together and it drives way more traffic to your website.
Speaker 1:Also, those monthly newsletters and the newsletter list that you have is super important. Folks will come to us and we'll tell them hey, all of your prospects that have any leads that you've purchased, anybody in your local community, anybody that you've done business with. Maybe it's people from your chamber, maybe it's a local senior group that meets senior provider group. If you want to put those people on your newsletter list, that would be great. Let's put them on your newsletter list because every month when your newsletter goes out without fail because we make sure it goes out without fail and it's beautiful that those people are going to click on those links to the articles that are on your website they're going to go back to your website. They're going to read that article.
Speaker 1:Most people aren't looking around for basic how to help my. I don't know why home care makes a difference. It's a great article to have on your website, but people aren't typically searching that every single day or coming back to your website every day to read the next great article, like they would for US Weekly or Time Magazine. So we have to give the content to them once a month in order to get them to look at it. And what we see time and time again is those spikes in traffic every single month with those beautiful newsletters that go out. So, vaughn, we will be happy to revisit what your website's doing for you now what kind of traffic that you have and see if we can make a difference for you, I appreciate it. I'm so glad you're here. You guys were our clients for a really long time, so I'm so happy to see you here, vaughn. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:Visibility, in-person outreach trust is built in the field, not behind the screen. Nope, it's me. Okay. So key tactics for in-person, when you're out there super important that you have a weekly route planning and a plan and that you've sorted your weekly route sheet. So you, if you're a full-time marketer or you're an owner and you want to get out there and market, it's eight to 10 meaningful stops a day. Some people I say that to they're like there's no way. There's no way and maybe in some places it would be difficult, based on where everything is located and can you drive and get to all the places, but it's eight to 10 stops a day. So two things there should be a plan on Monday mornings or Friday evening, depending on what your people do. I would have my marketing people submit their plan for the next week, not for me, it's for me, yes, but mostly for them.
Speaker 2:Marketing people are great face-to-face people. They love to fly by the seat of their pants. It's challenging, it's exciting. Oh, they didn't let me in last week, but I'm getting in there this week. It's fun. All of that is really fun for them. What they can tend to lack is organizational skills and they want to just run out there and do the things they're doing and be successful. And they do very good. That's wonderful, fabulous. The problem is, if it's not organized and they're not thinking about it ahead of time, they could miss Mary, who refers every single week. They could forget to go see her. They could forget to go thank her for a referral that she gave them last week. So a plan making them, forcing them to sit down and give you that plan before the week starts, means that they're thinking about what happened last week and they're organizing it. So super important to get a plan from a marketer at the beginning of every week.
Speaker 2:The second thing is if the route sheet could be sorted by zip code. This just makes a lot of sense. They might think they're going to start on the north side of town and this is where I'm going to spend my day. Get a call from someone in a skilled nursing facility on the south side of town and they say hey, can you come talk to this family? Of course you're gonna drop everything and go talk to the family. Now they're on the south side. Should they drive all the way back north to finish their day? Not unless they live over there. No, they should finish on the south side. So what does that mean? That means they get out their route sheet that's sorted by zip code and they know exactly where to go now, right here. Eventually, they're going to know their area, but I think it's really important to start with that zip code planning. It makes them more efficient and more effective. Again can be not a weakness. It's just not something they're strong at when they're really good at sales, not most of the time. So that's something to keep in mind.
Speaker 2:Snf, alf, il visits, snf, skilled nursing facility, alf, assisted living, independent living, il Target staff transitions for visits when social workers and discharge planners are most available. It's different in every place. I don't usually go to a skilled nursing facility first thing Monday morning. Why? Because the weekends happened. They came in and when they left on Friday they had 30 people maybe that were in rehab. And now they come in on Monday and they're 40. Am I going to walk in Monday morning when they're trying to figure out who these two or 10 new people are? And they're trying to because they start discharge the day of admission? That's how it's supposed to go down. And so if I'm walking in first thing Monday morning and they don't even know who these 10 new people are. That's just not good. So I would never go to SNF on Monday morning.
