April 17, 2024 • 19 mins
On Episode 7, we are joined by Sarah Eggers, Senior Living SEO Specialist. Listen to learn more about her top senior living SEO strategies for you to take charge of your organic rankings to increase your overall website conversions.
This is the Drake Insights Podcast, your weekly dose of cutting-edge senior living marketing insights. Your host, Natasha Drake from Drake Strategic, will bring you bold ideas, proven strategies, and inspiring stories – straight from the experts.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the Drake insights podcast,your weekly dose of cutting edge
senior living marketing insights.
Join me, your host, Natasha Drake for boldideas, proven strategies and inspiring
stories straight from the experts.
Tune in and let's conquer the seniorliving marketing landscape together.
Natasha (00:17):
Hey guys, welcome back to the Drake Insights Podcast.
I am your host, NatashaDrake from Drake Strategic.
So let's get started.
So on today's episode, if youwatched my episode last week where
I gave my top three marketing tips,I mentioned investing your time and
money in your SEO and your organicrankings being one of my top tips.
(00:38):
And so I thought today on the podcast,it would be great to bring on one
of my SEO specialists to give you alittle more insight into what I was
talking about in last week's episode.
So on today's episode, we have SarahEggers, our senior living SEO specialist.
So Sarah, would you liketo introduce yourself?
Sarah (00:58):
Hi, everyone.
It's great to be here.
Obviously, I'm very excited talkingabout SEO, organic search, content,
and even UX writing and content.
I've been working in senior livingfor a long time now, and I'm an
expert in search engine optimization,content related to that, and
also user experience on websites.
(01:20):
So I'm so glad to be here.
Natasha (01:22):
Thank you.
So last week on my episode, I talked abouthow today is more important than ever
to really invest time and money in SEO.
And if you can explain a little more,dig a little deeper into that, why not
just throwing money at paid dollars onGoogle, but really investing the time
and money into SEO and organic rankings.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Sarah (01:43):
Absolutely.
So it's often very easy for peopleto invest in paid because they
literally say, I have a budget.
looking to target these people, and theycan literally see this much money equates
to this many clicks, and eventuallydown the road, this many move ins,
this is how much it's going to cost.
(02:04):
On the organic side, there isn'ta smooth formula like that.
We're not paying to show up.
We're creating quality content thatGoogle is ranking against other
people to say, Hey, I think thisis something useful for somebody.
However, I like to remind peoplewhen you go, especially to Google in
(02:25):
your search engine, only one thirdof that page is paid right now.
You're going to see them all assponsored up at the top for links, but
you have your Google business profile.
That's going to be a key part over hereor in a series of listings if people are
looking at a specific physical location,which people are when they're looking for
(02:47):
senior living, and also all of your links.
So please don't ignore two thirdsof a search results page, right?
Invest in your organic search as well.
Natasha (02:59):
Yeah, it's really important.
I think we think today, if Ijust spend money on paid, how
many leads am I going to get?
And that's all the leadsyou're going to get.
And like you're saying, you're missingout on like two thirds of those of the
lead potential by not investing in SEO.
So can you talk a little more about anowner, a community, an agency doesn't
have enough money to do everything.
What is the most important thing right nowthat they should be doing that they should
(03:22):
be investing their time and money in?
Sarah (03:24):
For the smallest dollar amount that you could do.
honestly invest in yourGoogle business profile.
In the senior living industry, 94 percentof the traffic, organic traffic, coming
to your site is coming from Google.
30 to 50 percent of that, dependingon how well you've optimized your
(03:44):
listing, is coming from your listing.
It does not take too much time andeffort to make sure you have gorgeous
photos, do you have floor plans, thatyou have high reviews, that you have
posts up linking to blog posts you justput up or events that you're doing.
There's actually lots of traffic that willcome from your Google business profile.
(04:09):
And I've even seen for communities,people get event registrations
from someone clicking on somethingfrom their Google business profile.
So please don't ignore it.
That is the simplest thing thatis the simplest one third of your
search results page that you couldbe investing in right now before
you tackle the whole website, right?
