Basic marketing 121.

LONG TERM CARE MARKETING IS AS EASY AS ONE-TO-ONE

Most marketers are all too familiar with the concept of one-to-one marketing outlined in Peppers' and Rogers' now classic, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time. (Currency/Doubleday 1993). It's all about using technology to create customer intimacy, focusing on "share of customer" rather than "share of market," segmenting customers by their "worth," and redefining with whom you compete. While these concepts are embraced in the retail world, are they applicable to service industries, especially a service industry like long term care?

Before we tackle that question, let's get specific about what one-to-one marketing really is:

* One-to-one marketing is not mass marketing; it's selling what you have to offer, one customer at a time.

* One-to-one marketing differentiates customers and customizes services for them.

* One-to-one marketing tries to sell more services to current customers.

How do these principles apply to seniors (customers) and long term care facilities (service providers)?

Selling what you have, one customer at a time

Let's say that Mr. and Mrs. Jones are new residents of your independent living facility. A savvy marketing director who focuses on building a relationship with the Joneses might find out the following:

(1) Mrs. Jones has three sisters in neighboring states, who are potential candidates to live at the facility.

(2) The Jones children have friends who have parents looking for a high-quality independent living facility.

(3) The Joneses are part of a larger network of couples who keep in touch and go on vacations several times a year with one another.

The single act of building a relationship with the Joneses could potentially yield 12 additional sales during the next five years. If the Joneses are happy with their living arrangements, they are in a position to influence these 12 prospects in a dramatic way.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones are a "new breed" for your independent living facility. They are both former executives, retired from large corporations. Here are some services they would find useful and would be willing to pay you for:

* Arrangement/coordination of day trips to surrounding areas

* Spa services such as manicures, pedicures, massages, wraps, or aromatherapy 

* Wellness classes and fitness training

* In-home decorating

* Gift-shopping and party-planning services.

Selling more services. In addition to the add-on services listed above, the Joneses are interested in joining a fitness facility, becoming members of a wine club, and paying extra for gourmet meals served in an elegant atmosphere. Could your facility add these services and make incremental profits by attracting others like the Jones family?

Some seniors living in the vicinity who are not ready for retirement living might also enjoy these services. Moreover, it is an excellent way to acclimate them to what your facility is all about.

One of the primary challenges that CCRCs experience is attracting younger seniors to their facility. To overcome this challenge, CCRC owners and operators need to really understand what these younger seniors want and build relationships with this demographic group. How to do it? Interact with them on a regular basis by e-mailing them messages, sending them invitations to events, and surveying them online.

As Peppers and Rogers write in their book, "Technology is making it possible for the modern marketer to assume the role of the small proprietor, doing business again with individuals, one at a time. The computer can provide you with a foolproof memory of every customer's individually different needs." Once the needs are uncovered, an organization can develop more service offerings and figure out the best way to market them.

Throw out yesterday's rules

Forget all the traditional rules of marketing a CCRC for just a moment. Forget the half-page newspaper ads, the expensive television commercials, the in-your-face billboards, and those boring packets with your organization's mission stamped on them.

Imagine this: a fresh start to use your marketing budget any way you please. Let's say you have a relatively new facility that you need to fill up. It's not an inexpensive facility, and you want to target people who fit the right profile. First, figure out the profile by interviewing the people who have already committed to living there. Then, using the Internet, send out a brief survey to all the seniors in the geographic region you are targeting. If you can't buy e-mail addresses, buy a list with phone numbers and pay someone to call for e-mail addresses. Make sure the person you pay to do the calls has a credible voice and a legitimate-sounding script so the chances of getting the e-mail address go up.

Let's say this exercise produces the names of 200 people who are age- and zip-code qualified. Develop a survey, send it out to these 200 people, and see what you learn. Include several questions designed to assess the readiness level of recipients to seek out retirement living.

Include questions such as:

* Have your spouse or you experienced any health problems in the past three months? If so, what?

* Have your children ever suggested that you may be ready for retirement-community living?

* On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your current living situation (consider the amount of work you have to do maintaining the house in your response).

Add a bunch of other insightful questions. Now you've embarked on a one-to-one marketing approach.

What about the folks who may be interested but don't have computers and aren't hooked into the Internet? Use more traditional approaches to market to them, but build a personalized relationship with them as well. Don't forget that the people who do have computers and use the Internet influence many of these folks. A surprisingly large number of seniors fall into the category of being computer literate.

One of the most insightful books on one-to-one marketing was written long before Peppers and Rogers wrote about it. In their book, Personal Influence, published in 1955, Katz and Lazarsfeldt talked about the importance of opinion leaders who play much more influential roles in what people buy, read, and listen to than do the mass media. And yet, in long term care marketing, we rely primarily on the mass media to carry our messages to our target audiences. This happens in spite of the fact that any decent marketer today knows that word-of-mouth is the best marketing tool of all.

What the experts say

Say Rogers and Peppers: "It's important to know which customers are most valuable and which are least valuable. If the concept of 'value' is difficult when applied to your customers, you can substitute 'importance to your enterprise.'"

If this sounds harsh to those of us who work in and serve the long term care industry, we've lost the intent of Rogers and Peppers' meaning. They are not implying, for example, that one senior's worth is more than another's--all human life is important. What they are saying is that one resident of your facility may be a more valued marketer for the organization than another. And what they are further suggesting is that you, as a marketing agent for the facility, need to come up with a list of criteria outlining the characteristics of residents who can best assist in the marketing effort, so that you can identify them as individuals and get to know them better.

Know your MVRs

What would some of those characteristics be?