Speaker 2:Assisted living, independent living, might be perfect, but you do need to learn when is the best time to go, and it's not like SNFs is always Tuesday or always Wednesday or always Thursday. You have to get to know your people and when they have their meetings and what they're doing and they may say to you. Once you get to know them, tuesdays at nine o'clock is just really not a good time. If you want to see my face once in a while, it's just not a good time. So don't go the same time every week the same day. Mix it up so that you do get a chance to see their face from time to time. If you're going at nine o'clock on Tuesday, every nine o'clock on Tuesday, and they have a big meeting, you're never going to see them. So try to rotate that around with all of your referral source types, Strategic leave behinds. So it's not enough in today's day and age. I don't know if it's ever been enough I've never done this to just have a brochure and business card and call it good. Why do they need to see you again. Why do they need to talk to you again If you're bringing the same thing by every single time? And while we're talking about that, always staple your business card to your brochure. They are never going to refer somebody without a contact name and the paperclip doesn't work. And that's from the social worker's mouth to you. They've all said that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you need to have lead behinds that are different. They're strategic, they're fun. You have to stand out, you have to be different and your lead behinds are a big part of that. We created all the lead behinds in Mastery Circle. If you don't know what that is, we can get into that another time you can. I think there's gonna be a QR code or something at the end of this.
Speaker 2:In Mastery Circle, we create four lead-behinds a month. One is gonna get them out in front of you, face-to-face. You need one face-to-face a month. You your face every time you come in. That's why you have to have lead behinds. We do fun holiday ones. We do some about specific services. If you don't have a discharge package, you absolutely need a discharge package if you're talking to SNFs. So we create all of these for you.
Speaker 2:In Mastery Circle, you put your logo, your name, contact information, all this stuff it becomes yours. So strategic lead behind this isn't a quick it's strategy. I know sometimes it might seem simple oh, you just go to a few stops a day, you talk to some people, you get referrals. If that's what you're doing, that's why it's not working. It has to be strategic. You have to be thinking about things. We're going to do a mastery circle in October about how clients die in December. I know my private pay billing is going to tank in December because it happens and it's awful and it's sad and all the things, but from a business standpoint it stinks. You're rolling along the whole year doing really well and then December hits and so in October you got to start going after 24th. You have to be in that mindset of what's going on in the world. What can I do? When is social worker month? When is nurses month? All of that it's strategy. It's not just let's just run out there and slap a brochure down. There's a lot of thought and strategy, or there should be a lot of thought and strategy behind all of this Co-marketing.
Speaker 2:Hook yourself up with a home health, with a hospice, community liaison. Make sure they're good, make sure they follow through, make sure they do the thing, because we're going to tag them to you, right, and if they're going to be good, if they are good, they're good. Go ahead, co-market with them, introduce them to the people you know. They can introduce you to the people they know. They're very good at helping you get into hospitals. You very good at helping you get into hospitals. You're very good at helping them to get into skill nursing facilities. That's at least how I've seen it work. If there's any questions again, put them in the chat. Yeah, that'd be great. All right, is this you or me? I think it's me.
Speaker 2:The mistake most agencies make? They confuse marketing with sales. They're not the same thing. They're not at all the same thing. The next slide marketing Marketing creates awareness and visibility. It's just the beginning. It's not where referrals happen. So you're out there doing business development, you're doing the things. Until you build trust, you're not going to get a referral. Can it happen? The first visit? Sure, will it be a one and done? It could be.
Speaker 2:We have in our sales training class that Annette teaches there are five impressions you must go through to get a referral. They can all happen at one lunch and learn. It might take five to seven visits for you to get through all five impressions. It takes time. You have to be patient. I've seen marketers quit after three times. I've been there three times. I can't go back to the gatekeeper. I'm done with that sniff. You can't be done with the sniff. That's where all the gold is. It's just, if they are taking Medicare people who can afford private pay, you can't just write them off because you can't get past the gatekeeper. You got to figure it out. You got to figure it out. So marketing is part of it. And then sales builds the trust through consistent follow-up and relationship nurturing. That's where the referrals happen. You have to go through those five impressions and we teach that in our sales training class.