(04:29):
For organic search.
Natasha (04:30):
Right.
And, and can you explain a little more?
So I know I asked you this a coupleof weeks ago, a little more to
explain about SGE and what thatmeans and why your ratings on your
profile is so important today.
Sarah (04:41):
Yeah.
So last spring, Google announcedthe Search Generative Experience.
Now, most people remember November of2022, Chat GPT, everything Chat GPT.
Well, Google and everybodyelse like Bing has one too.
Google has a chat experience calledSearch Generative Experience.
(05:05):
Right now, it's in beta, and it'sbeing tested, and in a few places live,
eventually it'll roll out everywhere.
Now, what's interesting is, when peopledo qualitative searches, right, like,
best retirement community in, andthen a city name, it is not looking
at how your website is ranking, itis looking at how your listing ranks.
(05:27):
Some of you might be surprised, butit actually makes a lot of sense.
Google is using its own product,to decide how to rank something.
So after a lot of testing, I foundout communities that ranked number
one in the links for best retirementcommunity or best senior living in
this place, not necessarily showed upin that AI chat response list, right?
(05:50):
Because it was going off of their Googlebusiness profile, which maybe didn't
have frequent reviews, or it didn'tpass the threshold of about 4.1 star
rating, which is what we did a lot ofsearching across over 100 communities.
And we saw that that was about the cutoff.
But as long as you had a 4.1 or greater,you're going to show up in their list
(06:13):
of about five communities in the areain that city, someone searching for.
And if you're below that, no matterhow many local awards you've won, no
matter your CMS rating at your lifeplan community, or how well your website
ranks in the links area of SEO, it willnot suggest you as a great place for
(06:33):
someone to choose for retirement living.
So you have to make sure that everythingis in order with your listing, especially
as that will be rolling out later.
In 2024, and like I said, 94 percentof all senior living traffic, that's
organic search, comes from Google.
So really consider aboutwhere you're investing.
Natasha (06:57):
And I think, you know, we know that everyone always looked at stars.
Of course we do it foreverything we search, right?
We look at those stars.
But now, even more important than ever,is it's actually going to adjust your
ranking and it's actually going to be whatdecides whether you rank higher or not.
So rather than just, okay, oh, thelow stars isn't looking very good.
No, it's actually going to affectyour organic ranking as well.
(07:17):
So thanks for bringing that up.
That's great.
It's really importantfor people to focus on.
Another thing I want to ask is in termsof ranking specifically, so outside of
specifically the local listings, what'smost important for listeners to do
to help improve their rankings today?
Sarah (07:31):
Outside of your local listings, it all is on your content.
If you yourself can write a blog post,or you have somebody else who's writing
it, like an agency, writing answersto people's questions is the biggest
thing that we need to do for SEO.
So the old school way when peoplewere searching were keywords, right?
(07:53):
Keywords, we would say this, this,and this, and we might even put a
minus saying don't show anythingrelated to this, because that's how
we used to talk to search engines.
But even over a decade ago, assoon as we moved to voice search
and natural processing language.
The whole point of search engines is tounderstand how human beings ask questions
(08:15):
and learn how to give responses that soundlike something a human being would say.
So, gone are the days,really, of keywords.
And in is the way of knowing whatquestions people are asking, and
directly answering them in your content.
So definitely make sure thatwhatever questions people
(08:37):
have whether it's about cost?
How do I know like if I candownsize into a one bedroom or not?
What should I do when I move?
How do I get my pets ready?
A lot of those things, you can also findout if you talk to people who are directly
talking to prospective residents, whetherit's the people at events or people
picking up the phone, the questions youask there, people are going to be asking
(08:59):
related questions in search engines.
And if you're answering those, you're astep ahead of everyone else who's still
trying to put four or five keywordsinto a blog post and hoping that
someone magically is still using searchengines like we did 10, 15 years ago.
Natasha (09:17):
Right.
Can you talk a little bit too, Iknow we talked briefly about AI and
I know a lot of people are using thatspecifically for building content and
whether that is a good or bad idea.
