Holly Rehbock, vice president of sales at Senior Care Marketing Max, recently teamed up with Lori Eberly, a senior care consultant specializing in home and community-based care, to deliver proven strategies to boost market share on a webinar titled “Offline Gold: Proven Referral Strategies for Home Care Growth.”
The two home care leaders have known each other about 15 years, with Rehbock formerly serving as Eberly’s marketing and sales director when she owned a large home care agency with several locations in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. At other times over the years, they’ve been friendly competitors.
Although both were sharing strategies courtesy of Senior Care Marketing Max, which amplifies the online presence of businesses in the home care sector, their focus was on how offline strategies complement digital marketing efforts.
While digital marketing is essential for any home care business, offline marketing is still king, Eberly said.
“You may get more leads from digital … but the reality is you get more clients, and you get them more quickly from offline marketing sources,” she said.
The reason conversions from offline marketing efforts is better than digital is simple: People do business with people they trust, and when you get referrals from someone that they have an established relationship with, it’s easier to win that business.
With that said, whenever someone hears about you, they’ll check out your online presence before reaching out to you. It’s a way for them to confirm that your online brand matches your offline reputation, Eberly said.
“People have to know you exist before they Google you,” Eberly said. “A doctor may recommend your agency, but they will most likely check to see what your reviews look like, your website, etc.”
The two experts highlighted a number of reasons for engaging in offline marketing, including:
- Research from Wharton University indicates that referred clients have a 16% higher lifetime value than other clients.
- Referred customers have a 37% higher retention rate, according to research by Deloitte.
- Consistent agency presence builds recognition.
On the webinar, Rehbock and Eberly highlighted numerous ways to get involved with the community and connect with potential referrers – as well as how to identify them in the first place.
The two also highlighted the differences between marketing and sales, with Eberly observing, “Marketing builds awareness and gets you on people’s radar … sales builds the relationship and makes them your client.”
When engaging in offline marketing, it’s important to identify which types of clients you want, so you can determine how to spend your time, they said. Strive to serve as a resource instead of always focusing on what’s in it for you, they said.
Other topics included how to get more referrals from Veterans Affairs, potential partners, reimbursement rates, lessons learned from the pandemic, and more.
