#78 - The Website Is the Front Door: Digital Empowerment in Senior Living with Terri Sullivan - From Leads to Leases - Senior Living Marketing and Sales

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You have to be careful with yourlanguage on your website.
If you direct all the language to adult children could really
turn off an older adult. We we saw that really early on
is that there are a lot more older adults looking at your
website than you think for. A single call is made.
Today's buyer has already formeda first impression and chances
are it came from your website. But if that digital front door

(00:21):
is stuck, or worse, confusing, you've already lost them.
Welcome to From Leads to Leases,ACCR Growth podcast that helps
senior living providers transform their complex
challenges into opportunities. Listen in for stories from
industry leaders, innovative strategies and insights, and
with our expertise, learn how toincrease occupancy faster,

(00:43):
Guaranteed. Welcome back to another episode
of From Leads to Lease is the podcast that dives deep into the
senior living and senior care industries, bringing you
insights, strategies, and stories from the experts at the
forefront of innovation, leadership, and care.
I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEOof CCR Growth.
For those of you who don't know about us, CCR Growth is a full

(01:05):
service marketing and growth agency that's exclusive to the
senior living industry. And through this podcast, I'm
here to guide you through the evolving landscape of senior
care, exploring the innovation strategies and leadership
insights that are shaping the future of the industry.
So whether you're a provider, a caregiver, or industry leader,
that shows here to help you makeinformed decisions and create

(01:26):
meaningful impact. All right.
Today's guest is Terry Sullivan,sales strategist, technology
entrepreneur and the founder of Waypoint Converts.
With over 30 years of sales experience and more than sixteen
of those focused on the senior living space, Terry's a
nationally recognized voice in digital conversion.
She works with many of the largest recent operators in the

(01:47):
country to redesign how familiesand older adults engage with
senior living communities online.
Her platform doesn't just focus on traffic, it transforms the
way people choose to engage using AI assisted quizzes,
dynamic Ctas, and intentional language designed to meet both
the adult child and the 84 year old prospect exactly where they

(02:07):
are. So in today's episode, Terry
unpacks the behavioral data behind great websites and how
small shifts in copy access and education can unlock bigger
admissions and better leads. So, Terry, welcome to the show.
Thank you, excited to be here and I love the topic you're
hitting on. All my passion, all my buttons.
I'm ready. Anytime I get to talk about

(02:30):
marketing, I get excited. It's always a fun conversation
and I love learning from everyone in this industry.
Everybody's got such great insights into user behavior,
customer behavior, the prospect journey, all of it.
So I know we're going to touch on a lot of all that stuff
today. Obviously a big part of of
getting visitors on your site starts with search.

(02:50):
So I can start just talking about search a little bit.
One of the interesting data points that I found said that in
a 2024 Buildfire survey, 81% of people now conduct online
research before engaging a salesRep for higher consideration
services like senior living. And I know you said that this
trend is even more pronounced insenior living, where there's

(03:10):
things like fear and guilt and uncertainty that kind of shaped
that journey. What does the data show about
how long users engage with the website before converting or
bouncing in senior living? Yeah.
I think there's a lot of data out there generally across
websites and mobile versus desktop.
I mean, the bottom line at the end of the day is your website

(03:30):
is that first impression that a consumer gets.
And generally you have, you know, 20 to 30 seconds to grab
that person's attention and bring them in to want to learn
more than the average person mayspend anywhere from 2 to 5
minutes on your website. So if you think about that, the
content that you provide, whoever that audience is, how

(03:51):
you capture them, how you intrigue them to engage with
your brand. And then if you also look at the
way consumers have changed consumers really want Gartner
did a study that 75% of consumers in one of their
studies said that they would prefer a Rep free experience.
Well, if you take that into consideration and you put that

(04:13):
on top of your website, then youwant to make it as self-serve as
self educational, right? You want to be able to give that
consumer the ability to do that.So the better your content is
and the more engaging Ctas you have, the better chance you have
of keeping them on your website and then converting them into
your sales funnel. So you basically, it's your

(04:34):
digital front door and if you capture them when they open the
door, you do. If you don't, you don't, right?
And you're competing with what whoever, what other website they
go to or what other community they do down the street.
So yeah, so quick. It's quick.
Quick, it's got to be quick. I you mentioned to desktop and
mobile, One of the things, the challenges that I find with some

(04:55):
of our senior living clients is just the fact that there's so
much information to consume, butyou know, 65 to 70% of their
audience is consuming it througha mobile device.
Have you seen any conversion data that that says that it
converts better on desktop versus mobile?
I think we're seeing more and more mobile.
I think for the older adult segment, it's more desktop, you

(05:17):
know, but you know an adult child could be 65, right.
So at the end of the day, desktop and you'll bid tend to
visit more pages on desktop, maybe 2 to 4 plus pages where on
mobile they may not visit as many pages.
And I think you have to be supercareful too.
If you're using some type of assistant, a website assistant,

(05:37):
you don't want it taking over your mobile experience, right?
You want it there as a resource,but you don't want it taking
over your mobile experience. So in general, you know more on
the desktop and then you know the mobile is coming up fast.
We're seeing that about I'm trying to think on average and
we've separated out by an ILAL memory care and combined

(05:58):
average. We're almost seeing 5050.
If we take all the lifestyle quizzes that all of our
consumers across all of our customers filled out, we're
really close. It's like 60405050 on the older
doubts versus the the other family members or other could be
professional services, it could be something else, a
professional referral. So we're seeing it really mixed.

(06:20):
So you really have to think about it, who is your audience
and how are you meeting them where they are?
Because if you're getting a mix of both, think about that even
from a marketing perspective, right?
I mean, you have to think about how are you meeting them where
they are? Not only do you have to think
about that, but you have to think about how do they engage
technologically with your website, right?

(06:41):
How easy do you make it for someone who might be 80 that
comes in and experiences your website and somebody who's 40
that comes in and experience your website?
So you have to think about all of those things collectively
make sense. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Yeah. You mentioned quizzes too.
And I'm curious because on our end, we don't do quizzes per SE.

(07:02):
We engage with other companies like yours who do quizzes, but
we, we look at form fills, we look at chat conversations.
And a lot of times we look at, you know, the abandonment rate,
how quickly somebody starts and then potentially leaves that
that survey or that form or the chat.
Have you seen any difference between a mobile user and a
desktop user in terms of abandonment rates?

(07:23):
I think on the, the, the way ourproduct works is we offer like a
variety of short forms and longer form options as well as
an AI conversational assistant as well.
So we see a combination of that.I think it's a little early on
the AI assistant, but I think inthe mobile you definitely want
to keep it short. It has to be mobile responsive.

(07:44):
You know, it's a really good question because I would really
like to go in and look at our lifestyle data to what
percentage of the lifestyle quiz.
Like when you post this, I'm going to put that in the
comments because I want to look at that.
Well, it's longer one, right, The short ones.
That's that's a no brainer on both desktop and mobile.
I mean, we we see conversion rates up to 42%.

(08:06):
We see conform completion rates up to 90% less on the lifestyle
quiz, which is longer. But I think that because this is
kind of the, this is really likemy passion on in this industry
is that yes, short forms are better.
Yes, they convert quickly. But if you have a contact us
form on your website and it's capturing vendors and people

(08:29):
looking for jobs and people looking to sell you things and
people looking to get message toresidents.
If you offer some Ctas that are varied and you give the consumer
the power to convert in the way they want to.
And our forms are very short. They pop up on the screen and
then they drop down very quicklyafter somebody fills them in.