What your thoughts are on that?
Sarah (09:30):
I think, it is okay to use as part of efficiency but it
should never be a total product.
So something I always tell people is,AI for inspiration, not for product.
So one of the ways I would say that is,let's say you want to have a blog post.
(09:52):
What AI can create is whateveryone else has created.
So a common blog post in the seniorliving industry is, how do I talk
to my parents about assisted living?
And let me tell you, actually,the number one searched question
is, how do I convince my parentsto talk about assisted living?
But we would never quiteput it in those terms.
Natasha (10:14):
Right.
Sarah (10:14):
That's everywhere.
And actually, ChatGPT, Jasper,Gemini, which used to be Google's
Bard, all of those things canactually put out a satisfactory
600, 700 word blog post about that.
Why is that?
Because there's literallyhundreds of thousands of other
people have written about it.
Now, you come to AI, AI can never tiein a call to action to your community.
(10:41):
AI will never double checkif there's a misconception.
One of the problems with AI is ifpeople at large believe something
about senior living, even thoughit's incorrect, It will write about
that myth or misconception, right?
What you're basically doing is,imagine there's a hundred people in a
room with you, and you ask a hundredpeople to come together and write a
(11:04):
blog post about a very specific topic.
You're not necessarily goingto get all the experts.
No one's going to be proofreading it.
That's basically what you get from AI.
You're getting what everyone else on theinternet has written about and whatever
misconceptions might be out there.
So you have to be very careful, especiallyif you are not just rental and independent
(11:24):
living or residences, especiallywhen it comes into healthcare topics.
You have to be very careful aboutwhat you allow AI to do for you.
A way AI can do inspiration, whichI would give, B plus, A minus on is
helping you think of a wittier title.
Helping you think outside of the box.
(11:45):
It can't be too much outside thebox, because remember, it can only
think of something that somebodyelse has already thought of.
But if you're trying to finagle, let'ssay, some cute dog puns of like, why your
pet would like living in a community,you know, it might help you create a cute
tail wagging title for your blog post.
That's great!
Let's do that.
(12:05):
But it's not going to helpyou create unique content.
For example, like, if you have acommunity in a city, let's say Houston,
the local museums have special times andexhibits for people who have dementia.
And there's also special quiet hoursand low visit hours for a bunch
of other places around Houston.
(12:26):
You could write a whole blog postabout all the great dementia friendly
things you can do in the city, butno one else has written that yet.
AI wouldn't be able toprovide that for you.
In fact, it would actuallyrefer you to a bunch of memory
care communities as activities.
So whenever you want somethingunique, that's where you
have a human being, right?
(12:47):
Whenever you want something that'sstandard information, AI is going to be
really great at giving you core of it.
Natasha (12:54):
Right.
And, you know, I think also I mentionedone of my last podcasts , was your
strengths and differentiators.
Like you're saying, it's not goingto be custom to you specifically.
So it's not going to pull those thingsout either that a person can do for you.
Can you talk for a second, a little bitabout this is sort of a hot topic and
whether you do this or not, but listingyour pricing on your website and in terms
of content and what people are searchingfor and whether that's a good idea also.
Sarah (13:18):
Absolutely.
So I have always been a hugeproponent of at least having
starting at pricing on your website.
There's been pushback by some peoplesaying if I have someone see the price
first, then I scare away potential leads.
a lot of other people would say, ifyou can't opt out, if you know that's
not in your price range, you'regoing to keep getting a bunch of
(13:39):
financially unqualified leads, right?
So there's that issue of save yoursalespeople time by at least putting
starting at, that might be yourstudio apartment, but that's okay.
Because if someone's visiting yourwebsite And they can't afford the
buy in and or monthly fees fora studio apartment, they're not
the lead that you're looking for.
Right?
So.
(14:00):
Let's do starting at price.
The second thing, I have seenthis across many communities.
I can go as an SEO person.
I can go into Google search consoleand I can see the type of searches
that lead to people clicking ona link to come to the website.
