10 Easy Local Marketing Ideas for Your Home Care Business
A list of easy steps you can take to get the word out about your home care agency.
If you’re new to marketing your home care agency, promoting your business can feel like a mountain you have to climb with no equipment and no direction.
There are lots of ways you can promote your home care agency to your local community, and the most important one takes only ten minutes (we’ll get to that below). In this article, we’ll look at ten easy but very powerful ways you can start marketing your business now.
What is local marketing?
Local marketing is the practice of promoting your business to your immediate physical community. It’s a part of your overall marketing strategy. Not all kinds of businesses have a need for local marketing strategies, but home care agencies rely on their local market. For some agencies, local marketing will cover a region, for others, it might cover just a single town.
It’s likely you’re already marketing your agency to your community—but you may be missing some of the low-hanging fruit of great local marketing tools.
10 ideas to boost your home care agency's local marketing strategy
1. Complete your Google Business Profile
This is a marketing task that takes about ten minutes, and it’s the most important part of your local search engine optimization, or SEO, marketing strategy. Your Google Business Profile is the information that shows up in the right-hand side of a search engine results page (SERP) and is usually the first impression of your home care agency that a potential client, or a potential caregiver, will get.
2. Focus on your local SEO strategy
There is general SEO, and then there is local SEO. Both are necessary parts of your marketing plan, but your current strategy may focus more on general search engine users than on local users, when the inverse should be true. General SEO will aim to rank for keywords like how to pick a home care agency, and local SEO will aim to rank for keywords like home care agency near me or home health care phoenix.
Good local SEO goes beyond just keywords on your home page. It also involves getting client reviews on sites like Google and Care.com and creating content that prospective clients near you are looking for.
3. Launch a local search ad campaign
The beauty of really good SEO is that it costs only your time, and the effects are long-lasting, but we’re also big fans of paid search campaigns. Paid search ads, which you might hear referred to as Google ads, are the links that show up at the top of a SERP. With paid search, you’re in control over what shows up when, and where, and search ads are a great way to convert new clients and attract qualified caregivers looking for jobs.
4. Launch a local social media ad campaign
Local social media ads are another way to cast a net in your local community to find people looking for home care services and caregivers looking for home care jobs. Social campaigns let you target users based on the social media platforms they use, the area where they live, the content they consume, and the interests they’ve expressed.
5. Keep your social media accounts active
Your social media feeds might include health tips, research in the field, and the latest health findings. Don’t forget to show followers who’s behind the company too. This means showing your home caregivers, your leadership, and the ways they give back to the community.
Not only is this great employer branding, it also gives you the opportunity to tag posts with locations in your vicinity, making it easier for people to discover your home care agency.
6. Ask clients for reviews
Ninety-eight percent of consumers check reviews before buying, so you need your happy clients to give you a good review to boost your care marketing strategies. It’s often as easy as simply asking them to do so.
Ask clients to review your home care services on sites like Google, Caring.com, and Better Business Bureau, and have your employees rate and review you on sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and Comparably so you can interest job-seeking home caregivers.
7. Sponsor local events
Is there a community health program going on nearby? Health education seminars? Sponsor one (or a few!). You’ll benefit from the brand recognition your agency will get from community events, and you’ll align your home care agency with good causes.
8. Repurpose all the content you have
Let’s say you sponsored one of those local health education seminars. Have someone snap a few high-quality photos then write up a blog post of key takeaways from the event. Share it on your site and on your social media channels and ask your partners from the seminar to do the same. Repurposing your marketing materials will save you time and marketing budget.
9. Email marketing
Email marketing is its own discipline within the marketing field, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get started small. Use your email list to promote new services, ask clients for reviews, request feedback, and generally keep your clients up-to-date with the world of home health care and how they can keep their loved ones healthy and happy.
10. Invest in marketing automation
Automate as much of your local marketing efforts as you can, and you’ll have time for more advanced marketing strategies.
Need help with your home care agency's local marketing strategy?
The professionals at Home Care Marketing Pros can help take your marketing efforts to the next level. Contact us today to get started!
Stay tuned for part 2 of this 2-part Local Marketing Ideas series!
