By Pam McDonald

Cathy Berry, marketing director, and Hal Price, chief business development officer, for Healthcraft Creative Solutions, tell Foresight Radio Host Pam McDonald how this specialty marketing service can benefit senior living communities. Takeaways (lightly edited) are below or you can listen to the entire podcast episode here.

HAL: Healthcraft Creative Solutions has a specialized focus on wellness and healthcare in the post-acute healthcare space.

CATHY: Post-acute healthcare providers include skilled nursing, independent living, assisted living, continuing care retirement communities, and other providers. We also serve vendors, that is, people who are hoping to get in front of senior living leaders.

Marketing Focused on Wellness and Healthcare

HAL: We focus on promoting rehab and wellness services to our target population of people who provide those services, people who receive services, and people who meet the needs of other providers. We really think in terms of those needs falling in the general category of rehabilitation, prehab, wellness, and restorative care. You can think of it in terms of services needed as people try to age gracefully and actively. We can offer the right kinds of services for providers to keep people as active as possible for as long as they can.

CATHY: We’re focused on several areas of big impact, including brand positioning. So, we can help with developing your key messages, value propositions, or even basic assets such as logos or brand guidelines.

We provide both traditional and digital marketing. So, if you’re looking for support with outcomes-driven collateral, we can develop those materials. We would use your specific community results to help attract more referrals from providers by really explaining to consumers why your community would be the best place for them to recover and thrive.

We can help with community outreach through full social media management, and market analytics. We also can provide a lot of support with opportunity assessment, which looks at your local market overview, at referral patterns, to establish the opportunities that might be available to you. We can provide guided recommendations around those analytics and help with your sales planning.

Helping Providers Who Don’t Have Marketing Departments

HAL: When you think about any type of company that needs to communicate with customers or potential customers, people always think in terms of marketing. Some people have a large enough organization to afford several people or have a marketing department. People on the other extreme may think there’s no money for dedicated marketing people, so I’ll just do it myself. And then there’s all that space in between. We tend to target those people who really have not been able to hire their own marketing talent or have maybe one or two marketing generalists.

CATHY: Healthcraft Creative Solutions uses both digital and traditional marketing techniques. Traditional being paper materials: brochures, flyers, and advertisements. On the digital side, we really focus heavily on social media, helping to expand people’s presence there and drive their engagement; really getting the word out to as many folks as possible online.

We’re very flexible based on our client’s individual needs. If you’re looking for a single project solution, we can certainly provide that on a one-off basis. Or we can work as your virtual, in-house solution. We’re just a phone call away and we can work on a variety of different projects on an ongoing basis. That’s what we do for several of our customers today.

Pinpointing Local Growth Opportunities

HAL: Businesses market so they’re more likely to achieve their business objectives. So, when we’re talking about the providers of senior care services, they’re going to measure success in terms of are we helping them keep their location filled with the right types of residents? Can we help you develop more customer relationships? If we’re not meeting their business objectives, we’re not helping them grow. They may think, ‘I don’t know that I really need you.’

CATHY: We have a Market Mover Opportunity Assessment that provides a real, in-depth look at your local market analytics. Who the providers are, who the referral sources are, what kind of payers are in your market, and who’s part of those payer groups? Really just looking for opportunities. We can help you identify trends so you can determine if you could build a specialty program based on the referral patterns we see.

Perhaps your local hospital is referring a large patient base with a certain DRG and that’s something your clinical staff could handle, so you could capitalize on their large number of discharges from that setting.

An Opportunity Assessment Tool

CATHY: Our Opportunity Assessment tool has a neat feature that helps you visualize the data from your specific community. You see your individual outcomes and your wins. We define a win as that outcome where you are doing better than the local market average, and you’re also better than the national average. What our tool does is help you visualize that in a chart form. Then you can clearly tell your story to those referral sources. You could share that information with a referral source and say, “I’m doing the best at this measure, and this is why you should send your patients to me.”

HAL: That puts you in the position of being able to go to senior communities’ referral sources and say, “Let me show you what we’ve got and how this is even better suited for your needs. We’re here to help.”

No New Technology Needed

CATHY: You don’t need a new platform or other technology; it’s all provided via an Excel spreadsheet that’s interactive. Our analytics team will walk you through the report we offer and explain it step by step, so you know what we’re seeing, and what our recommendations are.

You’re able to click through it yourself or we can work hand-in-hand to let you know what we’re seeing and then work together to create a plan. It’s a collaborative approach to really putting that best story forward. We’ll think of what’s the most compelling way to get your story across.

So, if you really want to drive short-term referrals, we’ll take a look at things like your rate of discharge to community, and your functional improvement. We’ll put together a clear, concise story where prospects see the message you’re trying to get across in two seconds — that you are that clear choice for them to send their patients to.

HAL: The report will also help identify where the patients are that are receiving any hyper-reimbursement you may be targeting. So, if a community is more focused on private pay, we can help identify where the best private pay candidates are. If you’re targeting Part A patients who have specific medical issues or conditions, we can identify who they are, where they are, and help you let the provider know about the programs you’ve got that will best meet their needs. Or you might create specialized programs to address the types of challenges those people have.

Expert Help with Marketing

CATHY: I think people are drawn to what we have to offer, especially in the senior healthcare space, because we bring them opportunities to focus on their top-of-license responsibilities, while we take over the marketing part for them.

HAL: Anyone who thinks they can’t afford to have marketing support should be talking with us. We have set ourselves up like a marketing co-op. We have a stable of talent. We have people who are outstanding writers, graphics experts, analysts, and social media experts. If you need an hour of time, an ongoing presence, or anything in between, we can take care of that for you.

People can call us at 972-372-6790, visit us online at HealthcraftCreative.com, or email [email protected] or [email protected].