And with that, I can see howmany people clicked on it
(14:20):
and then how many timesit showed up in searches.
And I have seen people put a communityname plus the word cost or price with it.
And in one case, I saw one community,less than 10 percent of those
searches wound up on their website.
I put that search in because I wantedto know where those people were going.
(14:42):
And sure enough, right after theircommunity, which did not list
pricing on their website, were tonsof directories that listed prices.
And some of them were even right therein the link saying what the price is.
And I can also check through toolsto see how people rank for things.
I could see that directories were rankingvery well for that community plus cost.
(15:08):
And that means somebody alreadyhas a relationship with you.
They don't search your name.
Unless they already are interestedin moving into your community.
They can't find the price, so they goback to a search engine, put cost or price
with your community name, and guess what?
A directory has it.
(15:29):
And guess what?
They can get more informationfrom that referral site.
And so now you already created a greatrelationship with somebody, but at the
last minute, right, when they wouldconvert and become a potential lead for
you, they went to a referral directory,and now you're paying a huge fee for them
to say yes, that is a very large wasteof time and your money by doing that.
Natasha (15:54):
Yeah, and I also agree.
You know, I know it's difficultwith certain rentals in
certain life plan communities.
They, you know, you want toexplain the price and explain
why there's a large up front fee.
You know, But to Sarah's point, ifyou're not at least putting starting
somewhere, you're either going to begetting unqualified leads, like you
said, or you're going to be gettingthe wrong people coming to your site
(16:17):
that aren't ever going to convertbecause they don't know, right.
Or they're going to go toother directory listings.
So that is really important, tomake sure you have your pricing.
And if you are concerned about thatoutside of giving more detail there,
have some kind of pricing comparativeguide or something that explains
the pricing that they can download.
That's going to help them as well.
So thank you for that tip.
And I'm going to end today with,is there anything you want to let
(16:40):
our listeners know, top tips or keytakeaways to remember from this episode?
Sarah (16:46):
Yeah, I would like you to remember, please focus on
your local listings in 2024.
And if you don't know what that is,or you don't have an agency that's
providing that right now, ask for it.
It's going to be very important.
It already is important, right?
It could be half of your Googletraffic, and it's going to become
(17:07):
more once the Search GenerativeExperience rolls out to everybody.
Please put pricing on your site.
If you're scared about that, Ipromise you it's going to be okay.
Communities I've been able to convinceto put pricing up actually saw an
increase in leads on their website andthey had beautiful pricing pages that
explained all the finances and thesewere very hefty entrance fee life plan
(17:32):
communities that you would think, oh,I put this all up, I scared people
away, but they actually increasedtheir website leads because of it.
So please don't be scared toput starting at pricing and also
Explain why, especially if you'rea type A, why an entrance fee?
is the best investment.
Explain that story.
If you don't have a large fee, butmaybe you're a type C, and it's still
(17:57):
expensive, it's hard for people torealize it's not just a home, it's
their gym membership, it's going out todinner with friends, it's activities.
help lay that out so they can reallyrealize it's actually a great deal
to move into a retirement community.
Lastly, I have two phrases that I alwayswant people to keep in mind with AI.
(18:18):
One of them I said earlier, AI is forinspiration, not for a total product.
And secondly, AI is for processefficiency, not for people replacement.
So those are the things I'dlove for you guys to remember.
Put up your pricing, invest inyour listings, and use AI wisely.
It is not a total product, it isinspiration or process efficiency.
Natasha (18:46):
Great.
Thank you so much, Sarah.
This was really helpful.
Like I mentioned earlier, Wereally need to be showing and
showcasing our organic content.
We really need to be ranking higherand focus on those ratings, please.
So we make sure we're not justspending paid dollars, but that
we are spending time and money onour SEO and our organic rankings.
Thank you again, SarahEggers for joining us.
If anyone wants to reach out to herfor more specific tips, please do so.
(19:09):
Thank you for joining the DrakeInsights Podcast, and I look
forward to seeing you next time.
Bye.
If you enjoyed watching the podcasttoday, please follow me and subscribe
so you're notified for the next podcast.
