Home for the holidays: it’s more than just a song. One in three Americans are traveling to visit family, commonly leading to the discovery of the change in condition of loved ones that  leads to a spike in home care inquiries.  Is your agency prepared to handle them? 

The key is to implement a marketing and sales strategy with touches before, during, and after the holidays, to maximize your reach so that your agency remains top of mind to potential clients. The following checklist from corecubed is a great place to start. Our top tip? Plan NOW to kick off the new year with a PPC campaign to push your agency as high as possible in search results, so you’ll be more easily found by the surge of those searching post-holiday for care.

Pre-Holiday: 

• Make sure you have sufficient staff trained and ready. Ramp up recruitment efforts, and line up staff now who are available to work over the holidays and during the post-holiday spike in inquiries and assessments. 
• Prep your inquiry team: 
  • Let them know to expect an influx of calls after each major holiday. 
  • Make sure everyone who answers the phone, both during and after hours, is equipped to answer questions on how to know if care is needed. (Create a “How to Know if a Loved One Needs Care at Home” tool to email to inquiries after each call – or let us provide one for you!) 
  • Improve your staff’s inquiry skills; these tools can help: 
    • Online inquiry management training 
    • Inquiry tracking solution 
    • Telephone inquiry form
  • Make sure your marketing team follows up with inquiries, either by phone or email. Also, review your inquiry follow-up procedures and refine as needed; this tool can help: 
    • 9 Follow-up emails for inquiries, referral sources, and clients 
• Connect with referral sources to educate them about how your agency can help when families detect changes in their loved ones over the holidays, and give thanks to your referral sources for clients they’ve already sent your way during the year. 
• Share any creative community outreach your agency participates in with the media (local newspapers, radio, TV – and your own social media pages). Do your staff members work together to serve at a particular charity, collect for a food drive, or provide an activity for clients to make the holidays more enjoyable? Human interest stories are always in high demand, especially this time of year. 

During the Holidays: 

• Ensure adequate staffing for existing clients, of course, but also be prepared for any new emergency needs that arise. 
• Slip into the celebratory mood of the season. Remain visible, but with a lighter approach. Attend any and all holiday events and open houses that your targets host. The goal is to celebrate and build relationships. 
• Offer your sales team flexible work hours to accommodate client schedules to conduct home visits when the opportunity arises. 

Post-Holiday: 

• Kick off 2020 with a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign. The great thing about PPC is you can run it for a short period of time to catch the surge of people searching for care, placing your agency as high as possible in search results. corecubed is a Google-certified partner, with unparalleled expertise in our SEO and PPC team, led by Stacie Gillespie, who holds a Master of Science in Digital Marketing and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Integrated Marketing Communications, also earning a Google Analytics Individual Qualification, has passed the Google Fundamentals exam and the Google Search Ads exam to become Google AdWords certified.
• Add fresh content to your website and social media pages: resources, tips, blog posts on answering questions that those searching for care may have, such as warning signs that care is needed and overcoming objections to care.  
• Reassess staffing availability, both for existing clients and the anticipated uptick in new inquiries, and continue recruiting efforts. 
• Consider a direct mail series of postcards, or an email campaign, to let your target audience know you’re both an expert in aging care and at the ready to assist. 

Bonus Tip:

• Get started on planning for the new year with our Strategic Sales Plan!

Seem overwhelming? No worries! The home care sales and marketing experts at corecubed, can help with all of this and more, through the holidays and beyond. Our decades of industry expertise bring results – from planning to implementation, and everything in between. Contact us for details about how we can help with your home care digital marketing or traditional marketing strategies this holiday season!