Residential Assisted Living Websites – 3 Client Examples 26 Feb 2018 9:16 AM (7 years ago)

Residential Assisted Living Websites

At Marketplace Earth, we have been helping owners of residential assisted living homes with their websites and online marketing for nearly three years now. As our specialization in this niche market continues to grow, you can benefit from our insights into branding, design, website development, Local SEO, Adwords results and so much more. We build residential assisted living websites with the marketing in mind.

If you are just getting started and need to know how to build your residential assisted living website, we created this video to walk you through a bit of our process and what some of our client websites look like.



As we’ve talked to dozens of owners over the past few years, we have found that is helpful to think about your online marketing efforts in two phases.

Phase I – Create the Branding

In Phase I, you are creating your branding and website. Getting this designed and out there as quickly as possible is critical because while you are working on the 100 other tasks it takes to launch a residential assisted living home, your website can serve as a tool in your tool belt to help you begin to spread the word.

The website you use matters. And, the branding and quality of design matters. If somebody is entrusting you with the life of their mother or father to care for, they want to know they can trust you. They want to know you are competent. Your website, logo and branding go a long way towards earning that trust.

Is the site clean and attractive? Is it easy to navigate? Is the site mobile friendly? Can I easily get the information I need? Does it tell me about you and your company in a way that I would trust you? Is your contact information easily attainable? All of these questions matter greatly. Your company is in a fight with not only other residential assisted living homes, but also the big box institutions. You need to be able to compare and deliver on the message that you provide a better living experience.

Phase II – Market, Market, Market

Once the site is created, you can begin to market in any number of ways. We recommend you market both online with your SEO and Paid Search efforts, but also offline. And when you are networking with local hospitals, rehab centers, etc., it will give you a big leg up to have a good looking website that is already launched.

Contact us to get started on your Phase 1. We will help you build a clean, attractive and mobile friendly website that is ready to be used for all of your marketing efforts. And, when you are ready to market online, we are ready to help. Our experience with this industry gives us a leg up on how to market your website.

Residential Assisted Living Websites – Client Examples

We’ve built a number of websites for clients over the past few years for owners all over the country – California, Arizona, Michigan, Connecticut, Iowa and Kansas.

ConradMansionCountryEstates.com

 

SunriseHavenAssistedLiving.com

 

GoldenOaksHome.com

 

Get Started

We would love to help build your assisted living website! To learn more, check out our Assisted Living marketing services and see how we help our clients earn traffic and fill their beds. Give us a call at 859-916-8148 or email Eric at es@marketplaceearth.com to get started.

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Internet Marketing For Real Estate Investors – 5 Key Focus Areas 11 Jul 2017 10:33 AM (7 years ago)

A couple of years ago, I attended a real estate conference in Indianapolis, IN. These are the kind of conferences that pop up in virtually every city in America. Booths are set up. Educational seminars are held. Pitches are made. Networking is in full effect. Deals get done.

While walking around the conference floor, I came across real estate investors ranging the gamut – wholesalers, flippers, contractors, apartments, commercial real estate – even senior living real estate investing.

For all of the businesses there who hosted a booth, there is no question that it is part of their marketing budget. However, what was shocking to me was the lack education on internet marketing for real estate investors.

15 Years Behind The Marketing World

Real estate investing has been done only if you are in the in crowd for years. You might know someone down at the club who can get you in on a deal, but you have to be an insider. And because it was primarily a networking industry, the real estate world has definitely been lagging behind other industries in terms of its digital marketing presence.

It’s finally starting to catch up as the share economy is reaching into real estate.

The crowdfunding concept has peaked its head into real estate with sites like Patch of Land. The concept is that larger deals can be raised from lots of smaller, unaccredited investors. This has its pros and cons, but what is interesting is that these kind of companies are using internet marketing techniques that others are not used.

So, let’s review 5 areas of internet marketing that every real estate investor should at least consider.

5 Areas Of Internet Marketing For Real Estate Investors To Focus On

With the recovery since the 2008-09 crash, people are getting excited about real estate investing again. And with a house flipping show on TV nearly 24 hours a day, all kinds of real estate investors are getting the itch.

Many people get into real estate on the wholesaling level. They learn to buy houses for cash from motivated sellers and either make them buy and holds or sell them to another real estate investor.

So, let’s look at these 5 areas from a typical real estate wholesaler’s marketing efforts.

1. Branding

Geez. Ok. Let’s start here. I get it that your wholesaler site is not Nike or Apple, but would it hurt you to pay more than $5 for a logo?

The lack of effort put behind branding from real estate investors constantly amazes me. Your website and social media pages are basically like your front porch or your office lobby. Don’t you want to tidy them up a bit and put forth a professional image?

Before you start spending money on SEO, Adwords or other internet marketing efforts, make sure you put some time, energy and effort into your branding, design and website.

2. SEO

This one scares people because they think they will never rank or that it is too complicated. But, don’t you want leads coming to your site organically over time? There’s no better way to get low cost leads as a real estate investor than to do SEO well.

When I talk to clients about their SEO and what Google wants, I simply say this – Google wants to rank the best brands. I cannot explain it any simpler than that.

They want to give the best results on the SERPs. They want to gauge what are the best businesses for any particular keyword search with intent to look for a business. So, they look at indicators like social media interactions, links and reviews that give them clues about the status of your brand.

They also look at your content marketing. Is your business alive? Are you investing in content on a regular basis? Do you have anything to say to the world that is valuable and unique?

Often times, in the real estate world, a lot of the sales pitch is the same. For example, with wholesaling, you buy houses for cash. You buy houses fast. You can close quickly and you buy as is. That’s great. I know the message is the same, but find out ways to make the message your own. What is your unique selling proposition? What content can you put out there from a local level?

3. Paid Ads – Google & Facebook

Paid ads are fantastic, but you need to know the differences between Google and Facebook.