Speaker 2:Again, this is much more involved and strategic than surface level and it can take five to seven weeks to get a referral for private pay. So I always call it be pleasantly persistent. You have to be persistent and you have to be consistent and persistent. You have to be persistent and you have to be consistent and persistent. You have to be there right. You go to eight to 10 places a day. You also have to go back every eight to 10 days. So you're starting and some of you are already doing this successfully. But for those of you who don't know, that's what it takes. If eight to 10 stops a day and you see those people every eight to 10 days, face-to-face, once a month, the rest of it is leave behind, strategic leave behind. So the most successful agencies may take contact through at least five to seven touch points before expecting a referral.
Speaker 1:All right and yeah, you know, what comes to my head while you're talking about that is. One of our examples is a home care agency, a touching hearts agency, in Gainesville, florida, and my thing is this I believe that because that marketer, that person, does big events. They do small events and they do big events, but they try to include anybody who wants to participate in those events. Like right now they're having a pickleball tournament or for to raise money for for it's a charity event. They have these like proms around or Valentine's dances or they do like a Krispy Kreme giveaway thing or whatever raises money. So all of the things that she does are fundraisers for organizations in their little, in their local area and to get past a gatekeeper sometimes, I think why not invite that organization to be a part of this really cool little event that you are organizing and have their name and logo and lights? Maybe that would help them feel like they're included if you include them in some community efforts out there.
Speaker 2:I don't know Great. She does bang up John. That's a great. She does a great job. But in our sales training, we do teach you how to get past the key person. It's a 12-week training.
Speaker 2:The other thing I'm going to say about this is, when you're training a marketer, it's not a one and done, it's not a weekend bootcamp, it's not a video thing. It is just not that. It takes time. You have to teach them. What we do is we teach them all about skilled nursing.
Speaker 2:This is who's in the building. This is who you need to talk to get referrals. This is what you need to say to them. This is what you need to bring with you. This is how you get past the gatekeeper. Go do it. Go do it all week, come back next week and let's talk about how that went. And we do that with every referral source type and that is why it has been so successful.
Speaker 2:That is why, at week six, people are getting referrals, because they get to build their confidence. They get to try it on real world people, not role plays great. But there's nothing better than going out there. I know it's terrifying sometimes. Just go out there and just rip that bandaid off. You just have to do it. And when they come back and Annette talks to all of them some of them have been successful, some of them weren't. They learned from each other. That's the way that this works. This is how it's successful is because they get to build their confidence in real world.
Speaker 2:We also give them all the objections that could come up ahead of time. When you walk in there, they're going to think you just want money and referrals. That's what they're thinking, and this is what they might say to you. Or they might say to you I work with 10 home care agencies. I don't need to talk to you. What do you say to that? You have to be ready for that, and so that's why it's working. So the training is really. I think that might even be the next slide. I'm probably getting ahead of myself. Let's see.
Speaker 1:Okay, conversion is your website. Can visitors tell what you do in five seconds? I can't tell you how many times I've seen a website and I don't know what they do. I know what they do because I know who they are, but I don't know what they do. I don't know what area they serve and I don't know how to get a hold of them. And I'm looking at the website they serve and I don't know how to get a hold of them. And I'm looking at the website. I'm pretty sure they're a home care agency, but it doesn't really say that. Or I'm not sure. Like I live in St Charles, they say they don't say anything about where they serve, but I can see they have my area code somewhere on their website, so maybe they're for me, I don't know. So don't be that way. Don't have that kind of website.
Speaker 1:Clear value proposition your homepage should instantly communicate who you serve, what makes you different and what visitors should do next, if you look at the screenshot to the left, that's a recent website that we built for Grace at Home Care, and I know it's hard to see because it's little, but if you were to look at that website, you would see that there is a get started button at the top. There are two different phone numbers, one for the Denver office and one for the Evergreen office, if I'm reading that right, and that doesn't go away on mobile. That is exactly the way it looks on mobile. You know exactly where they are. You know what their phone number is. You can click on the button and call them. Right now there's a button right there on the front that says free in-home consultation, and those are the things that really matter to get. Those people are not going to fool around. When they're in a crisis and they need some help, they're going to call you more often than they're going to fill out a form. Filling out forms is great, but people in this specific market are probably, if it's during office hours, going to give you a call and if they leave a voicemail, I guarantee you the first person to call them back is probably going to get that business. But hopefully and what we always preach from here is that they should never receive a voicemail they should always find a live person on the other end of that phone that can talk to them.