(08:49):
But I think the power is offering a multitude of options
because if you think about everyconsumer that comes to your
website, they're in a different place in their search cycle and
they might be in a different place in the sales funnel,
right? If they're looking for memory
care and their spouses, they're no longer able to take care of
them. That's a good help now thing,

(09:10):
right? They're going to want to engage
with you quickly. But if somebody's just dabbling
and looking and give them a couple of ways to engage, engage
in longer form like a quiz or anassessment.
And then give them the shorter forms with multiple Ctas where
they can say, Oh yeah, I'm interested in pricing or I'm
interested in a tour, or yeah, Iwant to learn about the
financial aspect of senior living.

(09:30):
There's a guide I can download, like give them ways to engage.
We all want to drive them down atour.
Of course we do, because if theycome in and tour, we have a
better chance of them becoming residents.
But the reality is on how peopleshop and how they educate
themselves. Our goal is to educate them
enough and have them feel good about your brand that they do
want to schedule a tour and theydo want to come in.

(09:50):
So I think variety is really keythere in my opinion.
Yeah, no, I agree. Absolutely.
Everybody navigates differently,consumes information
differently, so giving people options is super important.
One of the biggest complaints that I get from owners and
operators is about solicitors, vendors and job seekers filling
out forms or hopping into chats and things like that.

(10:13):
Are have you found, are there any ways that you found to help
deter that from happening on a website?
Absolutely. So there's multiple ways to do
it and we can do it through our our fully full, full
conversational AI, our LLMAI assistant.
It will send them to the employment page.
But I think at the end of the day in your website assistant
itself, if you have something that's configurable where you

(10:35):
can add things, you want to get them out of the sales funnel.
So make it very clear, like whenour navigator pops up, it says
join our team or learn about employment opportunities or
whatever it is, get them out of the sales funnel, get them to
the page that you want them to be on and then let them
continue. You know, so then you're, you're
narrowing down right through these other ways to engage and

(10:58):
convert in a way that that consumers interested, right?
So yes, absolutely 100%. And then we also have an website
assistant for careers that a lotof our customers use, so then
they can engage in different types of Ctas on the career page
as well. So we do that too.
So it's really about being creative and utilizing tools to
help those people find where they want to go.

(11:21):
I love that. Yeah, we have this custom AI
tagging that we do on the back end to help make sure those
don't make it into the CRM. But man, that's so frustrating
across all the clients, how manyjob seekers they get calls for
on a on a daily basis. They're like, can we stop these
people from? Calling please.
Well, you're, you know, the challenge there too, is that
going back to the original 1 catch all contact us form

(11:45):
website, right? You're going to get everything
and you're right. Then you have to figure out how
to route those based on what they've selected, if they've
selected anything, right? So yeah, it's, it's, it's
definitely challenging, but there are ways to to do that for
sure. Going back to the conversation
around the giving people different options on the
website, why do you think it's especially important to give

(12:06):
prospects time and space to selfeducate, especially during like
the senior care journey? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's another one of my, one ofmy, my passions too, is that I,
I've been in sales my whole life.
I've been in professional sales,I'm not going to say it 30 plus
years and I've sold enterprise software for companies like NEC

(12:29):
America and three M I've been inmedia advertising and outdoor
advertising. So a lot of enterprise sales.
And then I joined senior living in 2007 and I personally hadn't
experienced it yet. A couple of years later I did in
helping grandmother, but I thinkit would it fascinated me this

(12:50):
sale. It is if you think about AB to B
sale, right, business to business sale, say it's
enterprise software sale like wehave and you and you when in the
sales process, you might have a committee sale.
You have multiple decision makers, right?
It's generally a higher priced item.
It's committee, right? You have family members, you

(13:12):
have all kinds of things going on.
It's emotional, it requires a physical move it and it's not a
it's, it's definitely a financial, it's a huge financial
decision too and a lifestyle decision.
I mean, think about all of thosethings combined into one sale.
I was like, wow, it's really notAB2C sale, it's AB2B sale.

(13:33):
It's like it's very, very, it's very rich.
It's one of the most unique sales that I've ever experienced
in in my life. So for me, that represents a
challenge for our customers to market, right and to meet these
people where they are. The other big thing that's
fascinating to me is often like if somebody does work to their

(13:53):
website, they're probably going to do it again and again and
again and again, right? And senior living, it may be a
first time experience. This person's coming in to learn
about it. It's the first time that they've
ever learned about the senior living industry.
So that's a challenge as well for our customers because
they're coming in not knowing, right?
So we have to educate them and that we're not, they're not

(14:14):
nursing. This is old stuff.
But you know, we're not nursing homes.
We're not this, we're not that. So I think that's the other big
challenge in this space is that it is so unique.
The only thing closer to it is maybe buying a home, your first
home or a home, because that canbe very emotional.
But there's there's a lot to unpack around a pack around the
the sale, you know, So, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

(14:38):
And no one, no one has ever doneit before until they have to do
it right or they don't even giveit thought beforehand most of
the time, unless they have someone in the family who's in
the senior living industry. I find that that's the only time
that somebody has these discussions ahead of time.
This is how I got my start in the industry, too.
I watched all four of my grandparents go through some
form of senior care, whether it was in home care, nursing home

(15:00):
at the time called nursing home,you know, assisted living and
then independent living. So they all had a different
journey and it, it just intrigued me how many different
options there were and how people in different stages of
life as they age has a differentexperience.
And it's, it's really interesting how the industry has
created all of these options to help people find a, a forever

(15:23):
place to call home that still feels right for them and for
their family. It helps you meet your needs and
be able to live fulfilling life right.
If I get there, I'm that age, I'm happy about that.
I'm glad there's something therefor me at the end of the day,
but I didn't have my experience was kind of one of those hard
family experiences where my my grandmother was experienced some

(15:46):
medical issues, so she went intoassisted living.
But she was sharp as a tack and there was a very high acuity in
this particular assisted living section of this community.
And she was absolutely miserable.
She was making everybody, the residents miserable.
Is the team, the staff, the executive director miserable?
We ended up moving her into an independent living apartment
with a little bit of assistance.And she was thrilled.

(16:08):
And her social life, you know, but you have to be so careful.
You just don't know, you know. So I take that experience and
thinking, how do you, how do youhelp these people figure out,
you know, what's the, what the right thing is, right.
So anyways, yeah, yeah. Talking about surveys a little
bit too. It's funny that you mentioned it

(16:28):
being B to B, because that was actually one of the data points
that I pulled was that survey tools and quizzes aren't just
interactive, they're actually high performing.
So a 2023 Demand Gen. report showed that 77% of high
performing B to B websites include some form of interactive
content or personalized quizzes.So why do you think quizzes

(16:51):
outperform traditional contact us forms on senior living
websites? I think it's, I think it, it,
it's a combination of things, the way consumers have changed.
I think that that whole Rep freeexperience, we want to we're,
we've gotten used to as a society being able to self-serve
and people want to self-serve before they're, they speak to a

(17:13):
salesperson. And that's, that's, that's a big
one, I think also is because these are first time buyers in
very many cases that that gives them the opportunity to interact
with that company's brand, sharesome relevant data and also
inform sales because they share this extra data about what they