If you are a wholesaler, Adwords’ search only network makes a lot of sense. If you aren’t ranking with SEO, Adwords allows you to “jump to the front of the line” because you are paying to play. You can rank highly on the first page for phrases like “sell my house fast in Fort Thomas“, but you are going to pay for click.

If you use Google’s display network or Facebook ads, this is going to be an entirely different marketing strategy. More likely, you are trying to build an audience or your brand. So, this kind of advertising is not in response to search intent. You are trying to get your name out there in front of the right people. You can target both geographically and demographically in your ads by using these tools.

Test, test and test again. Analyze well (another internet marketing for real estate investors tool that is often overlooked), and make informed decisions on which channels work best for you and your marketing dollars.

4. YouTube

I’ve used Youtube with a number of my clients, and I am constantly blown away at the power of the marketing platform.

It takes work. You need to be consistent. But, if you can set up a way to create a channel of value, video creates more trust than maybe any other marketing effort you can do.

If you are a wholesaler, what is the number one thing you probably need to buy homes from motivated sellers? Trust! YouTube is an excellent way to acquire that trust. And not only that, but it can also assist in your branding and SEO efforts. It’s a fantastic marketing tool!

5. Email Marketing

Lastly, you shouldn’t overlook your email marketing. If you are marketing properties to real estate investors, you need to have a good system for getting those properties in front of your cash buyers.

Email tools like Mailchimp and others do a great job of making this easy. And besides in person or phone calls, email is probably the best marketing channel to actually get your brand consistently in front of your buyers.

Conferences, direct mail and pounding the pavement all have their place, but if you want help with your internet marketing for real estate investors efforts, contact us today.

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Marketplace Earth Helps Launch Another Assisted Living Facility Website 12 May 2017 8:21 AM (7 years ago)

As Marketplace Earth continues to specialize in the assisted living marketing arena, we continue to hone our skills in helping senior living business owners create and launch their assisted living websites.

Recently, we were approached by a client from Iowa who had a beautiful home and wanted a beautiful assisted living website to match. Conrad Mansion Country Estates is the largest single family home Iowa has ever known was planted in the rich Grundy County soil near Conrad. This 16,000 square foot French provincial home, known as the Conrad Mansion, corners and crevices radiate with mystery and majesty.

Now, this family who has been living in the home is turning it into a wonderful oasis for senior living.

In this project, we helped the owners design and create their brand logo, and we built the website from scratch. Using a WordPress template we have come to like for it’s ease of use, mobile friendliness and sleek designs, the website really came together.

 

The house already had a reputation in the neighborhood, but now the business has an online presence to match the brand recognition. As we helped with some basic SEO items and marketing strategy, it’s fun to see the leads start rolling in for our client.

Conrad Mansion Country Estates is now the fifth website we’ve built for assisted living owners. We’ve helped owners all across the country – in Arizona, California, Utah, Maine, and now Iowa. Many of these clients have gone through Gene Guarino’s wonderful Residential Assisted Living Academy.

If you are a real estate investor who is naturally bent towards providing quality care AND you love outstanding cashflows, I would highly recommend you check out Gene’s class. The Baby Boomers are coming, and it is an excellent wave to ride to create outstanding cashflow.

And, when you are ready to get your business off the ground, we are here to help with branding, logo design, website design and development, SEO, content marketing, paid ads marketing, Facebook ads and more.

You create the business. We’ll help you build your assisted living website and fill the rooms.

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How To Use Local SEO Services To Get More Leads in 2017 5 Jan 2017 12:21 PM (8 years ago)

Marketplace Earth Offers Local SEO Services To Help Your Business Grow

If you are a small business looking for Local SEO services to boost your leads and revenue in 2017, then watch this video and see how our clients are ranking in the top results on Google Maps.

In this video, we discuss:
– What is local SEO
– Where do Local SEO results show up on Google Search Engine Results Pages
– Why you should focus on Local SEO for your small business
– What are the Local SEO Search Ranking Factors and
– Case Studies of our clients who are ranking in the top of Google’s snack pack

We discuss all of these issues in this video to help you get more leads for your business using Local SEO in 2017.

This video can apply to any local business, but particularly, we focus on assisted living marketing strategies. If you are a senior living or residential assisted living owner, than Local SEO needs to be a part of your marketing strategy.

What Is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a highly effective form of local online marketing. It allows your business to promote services to local customers exactly at the time they are looking for your business.

In the past, consumers had to call around or use a directory to find the business they needed. Today, it’s all about using Google to search on their mobile phones.

Local SEO uses search engines like Google and powerful directories like Yelp and Superpages to bring the best business search results to a customer.

Local SEO More Important As Mobile Searches Rise

Mobile search is booming. With every year, more and more or the overall search pie is trending towards people searching on their mobile phones. Because of this, Google has made massive changes in their SERPs, and they are much better at showing search results that they believe have local intent.

Today, Google alone handles more than 100 billion searches per month around the world. Of those searches:

• 4 billion desktop queries per month in the United States alone have local intent.
• 50%+ of mobile queries have local intent.
• Roughly 15-20% of all searches are mobile.

From these numbers, we can extrapolate that there are approximately seven billion unique local searches per month on Google in the United States.

Are you getting a piece of that pie?

Why You Should Focus On Local SEO

Using a marketing company to provide Local SEO services may be a fantastic investment for your marketing dollars. 

Specifically, we’ve been looking at the residential assisted living industry. Let’s say you have 10 beds and you charge $5,000 per bed. If you get your leads and residents from placing agencies such as aplaceformom.com, you are easily spending over $50,000 a year in marketing dollars to get new residents. And, that is not even considering additional fees and vacancies.

Now, let’s say for example you pay an SEO company to provide Local SEO services for $2,000 a month. Over time, you achieve top rankings on Google and potential customers are calling your business on an ongoing basis. You’ve spent $24,000 in marketing, less than 50% what you would have paid a placing agency. Plus, with some maintenance, you get to keep this rankings going forward!

