The Marketing Minimum Daily Requirement

Read the Full TranscriptStewart Gandolf

Hi, everyone. Stewart Gandolf here with my associate colleague, strategist, Kathy Gaughran.

We’ve worked together for a long time together. Tonight, this is the, if you’re listening to this, you won’t get this, but if you’re watching this, you’ll see this is a limited edition nighttime conversion recording after hours because we’re so busy coming back in the road, teaching in a bunch of conferences.

So, this is the first web that we’re going to cover that is sharing the content of three conferences Kathy and I’ve spoken at, and we’ve been studying about six or seven last couple weeks.

So, this is for, even though some of these may be about addiction, mental health or about senior living, the basic ideas apply to most of the kinds of people who are equipped.

So, the first one we’re going to cover in this episode, we’re talking about presentation I gave in Las Vegas this time.

like, was it Dallas, Atlanta? It Vegas. SMASH and SMASH is a marketing conference for senior living. I was one of the many speakers there and Enjoyed the time that I was there.

My small friends made some new ones and I want to share our topic today So again, this is a real-life presentation Just completed and I will be leading most of this and Kathy on this one will be giving color commentary and let’s just begin So this particular webinar we just created was about really multi location providers So while the examples and the presentation if you’re watching this on the YouTube version See some examples here if you’re listening, you’ll certainly be able to understand this from the podcast side of this We’re seeing the summary so while the talk the concept of the headline was ensure a healthy bottom line with the marketing minimum daily requirement What that really means is how do we mark in a multilocation business?

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That’s what this is really about a multilocation So again, this was for SMASH talking about senior care with these concepts apply

for any multiplication business. So, on this particular session, because this was about me, I did the presentation as a steward of CEO of healthcare success or leading top 100 medical and healthcare marketing agency.

And we work across branding, digital marketing, traditional marketing, experience, professional roles, PR. like I said, Kathy and I have worked together for years.

And we’ve got quite an agenda here. And I’m just going to jump straight into it. So the first thing we talked about in our meeting, is why is marketing important to senior care?

Or really, why is it important to any multi-location business? So, the first of all, one of the things that Kathy and talk about a lot is that most of the time we’re working with investors, like private equity owned businesses, there’s got a lot of time thinking about profitability levers, like revenue cycle management, contracting, acquisition.

cutting cost, and these are all very, very valid. These are all really important things. But they also oftentimes really don’t get marketing the attention that it deserves, because marketing can also be a tremendous profitability driver.

One of the things we talk about a lot is that excellent marketing can actually give you a competitive advantage, and particularly in the world of senior care, it’s a little behind some other specialties and professions that we work with.

So, marketing can give a great advantage, and marketing can reduce your reliance on various referral sources. in senior care, a place from home and caring dot com are really important.

But, for example, let’s say you have many of your referrals are from one health plan or from one large primary care group.

So, again, it’s not we strategies. So, we see that when we’re working with multi-location businesses of any kind, Sometimes have multi-location objectives where we want to grow the value of the business through marketing was a common thing that we see.

Attracting more residents and patients, growing priority service lines, enhancing new and building existing brands is pretty common, creating an appropriate strategy for all your new acquisitions and de novo and including transitions as well.

do we transition? How do we promote specific locations or sometimes specific doctors or services again? And identify the most appropriate platforms and tactics for optimal campaigns scaling.

Kathy, love you to carry this next topic.

Kathy Gaughran

Yes, I love this slide. Thank you. One of the things I wanted to weigh in on is when we work with a multi-location client, one of the factors we really focus on is making sure that you’re getting in front of the searches that are happening already.

You’re blocking and tackling. So, it’s critical that you’re making sure each location can get found for local searches. We look for earned media as well as paid media.

But Stewart and I, as you mentioned, we’ve worked with groups of providers for a couple of decades, and things have changed so significantly.

But more often than not, providers are still involved in the conversations as it relates to marketing. So it’s critical that they feel involved in the process, the executive team, local managers and staff, business development and sales, but really important year providers.

The doctors need to feel like they’ve got their time in the sun, that they’ve got attention that’s equal to all the other locations.

And we have worked in this space and really understand how frustrated the doctors can get. Stewart and I have seen several occasions where one single doctor can try to take down a whole campaign because it didn’t feel that that practice was getting enough attention.

So, it’s just really important that everybody across the board feels your love, feels attention and that they’re part of the campaign.