Speaker 1:Anyway, real photos and testimonials. Most of our home care agencies do use stock imagery and we try to go out and find stock imagery that hasn't been used 5,000 times. There is also AI imagery. Some people really don't like that. Some people love it. Ai can generate some absolutely gorgeous AI photos now that are completely unique to you. The tops, their scrub tops can be changed. Your logo can be on there. They look realistic. When this all first started with AI, there was a lot of scary pictures. We looked at 10 fingers and ears. Yeah, eyes were black. Oh my gosh, it was creepy. But things have come a long way and I can't say that they're perfect. But if you don't have the money or the time to do professional staged pictures on your website, it's okay to use stock imagery. But if, anytime you can get real pictures of events that you're at, of places that you visit, of community outreach efforts, of caregiver appreciation, caregiver of the month, those things should really be on your website, at least in a blog post or on a page. And then testimonials, of course. You really want testimonials to be on your website.
Speaker 1:Fast contact methods I just reviewed that Phone number right at the top, service area, right at the top. Lead alerts via text and email. Now, this is something that I find that people are missing when a client has a website built through us. We have forms on the website, right, and we also have that little chat. If you look closely in the bottom right-hand corner of this website like the bottom, like the laptop view you can see there's a little chat box that pops up there. If somebody fills that out instead of calling, or if they fill out another form on the website somewhere, our clients, the home care agency owners or marketers are texted that information instantly and emailed that because we find that emailing the information only sometimes they get missed. So now we text everyone and we email them to let them know a new inquiry has come in, and that works beautifully and people love that. So lead alerts via text and email are really important, and calling them back within five minutes is really important too, do we?
Speaker 2:have a question. I think there is a question, annette, do you see?
Speaker 3:it. Yes, okay, asn did my website and we love it. Would it help to put some of our Google reviews at the top of our landing page? Mac from Castle Comfort Home Care.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm so glad you came to the webinar. Having some testimonials on the homepage is important. I don't know if they have to be at the top of the page, but certainly and if you have some changes you'd like to make to your website, all you have to do is reach out to support and we can rearrange things any way you want. Sometimes when people come to us, they don't have a whole lot of testimonials, and then sometimes they do. They have lots, and what we can do is we can bring them in through an automatic feed from Google and make them look pretty, but they don't necessarily have to be at the top. As long as you have a clear way for people, like in the main navigation under about us, a testimonials page, or you have a button somewhere on the homepage that says read our testimonials, there's lots of ways to skin a cat. I agree that people should definitely have access to those and we'd be happy to move them around if you'd like.
Speaker 3:All right Next.
Speaker 2:Oh, there we go. Inversion, in-person sales your marketer is your most powerful asset for private pay revenue, absolutely. So what marketers actually need? They need training guys, they need training. I can't tell you over and over again. So there are three kinds of people entering that we're seeing. One is someone who's been maybe your scheduler or has been your hr person and now they're going to try marketing. They're going to be out in the field and do your business development. The other is you're hiring a marketer who's been in sales their whole entire life but they've never been in home care. And then you have people that are coming and then have done neither. All three of those people need sales training and again, the one and done doesn't work.
Speaker 2:If you're hiring someone or moving someone in your current office into sales, into a sales role, you have to train them. They have to be trained. It's just not fair to send them out there without that. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what to say, they don't know how to overcome the objections that are thrown at them. So the other things they need is scripts and objection handling, prepared responses for the top 10 objections that get thrown out at them. We've already have agencies we don't refer much. We already have some agencies and we don't refer much. That's an objection that they're going to have to overcome. There's also objections when you're sitting in an assessment. That's too expensive. My mom's never going to go for that. How do I know the caregiver is going to be safe? You have to be ready to overcome those objections. This isn't something that they're going to be able to just answer on the fly. If they're new, they need to be trained on how to respond to those things. Weekly call plans, so structured schedules that balance a priority mix so this can change and move around.