Local SEO Ranking Factors

One question we get a lot revolves around the difference between traditional SEO and Local SEO. To be sure, there are carry overs that impact your rankings in both. Local SEO results show up in what is know as the Google Snackpack. It is the map and 3 listings you see on a search engine results page.

Traditional SEO results are those listings underneath Adwords results and underneath the Google Maps local listings.

Great content, a social media strategy and authoritative links are helpful for both traditional and Local SEO. However, some other ranking factors for Local SEO include Google My Business Signals, Mobile and Behavioral Signals and Review Signals.

Get Those Reviews!

A lot of small businesses shy away from a review strategy. They think they are too hard to get or they put their business at risk of negative reviews by asking for them.

We think this is crazy, and if you are afraid of asking for reviews, you have a bigger issue within your business that needs to be dealt with.

With reviews, you have an excellent opportunity to not only increase your Local SEO rankings but also create social proof that has a snowballing effect. The buying process is different today and customers rely heavily on online reviews. Be sure to get a system and strategy in place for asking for reviews. And, make is simple for your customer!

Get Started With Local SEO Now

There is one thing for sure about Local SEO. If you don’t put a plan in place, your competition will beat you out for the rankings, and you will need to get those customers from another source.

If you are looking for help from an experience digital marketing company with proven results, contact us today to discuss custom Local SEO services that are right for you.

 

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Inbound Certified Through HubSpot Academy 4 Jan 2017 11:29 AM (8 years ago)

Inbound Certified from Hubspot

A Review of the Course

1. Inbound Fundamentals
   1. Essentials of an Effective Inbound Strategy
2. Attract
   1. Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines
   2. Creating Content with a Purpose
   3. The Fundamentals of Blogging
   4. Amplifying Your Content with Social Media
3. Convert
   1. Enticing Clicks with Calls-to-Action
   2. The Anatomy of a Landing Page
   3. Guiding the Next Step with Thank You Pages
4. Close
   1. Sending the Right Email to the Right Person
   2. The Power of Smarketing
   3. Taking Your Sales Process Inbound
5. Delight
   1. The Pillars of Delight

Straight to the Test

All of the subject material seemed like review to me, so I decided to jump straight to the test. As it turns out, it was the right move. I passed with flying colors and am now Inbound certified!

Woo hoo, a badge! Yes, I will share you socially, thank you very much.

It’s been a while (probably 2003 in college) since I’ve taken a test and received that satisfying feeling of a good grade.

Now, I have it again and am Inbound certified from Hubpsot.

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How To Compete Against Big Brands With Local SEO 23 Dec 2016 12:23 PM (8 years ago)

Competing Against The Big Brands

Is it possible to compete against big brands with your digital marketing efforts? Yes! You can do it. Don’t give up. Often, it may feel like an impossible task, but one thing is for sure – if you don’t do anything, you can never compete.

In this video, we look specifically within the assisted living industry. Why pay placing agencies like APlaceForMom.com thousands of dollars per lead when you can compete and even outrank them with your digital marketing efforts?

When you look at the amount of money being spent in Google Adwords, SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing by the placing agencies, it’s easy to get discouraged. However, there is a secret weapon that small businesses and residential assisted living home owners can use against the big brands and placing agencies – Local SEO!

Google On Your Side?

Google wants to rank the best businesses and give their users the most accurate search results. And with doing Local SEO for your assisted living home, you have a golden opportunity to capture leads for yourself and save money from having to always pay placing agencies.

In this video, we dive deeper into Local SEO for your assisted living home and show you how to compete against placing agencies and big brands.

 

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How to Get Assisted Living Leads, Save $ and NOT Pay Placing Agencies 21 Dec 2016 6:48 AM (8 years ago)

Placing agencies, like APlaceForMom.com, are the industry standard in getting independent living and assisted living leads to your senior living business. But, they are expensive!

What if you could cut your marketing budget in half, save thousands of dollars, and beat the placing agencies at their own game by implementing an effective digital marketing strategy? That’s the discussion of this week’s video. Enjoy!

Transcript:

Introduction

How can you save, 5, 10 or maybe even $20,000 on the marketing efforts of your senior living home? Let’s talk about that.

Hey guys, welcome back to Marketplace Earth, where we help brands grow. My name is Eric Sztanyo, and I am super excited about this video today where we are talking about placing agencies – how you can save $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 on your marketing efforts! Maybe even more! I’m going to show you exactly how we are going to do that.

Specializing in Assisted Living Marketing

I am so excited about this because this idea is basically the entire reason why Marketplace Earth has shifted into specializing in digital marketing efforts for the senior living, whether that is assisted living, independent care or home health care. Whatever it is, if you need help with your marketing efforts, please contact us because we are seeing tremendous results with our clients. I can’t wait to talk about this idea and show you guys how you can save a TON of money on your marketing efforts.

So, let’s dive into it. This video is part of a series, and we are in video #3 of our Top Ten Digital Marketing Strategies for your senior living or assisted living home. Today, we are talking about placing agencies. In a list of our 10 videos, we are on video #3. We’ve talked about branding, and we’ve talked about your website. Click the links to watch those videos and see how important it is to get your branding and your website going. But now, we want to talk about placing agencies, and how we can save you money.

Overview

So, here’s an overview of the video today.

• First of all, placing agencies – what are they and who are they?
• How much do they cost?
• How do they get their leads? We’re going to show you exactly what they are doing with their digital marketing efforts.
• How can you save literally thousands of dollars in your marketing costs? We’re going to map that out for you and show you exactly how to do it.

What Are Senior Placing or Referral Agencies?

First of all, what is a senior placing, or sometimes they are called senior referral agencies? These businesses occur in different industries, but specifically we are talking about the senior living industry.

Placement agencies provide a free referral service to assist in locating licensed residential care facilities for the elderly (assisted living facilities, board and care homes, demential care facilities.)

