Posts Tagged ‘home care agency marketing’

7 Home Care Business Marketing Tips

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Home Care Agency Marketing & Promotion

Here are several tips to help market your home care agency:

Don’t Advertise Like a Big Business
Big businesses advertise to create name recognition and future sales. As a small business, your home care agency can’t afford to do that. Instead, design your advertising to produce sales…now. One way to accomplish this is to always include an offer in your advertising – and an easy way for prospective customers to respond to it.

Offer a More Affordable Version
Some prospective customers may not be willing to pay the asking price for your home care services. Others are more interested in paying a low price than in getting the best quality. You can avoid losing sales to your competitors by offering a smaller or stripped down version of the services your agency offers at a lower price.

Offer a Premium Version
Not all home care customers are looking for a cheap price. Many are willing to pay a higher price to get a premium service. You can boost your average size sale and your total revenue by offering a more comprehensive service…or by combining several services in a special premium package offer for a higher price.

Try Some Unusual Marketing Methods
Look for some unconventional marketing methods your competitors are overlooking. You may discover some highly profitable ways to generate sales and avoid competition. For example, print your best small ad on a postcard and mail it to prospects in your targeted market. A small ad on a postcard can drive a high volume of traffic to your website or generate a flood of sales leads for a very small cost.

Trim Your Ads
Reduce the size of your ads so you can run more ads for the same cost. You may even be surprised to find that greater frequency and smaller ads generate a better response.

Set up Joint Promotions with Other Small Businesses
Contact some non-competing small businesses serving customers in your market. Offer to publicize their products or services to your customers in exchange for their publicizing your services to their customers. This can range from hair salons to restaurants to hardware stores.

Maximize Your Customers

Convert your customers into publicity agents for your homecare business. Develop an incentive for them to tell associates and friends about the value of your services. An endorsement from them is more effective than any amount of advertising – and far more affordable.

Posted by: David Goodman, President of Companion Connection Senior Care, the premier No Royalty Membership Organization serving the non medical home care and licensed home health business communities. Demand for home based elder care is soaring! CCSC will help you start your own highly successful Home Care Agency business. Contact us today for a FREE Business Info Kit… 1-800-270-6949

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Posted in Free Advertising & Marketing, Home Care Agency Marketing & Promotion, Home Care Business Planning, Home Care Business Tips, Non Medical Home Care Business, Public Relations, Senior Business, Start Up Business, home health care business | No Comments »

4 Critical Rules For Advertising Your Home Care Agency

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Home Care Agency Marketing Tips

Leads are more important than branding. No matter what the media or ad agency experts tell you, generating leads for a home care business is more important than building a brand at this point, especially if you recently opened your homecare business.

A strong identity can help, and a simple logo can accomplish that less expensively than ever before. But don’t waste your dollars buying weeks of ads.  Building your brand starts at delivering outstanding services under your home care agency’s name to happy customers.

So it’s important that your ads generate a response by including a call to action. Prospects should feel compelled to do something, be it calling in on an offer or visiting a website. This will enable you to track the effectiveness of your ads. Remember the formula: target, offer, copy.

The most critical component of your campaign will be drilling down to find media that deliver your message to people actively looking to buy your product or service, as well as those looking for a new, lower-cost or better service provider. To truly build your brand, you need to be that provider.

Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. Since it is a buyer’s market right now, you’re in a good position to push for as much value as possible. In TV, this may mean additional mentions into or out of commercial breaks. For radio, it may mean more frequency or co-sponsorship of a local promotion or event. And for print, it may mean a bigger ad or additional placements, or even space for an advertorial.

You won’t get what you don’t ask for, so, consider any packages you are presented and see how you can leverage that package to get as many leads as possible.

Remember PR. Use your own story to your advantage by incorporating it into your pitch to local business publications or TV/radio morning shows. You will have a better chance of being mentioned if you make your home care business sound unique.  Make sure your press releases are not overly self serving, or the media outlet won’t run it.

E-mail is a necessity, but don’t forget direct mail. E-mail marketing has taken off in the past few years, but there are limitations. Double opt-ins – where people have to confirm twice that they want to receive your email – are the norm these days. Even so, click-through rates average less than half of 1 percent.

That means there is opportunity to leverage your budget the old-fashioned way: through direct mail. You may consider this counterintuitive, but there are some definite advantages to a highly targeted direct-mail program right now: Due to higher paper and postage rates, a good deal of direct-mail competition has fallen by the wayside. That means a compelling letter or postcard has a better chance than ever of getting your prospect’s attention.

Direct mail can also yield one of the best returns on investment if you have a great offer and a good list, the latter being most important. That said, take care in building your list. If done correctly, over time your list/database will be your homecare business’s most valuable asset.

Posted by: David Goodman, President of Companion Connection Senior Care, the premier No Royalty Membership Organization serving the non medical home care and licensed home health business communities. Demand for home based elder care is soaring! CCSC will help you start your own highly successful Home Care Agency business. Contact us today for a FREE Business Info Kit… 1-800-270-6949

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Posted in Computer & Internet Technology, Free Advertising & Marketing, Home Care Agency Marketing & Promotion, Home Care Business Planning, Home Care Business Tips, Non Medical Home Care Business, Public Relations, Radio Advertising, Senior Business, Start Up Business, home health care business | No Comments »

Writing Great Ads For Your Home Care Agency

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Home Care Business Marketing Tips

You have an advertising budget and a media schedule (where you plan to advertise), but you still have one question.  How do you make a great ad that will get the attention of potential clients? Here are some tips to help you develop that ad:

  • Engage Prospects. The more time someone spends with your ad, the more likely he or she is to remember it. Ads that include headlines that contain a benefit and a strong visual focal point, such as a close-up of a person with a warm, friendly smile work the best. A large photo works well in magazines while multiple visuals are good for newspapers.
  • Add color and contrast. High-contrast images in magazines will increase the chances of a potential client seeing and responding to your ad.  Larger ads tend to be more memorable, but a creative ad in a small space can be more memorable than a mediocre one that takes up a full page.  Some colors increase the chances of your ad being seen, which include sky blue, golden yellow and shades of blue-green. Red is a good spot color in newspapers.
  • Communicate frequently and in multiple ways (if you can afford it).  Repetition is important to selling  Studies show that exposure to information in different contexts helps a reader remember it.  When you see a message in different formats, such as a print ad, a billboard and a TV commercial, you associate the different impressions, and that helps you retrieve the information when you need it.
  • Use memorable benefits.  Ads that grab and hold a potential client’s attention are those that immediately relay a benefit that answers the question, How does the home care service benefit me and/or my elderly loved one? Benefits are what a potential client remembers; not features. People will read, remember and clip your ad out of a magazine or newspaper and hold onto it if you have a headline that shows a benefit.
  • Differentiate it.  You need to make sure your ad stands out in the marketplace.  You may be selling the same service and benefits of your competitors, but you need to have a look – a headline, a photo, colors, a logo – that will set it apart from the others.

Posted by: David Goodman, President of Companion Connection Senior Care, the premier No Royalty Membership Organization serving the non medical home care and licensed home health business communities. Demand for home based elder care is soaring! CCSC will help you start your own highly successful Home Care Agency business. Contact us today for a FREE Business Info Kit… 1-800-270-6949

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Posted in Computer & Internet Technology, Home Care Agency Marketing & Promotion, Home Care Business Tips, Non Medical Home Care Business, Senior Business, Start Up Business, home health care business | No Comments »