And if you have any questions or wantto talk after about anything that Drake
Strategic can provide for you, pleasereach out to me, call me, email me, or
visit our website at drakestrategic.
(19:30):
com.
This is the Drake insights podcast,your weekly dose of cutting edge
senior living marketing insights.
Join me, your host, Natasha Drake for boldideas, proven strategies and inspiring
stories straight from the experts.
Tune in and let's conquer the seniorliving marketing landscape together.
Natasha (00:17):
Hey guys, welcome back to the Drake Insights Podcast.
I am your host, NatashaDrake from Drake Strategic.
So let's get started.
So on today's episode, if youwatched my episode last week where
I gave my top three marketing tips,I mentioned investing your time and
money in your SEO and your organicrankings being one of my top tips.
(00:38):
And so I thought today on the podcast,it would be great to bring on one
of my SEO specialists to give you alittle more insight into what I was
talking about in last week's episode.
So on today's episode, we have SarahEggers, our senior living SEO specialist.
So Sarah, would you liketo introduce yourself?
Sarah (00:58):
Hi, everyone.
It's great to be here.
Obviously, I'm very excited talkingabout SEO, organic search, content,
and even UX writing and content.
I've been working in senior livingfor a long time now, and I'm an
expert in search engine optimization,content related to that, and
also user experience on websites.
(01:20):
So I'm so glad to be here.
Natasha (01:22):
Thank you.
So last week on my episode, I talked abouthow today is more important than ever
to really invest time and money in SEO.
And if you can explain a little more,dig a little deeper into that, why not
just throwing money at paid dollars onGoogle, but really investing the time
and money into SEO and organic rankings.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Sarah (01:43):
Absolutely.
So it's often very easy for peopleto invest in paid because they
literally say, I have a budget.
looking to target these people, and theycan literally see this much money equates
to this many clicks, and eventuallydown the road, this many move ins,
this is how much it's going to cost.
(02:04):
On the organic side, there isn'ta smooth formula like that.
We're not paying to show up.
We're creating quality content thatGoogle is ranking against other
people to say, Hey, I think thisis something useful for somebody.
However, I like to remind peoplewhen you go, especially to Google in
(02:25):
your search engine, only one thirdof that page is paid right now.
You're going to see them all assponsored up at the top for links, but
you have your Google business profile.
That's going to be a key part over hereor in a series of listings if people are
looking at a specific physical location,which people are when they're looking for
(02:47):
senior living, and also all of your links.
So please don't ignore two thirdsof a search results page, right?
Invest in your organic search as well.
Natasha (02:59):
Yeah, it's really important.
I think we think today, if Ijust spend money on paid, how
many leads am I going to get?
And that's all the leadsyou're going to get.
And like you're saying, you're missingout on like two thirds of those of the
lead potential by not investing in SEO.
So can you talk a little more about anowner, a community, an agency doesn't
have enough money to do everything.
What is the most important thing right nowthat they should be doing that they should
(03:22):
be investing their time and money in?
Sarah (03:24):
For the smallest dollar amount that you could do.
honestly invest in yourGoogle business profile.
In the senior living industry, 94 percentof the traffic, organic traffic, coming
to your site is coming from Google.
30 to 50 percent of that, dependingon how well you've optimized your
(03:44):
listing, is coming from your listing.
It does not take too much time andeffort to make sure you have gorgeous
photos, do you have floor plans, thatyou have high reviews, that you have
posts up linking to blog posts you justput up or events that you're doing.
There's actually lots of traffic that willcome from your Google business profile.
(04:09):
And I've even seen for communities,people get event registrations
from someone clicking on somethingfrom their Google business profile.
So please don't ignore it.
That is the simplest thing thatis the simplest one third of your
search results page that you couldbe investing in right now before
you tackle the whole website, right?
(04:29):
For organic search.
Natasha (04:30):
Right.
And, and can you explain a little more?
So I know I asked you this a coupleof weeks ago, a little more to
explain about SGE and what thatmeans and why your ratings on your
profile is so important today.