Speaker 2:A new prospect development. So this is basically saying during my week, I'm going to spend 30% of my time on new prospect, 40% on relationship building and 30% on follow-up. This is different for every person. If they're brand new, it's mostly going to be new prospect development. Those percentages are going to change based on how long they've been out there in the field and doing what they're doing. I would say this is, for someone who's probably seasoned and has been doing this for a while, this works. They should always be looking for new prospects, always looking for the new. It's important to never just kind of okay, this is my group and this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2:Plus, there's a lot of turnover in this. You finally get a social worker in a skilled nursing facility. She starts giving you all the referrals and then boom, she quits, she's gone, and so you got to find them, because they usually land somewhere else where they can continue to refer to you. But there's a lot of turnover too, and so in that situation there's new prospect development. Also, you've got to figure out who this new person is replaced. What makes them tick? What do I share? My relationship I had before. But they might be coming and they only use 24 hour home care or they only use touching arts and like, how do I get in there? And this was my building. These were the people that talked to me. I walked freely around here and now it's all changing because there's somebody new. So they need to be thinking about that. They need to know that. Again.
Speaker 2:The training comes in Accountability start with visit counts and then layer and structure with planned talking points, strategic leave-behinds and intentional follow-up. So this is where the training helps. Also, the leave-behinds have to be strategic as well, and all of this needs to be thought about In Mastery Circle. We're three months ahead, so you can't. Oh, it's September. What are we going to do? Like, even right now, it's almost too late to think about September. The leave behind should be printed and ready to go. Whatever you're going to get out with them should be. It should be assembled. It should be in assembly stage right now so that they can run into the office, grab them and go. You don't want them sitting around doing that last minute. I honestly only had my marketers put those things together. If we were having a meeting anyway, we would all just do that together, because I don't want my most valuable person to be sitting in the office doing administrative duties. They need to be out and seeing people. If they're in the office, they're not marketing.
Speaker 2:Tracking tools, simple CRM with reporting or even manual systems to document every interaction, preference and follow-up commitment made to referral sources. This really gets difficult with marketing people. Wave of hands, I don't know. Are they using the CRM that you have? It needs to be simple. Are they gonna take notes that are legible, that you're gonna be able to give to you and read and all the things? Probably not. They're running around all day. So a simple CRM that they have an app for their cell phone. They can run around the field and enter the information quick, quick and off they go again. Super important. The referral sources belong to the company, not to the marketer. They belong to the company. If that marketer gets hit by truck tomorrow, do we lose everything? That's crazy. It needs to be in a CRM that everyone can see and everyone can share. Okay, next one. I don't know if it's near you, I can't remember. Continuity stay top of mind. Referrals slow down when marketers disappear. This, again, is why they are so important.
Speaker 2:I had lots of great referral source relationships. They were in my back pocket. They were sending me all the things, all of their people. They were sending to me everyone who was discharging. I went on vacation for a week. Come back, phone's dead, silence, crickets, because I was gone for a week. So you have to be out there every eight to 10 days. Don't think if you are a marketer watching this, don't think, oh, they love me, it'll be fine. No, you have to be out every eight to 10 days.
Speaker 1:Next slide we have a couple questions, if you want. Oh, okay, I did answer them privately, so you may want to answer these privately. Let's see Michelle asked the price for training, for the 12-week sales training, and I did provide that information to her. And then Anthony talks about being part of a franchise. What can you do from the website they provide? And my response to anyone who's in a franchise is it really depends on the franchise itself.
Speaker 1:We have worked with almost every franchise organization. I'm sure there are some small ones we have not worked with, but we've worked a lot of small ones too, and it's what you should know what's in your contract, what is allowed and how they feel about third parties making recommendations for changes or logging in and making the changes themselves. We've had some organizations that have let us log in and make any text changes not the pretty pictures or the branding, but any text additions or changes that we want to make. Pretty much within reason we can do that. And then we've had other.