They will interview you and determine your level of care need, type of placement you desire, amount of income, etc. They may take you to homes for your inspection. The agency is paid by the facility (this is a key point) once a placement is made. The agencies do not assist in finding skilled nursing facilities, subsidized housing, or general properties. How much do they cost?

Who Are They?

Let’s take a look at who they are. You’ve probably seen these online. Some of the most common ones are APlaceforMom.com, SeniorLiving.org, SeniorLiving.com, and Caring.com.

If you look right here, this is a little snapshot, they all basically look like this on their homepage. There’s an elderly person. You see a friendly person helping them. There’s a zip code search bar, and it’s basically a giant directory of the local senior living homes and businesses that can help those seniors.

Here’s another one, A Place for Mom. You’ve probably seen it. Very common and very popular. They get a lot of leads. A lot of people are visiting their website, and we’re going to talk about this one specifically today.

They do a great job and earn a ton of traffic. It leads to earning a ton of leads. But, are they the best choice for your assisted living marketing strategy. That’s what we are talking about.

How Much Do They Cost

Let’s keep moving along because the question is, how much do they cost? If you’ve done any research into this already, you might know how much a placing agency costs. Let’s run through the numbers.

First of all, as we read in the definition, placing agencies are free for the seniors or family members using the service. The reason why placing agencies have boomed and they get so much traction online is because a lot of people use them. Why? They’re free to use!

So basically, I call the number or fill out the lead form. I give you my information and the details of the person who needs placed. Then I say, go to work for me. That company goes to work and comes back with a list of senior homes in the area that might be a potential fit. From the consumer’s standpoint, it is a great value. It’s free. I don’t have to go out and do a lot of searching out there because you are doing the searching for me. Now, are you going to provide the right senior home for me? I don’t really know. But, for the families, they are free.

How Placing Agencies Afford Their Marketing Budgets

Now, let’s talk about how much they cost and figure out how they pay for all of this. Placing agencies make money when they place a resident in a home, and they get paid by the senior living facility. They get paid by you. So, how much does it cost?

I have some clients who are using APlaceForMom.com, and this is the current rate they use, which is a pretty good benchmark for these referral agencies.

It’s a $3,000 fee just to get started. So, before you get a resident, you have to pay three thousand dollars. The, for every resident that they place in your home – for every bed, it’s a 120% referral fee. Whatever your monthly rate is for a senior living in your assisted living home, they are going to charge 120% on top of the $3,000.

Running the Math

Let’s run through the math.

An average assisted living home to stay in on a national level is $3,600 per month per resident. You’re monthly rate might be less or it might be more. Perhaps, you are targeting a higher rate with a Level 4 or Level 5 type of care. Your costs may be $4k, $5k, $6k per bed.

Looking at the average costs nationally, if you take $3,600 x 120%, that is $4,320.

Let’s say you have 10 beds in your residential assisted living home. If you use a placing agent to fill every bed in your home, that will cost you $43,200 + $3,000 for the original fee for a total of $46,200 to fill your home before any vacancies.

That’s a lot of money. I don’t know if you want to pay $46,000 to fill all your beds. Perhaps you feel like you can do better with your own marketing, but that is a lot of money.

Then, of course, you need to think about vacancy. So, you are looking at another $4,300 for every new resident. The average stay for assisted living is 28 months (21 months median). Most of your residents are elders, and they will either move on to skilled nursing, or they may pass away in your home. If you have ten beds, there’s a good chance you’re always going to have one vacancy in your home. Really easily, you are looking at $50,000 a year.

If you are at $5,000 per bed, 120% for the referral fee is $6,000 per resident lead. 10 beds x $6,000 = $60,000, not counting any vacancies. If you have $6,000 per bed, then you’re talking about $72,000 for marketing costs. Any give year, you are easily spending $50,000.

That’s not an unrealistic number if you are only using placing agencies to fill your beds with residents. That’s how much they cost. It’s not cheap. I remember seeing this amount of spend going through Gene’s class thinking, “wow, that’s a lot of money to spend on marketing.”

How Do Placing Agencies Get Their Leads?

So, how are the assisted living placing agencies actually getting their leads? It’s not very complicated. It’s pretty simple actually. What they are doing is an ongoing, effective digital marketing strategy. They are spending tons of money on Google Adwords. They’re doing LOTS of content marketing, and they are doing SEO and Social Media. It’s simply the basic blocks of a good digital marketing strategy. It’s just that they are heavily invested in it.

Let’s take a look.

If we go over and look at APlaceforMom.com again, we’ll see that they are putting out consistent, quality, authoritative and relevant content that helps their users.

They are doing articles every single day where they are creating new content. The placing agencies are spending money on writers. They are spending money on digital marketers to create a space that tells Google, “hey, look! We are really relevant. We are really important for helping people find the best senior home, and we are constantly building content.”

If you go over to their Social Media side, they have 260,000 likes on their Facebook page. They are constantly putting out photos and videos. In their social media accounts, they are linking to their blog. They are sharing and communicating with people. It’s a great social presence.

Placing Agencies’ Google Results

Then, if you go to Google’s SERP pages, you’ll see that they are spending money on ads – lots and lots and lots of money. How are they going to get that money back? YOU are going to pay that money back when they charge you referral fees for their leads.

If you search on Google “assisted living” in virtually any city in the country, you’re going to find APlaceForMom.com spending money on Adwords and getting those top SERP listings. They are like a huge vacuum sucking in all of these leads, so that they can charge you for them.

They are spending money on Adwords and if you scroll down on Google, you’ll see that because they’ve built up such a high domain authority trust through their digital marketing efforts, they are ranking organically. Here’s a list of 50 assisted living facilities near Draper, UT, and they are ranking for that search of when someone searches “assisted living in Draper UT”.