Sarah (04:41):
Yeah.
So last spring, Google announcedthe Search Generative Experience.
Now, most people remember November of2022, Chat GPT, everything Chat GPT.
Well, Google and everybodyelse like Bing has one too.
Google has a chat experience calledSearch Generative Experience.
(05:05):
Right now, it's in beta, and it'sbeing tested, and in a few places live,
eventually it'll roll out everywhere.
Now, what's interesting is, when peopledo qualitative searches, right, like,
best retirement community in, andthen a city name, it is not looking
at how your website is ranking, itis looking at how your listing ranks.
(05:27):
Some of you might be surprised, butit actually makes a lot of sense.
Google is using its own product,to decide how to rank something.
So after a lot of testing, I foundout communities that ranked number
one in the links for best retirementcommunity or best senior living in
this place, not necessarily showed upin that AI chat response list, right?
(05:50):
Because it was going off of their Googlebusiness profile, which maybe didn't
have frequent reviews, or it didn'tpass the threshold of about 4.1 star
rating, which is what we did a lot ofsearching across over 100 communities.
And we saw that that was about the cutoff.
But as long as you had a 4.1 or greater,you're going to show up in their list
(06:13):
of about five communities in the areain that city, someone searching for.
And if you're below that, no matterhow many local awards you've won, no
matter your CMS rating at your lifeplan community, or how well your website
ranks in the links area of SEO, it willnot suggest you as a great place for
(06:33):
someone to choose for retirement living.
So you have to make sure that everythingis in order with your listing, especially
as that will be rolling out later.
In 2024, and like I said, 94 percentof all senior living traffic, that's
organic search, comes from Google.
So really consider aboutwhere you're investing.
Natasha (06:57):
And I think, you know, we know that everyone always looked at stars.
Of course we do it foreverything we search, right?
We look at those stars.
But now, even more important than ever,is it's actually going to adjust your
ranking and it's actually going to be whatdecides whether you rank higher or not.
So rather than just, okay, oh, thelow stars isn't looking very good.
No, it's actually going to affectyour organic ranking as well.
(07:17):
So thanks for bringing that up.
That's great.
It's really importantfor people to focus on.
Another thing I want to ask is in termsof ranking specifically, so outside of
specifically the local listings, what'smost important for listeners to do
to help improve their rankings today?
Sarah (07:31):
Outside of your local listings, it all is on your content.
If you yourself can write a blog post,or you have somebody else who's writing
it, like an agency, writing answersto people's questions is the biggest
thing that we need to do for SEO.
So the old school way when peoplewere searching were keywords, right?
(07:53):
Keywords, we would say this, this,and this, and we might even put a
minus saying don't show anythingrelated to this, because that's how
we used to talk to search engines.
But even over a decade ago, assoon as we moved to voice search
and natural processing language.
The whole point of search engines is tounderstand how human beings ask questions
(08:15):
and learn how to give responses that soundlike something a human being would say.
So, gone are the days,really, of keywords.
And in is the way of knowing whatquestions people are asking, and
directly answering them in your content.
So definitely make sure thatwhatever questions people
(08:37):
have whether it's about cost?
How do I know like if I candownsize into a one bedroom or not?
What should I do when I move?
How do I get my pets ready?
A lot of those things, you can also findout if you talk to people who are directly
talking to prospective residents, whetherit's the people at events or people
picking up the phone, the questions youask there, people are going to be asking
(08:59):
related questions in search engines.
And if you're answering those, you're astep ahead of everyone else who's still
trying to put four or five keywordsinto a blog post and hoping that
someone magically is still using searchengines like we did 10, 15 years ago.
Natasha (09:17):
Right.
Can you talk a little bit too, Iknow we talked briefly about AI and
I know a lot of people are using thatspecifically for building content and
whether that is a good or bad idea.
What your thoughts are on that?
Sarah (09:30):
I think, it is okay to use as part of efficiency but it
should never be a total product.
So something I always tell people is,AI for inspiration, not for product.