(17:35):
want to do next. What's important to them, right?
Because discovery we know in this industry is huge and being
able to, I like to say help a resident see themselves living
there or a family and a residentsee themselves living there.
So that's, that's a very value based high touch personal sale

(17:59):
unless it's way down the the youknow, someone's just in need of
something right now, you know, but in general, I mean, this is
a pretty big decision. I think that people that the
quizzes tend to engage in a way that allow people to experience
the brand, get some education, watch a testimonial in the end,
get connected to more content. They're still converting into

(18:21):
the funnel. And then it's empowering the
salespeople to have more data tobe better salespeople in the end
of the, at the end of the day, which is really important.
So I think that's why it's really successful in senior
living. I, I think it gives people that
opportunity on their iPad at 11:00 at night to go ahead and
engage with the brand. And it makes them also feel that
the company, the community, the company, the organization, the

(18:44):
operator cares about what's important to them, how you
position those questions. It's important, right?
Tell me about what's important to you.
How can we help you? What would you like to do next?
And really putting the consumer in the driver's seat because we
want to drive now. We don't want anybody else
driving us. Yeah.
Absolutely. Not.
Yeah, you don't want me driving you.

(19:07):
Yeah, my team sees this. We're going to laugh.
But yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
What about conversion rates on websites that have surveys
versus those that just use traditional forms and what what
does that look like? Yeah.
So for us, we see lower conversion rates on the
lifestyle quizzes anywhere up to25%.
We're in our short forms, we'll see anywhere up to 40%, meaning

(19:31):
Click to convert into the sales funnel.
Well, it's lower. Could we see on average like 18
to 20 to 20, sometimes we see 25%.
We do have one customer that saw40%.
For some reason, their communities in general and the
way they position themselves just drove more.
But what we do here is that those leads that do come in

(19:53):
through the lifestyle quiz tend to be higher quality.
They have more data so they can actually help the salespeople
position, which leads to prioritize what the customer
wants to do next, right? There's just more information
there. We just released, and I know
we're going to talk a little bitabout AI, but we just released
this AI summary. For the sales people too, that

(20:14):
will tell the story based on howthey answered the questions,
give them a couple of open-endeddiscovery questions to ask and
then also empower them with potential next steps for the
salesperson. So we released that about two
months ago and so far now we're rolling it out to our customers.
But I think at the end of the day, it's the empowerment of
sales as well. So the consumer's going to have
a better personalized experiencefrom beginning to end and

(20:37):
hopefully the sales person we dotraining too, but hopefully the
salesperson won't ask the same questions again.
Hopefully not. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, they can get to a deeper, more meaningful
conversation right off the. Bat this business in general is
you're in marketing and you're in your whole goal is to help
drive more people to their websites, help engage them on
the websites and help with the content and then convert them

(20:58):
into the sales funnel. But once we do that collectively
as partners, the sales folks have to take that over.
So anything that we can do to empower them to have more
qualified leads, to be able to spend their time more
efficiently, to help empower them to be better sales
professionals. And I think that focus on
professional. I've been a sales professional

(21:19):
my entire career and it is an extremely respectable industry
and it is a very fulfilling job.So I think we don't build up
salespeople enough to say, hey, you're so important because
you're the first person, first person they've done the digital
experience. You're the first person that
that customer is going to touch,right.

(21:41):
So focusing on that is everything on the customer care
side in my opinion. So, first impressions.
Yeah. And I think that's probably the
number one complaint from sales teams is the quality of leads
that they're getting or the quality of information that
they're getting. So if a survey is able to to
provide them with a deeper understanding so they can show
up in a way different way to that first conversation they

(22:02):
have with a prospect, it's goingto change the prospects whole
experience of what it's like within that community or within
that provider's portfolio of communities.
So because the surveys collecting and curating a better
data set, have you seen a highertheir conversion rate on the
leads that get into the CRM thatcome from the surveys We're

(22:24):
yeah, move it. Let's just say move.
It yeah. So we're we're fortunate we have
really great partnerships with our customers.
So they'll give us read access to their CRM because our job is
really to make sure to help themmake sure that they're, they're
seeing a great return on our product and that we're helping
them, right. So we can see the conversion
rates. And for us on the lifestyle

(22:45):
quiz, our customers tell us and we've seen that they'll convert
to move insurance more like 10 to 12%, right, on average.
But with the regular forms, you're looking, you know, it
could be two to 6% if you're lucky on the high end.
We do see higher move in rates on the lifestyle quiz in
general. Again, there's a lot of factors

(23:06):
that how good the sales team is,right?
There's there's a lot there, howresponsive they are to leads,
all of those things. But in general, we do see higher
quality leads with lead to more move insurance through the
lifestyle close definitely. And aside from move insurance, I
think the other major metric that everybody kind of tracks
would be scheduled tours. Have you seen a higher

(23:27):
percentage with that as well? Well, we're, we're, we're unique
in the way we do this is we bring them to the lifestyle quiz
and we ask them what they want to do next.
If they want to schedule a tour,then we deliver up the tour
scheduler on the back end of theform so they can go ahead and
schedule the tour. So we do it a little bit more
uniquely. And we do see duplicate forms
sometimes some people will take the lifestyle quiz and then go

(23:49):
in and schedule a tour off the navigator too.
So we do see definitely more tours could be anywhere 20 to
40% more tours, depending on traffic, depending on, you know,
the customer, depending on whether they want people to
self-serve and schedule tours themselves or they want to give
them an option to give a couple dates and times.
It really depends on the customer.

(24:10):
But in general, yes, for sure, there's a lot of senior living
providers out there that still don't have a self-service
schedule tour scheduler, which at this day and age, it's a
simple ad and it's not an expensive ad to help somebody
who's at home make a decision ontheir own to go ahead and
schedule a tour. And if you don't have that,
that's the simplest thing that you could add to your web help

(24:33):
drive, right? I mean, I still see it a lot,
though. I do see it a lot.
And they're afraid because they're like, oh, will the
salesperson be able to handle itall?
Well, you know, will they, will they double book?
You know, I don't know what their schedules are going to
look like. They might be on a tour.
I'm like, just schedule the tourso you can move them, you know?

(24:53):
So anyways. Even the consumer behavior I
think is a bit unique in this industry too, because on the
back end, we'll see somebody will fill out the form and then
they'll call and then they mightget on chat and then they might
call again and then they'll schedule a tour.
So it's kind of interesting. It's never, it's never just a
straight line from A to B. So I see what you're saying

(25:13):
about somebody filling out the survey and maybe not scheduling
the tour right away makes. Sense we ran into that with the
AI conversational assistant too.When we first came out with the
conversational assistant, it canask any question.
It's educated on the on the customer's brand and their FAQs,
whatever they want to educate iton.
But we noticed that people were really was more top of funnel.

(25:35):
Like people are asking a lot of questions about the community,
where it was located, when did it open.
And we're capturing all this data so we can understand for
our customers what they need to do to educate their AI assistant
because bottom line is we tend to drive people down with
question set. So we're not really capturing
the true essence of what people are really going to ask.