It’s not rocket science. That’s how they are getting their leads. They are doing digital marketing, and you are paying for their digital marketing efforts.  

Should You Use Placing Agencies?

Here’s the next question. Should you use them? Should you use placing agencies, or are they not worth it? I would say this. Yes!

If you go back to our Top 10 list of marketing efforts for your residential assisted living home, we have placing agencies on the list. Why? Because, they are effective. You will get leads. However, they are expensive. So, what I would say is why not keep them as a tool in your tool belt. At the same time, build up a digital marketing effort up yourself so that you can save money in the long term.

How Can You Save Thousands of Marketing Dollars?

Some of you may know Gene Guarino and his Residential Assisted Living Academy. I went through his class, and it was phenomenal teaching. Gene is awesome. If you want to get in this business, I highly recommend you go check out his website. Get out to Phoenix and go through his class. It is so worth it!

One of the things I saw in that class was a pro forma of a residential assisted living home. And, one of the line items was the marketing budget for getting residents into your home. He had 4 or 5 grand per month, actually double that, because you are ramping up and trying to get your beds filled in your home. He had a line item for paying placing agencies. I looked at that and thought, “$50,000? $60,000? That’s a ton of money! I can beat that!”, because I’ve been doing digital marketing for 10 years. I know I can get leads and fill those beds for cheaper than that.

So, for me personally, as I was looking at doing my own residential assisted living home, I was thinking, “oh, this is great” because I knew we could save money on our marketing efforts.

I knew I could beat those numbers not only for the short term, but also for the long term. This is a hunting vs farming effort. I knew that I would be able to farm those leads continually for my home year after year. And, every year, I’d be able to fill it up because I would have strong rankings and a good digital marketing presence.

Helping Others

Then, I thought, “I can help other people with that!”

I knew this could save other residential assisted living owners a lot of money, and that’s a big reason why we started specializing in this space. At the RALA academy, I sat in the room with 50 or 60 other people who all wanted to start their own home, and I thought to myself, “I can help these people. I can save them a lot of money both now and in the future.”

One other question, and we’re not going to get into it on this video is this. If APlaceforMom and all of these national brands like Brookdale and Emeritus are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars into their digital marketing efforts, can you catch up to them? Is it even worth it, or is it a waste of money to spend on my own digital marketing strategy. We’ll talk about that in another video.

 How Much Can I Save?

So, how much can you actually save with your own digital marketing? Well, if your annual budget is $50,000 to fill ten beds, then if you just save 10%, you are saving $5,000. Is it worth it to you to try to save 10%?

If you save 20%, you are 10 grand. 40% is $20,000. What if you could save 60% or $30,000 on your marketing budget for the first year? That’s what I’m talking about! That would be really good!

And, I mentioned previously, but I look at this as farming, not hunting. If you’re going to invest in your own digital marketing efforts for your senior home, what you are doing is sowing seed. I like to reap fruit from seed that grows as opposed to hunting for every single new lead. I consider using placing agencies as hunting. You might need them from time to time, but it’s a one time kill (no pun intended). But, you’re hunting and only getting one resident at at time. To me, that’s not a good long term marketing strategy.

Get The Leads Yourself! Cut Out The Middle Man.

I say, get the leads yourself and cut out the middle man because really, that’s what these placing agencies are. They are a glorified middle man … that is really good at digital marketing. And, I wish I had created APlaceforMom.com years ago, because I would be a millionaire. But, I didn’t. So, instead, what I’m going to do is help you save money, so that you don’t have to pay their expensive referral fees.

So, what should you do?

Well, that’s what this web series and the Top 10 list has been all about. Get your website up. Take care of your branding. Do SEO. Build content regularly. Get your social media out there regularly. Have an Adwords strategy.

This screenshot here is from one of our clients. When you look up “assisted living Draper, UT”, you’ll see them ranking both on mobile and desktop.

#1 Ranking On Google

If you look at the Google Maps results, you will see our client’s business, AssistedLivingofDraper.com. They are ranking #1, and if I look at the “more places” on the Google results, they are number one.

When someone is on their phone, and they need to find a place for their Mom or Dad to live. And, they’re searching for assisted living, guess what pops up? Our client! Because they have an effective digital marketing strategy.

Not only are they ranking on the local maps results, but they are ranking in the national organic results as well right by APlaceforMom.com.

When people search for “assisted living” in Draper, our client’s address and phone number pops up on desktop. And on mobile, Google gives a result with a simple button to call. That’s what I’m talking about!

That’s going to save you money because leads are coming organically to you if you’ve sown the right seeds for your digital marketing efforts. You’ve built content. You are earning domain trust. You’ve got social. You spend money on Adwords from time to time when you need to, but you are doing an effective digital marketing campaign to get the leads yourself.

That’s how you save thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every year.

How Much Do You Want To Save?

The question now is how much do you want to save, or how much can you save? Looking at our $50,000 marketing budget from early, let’s look at a few examples.

Save $8,000

Let’s say you put in $2,500 a month into a digital marketing campaign and that was your website, branding, content, SEO, Local SEO, and Social Media. Then, let’s say you put another $1,000 into Adwords for direct ad spend to jump the line on the search engine results page. If you add that up annually, that comes to $42,000 per year. Off a $50k budget, you are saving $8,000, which equals a 16% savings.

The client we showed you previously, we helped them maintain their rankings. There was a transition where you had to be very careful with what you were doing on the SEO side to keep them ranking #1. However, with our other client, we helped them build their rankings from scratch. They had no website. No branding. No anything. And within a bit over 6 months, they were ranking on the first page of Google.

Now, in the time you are trying to rank, it makes sense to use Adwords to jump the line. Maybe you even need to use placing agencies to get some cash flow in the door. But at the same time, you can be investing into your own rankings as part of your overall marketing strategy.

Save $14,000

Ok, let’s look at an example of if you were to spend $2,000 a month on your digital marketing and $1,000 on Adwords. Total spend annually would be $36,000, and you are saving $14,000, or 28%!