So one of the ways I would say that is,let's say you want to have a blog post.
(09:52):
What AI can create is whateveryone else has created.
So a common blog post in the seniorliving industry is, how do I talk
to my parents about assisted living?
And let me tell you, actually,the number one searched question
is, how do I convince my parentsto talk about assisted living?
But we would never quiteput it in those terms.
Natasha (10:14):
Right.
Sarah (10:14):
That's everywhere.
And actually, ChatGPT, Jasper,Gemini, which used to be Google's
Bard, all of those things canactually put out a satisfactory
600, 700 word blog post about that.
Why is that?
Because there's literallyhundreds of thousands of other
people have written about it.
Now, you come to AI, AI can never tiein a call to action to your community.
(10:41):
AI will never double checkif there's a misconception.
One of the problems with AI is ifpeople at large believe something
about senior living, even thoughit's incorrect, It will write about
that myth or misconception, right?
What you're basically doing is,imagine there's a hundred people in a
room with you, and you ask a hundredpeople to come together and write a
(11:04):
blog post about a very specific topic.
You're not necessarily goingto get all the experts.
No one's going to be proofreading it.
That's basically what you get from AI.
You're getting what everyone else on theinternet has written about and whatever
misconceptions might be out there.
So you have to be very careful, especiallyif you are not just rental and independent
(11:24):
living or residences, especiallywhen it comes into healthcare topics.
You have to be very careful aboutwhat you allow AI to do for you.
A way AI can do inspiration, whichI would give, B plus, A minus on is
helping you think of a wittier title.
Helping you think outside of the box.
(11:45):
It can't be too much outside thebox, because remember, it can only
think of something that somebodyelse has already thought of.
But if you're trying to finagle, let'ssay, some cute dog puns of like, why your
pet would like living in a community,you know, it might help you create a cute
tail wagging title for your blog post.
That's great!
Let's do that.
(12:05):
But it's not going to helpyou create unique content.
For example, like, if you have acommunity in a city, let's say Houston,
the local museums have special times andexhibits for people who have dementia.
And there's also special quiet hoursand low visit hours for a bunch
of other places around Houston.
(12:26):
You could write a whole blog postabout all the great dementia friendly
things you can do in the city, butno one else has written that yet.
AI wouldn't be able toprovide that for you.
In fact, it would actuallyrefer you to a bunch of memory
care communities as activities.
So whenever you want somethingunique, that's where you
have a human being, right?
(12:47):
Whenever you want something that'sstandard information, AI is going to be
really great at giving you core of it.
Natasha (12:54):
Right.
And, you know, I think also I mentionedone of my last podcasts , was your
strengths and differentiators.
Like you're saying, it's not goingto be custom to you specifically.
So it's not going to pull those thingsout either that a person can do for you.
Can you talk for a second, a little bitabout this is sort of a hot topic and
whether you do this or not, but listingyour pricing on your website and in terms
of content and what people are searchingfor and whether that's a good idea also.
Sarah (13:18):
Absolutely.
So I have always been a hugeproponent of at least having
starting at pricing on your website.
There's been pushback by some peoplesaying if I have someone see the price
first, then I scare away potential leads.
a lot of other people would say, ifyou can't opt out, if you know that's
not in your price range, you'regoing to keep getting a bunch of
(13:39):
financially unqualified leads, right?
So there's that issue of save yoursalespeople time by at least putting
starting at, that might be yourstudio apartment, but that's okay.
Because if someone's visiting yourwebsite And they can't afford the
buy in and or monthly fees fora studio apartment, they're not
the lead that you're looking for.
Right?
So.
(14:00):
Let's do starting at price.
The second thing, I have seenthis across many communities.
I can go as an SEO person.
I can go into Google search consoleand I can see the type of searches
that lead to people clicking ona link to come to the website.
And with that, I can see howmany people clicked on it
(14:20):
and then how many timesit showed up in searches.
And I have seen people put a communityname plus the word cost or price with it.
And in one case, I saw one community,less than 10 percent of those
searches wound up on their website.