Share regular KPI reports, tracking analytics data, feedback on how their team is doing on inbound phone calls. Be sure to include marketing efforts that are going to be visible to them.

You don’t want people calling and responding to campaigns. your stuff isn’t prepared to handle that particular call. And continually market to your internal audiences so that they don’t feel neglected.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, so another topic we want to talk about a lot, or we do talk about a lot rather is that people are making their own decisions today.

Thank you very much. So, health care consumers review multiple options. In the senior market, there’s family involved oftentimes, but whether it’s the patient or the resident or the consumer, they’re taking their own decisions.

And people have higher expectations, retail, the retail-ization of health care, meaning that health care is far more mistakes are higher, just because

Healthcare no longer gives you a pass. People expect things to be nice, clean, good service, be treated well, not to be feeling like they’re upon in somebody else’s game.

People that are digitally enabled are looking for convenience, cleanliness, safety, compassion. And another thing we talk about a lot is things need to be customized by market, by competition, service line.

All these journey.

Kathy Gaughran

Yeah, we talk a lot, Stewart and I, when we’re teaching about pushing poll marketing. And when you look at the front end of the consumer journey, a lot of that is really around push.

Push marketing is pushing your information at people who are likely candidates, but not yet actively engaged in search. Poll marketing is being king of the hill when they are, so that you’re the first opportunity for a solution that they come across.

So it’s critical to recognize all of the messages that they’ll be exposed to throughout this consumer journey and knowing your competition, understanding what their unique value proposition is, what their key strategies are, what you do that’s different or better.

your staff, you and your staff can address questions and address the specific issues that that caller might have when they’re reaching out.

Stewart Gandolf

Very good. Another thing that we see a lot of this isn’t surprising with all this new consolidation in the marketplace and certainly whether we’re working in addiction or with practices, multiplication practices or senior care, private equity and venture capital are there.

These partners demand, they have deeper pockets, they have more business savvy, they’re thinking about scaling, they’re willing to invest in leadership and marketing.

They have much more focus on results, analytics, ROI. And we find that the stronger businesses tend to win, both in marketing and just sort of the long game.

So, the minimum daily requirement is a concept we came up with pretty recently, we’ve been doing this before, we just found this was a nice moniker.

basically, the concept is this, that every location, no matter how busy it is, deserves some love on an ongoing basis.

this is tricky because a lot of times in addiction or a lot of times in senior care, if somebody is, you know, they say, well, I’ve got three locations or eat patients, but everybody else is at full census, we shouldn’t do any marketing.

I would argue that when somebody goes searching for care, even if you’re full, they’re low to find your competitors or you, which would you prefer they call, right?

You want to be there or not. So, I’m not saying you spend the same amount of money on marketing for every location, but each location deserves a little love, right?

it needs a lot of deserves love ongoing. And then that gives you the opportunity to double down in those locations that need more.

And so some of things we’re going to talk about today include like about the website pages, local search, page search.

I’m not going to cover everything today that we know in this very short talk. We are going to talk about some of the critical success factors.

So when we think about how much should we invest per location, the point I made in this particular meeting because it was about senior care was, well, what if I’m spending $50 per location for a large change?

So, it’s $1,500 per month per location. So, if you have 100 locations it’ll be $150,000. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Well, I don’t is it a lot? Well, let’s say the average locations, in this case I was talking about assisted living, I checked out the national status, the average location is bringing in $3 million a year.

That’s 0.6% of sales, right? That’s not a huge number. So it’s like, obviously, when you have more locations, the budget is going to have to reflect like that.

Looking at this another way, what is your return on Like what’s your ROI? So at the average new patient or new resident is worth, let’s say, $10,000, you’re spending, you know, $3,000 a month, or no, I’m sorry, in this case, $1,500 a month, so what, six, seven, eight to one ROI, is that a good deal?

I’d say so, right? we bring you one patient a month, what if we bring in two? just double that.

getting away from just the gross number and thinking about, you know, what does it take to be competitive? What is our return on that?

And what is that on a percentage of sales basis? And just remember that minimum are exactly at just minimums, right?

So, the next slide here, I’d like to talk to Kathy, or like Kathy Kerry goes about the swap budget.

Like what does that mean?

Kathy Gaughran

Well, what budget?

Stewart Gandolf

I think we’ve called swag, didn’t we? Those guys were talking about like being a SWAT team.

Kathy Gaughran

other words, we’re joking here.

Stewart Gandolf

Like maybe look at the notebook as the emergency response plan.