(25:57):
And so we were like certain things like, can you give me
directions? Well, then you should add into
the editor Google Maps link, right?
So we're learning by what peopleare asking to build better
experiences for consumers. But we learned that it was so
top of funnel. We're like, no, it needs to
convert more because that's whatour customers want.
So we just put a schedule a tourbutton at the bottom of the AI

(26:19):
assistant. They can click on it and a form
opens up, they schedule it and they're good to go.
So it's it's all about learning.You know how people use the
website? Going back to surveys to what do
you think is the psychology behind someone being more
willing to fill out a lifestyle quiz than a form?
I think human beings. I mean, I've done K Health's
quizzes and Noomes quizzes and. I mean, we get excited about

(26:42):
quizzes. That's your everything, you
know. But I think that there's
something in human nature. There's a curiosity that we have
and we have this, this, this quench to learn even about
ourselves is going to tell me something about myself that I
don't know, right. So I think it's that I think
it's also entertaining for them.Like we have some customers who
love to use cartoons and their lifestyle quails because they

(27:05):
feel it's light and this is a heavy subject.
So use light. We have some that want to be
more sophisticated and use line drawings and some that use black
and you know, that are are much more dramatic.
But at the end of the day, I think it's kind of entertaining.
Oh, go through this little quiz,right.
And the next version of our quizwill be based on how someone
answers. AI will then serve up different

(27:26):
content depending on what they, what they answered.
But I think at the end of the day, it's, it's about their
experience and they're learning comfort level, you know, but I
think in general in human beings, we, we like, we like,
and we like to be entertained and we're, I think we're
naturally curious and I think people just love the word quiz.
I mean, we we have over the years experience with what to

(27:50):
call it, right, You know, get could be start your journey or
you know, get admissions ready on the skilled side or you know,
whatever it is, but still the take the lifestyle quiz or start
here. But I take the lifestyle quiz
still works when we changed it to take our survey 50% reduction

(28:10):
in conversions. Bad words matter when it comes
to these sort of things. And I think when people take
things like that, they expect them to be a little longer.
They don't expect them to be, you know, 4 fields, right?
So yeah, I think it does just human curiosity and the need and
want not not to speak with someone yet, but I can take, I
can take this quiz, right? And it's fun and it's easy, so.

(28:34):
Yeah, I mean lifestyle quiz immediately makes me think
what's my lifestyle and I want to take a quiz to find out.
I think that's just the nature of a quiz.
It's somebody's going to, it's interactive number one, I think
that's the, the best part about it.
And it's not overloading them with questions all at once.
It's like 1 at a time. And then the second piece of
that is that hopefully at the end of it, they learn something

(28:55):
about themselves. And because the senior living
journey is usually it's their first time or maybe their second
time going through it, you know,they're, they're still not sure
what options are available. So this will help educate them
along the way. So I, I love that.
I think it's really beneficial. Yeah, and you know the beauty,
the beauty about doing a lifestyle quiz, ours is not
cookie cutter. It's it's not the for every

(29:16):
customer. So you could put educational
snippets, testimonial videos in it so you can educate as you go.
Some people, the first question often could be is are you
interested in assisted living, independent living, assisted
living or memory care or shop for this before?
So we just put a little educational snippet down at the
bottom that says what each one is so they can at least make a

(29:37):
selection that they're partiallyeducated on, right?
So there's so many ways to use technology like this to self
educate as they go too. So and you can be as creative as
you want, which is fun. You had said that words matter
when you're creating the CTA. So I wanted to talk about that
real quick because you had a pretty cool case study.
You had told me about an AB testin skilled nursing where you

(30:00):
replaced the phrase get emissions ready with get help
now. And I think what?
Emissions jumped 37%, right? 5050.
Wow. Yeah, wow.
They had a 37% conversion from lead to admissions over 10
centers over nine months, which is huge.
Senior living would kill for that move in, right?

(30:21):
But it was a 50% increase in conversion when we changed it
from get admissions ready to gethelp now.
And if you think about who is atthat funnel when they're looking
at skilled nursing, that's why Ithink we really need to think
about where the customer is whenthey're looking.
You know, they're feeling anxiety, they might be feeling
fear, they might be feeling overwhelmed, like there's a lot

(30:43):
of things that they could be feeling.
So the get help now, even for memory care could be really
effective because it might be someone looking, I've been
taking care of my wife or my mother or my father and I'm at
that point where I can't do it anymore.
Home care is too much, it's too expensive.
The Get Help now just was huge. And we just looked at it over a

(31:03):
two week and then a 30 day period and we're like, holy cow,
50%. I mean, that's a big jump just
by changing 3 words, you know? So, and we encourage our
customers, the data doesn't lie.So you can easily change the
name of a button on a website assistant.
And you should, you should try things and don't be afraid to

(31:23):
try things, you know, start yourjourney.
I wrote some down that we found customers are finding
successful. Start your journey, get
admissions ready. I put on here, start the process
because think about it, they don't even know what the process
is of you buy a car. You know you're going to go in,
you're going to select your car,you got to know your budget,
you're going to get approved fora loan, right?
If you take a loan or you're going to pay cash, you're going

(31:45):
to negotiate. These folks don't even know what
the process is. So I think there's just these
ways that you can use wording and positioning to help them
feel more comfortable. Yeah, it's, it's kind of the fun
part of having a configurable product you can change fly,
which is. Me, I love, I love what you just
said about the process too, because if they don't know what

(32:06):
the process is, then how are they going to feel comfortable
starting the process when they don't know what that even looks
like? They might be.
They might feel like they're over committing to something.
And I am Florida, the senior living world right now.
Do me a favor, create for the sales teams what to expect next.
Just a guide. It can be 5 steps.

(32:27):
It can be however you want it tobe.
You know, the visit, talking about the financial pieces of
it, like lay it out for them. And then even say this is
generally a 30 day process. Or like come up with what your
process is for your community and share it with your
consumers. Because at the end of the day,
then they're going to feel a little less anxiety.

(32:49):
They're going to say, oh, these people are going to take me
right through this process. This is generally what happens
and I don't see it anywhere. I've seen a couple of really
wonderful graphics that say whatwe are not.
It was a skilled nursing and it was this beautiful graphic and
it listed these five things of what they're not, but just a
simple what to expect guide I think would be extremely

(33:10):
successful. So reach out to me if you have
one because I would love to, I'dlove to, I'd love to read it,
you know, and so. That's great advice though,
because every single marketing and sales proposal that we put
together after we do the presentation, the first thing we
do is show a next step slide so they know exactly what's going
to come next. And I think that's so important

(33:31):
because without telling people what comes next or what to do
next, they may not do anything. They may just sit there and be
like, OK, I got that information, great.
And then they move on to someoneelse.
So people need to be motivated to.
Take the next step some time they want to make a decision,
help them make a decision and make help them make a decision
quickly, as quickly as you can, right.