In each individual facility they will differ, but here's a sample list of characteristics one facility uses to segment its MVRs (most valuable residents) to help with the marketing effort:

* wide circle of family and friends

* "influencer" type of personality

* supportive of the organization's mission and leadership

* participates in variety of activities and clubs

* active in resident council

* sees self as vital and healthy

* has resided at facility at least one year

Your first step as a one-to-one marketer is to figure Out who within the resident population most closely matches the criteria and meet with them individually. Here's what you want to learn from them:

(1) What do they absolutely love about the facility?

(2) What would they like to see improved?

(3) What new services would they like to see added?

(4) When they were evaluating retirement options, why did they select this facility over competitors?

(5) How would they propose reaching others like them to tell the story of the facility?

(6) How willing would they be to act as advisors to the "one-to-one marketing" effort?

(7) Do they surf the Internet? Do they have an e-mail address?

(8) What are their individual hobbies and interests?

Let's say that 20 individuals were interviewed and you, as a marketer, learned the following about your residents: They ...

* love the grounds, maintenance, and upkeep of the facility

* do not love the food--it's mushy and lacks variety

* think the servers are rushed and impolite 

* want more fitness classes and group outings

* selected your facility because it was church-affiliated

* think more "socials" is a great way to introduce new people to the facility

* they would act as advisors, as long as they aren't made into salespeople for the facility

* use the Web (most of them, anyway); half have an e-mail address

* have a common interest in gardening, reading, and exercising (at least 75 percent).

So what does this tell you?

Armed with this arsenal of information, you can begin to customize some aspects of your services to meet the needs of these MVRs by starting a book club; arranging for horticultural lectures and exhibits; upgrading the menu and server staff; incorporating additional fitness classes; and arranging for day trips to nearby museums, malls, and attractions. You can also adjust your advertising message to include prominent mention of church affiliation and encourage other seniors to log onto your Web site. This would be a great outlet to promote the facility's "socials" and to enlist the MVRs to act as hosts and hostesses at the events.

All these new developments give you the opportunity to send e-malls to those who have it and let the non-e-mail users know about plans via other methods (resident council announcements, resident newsletters, or the telephone). During these interactions with the MVRs, you should be asking more questions and acquiring more information that can help you make decisions or implement new strategies on behalf of residents.

To expand upon this marketing effort, you should also consider conducting a facility-wide resident satisfaction study to determine how the wider population feels about the organization and its services. Done properly, study results will allow you to further segment the resident population by common needs correlated to demographic factors.

For instance, you may find that older residents long for musical reviews and scented candles for their rooms while younger residents seek exercise and gardening activities. Older residents may like the food the way it is while younger ones seek more variety and stronger flavors.

How individualized does one-to-one marketing get?

One-to-one marketing happens on several different levels. It can be as individualized as e-mailing every one of your MVRs each week and sending every resident a birthday or anniversary card when their special day comes around. The next level is to segment residents by age, sex, type of care (independent living, skilled nursing, etc.), and expressed needs. The third level is called "mass customization," whereby you offer options that will meet differing needs (such as foodservice that caters to those liking softer, less spicy food and those who seek more lively cuisine).

Your facility's ability to customize services to different types of residents will depend on many factors, including degree of top management buy-in, available resources to add new desired services, number of people involved in the marketing effort, and technological infrastructure (Web site, e-mail, database programs, etc.)

Despite an individual facility's resources, or lack thereof, some degree of the one-to-one marketing philosophy can be incorporated, even if it's the simple requirement that staff members address residents by name at all times. See the sidebar "How to get started" on page 42, for a plan adapted to the needs of long term care.

The bottom-line benefits

One-to-one marketing pays off in many ways for organizations. By its nature, it is designed to set up "listening posts" to better understand customer needs. This, in turn, should lead to higher levels of resident satisfaction. Higher levels of satisfaction can lead to additional sales to new customers.

The other by-product of a one-to-one marketing program is more integration between departments within a long term care facility. Marketing and housekeeping and foodservice and nursing services all work together to provide what the customer says she wants and needs from the organization.

The other benefit (while it's also a cost) is that the organization is forced to examine the system it uses to communicate interactively with residents, staff, family members, and prospective residents. If it has delayed putting together an interactive Web site, utilizing e-mail to communicate with customers, surveying resident needs on an on-going basis using kiosks and other electronic means, or instituting a customer management system, the organization realizes that the time is now to develop a strategic information technology plan.

Michele Holleran is a partner in York, Pa.-based Holleran Consulting, which offers marketing and strategic planning.

How to get started

Rogers and Peppers suggest a 10-step plan in their sequel, One-to-One Fieldbook (Currency/Doubleday 1999). Herewith is an adapted and shortened plan so it makes sense for long term care:

Step 1: Get senior management buy-in. As mentioned above, this is imperative to the effort. If management has a "build it and they will come" mentality, you as a marketing director will have an uphill battle.

Step 2: Establish a team of customer-focused people to plan and implement the 1-to-1 program.

Step 3: Develop a long-term vision for your organization as it becomes a 1-to-1 enterprise.

Step 4: Outline criteria for MVRs (most valuable residents) and identify who they are within your organization.

Step 5: Evaluate and prioritize a list of 1-to-1 initiatives, such as e-mail programs, customer satisfaction research, and new services based on customer feedback.

Step 6: Implement your initiatives and get feedback from residents about them.

Step 7: Share the learning your team obtains from research and communication with residents. Let other members of management and employees know what customers want from the organization.

Step 8: Analyze the broader system to keep momentum going--figure out what you need to reach your vision (laptops for key employees, paying for resident Internet access, funds for regular socials, a new activities director position, etc.)