Save $26,000!

Let’s say you are in a situation where you invested in your SEO. You are ranking alongside your competitors, and you can hold off on your Adwords spend. However, you need to maintain your rankings. So, you continue to build content, social media, etc. Now, your annual budget is $24,000. You’re not having to spend on Adwords because you are generating leads from Google Maps. Against a $50,ooo budget, you are saving $26,000 or 52%!

I don’t feel like I am being unrealistic here. I am trying to be conservative. These numbers are from an example where your beds are only $3,600 a month. These marketing spend dollars are pretty much the same no matter how many beds you may have. So, if you have a home that charges $4k, $5k, or $6k per bed, the percentages and numbers are going to look even better.

Conclusion

This is why I’m so excited about all of this! You can save a lot of money on your marketing, and we want to help you do it!

We’ve zeroed in on this kind of marketing and are specializing in this senior living industry. Besides building the content, knowing how to do Local SEO, branding, and Adwords, we are gaining insights every single day. We are getting results for our clients. We are getting first page rankings on Google. And, we’re specializing in this space because we realize there is a better way – and we can save senior living business owners a lot of money for their business. We want your assisted living home to outperform the numbers in your pro forma.

Again, we’re MarketplaceEarth.com. Check out our other videos. If this video was helpful for you, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. That will help us out and encourage me to keep making these videos for you.

If you want to reach out, here’s our contact info. We’d love to talk to you and help you save a lot of money on your assisted living home. Thanks a lot guys. We’ll see you next time.

 

The post How to Get Assisted Living Leads, Save $ and NOT Pay Placing Agencies appeared first on Marketplace Earth - Growth Hacking Marketing for Startups.

How To Build A Website For Your Small Business … And Get Rankings 16 Dec 2016 7:11 AM (8 years ago)

There are about 10,000 different tutorials out there for how to build a website. If you have the time and patience, you can sit down on YouTube and watch tutorials for how to build your small business’ website on Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Weebly, Wobbly, Itchy, Scratchy, or Doc.

The good news is that in the information world we now live in, demand has driven competition for more and better website platforms. It’s now easier than ever to build a website for your small business that looks great. And generally, you can get it done quite cheap as well.

The question is, can you get rankings from your website? Do you have a digital marketing plan that goes along with that shiny new drag and drop, mobile friendly slider.

In this week’s video, we continue our series of our Top 10 Online Marketing Tools for owners of residential assisted living facilities. Again, if you own a local business, this video still applies to you. However, we have been focusing specifically for those in the senior living space who are looking for an effective online strategy that keeps them from having to pay senior placing agencies like A Place for Mom for every single resident of their assisted living homes.

So, if you are a small business owner looking to build your online marketing strategy, we hope you enjoy this video for how to build a website for your small business.

 

Video Transcript:

Introduction – How To Build A Website

How do I build a website for my small business? Which website platform should I choose? And how much is it going to cost me? And maybe more importantly, how will I get Google rankings once I build that website? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Hey guys! Welcome back to Marketplace Earth where we help brands grow. My name is Eric Sztanyo, and today, we are talking about how to build a website for your small business, which website platform should you choose? How much is this going to cost? And more importantly, how does this fit into my digital marketing strategy? I want to actually use my website to get leads coming in. So, how do I get rankings and use my website effectively?

So, let’s dive in.

We’re in the middle of a series where we’ve been helping residential assisted living homeowners figure out and go through the top ten marketing tools to help their business bring leads and bring residents into their homes so that they don’t have to pay a placing agent for every resident that comes into their home.

Now, if you are a local business that is not residential assisted living, that’s ok. This video is still for you. Here’s what this video is not. It’s not going to be a two hour long tutorial of how to actually build your website. It’s not going to be a step by step review of every single platform that’s out there. What we are going to do is show you a brief overview of some of the website platforms that are out there, how much they cost, and what we’ve used for our clients to build their website and be their base and foundation for their digital marketing strategy.

All right, let’s go!

Ok, we’ve been reviewing these top ten steps. Last week’s video we were talking about branding and how important that is. The next step is websites. So, if you are just bare minimum and are dipping your toe into starting a business, you need to be thinking about branding. Check out that other video. We’ll put a link above. And now we’re talking about websites. So, let’s dive in.

Purpose Of Your Website

First of all, what’s the purpose of your website. Well, pretty simple. It’s going to represent your brand online. It’s going to do a lot of things, but maybe most importantly, it’s representing your brand online. This is a lot of times your first impression with people. And number two, it’s supposed to get you leads. So, let’s make sure we set up a good website that has a strong call to action that builds trust and supports your brand.

“I’ll Just Get A Free One”

Now, here’s what I hear a lot in the world today. And this world of website building has changed a LOT in the last ten years. But, I hear people say, “aw, just get a free website.” And it’s like … I always cringe when I hear people say that. Do you really want to do that? A couple of things here.

First of all, you want to remember brand, brand, brand. Does your website improve your brand’s perception? If you just get a free one and you are cobbling things together, are people trusting you? Whether you are in the assisted living space or any small business, it’s got to look good. So, does it build trust?

The second thing is that these free website builders are usually free-ish. You might be able to get a free website, but the features you get with it are very minimal. So, nothing is free. It’s not going to be the best for your long term strategy.

You need to ask a few questions.

1. Do I actually own the domain?
2. Do I have control to edit it as necessary?
3. Is it SEO friendly?
4. Does it cover my hosting costs?
5. What about design and development hours?

So, you need to take this free-ish with a grain of salt.

Good News. More Options Than Ever.

Now, there are some really good cheap alternatives out there. The good news is that there are more options than ever to build a website. We live in the information age and because of the demand, there are a lot more platforms and options out there then there were 10 years ago. And, they’re doing a great job with quality templates and user friendly drag and drop style front end builders that anyone can do. You don’t have to be a coding expert, locked in your room studying html and css and blah blah blah.