(33:53):
I think the major thing that's changed from a marketing and
sales perspective, COVID especially and the whole world,
not just senior living, is that the marketing process is longer
now and the sales process is shorter.
So the salesperson's job actually got harder because
they, the sales, the yet the consumers are coming in a little
bit more educated. They're downloading your guides,

(34:14):
they're educating themselves andthen they get to meet with a
salesperson. Now they've educated themselves,
right? They still don't know what they
don't know. But at the end of the day, it
is, it's that salesperson has is, is even more Pinnacle now
than they used to be. I think this business is still
high touch no matter how you look at it.
But yeah, I think that's super key is understanding that the

(34:37):
sales process has changed now the digital has taken over such
a big piece of it that the salesside of it is, is really
critical, you know, that ever complete takeover maybe, maybe
people will be booking, booking rooms online.
That may happen, you know, sooner than later.
Who knows? Yeah, at some point sight
unseen, right, just like just like rentals in some cities

(34:58):
that. Happen the new way of the way of
coming in 2025 and 10,000 peopleturning 80 every day.
I mean, we're there. We've been talking about it for
years, but we're here now, right?
But I think that's why language simplicity matters because this
it's not just unique to senior living too.
I mean we see this across a lot of different industries and one
data point I saw was that plain language Ctas, they convert 28%

(35:20):
better than like clever or like brand heavy alternatives.
So I think it's very, very important to to find that one.
So like you're saying, test and test and test again till you
till you see a marked differencein how people are taking action.
Yeah, And every region's different.
I mean, reach the Northeast is not going to be the same as
Pennsylvania, right. So I think that that it's to

(35:43):
have that flexibility to be ableto do that and to have a digital
marketing partner, you know, like your company or other,
whatever their digital marketingpartners are to work with them
to say, how can we improve? What can we do to tweak this to
make it more effective and reduce the amount of people that
are getting into the sales funnel that shouldn't be there,
you know? Are there other Ctas that you
found to be really successful atconversion?

(36:06):
Yeah, at the end of the day, almost every single consumer is
wondering if they can afford it or not, right?
And I think the industry struggles with this.
They struggle with whether they should share their pricing
online. They're starting at pricing and
a lot more are. And, and I think they want the
opportunity to connect with the consumer because there are so
many variations of whether someone is a veteran or they

(36:28):
have like long term care insurance or, you know, whatever
it might be. So I think at the end of the
day, we have a customer that we had a pricing CTA.
It was basically a get pricing form.
They fill it out and, and you know, of course it was a high
converting form. But what we were thinking is,
is, well, what if we change that?
We flop it around and instead ofit being just a straight up

(36:50):
pricing, what if we give them the opportunity to convert and
to get pricing, but also get a downloadable financial guide at
the same time, right? Get your downloadable financial
guide that just it went to the roof.
Now it's the top converting CTA.The lifestyle quiz is the top
Click to conversion CTA for thiscustomer, which is interesting.

(37:11):
We don't see that on a lot of customers, but the second Click
to convert into sales funnel andthe largest volume of, of
engagements is on the download of financial guide.
So you're educating the customer, you're capturing them
in the sales funnel. So by the time you get to them,
they've read information about your pricing.
It's just brilliant. And I and I think it's, again,

(37:32):
it goes to the education, educating the consumers on what
to expect, right? They're going to have the
conversation and that's a perfect opportunity for you to
put here. Here are the steps of
researching senior living and what you should expect.
You know, that sort of thing. So anyways, I get a little
passionate about that. No, I think that's great.
And I think that the more dialedin you can have your Ctas, the

(37:55):
more you're going to learn from your perspective clientele.
You know, as they're navigating the website, what are they
downloading? What are they clicking on?
How long are they staying on these pages or reading these
brochures or ebooks or whatever it is that you have for them to
consume? If you can collect all of that
data and use that to create evenbetter experiences for people.
Education is, I think, at the forefront of everything in this

(38:16):
industry. It's soft selling, right?
You can't go in like a like a used car salesman.
It just doesn't work. No, and I think, you know, when
we even when we tour, you know, there's like, oh, here's our
dining room and here's and I've got I followed lots of tours and
they're generally wonderful people, very passionate.
But at the end of the day, it that understanding what's
important to the person matters more.

(38:38):
Well, this is our dining. I know that wasn't one of the
things that was most important to you.
Let's go to the Wellness Center,right?
Or here's a menu or would you like to meet the chef or
whatever? But I think just being more
personalized is key to that. What if a owner operator has
issues with their website? Or how can they identify when
their current language might be underperforming?
So yes, it depends on how your website is set up

(39:02):
technologically, right? So for us, I think the data
speaks volumes. You should be tracking your
conversion mechanisms. You should understand how your
Ctas make sure your Ctas are performing not just a
completion, not just a form completion rate, but a click
when they click on that CTA or call to action.

(39:24):
I'll try not to use acronyms. And then they convert into the
sales funnel. You should know all of those
numbers and you should know how they're working collectively as
a whole on average across your portfolio, but also at a
community level, at a regional level.
So I think the data, again, I said this earlier is the data
doesn't lie and you can make quick subtle changes and it

(39:44):
doesn't, you don't even have to use our tool.
I mean, you've just do just the buttons on your website.
If you're just using, you know, if let's say you have a landing
page for tours and you have a landing page for the
downloadable content of whoever you do it is just play with the
language a little bit. It's not a huge change to change
out a button name on a website, right?

(40:05):
For our tool is just really configurable.
You can go in and just type it in, hit save and it goes live on
the website. So it's really, really easy.
But at the end of the day, I think the data speaks volumes.
And if you see something that's not working, don't use it.
Put something else there. You know, we've done that too,
where we've seen with some communities that the lifestyle
quiz just doesn't resonate. You know, it may not resonate

(40:26):
with, you know, communities in Virginia or South Carolina, you
know, So take it off, you know, put something else on there.
Put something that's more engaging for them or what they
care about. But the ability to, you know,
mix and match and do what's effective for your community
could be very effective. And having a partner that's
willing to don't be afraid to ABtest.

(40:46):
I think that is where I'm going with this.
Link you into your partner, leaninto your digital marketing
agency and partner lean into your conversion tools, partner
lean into the group that you're engaging with and say, hey,
could we do some AB testing? It's really not that hard and
you learn a lot from it and justthe data that you capture from
it. We do free trials all the time.

(41:07):
And I say to people, they're like, oh, we need to redesign
our website. I'm like, OK, well why don't we
tie some things first? Let's put up some Ctas.
Let's see how people are engaging.
Let's capture some data and thenapply that towards the
learnings, towards your experience with your agency
that's helping you build it, capture something on it and it's

(41:27):
learn something you know, and itdoesn't take a lot and it
doesn't take a lot of money to learn something.
So I often recommend that too, as you can continue down that
track. But while you're continuing down
that track, throw up a, you know, like our navigator and
just capture information. Look at the see what's happening
there, see what your consumers are doing right.

(41:48):
It's an easy way to capture someinformation and to inform how
you move forward on how you develop your website.
So I don't know. That's the advice.
Yeah, yeah. Shifting gears a little bit,
talking about AII think we both agree for now that AI is kind of
top of the funnel. There was a 2024 HubSpot report

(42:10):
that showed AI powered chat tools increased time on a
website by 55% on average, but it accounts for less than 15% of
direct conversions. I can account.
I can. I can.
Yeah. Yeah, it'll change.
I think it will change over timefor sure.
Yeah, yeah. Where do you see it helping the
most in your current deployments?

(42:31):
So that's a really, really good question the most.
So if I was to rank, how are youusing it?
I think I have to put that into customer value.
Let's let's. First, let's first talk, how are
you using a? Let's first talk about that.
Like how simple. Yeah, that's.

(42:53):
Simple. SO we take a little bit of a
unique approach where there if you, if you invest in an AI
assistant for your website, you can either build it yourself or
you can partner with a company like ours and there are other
companies out there doing it too.
For us, the way we wanted to build it is we are not all
senior living is ready for an AIassistant yet.

