Being visible to potential senior care customers through hyper local ad digital ad targeting.

Hyperlocal Targeting: What It Means in the Digital Age . . . 

Local marketing is nothing new to people in the senior care industry and some things about your local approach should stay the same. (Yes, it’s still a good idea to bring doughnuts to the discharge nurse to get referrals.) But the web brings new opportunities for what is known as hyperlocal marketing. In a nutshell, it is the idea of targeting your online messages based on someone’s specific location.

I know, it sounds pretty labor-intensive, but in fact, hyperlocal targeting can be your secret weapon.

Why is that?

Because it can help you get around the aggregators who claim so much space at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). According to a survey by Search Engine Land, 85% of people report using web searches to look up local businesses. What that means to you: You don’t have to rank at the top of SERPs for “assisted living” Instead your efforts should be focused on coming up in searches for “assisted living, Hunterdon County, NJ.” Let’s take a closer look at how hyperlocal targeting can work for you.

Let Your Numbers Lead the Way

Digging into the analytics of your website can provide good insight about where your visitors are coming from. Google Analytics and other analytics platforms provide visibility into the location of searchers. Once you have that information, you can focus more of your marketing efforts in those geographic areas.

Let Your Content Shine

Search engine algorithms are constantly changing. The good news, though, is that unique content remains one of the best ways to be found. Making specific references to area or locations is another great way to ensure that you’re found in search engines. Be sure to use geo-modifiers in your key words and throughout your content. In addition to plugging in “Philadelphia-area assisted living,” add “Bucks County assisted living,” “Doylestown assisted living,” “Doylestown borough assisted living.”

Get Social

According to stats from Facebook, pages for local businesses in the U.S. receive 645 million page views in the average week. What’s more, 70% of consumers in North America are connected to at least one local business. This means it’s smart to get social. Make sure that your business has a separate page for each community. It’s also a good idea to put your ear to the ground on social media discussions about senior care. Be sure to follow any senior recreation or medical businesses in your area – and then join those conversations. While seniors themselves may not be on social media (although some certainly are), adult children are often on these sites while looking for care for elderly parents.

Get in With the Hometown Crowd

Set up Google Alerts to stay abreast of what’s happening in areas where your communities are located. That way, you can tweet or write Facebook posts if something relevant to your target audience is in the news. And don’t forget, if you’re advertising in a digital or print newspaper, be sure to restructure any ads based on the geographic area.

We’ll be diving even deeper into this subject at Senior Care Marketing Sales Summit (SMASH) in November with Josh Dreller, Super Digital Targeter Extraordinaire from Signal and Bryan Reynolds, Integrated Marketing Director, Episcopal Retirement Homes during the Hyper focus digital marketing session covering geo, behavioral and persona ad buying for high value lead gen. If you can’t join us at SMASH, join our conversation on the state of senior care marketing here. And don’t forget, we’ll be meeting at the Senior Care Marketing and Sales Summit HQ (SMASH) in Chicago in November. Please consider joining us!

Bailey