Speaker 1:Some of the bigger franchises are pretty much hands-off. You are not allowed to touch or make changes to any of them. So it just really depends on your contract and what they feel comfortable with at the corporate level, but if they are comfortable with it, then we've worked with many folks that they allow us to blog post every other week or they allow us to do their social media. They allow us to help them with the review program and get more reviews. There's all kinds of great things that we can do, but sometimes it's a little bit limited on changes to the actual website, so just wanted to throw that in there.
Speaker 2:Okay, from the franchise level too, it's important to hyper-localize your local digital marketing strategy, and that's where we come in too. Yeah, okay, follow-up tactics. So you got to have excuses to stop by, right, we have to have reasons to come by. So, birthday visits I get all the birthdays, not the year people were born they don't like to share that but their actual birthday, and I'm going to bring them a little coffee or I'm going to write them a little thank you card or send them a little birthday text, something. It might be a good reason to come in, though it's their birthday. I'm going to bring them a coffee or something.
Speaker 2:The events that Valerie was talking about, that the Gallon Florida is doing those are very powerful. Any kind of events that you can put on, or have your social workers at a SNF help you with an event, or have the actual SNF itself help you put on an event that's great stuff Printed leave-behinds and newsletters, physical leave-behinds Again, if you're going every eight to 10 days, you have something important to drop off or something fun, something different, celebrating some social worker month or celebrating Independence Day, or whatever it is. It's new and it's different, and they look forward to your drop-offs. They like them. They're clever, they're different, they're fun. Weekly visits brief, face-to-face that's important too. If you can get a face-to-face once a month, that's fabulous. You need a reason to pull them out of their office. That's why the leave-behinds that we create, the one we do one a month that will get them to come out and talk to you. You can't just be like I'm here, come talk to me. They don't have time for that. So it needs to be purposeful. Your visits need to be purposeful, especially if you're expecting a face-to-face Text follow-ups.
Speaker 2:If you can get on a texting basis with any of your referral sources, you are golden. If they will share their cell phone number with you and we have tricks of how to get their cell phone number Annette is the queen of getting a cell phone number. Yes, she is. You got to get on this texting basis with them If they've got a last-minute discharge that fell through, or the doctor came in and said they're going home today. I'm not keeping them until Tuesday. I know I said I was, but we're not. They're going home today If they can text you, but they have to call everybody else. What do you think they're going to do? They're going to text. It's fast, it's easy and you respond right away. So yeah, get on a texting basis. It'll change things, for sure that's you the asn method.
Speaker 1:What a method. We have all right so local seo and visibility services. So the beginning from since the beginning of time, 18 years ago, asn was all about visibility, and that means your website, it means videos, it means blog posts, newsletters, anything that has to do with online visibility. We take care of all of it. We always encourage, though, that our clients participate with us. Just handing it to someone and walking away does not mean that it's going to work well. You have to be involved or assign someone in your organization to be a partner with us, so that we are constantly in communication about events and happenings and celebrations and all the things that matter to you, and we have so many great home care agencies right now that are just there's a couple of them in Nebraska, and if you're on this call and you're from Nebraska, you know who you are, because there's not that many of you. So those folks are the most in tune people to making their marketing hyper local, and by that, the smallest town in the most rural area gets attention, because people are so spread out in the state of Nebraska and everybody knows everybody in these small towns. Those organizations know how important it is to be a part of that community, to have someone in an office there, to have someone with roots there to do marketing events that are important to that community. And they do it, and that is how we help with visibility. They send all their stuff to us or sometimes they post it on their own and then we help put together a little reel, or we do this or that and blog posting and we put it out there for them as well. So together we make a difference. It's a partnership when it comes to having that marketing person in the field and having someone managing your online visibility Results tracking. So results include anything from how many referrals the salesperson gets this month to how much website traffic you have or how you rank for the word Home Care, st Louis, missouri, versus your competitors. So there's lots of results tracking that we do and you can pick and choose what pieces are most important and, of course, we'll guide you. We'll tell you, hey, most people want to know how many phone calls came from their website, how much traffic they got based on that, how their social media is doing. Whatever it is that you need, we can track all of it.