(43:15):
They're uncomfortable about how it might answer a question, how
is it going to respond to pricing, right.
So for us, the way we chose to do it is we wanted we build
agents, our customers could build agents if they want to in
the back end. So we build an agent, we
educate, it goes up on the website, but it goes up into the
navigator as an option. So the 82 year old that's coming

(43:38):
in that's not want, doesn't wantto use a bot, can use a simple
form and convert in using the navigator.
But the AI assistant is fully trained.
You can ask it anything you want, it will convert.
And there are other ways to convert within the AI assistant.
So that's one way that we use itand we chose to go full LLM,
full conversational. It's not a decision tree.

(44:00):
We don't ask a ton of the questions.
We say what would you like to ask, right?
And then we learn from that dataand then we educate these and
based on that data. So that's the approach that we
took. The second way we use it is we
apply it on the data that we capture on our lifestyle
quizzes. We could do it on the pro forms
too, but that's limited data. And then we take that and create

(44:22):
these AI summaries for the salespeople.
So that's the second way we use it.
And the third way we're using itis for analytics.
There is no computing power bigger than or faster than AI.
So we're releasing a brand new dashboard in September that will
be heavily, heavily using AI to crunch and you know, pull
together the analytics that our customers care about.

(44:44):
So those and then then we use itpersonally in our marketing
department, right? So Chachi, TP and cloud or
whatever to create proposals or you know, content or or
whatever. But from a product perspective
for our customers, sales facing,consumer facing on their
websites back end to support their sales people to sell

(45:04):
better and then for the analytics piece of it.
So those are the three years that we're using it.
And out of those areas, where doyou think it's helping the most?
I mean, they're all, they're allunique, right?
They all have their own. I think right now the AI piece
on the analytics, our dashboardsaren't ready yet.
So I'll can tell you more on that.
But in the end, I think that will be the most informative for

(45:27):
our customers. They want to know where they're
spending money and what's effective.
I think in senior living the seethis, the consumer facing, in my
opinion, and it is IMO, in my opinion, is that that's still
coming along and people want to be on the cutting edge of
technology and they do want to help the salespeople save time

(45:49):
and they do want to help answer the customers questions.
They want to reduce abandonment on their website.
They want the higher engagement on their website.
So it's really important. So I would say that probably
empowering the sales teams rightnow, I would put up a little
higher because again, we can capture leads, but how do we
empower the sales people to be more effective?

(46:10):
So if I had to, I think that's what I would say so.
I will go with that you. Put me on the spot.
That makes sense. And then obviously this is a
human centered, human focused industry.
How do you balance AI tools withthe need for personal human
interaction? I think our customers worry

(46:31):
about that a lot. So I think how these assistants
are educated matters a lot, right?
So by when I say educating AI agent is a set of FAQs, how do
they want them to answer specific questions, right?
So we have a standard set of FAQs that we would want the AI

(46:53):
agent to be educated on and thenlearning from the conversations.
I think that there's a timidity because they're afraid of what
and how the agent is going to answer questions.
But I think that goes to preparation and planning.
So we have 70 communities right now testing out our AI

(47:13):
conversational, fully conversational LMLLLM agent.
And we review those conversations constantly.
And you're right, it's still topof the funnel.
Even though the agent is trainedto convert and send into the
CRM, they're still mainly top offunnel.
So, you know, I think it's just going to evolve.
I think it's going to evolve andget better and better and

(47:35):
better. And I think that the companies
that want to be a little bit more innovative, I think the way
it's going to work is it saves the sales team some time because
people can do some self qualifying and ask them
questions that they might just call and talk to a salesperson
about and may not be ready to make a decision.
So I think it'll save sales time.
I think with the turnover in this industry and also the lack

(47:59):
of speed, not all companies, I do want to be very careful that
speed to lead is could be improved upon a great deal in
this industry. I think, I don't remember what
the percentages are at the top of my head, but it's pretty slow
lead response times and some areprobably shaking head not on my

(48:20):
company, but I think in general it is.
I think with those three factors, AI can help
significantly by converting in at least keeping people engaged
on the website, educating them on the top of line questions
that they have about senior living, about the community.
So I think in in some sense it'sabout time savings and about

(48:40):
engagement and supporting the sales team.
Turnover in the industry is top 2, right.
So if you can have that least standard trained way in which
this agent can answer questions in the way that you want your
organization to answer those questions, that's a very
powerful thing. I yeah, one, I mean one super
powerful way to use AI in this space too.

(49:00):
I mean, I saw there was a data point recently that said
something when I was talking about follow-ups, and it said
that that sales teams that follow up within 5 minutes of
receiving, you know, a form or acall or a chat had a 80% higher
conversion rate. Yeah, it's just crazy.

(49:21):
Yeah. Such a simple little tweak,
right? It really is it, it, it really
is. I mean it, it could and somebody
could feel like they're being serviced very quickly through an
AI, right. And the data that comes from
that we can learn from, like I said earlier is it's one thing
to guide somebody down a bunch of questions and it's another
thing to actually know what customers questions are actually

(49:43):
asking open-ended questions, what are they going to our
website and asking? We haven't been doing that at
all. So do we really know our
consumers? We think we do, yeah.
So anyways. We, we talked a little bit about
the website earlier and we talked about, we talked about
one platform on 2 separate devices.
But now we have, I want to talk about one platform and the two

(50:05):
personas that are on that platform.
So I know your data, you had mentioned that 50% of
conversions come from older adults themselves, not just the
adult children. And then according to AARP, in
2024, they had they did a study that says 69% of adults 70 plus
now on a smartphone, but only 18% are very comfortable

(50:29):
navigating new websites independently.
How do you design A site that works just as well for an 82
year old as it does for their 52year old daughter?
Yeah, I mean that that's and that really falls more into your
business side, our product side for us, we really believe that
content delivering, you know what a great way to position

(50:51):
this is. When we did our data for last
year, the number one converting mechanism across all of our
customers were resources and content.
So financial guides, pricing is always a big one, but resources
came up overpricing this year. So what does that tell me?
That tells me that people want to educate themselves, right?
So as long as I think if you canengage people and have content

(51:14):
that's directed at those specific audiences, I think
that's really key. And that I still really am
passionately stand behind makingsure that you're offering
multiple Ctas that people can like, why would you just put a
decision tree bot on your website?

(51:35):
Because people are going to ask questions and they're going to
get frustrated because they can't get an answer.
So why not have other options for them, right?
And then there are people that are comfortable with that.
They're perfectly fine with it, right?
So I'm, I'm a believer in order to design an experience, let's
take it website wise for older adults and adult children is you

(51:58):
just have to have enough ways for people to engage and convert
in in a way that those two groups are comfortable with,
right? So I think that's key.
And then content directed to them.
And you have to be careful with your language on your website.
If you direct all of the language to adult children,
that's really could really turn off an older adult.

(52:18):
And we saw that really early on with agingchoices.com.
We have a another website and we, we saw that really early on
is that there are a lot more older adults looking at your
website than you think. So being careful about that
language is important. Are there different friction
points for each generation too? Are they similar?
We're seeing it. I can tell you what we see in

(52:38):
our lifestyle quiz. So on our lifestyle quiz, when
older adults fill it out, affordability, lifestyle, going
back lifestyle, affordability, downsizing that that's a big
move. I just helped a girl that works
with us move last weekend. It's huge, right?