I put that search in because I wantedto know where those people were going.
(14:42):
And sure enough, right after theircommunity, which did not list
pricing on their website, were tonsof directories that listed prices.
And some of them were even right therein the link saying what the price is.
And I can also check through toolsto see how people rank for things.
I could see that directories were rankingvery well for that community plus cost.
(15:08):
And that means somebody alreadyhas a relationship with you.
They don't search your name.
Unless they already are interestedin moving into your community.
They can't find the price, so they goback to a search engine, put cost or price
with your community name, and guess what?
A directory has it.
(15:29):
And guess what?
They can get more informationfrom that referral site.
And so now you already created a greatrelationship with somebody, but at the
last minute, right, when they wouldconvert and become a potential lead for
you, they went to a referral directory,and now you're paying a huge fee for them
to say yes, that is a very large wasteof time and your money by doing that.
Natasha (15:54):
Yeah, and I also agree.
You know, I know it's difficultwith certain rentals in
certain life plan communities.
They, you know, you want toexplain the price and explain
why there's a large up front fee.
You know, But to Sarah's point, ifyou're not at least putting starting
somewhere, you're either going to begetting unqualified leads, like you
said, or you're going to be gettingthe wrong people coming to your site
(16:17):
that aren't ever going to convertbecause they don't know, right.
Or they're going to go toother directory listings.
So that is really important, tomake sure you have your pricing.
And if you are concerned about thatoutside of giving more detail there,
have some kind of pricing comparativeguide or something that explains
the pricing that they can download.
That's going to help them as well.
So thank you for that tip.
And I'm going to end today with,is there anything you want to let
(16:40):
our listeners know, top tips or keytakeaways to remember from this episode?
Sarah (16:46):
Yeah, I would like you to remember, please focus on
your local listings in 2024.
And if you don't know what that is,or you don't have an agency that's
providing that right now, ask for it.
It's going to be very important.
It already is important, right?
It could be half of your Googletraffic, and it's going to become
(17:07):
more once the Search GenerativeExperience rolls out to everybody.
Please put pricing on your site.
If you're scared about that, Ipromise you it's going to be okay.
Communities I've been able to convinceto put pricing up actually saw an
increase in leads on their website andthey had beautiful pricing pages that
explained all the finances and thesewere very hefty entrance fee life plan
(17:32):
communities that you would think, oh,I put this all up, I scared people
away, but they actually increasedtheir website leads because of it.
So please don't be scared toput starting at pricing and also
Explain why, especially if you'rea type A, why an entrance fee?
is the best investment.
Explain that story.
If you don't have a large fee, butmaybe you're a type C, and it's still
(17:57):
expensive, it's hard for people torealize it's not just a home, it's
their gym membership, it's going out todinner with friends, it's activities.
help lay that out so they can reallyrealize it's actually a great deal
to move into a retirement community.
Lastly, I have two phrases that I alwayswant people to keep in mind with AI.
(18:18):
One of them I said earlier, AI is forinspiration, not for a total product.
And secondly, AI is for processefficiency, not for people replacement.
So those are the things I'dlove for you guys to remember.
Put up your pricing, invest inyour listings, and use AI wisely.
It is not a total product, it isinspiration or process efficiency.
Natasha (18:46):
Great.
Thank you so much, Sarah.
This was really helpful.
Like I mentioned earlier, Wereally need to be showing and
showcasing our organic content.
We really need to be ranking higherand focus on those ratings, please.
So we make sure we're not justspending paid dollars, but that
we are spending time and money onour SEO and our organic rankings.
Thank you again, SarahEggers for joining us.
If anyone wants to reach out to herfor more specific tips, please do so.
(19:09):
Thank you for joining the DrakeInsights Podcast, and I look
forward to seeing you next time.
Bye.
If you enjoyed watching the podcasttoday, please follow me and subscribe
so you're notified for the next podcast.
And if you have any questions or wantto talk after about anything that Drake
Strategic can provide for you, pleasereach out to me, call me, email me, or
visit our website at drakestrategic.
(19:30):
com.
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