Speaker 1:Sales Training Accelerator. So the 12-week live Zoom program that transforms marketers into strategic relationship builders who consistently generate referrals. I'm going to introduce Annette again, because Annette takes these folks and she takes them from not knowing what they're doing. In some cases, though and I'll stop talking and let Annette talk in just a second I know she's got she's a world of wisdom here she takes some people from not knowing anything, never being in the home care market.
Speaker 1:We just had a really great video testimonial from an IT guy who bought a home care agency, a franchise location, and knew nothing about home care, and in 12 weeks, annette was his best friend. For 12 weeks. She became my best friend. She converted him into a home care marketer in 12 weeks. And it's great. And we love Trey and he does such a good job. And we have people that are well-versed, been in the business for years, and they go through that 12-week training and they're like, oh my gosh, I thought we were doing great stuff, but now I know that we could be doing more. And oh, and Tess Kinney just said she does a great job.
Speaker 2:Yay, and we've had people that are stuck. They get to this level and they just can't get over it. Yes, and they've taken the class and gone over the level. So Annette is doing a fabulous job. So, annette, go ahead. They have taken the class and gone over the level.
Speaker 3:So Annette is doing a fabulous job. So, annette, go ahead. Annette, I'll just I'll add I think you know what's so successful about our program. I had somebody ask me today why are you, how are you different from all the other sales training programs that are out there? And I think we're different. We're not a one and done. Dawn mentioned that in the beginning of the presentation. We're not a weekend or one day seminar. We are meeting with you every single week. We I say we spoon feed you. And I think the great thing about this program is like we're meeting every week. We hold you accountable, we give you homework, a little bit of homework. But I just think it's very helpful for everybody to learn that way, because their home care marketing is just so different. It helps that I did it for almost eight years. I was that person. So when people tell me their struggles, I can help them and walk them through that. But I think that's the biggest thing. We are not one and done. I'm also available to everybody If you have questions.
Speaker 3:In between classes Valerie mentioned I'll say his name, trey. He was a tech person. He was never in marketing In the beginning. He'd call me up and then I'm on my way to a sniff, I'm nervous, what do I do? And after he did it a few times he realized it's easy. These people are nice. Sometimes a gatekeeper you might get one, that's not too friendly, but people in home care are pretty nice and easy to get along with. So I think it's a great program. And again, because it is consistent and it's every week, we have the participants look forward to it. The classes are small. We tell you what to say, what to do. We give you the lead behinds. I think it's a great program, yeah.
Speaker 1:Hines. I think I think it's a great program. Yeah, honestly, three months with someone you can text or call a mentor and other people. So the way that it works is there's like four to six people six to eight people it depends on the month but it's a small group and none of the people that are in the group are in your territory. So we're not putting two people side by side in Tampa, florida, in the same class. That is not going to happen. We'll move one to a different class because you're not going to say anything if your competitor is sitting there.
Speaker 1:So, having said that, you can feel free to talk to those six people that are also in your group, because they're not invading your territory and they're not going to come next door to you. So, anyway, so I just think it's been such an amazing journey these last few years doing this. Dawn created the curriculum, annette looked at it and said absolutely, this is great and she adds her own flair to it and she's so supportive and so kind. So I would highly recommend anybody, whether it's been home care agency owners, home care agency marketers, some form of both. It's just a whole range of different people.
Speaker 2:We have some more questions too. They were under the Q&A. Do you make an appointment or just drop in unannounced? I think she or he it's anonymous is asking when you stop by to see a referral source person? I've never made an appointment, unless it's a lunch and learn. I don't make an appointment. If it's an elder law attorney, yeah, probably, but at a skilled nursing facility, assisted living, independent living, no appointment. You drop in Another one. I would like more information about hiring your services. So, valerie, do you want to put up the QR code?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me Other people can scan that in Hello. All right. So if you take your phone, if you're on your phone, I think you just screenshot it and then, when you screenshot it, you can touch the QR code and it'll let you go to the website. But anyway, that QR code is where, or at the bottom of the screen, asnhomecaremarketingcom. So I put the contact-us at the end and that's where this QR code is going to take you. You can look at any part of the website you want, any part of the website you want.