(52:59):
I mean, she's been in the house for a long time.
So that is definitely, it's moreof how am I going to make that
change? How am I going to live there?
What does that mean to me? Unless I have a spouse that
maybe has also memory care issues or I care about the care
piece on the on the adult child side, we see more of safety,

(53:20):
security, available care, knowing somebody's available
enrichment programs. This is enough socialization.
My mom won't be alone. So we definitely see those
traditional subsets of what we've seen all along.
So it's not rocket science, right?
So and then I think the affordability thing is a major
friction point for not only consumers, but for providers.

(53:42):
And they're trying to, they're trying to figure it out, You
know, how do they present that in a way that because you don't
go by, you don't go on to Zillowand go look at a house that's
$1,000,000 if your price range is 400,000, right?
So I think that that the industry will continue to try to
figure that out. And we've customized pro forms
that literally say upfront, you know, hey, you know, our

(54:06):
services or our apartments startat $4000 a month depending on
your needs. You know, we recommend that you
speak with an advisor or if you have some benefits that could
apply, like you could put some disclaimers on it so people
don't go, oh, you know, no, that's too expensive for me.
But that is self qualifying too,right?
So they walk that line of being nervous about losing somebody

(54:28):
because they didn't have the right and correct information.
So. Yeah.
That's a big challenge I think for a lot of sales teams and,
and owners and operators in general.
I mean, they, they don't necessarily want to turn leads
away, but realistically, you can't help everyone and not
everyone has the budget that they need to be able to afford

(54:48):
to live in certain communities. So I think it's, it's an
important question to ask upfront.
Unfortunately, our society's a little feels like money's still
a little taboo to talk about. You know, right out of the gate
before you collect somebody's name and information, you're
already asking me what my budgetis.
It's a little. No, it's challenging.
It's definitely, it's definitelya challenge in this space for.

(55:10):
Sure. One one thing I want to make
sure we talk about too is the new self-serve tool that you're
working on. And it's interesting because
obviously not every community has a six figure budget, but you
know, every family deserves a digital experience that's going
to build trust along the way. And we're also in the process of
developing a strategy for micro communities or for boutique

(55:33):
senior living communities that may not be able to afford a
giant marketing package either because that's a big part of the
market, you know, and huge. Part and aging in place you know
is a big one too right your homecare those segments are also
looking to figure out a way to improve their digital so.
Yeah, and, and they're all competing against the Brookdales

(55:55):
and the Sunrises and everything else.
So I mean, how do these smaller communities get a leg up or how
do they get access to the same technologies?
Well, tell me, tell me about that.
What we learned, you know, majority of our customers are
senior living, but we started tohave conversations with agencies
that handle franchises. It could be group homes or

(56:17):
personal homes or small, you know, just small group homes.
And we started talking to Beehive homes and got to know
one of their agencies and we were thinking about it and we
were basically told we did a whole bunch of we'd love doing
pilot. So we would do do the pilot and
the owner, the owner operators came back and said, you know,
for the price point, it doesn't really make sense for us because

(56:40):
we don't have that many beds. You know, our margins are lower,
you know, we don't have big budgets.
So internally we sat down and said, wow, we've, we've talked
to a lot of customers that coulduse a product that is not high
cost, that is self-serve and they could build it themselves
and put it on their website and at least start utilizing

(57:00):
technologies in a way that the larger providers can and have,
right, maybe at a scaled down version, but they could put
their toes in and then start to build towards something.
So we released a full software as a service, a SAS product that
people can sign up with a creditcard for $20.00 a month and they
can build and navigate our ideally what we'd love to do is

(57:21):
partner with agencies like you, because at the end of the day,
these folks also don't have the time to do this so often, you
know? So we, we work with an, a couple
of the big testing ones that we do and the agency will set them
up and they have a dashboard andthey can build them all out and
have them all ready and put themon the sites and they can see
the analytics and the dashboard.So we are tweaking that more and

(57:45):
we'll be going to market with that in Q4.
So we're really excited about it.
And it can serve Hospice, It canserve so many segments that
don't have, you know, the marketing expertise or there
might be individual owners that have 20 beds, but they're
running the whole show, right? And they can't think they don't

(58:05):
have that type of expertise or resources.
So our goal would be to work with people like you to say,
hey, how do we create something that's affordable and that
someone can enter in? And then if they decide over
time that's really working for them or they're growing, then
they can move into other products like AI, you know, or a
lifestyle quiz or you know, whatever it is they want to do.

(58:27):
So our goal is to become more cognizant of the needs of the
different levels and the aging space in general, and then be
able to build to suit based on what people need and what their
budgets are. So that's kind of our goal is to
be less senior living focused. We already are, right, But
expand that out with the knowledge that we have to share

(58:47):
that with other segments as well.
Yeah. And what are the barriers you're
hoping to remove for smaller or mid sized providers with this?
I think making their website a little bit more modern, right,
utilizing pop up technology likethe bigger providers are using,
so they are more innovative and they're using some innovative

(59:10):
products. I think helping them convert
more out of their website, but also have a mechanism in place.
They may not even use ACRM. Having a mechanism in place in
which they can at least capture their leads via e-mail or a text
so they can respond more quickly.
Having the ability to just use asimple Google Sheet to track

(59:32):
their leads. I mean, it's simple stuff, but
it takes them to a different level, right?
So I think it's enabling them tomanage their sales better, to be
more responsive, to have that ability to have a better
performing or better, I want to say performing website because
that's not really the right way to say it.
Maybe convert more leads becausewe know, I mean the data shows

(59:54):
if you use some type of pop up, we'll call it a widget for a
lack of better terms, right, is that you will see across all
industries an average of nine to10% more conversions.
But if you do it well, you couldsee much more than that.
We've had a customer saw 200%, we had a customer that saw 40%,
right? So it depends, it really
depends. But I think giving them the

(01:00:14):
option, lower cost, more affordable, let's say it that
way, more affordable, really easy to install, easy to set up.
There are tutorial videos and you know, a tutorial that they
can go through and literally take that piece of code and put
it on their website and put it up.
They don't need to be experts todo it so.
Yeah, yeah. I think most small providers are

(01:00:36):
flying blind when it comes to understanding what's actually
going on on their website. So anything we could do to help
them understand a little bit more to get some clarity on what
they can do to improve, to change, to create more
conversions without having to hire an entire marketing team to
do it, I think is. Great.
What we're seeing here, we're seeing an influx of requests on

(01:00:58):
the smaller personal care homes and in Group homes and
individual smaller assisted living or smaller memory cares.
And you can only work on so muchand focus on so much.
So by creating a self-serve process and a self-serve on
boarding, we can help service that market more effectively in

(01:01:18):
partnering with folks like yourself that could help as
well, right? Because they could have a
standard package to help them with the website traffic as
well. You know a whole collective
experience, if that makes sense.Yeah.
Yeah. My last thing I want to talk
about a little bit is, is partnership, not competition,
because Waypoint works. You work alongside agencies like

(01:01:39):
RCCR Growth. And I know that you've mentioned
before that the vendor agency relationship is misunderstood.
And I think we align in the factthat we both kind of see this as
a partnership. It's not.
We're not tech competitors, we're partners.
And why do you think some marketing agencies see
conversion tools like yours as athreat?

(01:02:00):
I think there's the basics, which is there's only so much
marketing budget to go around and, you know, work in some
sense competing for some pieces of budget.
I think there's the basics of that.
I think there's also a thing where people that manage
websites want to control the journey from beginning to end.
Some are more full service than others.