Some of the top options out there are Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.

Those are maybe the three biggest ones. Now, let’s look at a few of these.

From Wix, “Wix unites beauty and advanced technology to create stunning websites. It’s easy and free.”

I would say that sites like Wix and Squarespace, I’ve had a limited interaction with them. But, they are pretty easy. Now free? That’s where we are talking about free-ish.

Here’s a quick look at Wix’ premium plans. They start at $5 a month, but what do you get for $5. I’m not going to spend a ton of time here. You guys can look at the features. But essentially, what you are looking at with Wix – same thing with Squarespace, you are looking at around $14 – $25 a month. Somewhere in that range.

Squarespace is something similar if you are going monthly vs. annually, you’re looking at $16 – $26 a month. So, they’re both in that space. Very affordable. The thing I don’t love about these two is that you are kind of renting your website vs. if you outright buy a theme on WordPress that you own.

So, it is an affordable option. They are user friendly. I like using WordPress, but I’m not opposed to using Squarespace and Wix.

Local SEO Musts For Your Business Website

But, there are a few things you need to make sure for your website as you are building your online brand, beginning your digital marketing efforts online, trying to get Google rankings, trying to say to Google, “hey, look at me!”

These are absolute musts. Whatever website option you are looking out there, make sure you own the domain. You can’t have yourbusiness.wix.com. That won’t work. Make sure you own the domain. That means you have to have hosting.

You have to make sure in today’s day and age that your website is going to be responsive and mobile friendly. Now, a lot of websites have been making this switch and Google did an update a bit ago where if your website is not mobile friendly, you are going down in the rankings because so many people use mobile devices now to search online. So, you have to, have to have a responsive and mobile friendly website.

You need to be sure you can edit such things as schema markup and your NAP for your Google My Business local SEO efforts. So, did down into the websites to find out. I know Rand Fishkin, if anyone has looked at moz.com, has endorsed Squarespace. And I’ve used Squarespace, and I kind of like their SEO efforts, but I don’t think they are as quite as in depth as a Wordpres site. That’s just my personal opinion.

You need to make sure the site works well for you digital marketing efforts. You need to be able to blog easily. It interacts well with your social media. There’s clear call to actions. It’s easy to edit. It’s something your comfortable with.

I Like WordPress

Now, here’s my vote. And, I’m not an affiliate. You need to be careful because there are a lot of websites out there that walk you through comparing the different website platforms like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Weebly, Jimdo, Itchy, Scratchy and Doc. Be careful on these because a lot of them are written by affiliates. So, gather the information and make your own decision on which one you want to use. But realize that often times they are getting paid by the company to write the article and promote their service. So, just be careful.

I personally, and I am not an affiliate, I like WordPress. I’ve been using WordPress for over 10 years, and I’m familiar with it. For those who are brand new to WordPress, there might be a bit more of a steeper learning curve, but it’s not crazy. It’s maybe not as user friendly or intuitive as some of the newer platforms, but it’s an open source platform. So, there’s lots of plugins. It offers the most customization of any platform out there, and it’s the most flexible. Whereas if you are just grabbing a template from Squarespace or Wix, you don’t have as much flexibility to build something.

Now, if you have a very simple template, and you don’t need anything custom, then one of the other platforms can work great for you. I just like WordPress. I think it’s great for blogging and your digital marketing efforts.

Avada WordPress Theme

I just want to show you a theme that I’ve used and liked. It’s called the Avada theme.

So, popping over to the Avada theme on envatomarket. It’s the #1 selling theme of all time. To buy the theme, it’s $60, and to get support for a year is $18. So, as opposed to renting a website each month for $12- $20 a month, here, you buy the license and own it.

You might need the help of a developer to get started, but it’s pretty simple. If you need technical help, you would probably need that on any of these platforms.

What’s great about Avada is that it has integrated a lot of the other features like drag and drop. There are lots of different beautiful templates to choose from. It’s definitely mobile friendly. There are all kinds of features that come with it. I just like it. I’ve used it for my own website and a number of clients now.

Here’s a look at one of my client’s websites. Really nice banners with slider revolution up top that you can play around with. Galleries you can add and videos you can add easily. Here’s a look at their backend editor. You have a drag and drop. I can edit right here. It’s really easy to add an element. There are lots of elements to choose from in terms of buttons, Google maps, CTAs, etc. It’s easy. I like it. And, a lot of you may be familiar with this kind of blog post editor. You have SEO tools like Yoast and other plugins to integrate.

So, it’s up to you, but I like this theme.

Review – Decisions To Make

All right guys, so just kind of to review here. When you are looking at which website platform and how to build a website for your small business online, here are the things you want to remember.

1. Build Your Brand – Will it help you build your brand?
2. SEO Friendly – Is it SEO friendly?
3. Do Yourself or Outsource (time/$) – Do you want to do it yourself and use a really easy do-it-yourself website or do you think, I want to outsource this. I want some kind of custom design. I’d rather spend my time doing things that I’m good at. So, you might think a little about do I want to rent this website or own it? And, have someone help me build it.
4. Long Term Cost (Rent vs Own) – Lastly, long term cost. Do I want to rent it and have a monthly fee? Or, do I want to own it. Buy the theme, and just pay ongoing hosting, which will be around $5 a month.

Helping Brands Grow

Hey guys, hopefully this video was helpful for you as you’re going out there and building your brand. Again, my name is Eric Sztanyo from Marketplace Earth.

If you need help with your website or any of your digital marketing needs, feel free to contact us and thanks so much. Please subscribe to the channel. We’ll see you next time.

 

The post How To Build A Website For Your Small Business … And Get Rankings appeared first on Marketplace Earth - Growth Hacking Marketing for Startups.

