Understanding Your Care Home’s Target Audience

Defining your target audiences from the outset can make or break your digital marketing campaigns. Read on for our expert insights. 

There are a multitude of factors to consider when deciding on who your care home marketing campaign should target — including age, gender, location and even social background. 

Whether your business is a nursing home or a care home, when preparing a digital marketing strategy, it’s sensible to focus your efforts on people who will respond positively to your campaigns. By using analytics information, online marketing strategies can be tailored to your ideal customers. Understanding your target demographic needn’t be as confusing as it sounds. 

Why Target Audience Analysis Matters 

For example, consider the following: 

It may seem obvious, but would it make sense to advertise your care home business to children? 

It’s unlikely, since children aren’t, at least in the immediate term, potential residents. They aren’t your target audience.  

Understanding who your target audience is can be critical; you can take those insights forward to market your business at the people that are more likely to pick up the phone or fill out an enquiry form. 

In some situations, you can make wild generalisations when it comes to defining a target audience, but with the dizzying array of metrics now available, choosing specific demographics to target your campaigns at has never been more possible. 

According to Statitia, the number of people aged 65 or over that use a smartphone has grown in the past decade by 63%. Thanks to the widespread use of and volume of data collected by mobile phones, you can now filter your target audience by their age, gender, location, even down to the type of device, operating system and screen size that they use. Whilst some of these may not seem particularly relevant at first glance, there are insights that can be gleaned from the way in which people use their devices. 

It’s worth noting that, whilst your target audience may stay the same, the breakdown of that target audience may change. Older people were once young, and future-proofing your campaigns may be worth more than you think. It may be beneficial to advertise to people who are not yet at care home resident age: people who may need to relocate an elderly relative or will, one day, remember your brand in the event that they need residential care themselves. 

Defining Your Unique Selling Point (USP) for your Nursing Homes 

Your care home isn’t like other care homes. Convincing your potential residents of that fact is what will set your business apart from the competition. But how? Your USP is something that makes your care home unique, maybe it’s that special personal connection that your staff have with residents, or perhaps it’s the community events that you put on for those in your care; having a unique selling point is an effective way to promote your business. A unique selling point will generally help to improve your brand’s reach and ultimately, can help to create more leads in the form of potential customers. 

Things as simple as the locale of your care home may be chosen as your unique selling point: Do you have wonderful gardens for residents to relax in? Is your care home accredited or do you hold some kind of award? It may be the history of the building itself, or the excellent support that your care home offers to residents; identifying and defining your unique selling point (sometimes referred to as a unique selling proposition) will help you to target your marketing ideas to your target audience. 

Tools and Methods for Target Audience Analysis 

Analysing your target audience first requires acquiring data. Whether that’s through setting up social media accounts or using website analytics, surveys or questionnaires, the importance of proper analysis can’t be understated. Taking wild shots in the dark will always steer you wrong. 

Let’s assume that you’ve already got a website. Is it performing to the level that you need? In order to really understand your existing audience, tools like Google’s GA4 can collect relevant data on visitors to your website and help you make informed decisions going forward. Google Search Console (GSC) is also helpful when learning about how your page appears on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Whilst GSC won’t tell you specific details about potential residents for your care home, it’ll give you an overall top-line view of how your business appears when people are browsing the internet. 

If you don’t yet have a website, or think your current site is getting outdated, Black Lab can help with that too. Our Web Dev team are proven experts in producing responsive websites that help your business to grow. 

So, what about your social media accounts? Social Media isn’t just for sharing the latest events or photos of your care home. By leveraging social media appropriately, care homes can learn about, target and retarget potential residents, their families and even tailor ads to people within a certain geographical location. 

If you know that you want your adverts to appear online to a certain demographic, for example older people, or those in your immediate local community, Facebook’s Ads Manager allows you to withhold adverts from people who don’t meet that specific criteria, whilst pushing ads to people that do. This type of market research is made easier thanks to Facebook’s Professional Dashboard, by which you can gain valuable insights into the type of people already interacting with your pages, and make informed decisions on who to target next. 

At Black Lab, Paid Social Media is but one of the arrows in our quiver; knowing how to use it can be an essential part of keeping your care home occupied. Alongside a healthy dose of Search Engine Optimisation (also known as SEO), you can take your care home business from languishing in the depths of Google to being at the forefront of your future potential residents’ FYP. 

Give us a call to see how Black Lab can help change your business: 0113 436 0024 

Addressing Challenges and Creating Marketing Strategies for the Target Audience of your Nursing Home 

The discussion surrounding whether a loved one requires extra care can be delicate, so knowing how to appear at the right part in a user’s journey needs careful consideration. Think: what questions will your potential residents, their families or even prospective employees be searching for? 

Some of the most common queries following “care home near me” relate to the costs surrounding residential care; utilising SEO and PPC, Black Lab can help to construct landing pages and adverts that address these topics to propel your care home business to the higher end of organic search results. By answering relevant and pertinent questions that your potential clients may have, you say to Google that you are authoritative and experienced, two of Google’s 4 E-E-A-T rank factors. 

At Black Lab, we can help you to market your care home business. Speak with us — call 0113 436 0024