(01:02:21):
They'll literally get into CRMS and automation and HubSpot and
all of that. So I think there's some of that,
but I see it on the other side. I see it as if I was a customer,
I would want the best set of tools and the best partners that
I could have based on my business, my brand, what I want
to achieve, my culture, like everything about my business, if

(01:02:46):
I could have partners like that.So I see us as an extension of
your team, of the customers team.
And if we're all working together and having brainstorm
sessions on how do we change theCtas on this website?
What would be better? Like we just read this to a
whole brand new product. It was it was a it's a pop up
that comes from the NAV and it just if somebody wants to turn
it on, they can, they can changeit out, they can do whatever

(01:03:08):
they want, but that's through conversation and that's about
understanding and tracking. And then how do we track
effective? Like what if you have an
advanced welcome home integration and you're tracking
true lead source and you have a pop up form on your website,
consolidate it, get it all into one dashboard, right?
So I think at the end of the day, it's about partnership,
actively have one goal and that's to make our customer help

(01:03:30):
our customers meet their strategic goals.
So if we work together to do that, we all win.
And you've heard of the term mastermind, right?
It's collective mastermind. The more people you bring in,
the more brainpower you have in the more effective you can be,
right? And for me personally, if I had
an agency, which I don't, what if I did, I would say I would
want to have a bag of tricks formy customers that were the best

(01:03:53):
bag of tricks for that particular customer.
So you may have rubric, you may have site staff, you may have
waypoint, you may have further, but have a mall because that
customer might be different. A CCRC might want a different
product than a traditional rental.
AL you know, 50 site ALIL get toknow who's out there and then

(01:04:14):
pick the best product for your your customers.
And then there's different pricelevels too.
Everybody has different budgets collectively.
I think if the more tools that you have as a marketing your
partner, the more tools you haveto help them be better at what
they do, the better off you are.I, you know, that's, that's the
way I feel about it. Yeah.
Well, I, I can definitely speak to the strength of that

(01:04:36):
partnership too. I mean, we for our agency, we're
not just marketing, we also helpwith the sales side.
So we're we're helping with leadgeneration, we're helping look
at the sales cycle. How can we compress the sales
cycle or improve it or automate pieces of it so that the sales
team can spend their time actually in more meaningful ways
with their prospects? And then we look at systems on
the back end. Which systems can we remove?

(01:04:58):
Which ones can we condense? How can we add to make this more
efficient for the operations team so that they can better
understand what's going on? What are we spending money on?
How much is it costing per moving?
But then your piece of it I think is so important too is the
conversion piece is understanding what that users
doing on the website and how arethey converting and how can we

(01:05:19):
continuously test. So I do think it's a partnership
that needs to happen and I think, you know, I think there
are. We learn all the time.
Yeah. So why aren't we sharing in the
learning so our customers can bemore successful?
Yeah, to gatekeep that information from each other just
doesn't make sense, no. It doesn't make sense and our
tools may not be right for a particular organization, but

(01:05:41):
they might be great for another organization, you know?
So I think yeah, 100%, that's cool that you guys do end to
end. Yeah.
That was one of the biggest things when we transitioned from
just a traditional marketing agency to to full service within
the senior living spaces. We wanted.
We wanted to have the opportunity with the clients who
would allow us to have the opportunity to do more than just

(01:06:03):
lead generation because it here's a bunch of leads and then
what happens, you know, then they go to someone else.
Then we get no feedback on, on what's happening, how they're
converting. And so we have to end up doing
the digging on the back end to then, you know, put the pieces
together. But now we build CRMS from
scratch. We have the entire system laid
out so we fully understand what's going on and and where

(01:06:24):
every lead is dropping off or orconverting and what those
percentages look like. So it just helps us provide
better opportunities for conversion and we don't have to
have as many leads in the pipeline to convert like we used
to. Yeah, effectiveness of
campaigns, I mean, it's huge. I mean, some of our customers,
they've thrown our navigator up on their PPC landing pages and

(01:06:45):
they saw anywhere from like 57 to 157% increase in conversions
on the page. It's like, then why wouldn't you
do it? It's such an inexpensive way to
increase number of leads, right?But, but don't be afraid to try
it. I think that's the point is the
one thing I love about our all of our partners is what do we
have to lose? Let's try it.
Let's yeah, let's put it up. Just test it out to see see how

(01:07:08):
it works. If it doesn't work, it doesn't
work right. 100% yeah, exactly. We put rubric on our navigator
and a customer saw 4747% increase on conversions just by
putting rubric on our navigator.So if somebody uses rubric, we
by all means want to help that customer get more rubric
conversions, right? So at the end of the day, it's

(01:07:29):
just about making it work. So yeah.
Well, Terry, thank you. Thank you so much for such a
great interview. This was pretty amazing.
I know our audience is going to eat this up because everybody
wants to know more about why their website isn't converting
and and what are the best tricksand tools that are available to
them. Well, thank you for having me.
I've enjoyed it and you've touched upon a bunch of a bunch

(01:07:51):
of my passion points if I wasn'tto a server here, but you know,
if anybody wants to learn more about us, we do have a website,
itswaypointconverts.com. I'm always happy to have a
conversation, a more consultative conversation with
someone if they'd like to talk about it, their website and
their conversions and how that works.
Also, you can follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram as

(01:08:13):
well. They want to connect with you.
Linkedin's the best option for them.
Yeah, Linkedin's a great option,but you can always e-mail me
directdirectlytsullivan@waypointconverts.comor just
sales@waypointconverts.com will come to me to collectively as a
team. So yeah, if you want to reach
out and have a conversation, we're happy to have it.
Would love to chat. OK, great.

(01:08:33):
All right. Well, as we wrap up today's
episode, I want to extend a hugethank you to Terry Sullivan for
joining us and sharing your powerful perspective on how to
make websites work smarter and senior living.
Your emphasis on data personalization and sales
empowerment brings clarity to a space that often overlooks the
digital experience still even in2025.
So if you want to connect with Terry or learn more about her

(01:08:56):
work at Waypoint Converts, we'veincluded her LinkedIn and
company info in the show notes. And as always, we hope you found
this episode insightful and inspiring.
Don't forget to subscribe to ourpodcast on your favorite
platform. And stay tuned for more episodes
where we continue to explore theevolving world of senior care,
covering everything from innovative care models and
leadership strategies to family support, technology and the

(01:09:16):
future of aging. And also remember that from
lease to lease, this isn't just an audio experience.
We're also a video podcast. So if you want to see the video
versions of our episodes like the one here with Terry, make
sure to subscribe to our YouTubeor Spotify channels.
I'm Jerry Vinci, CEO of CCR growth.
Thank you for joining us on fromLeads to Leases.
Please like, subscribe and sharethis episode with anyone who

(01:09:38):
might find it useful. And until next time, leave a
strategy and with heart chat with you again soon.
Thanks, Terry. My pleasure.
Thanks for having me, it was great.
Thanks for listening to From Leads to Leases.
Are you ready to fill your roomsfaster and increase occupancy?
Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn about our Senior Growth
Innovation Suite, a proven system to generate highly

(01:10:00):
qualified tour ready leads, accelerate sales and reduce
acquisition costs. Let's connect and turn your
challenges into opportunities. See you next time.

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#78 - The Website Is the Front Door: Digital Empowerment in Senior Living with Terri Sullivan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#78 - The Website Is the Front Door: Digital Empowerment in Senior Living with Terri Sullivan