Branding and SEO – How Your Brand Affects Your Search Rankings 9 Dec 2016 8:02 AM (8 years ago)

Branding and SEO, they are two different sections of your overall marketing strategy, right? Well, not so fast. In this week’s video, we take a look at how your brand can impact your rankings in Google.

Particularly, if you are a small or local business, how are you going to compete with the big national brands? And, why do they always seem to get the higher rankings? Does Google have a way of determining which brands are more powerful and they give higher rankings accordingly? Well … yes … and no.

Watch the video to learn more and see our case studies with some different assisted living facilities. If this video is helpful for you, be sure to thumbs up, comment and subscribe. Thanks!

 

This video is Part 1 of a Marketing Your Assisted Living series. Click here to see more. 

 

We are continuing our video series to help residential assisted living owners with their online marketing. In our first video, we did an overview of how to market your residential assisted living home. We covered the Top 10 Marketing Tools you should be considering if you are trying to keep your costs down for placing residents in your assisted living home. While we are focusing on assisted living in this series, many of the marketing tools will apply to any local small business who is implementing a Local SEO strategy.

 

Spend Time On Crafting Your Core Beliefs and Brand

So, let’s talk about branding and SEO.

Branding is obviously an enormous topic, and we spend time in the video talking a little about where to begin with your brand. It needs to flow out of core beliefs from the owners – what you care about, what you are passionate about. If you are already in the assisted living business or plan on getting into residential assisted living and haven’t spent time working on your brand, then STOP!!! Take the time to sit down and develop who you are, and what you are all about.

When I first went to work for Cladwell, a Cincinnati fashion-tech startup, the first project I got into was the brand. At the time I came on, the brand was not true to what the founders believed about men, clothing, and life. So, we did a deep dive into beliefs and out of that work, we came up with a mission that I was extremely proud to create.

At Cladwell, I helped grow their user base from 10 dudes to over 200,000, but I think the single project I was most proud of was creating this About Page that shared Cladwell’s story and core beliefs.

To boil it down, we determined that all men matter. Whereas most clothing/fashion companies like to say, “we’re cool. You’re not. Buy our stuff to be cool for a while.” We drove a stake in the ground and said that every man has worth and inherent value. Therefore, they should dress well to express that value and dignity bestowed upon all men who are created in the image of God.

That work in branding helped guide a lot of decisions for the company. It helped us earn trust with our users. And, it’s guided the path for a lot of other marketing efforts.

So, did it help our rankings?

 

Branding and SEO Correlations

So, does a strong brand really impact your rankings? Yes and no.

As Rand Fishkin points out in this Whiteboard Friday, there is not a specific piece in Google’s algorithm that says, “I will rank one stronger brand over a weaker brand.” However, stronger brands tend to create a cycle of great SEO ranking factors.

If a brand is known and trusted, people might be more willing to link to a piece of content from that site. Or, maybe they will share on social media platforms more often.

Strong brands often spend resources on quality website design and user experiences. This tends to create higher data points for site usage. If Google looks at two sites and one has an average of 2 minutes of site usage time and the other has five seconds, then, they naturally Google says, “people like this site better. Maybe, I should give it a bump in rankings.”

You can go down the list of other ranking factors for SEO and see how a strong brand which invests regularly in branding can develop stronger rankings over time.

 

Putting It Together

So, how does this impact you and your small business? How should you build your brand at your residential assisted living home?

Clearly, your brand is much more than just your rankings in Google. Your brand includes your reputation, people’s perception of your business, the quality of your service, how you treat your residents and their families, how you treat your employees, etc. You can build a great business simply by providing excellent and quality value to your community.

At the same time, you can leverage that brand into higher SEO rankings by getting a bit creative and thinking about how to translate that brand authority into the online world.

Spend time on design. Create consistent and quality content. Reach out to the community. Give great service and ask for online reviews. Reach out to other brands and websites and create partnerships.

So, as you are thinking through building your brand, realize that typically, the stronger your brand, the better impact you will have on your SEO and rankings.

The post Branding and SEO – How Your Brand Affects Your Search Rankings appeared first on Marketplace Earth - Growth Hacking Marketing for Startups.

Launching Our YouTube Channel – Time to Create 1 Dec 2016 5:26 AM (8 years ago)

I am very excited to announce the launching of Marketplace Earth’s YouTube channel. Check out our channel trailer to get an overview.

Over the past few years, I’ve spent most of my time helping brands grow. If you look around our website and see a bunch of cobwebs and dust, there’s a reason why. I’ve put all of my energy into helping other companies and very, very little into helping my own.

Well, it’s time to sow some seed.

I love YouTube. I think it is one of the best things that has ever happened to the internet. And in terms of helping to get a message out there, I don’t know if there is a better platform.

What is Marketplace Earth’s message? We help brands grow.

So, if you are a startup, a small business, or even need growth within a project for a larger company, let us know. We love to come up with creative and sustainable solutions and crack the system for growth.

Here’s to many more episodes and the growth of this channel. We’d love to have you join in on the conversation and share about your business needs and growth challenges or successes.

Click here to check out our channel and subscribe for Growth Hacking tips, news, audits and case studies.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: 

Hi Guys,

Welcome to Marketplace Earth where we are all about Helping Brands Grow. We specialize in helping Small Businesses and Startups Grow their Brand through sustainable growth hacking solutions.

My name is Eric Sztanyo, and I’ve been doing Internet Marketing since 2007. I’ve founded several of my own e-commerce stores, and I’ve helped dozens of clients create and execute  their online marketing strategies.

Every week on this channel, we will be making videos about Growth Hacking tips, news, audits and case studies.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that the best businesses are those that bring the most value and help the greatest amount of people.

So, my passion is taking what I’ve learned to help businesses like yours Grow, Reach More People, and ultimately Change More Lives.

So, subscribe. And, let’s work together on growing your business and helping more people.

The post Launching Our YouTube Channel – Time to Create appeared first on Marketplace Earth - Growth Hacking Marketing for Startups.