Speaker 1:But to fill out that form on the Contact Us page is how you get a call from Lisa or Dawn or Annette, depending on what it is you're interested in doing. And a lot of folks are asking for the price on sales training. We're happy to share that with you privately, and the reason we don't put it in a recording, we don't put it online, is because, simply, it depends. It depends on how many people are going through the training, and some of our larger clients negotiate some discounts. If it's one person, that's one thing, but if you do have a group, depending on the size of the group, it's worth having a discussion anyway with Annette about that because she can tell you how much, what to expect and all those things. So yes, free sales training, consultation with Annette or Dawn, and for everything else, free consultation on our website. So anyway, we'll be happy to answer any more questions. Is there anything else? Pricing oh, do you make an appointment or just drop in unannounced? Did you answer?
Speaker 2:that. I answered that. Yeah, I think they were asking about referral sources. I did answer that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. 12 week program. What do you think about calling before going out in the approach phase to vet them? I think that's in-person sales.
Speaker 2:So it is nice to go in with a name. Sometimes that helps them. You go to get past a gatekeeper. Can I see Susie the social worker? It can help to have that name. You can get that name a lot of times off on LinkedIn. You type in the skilled nursing facility. It'll show you all the people that work there. That's a great trick. Sometimes I would reach out via LinkedIn and message them there before I would come in. The thing is, if you call and say I'd like to come see you, I'm too busy, I have home care agents and it's over the phone and it just doesn't always work, and then you've loaned it, so I ask for permission or forgiveness. It falls in that category, because if you call and say I'd like to schedule time, they might say no. So I've always found Annette. Do you want to talk about that? Has that been your approach as well? Pretty much the same. Yeah, yeah, and I think it seems like gosh. I'm just going to pop in. It feels uncomfortable, but that's how everyone else is doing it.
Speaker 1:So it's a business. It's not like you're going to their house.
Speaker 3:And not to be afraid. You're not trying to talk anybody into something they don't need. Just remember that in your head.
Speaker 2:It's true, Everyone in that building needs they're discharging and they're going to probably need home care.
Speaker 1:You're directing the referral. That's all you're doing Absolutely Some of the fear out of it. Yep, anybody else have questions about either sales training sales we know that some of you want that pricing on sales training and we'll make sure that you guys get that or, if you fill out the contact us form, annette will also reach out to you based on that too. There's a sales training page on the website. If you go to that, there's an application that you fill out and that doesn't mean you're in. It just means that, annette, we can set up an appointment with Annette to talk about it, if that's something you want. It asks a lot of good questions about how many people and things like that, so you're welcome to fill out that too.
Speaker 1:But I think the real, I guess, learning piece of this whole webinar is that marrying up that in-person sales training I mean that in-person sales and marketing that community outreach with your online presence and making sure we did the whole presentation on branding at the Florida Home Care Association of Florida big home care con conference in July and this is what we talked about the whole time basically is making sure that the people that are in the field that are representing you whether it's you or someone else and your online presence are married together. They match. You're saying the same things, you have the same mission, vision and values, and when you are out there in the field, you are representing that company, just like they would represent themselves or represent themselves online. And my final word of advice for everybody here is if you are not already on LinkedIn with a full profile with your picture and it completely filled out, then you're doing yourself a disservice.
Speaker 1:Linkedin is not the be all, end all, but it is an excellent way for you to get in touch with those referral sources that you may not be able to get to any other way. I highly recommend it. Anybody else have questions, comments, anything I can sing. I hope you all got something out of this and we'd be happy to follow up with you if you need anything from us. But these ladies know their stuff. Highly recommend that you get in touch with them and see if there's anything we can help you with. Thanks so much, everybody.
Speaker 3:Thank you, bye. Bye, everybody, take care.
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