The work: Brand repositioning and marketing plan.
The summary: Switching from a ‘brand awareness’ strategy to a customer (resident) experience one improved resident satisfaction and referrals by 4x.
The result: Record sales 7 months in a row.
The challenge.
St Ives were operating in a challenging market, with lots of competition both from traditional retirement homes and new models of retirement living. On top of this, the media were aggressively attacking the industry from a few different angles. Oh, and sales were down.
Diagnosis.
Starting by talking with residents (huh?), it was clear St Ives were promoting the wrong thing - people didn’t purchase a lifestyle, they purchased security. What residents wanted was for management to ‘take care of my security so I can do what I want in peace’.
So the messaging was wrong, the advertising was misdirected, and we were neglecting a major source of marketing and leads: our residents.
Solution.
Marketing attention was switched from big budget, big reach advertising, to internal satisfaction.
A big chunk of the marketing budget was reallocated to internal ‘resident thank you’ events, like wine tastings and concerts. Warm prospects were invited along and the satisfied residents did the selling.
Advertising was reallocated to local papers (the kind our audience read), saving huge amounts of cash, and to make sure this wasn’t just a marketing gimmick, 6 areas of measurable focus for improving the contentment of our residents were identified and tracked to produced a quarterly ‘happiness score’ which showed management where to focus, and gave us some solid PR.
The results after one year.
Record sales 7 months in a row
4x increase in referrals, generating >$1m profit
45% decrease in marketing spend per sale
107% increase in sales
8% improvement in resident satisfaction in 6 months
“Andy successfully changed our perspective on what our marketing should be. He implemented a number of customer-focused initiatives that resulted in measurable improvements in resident satisfaction, resulting in increased sales. Most impressive was how he brought the whole organisation along on the journey – from our reception team to the Board. Referrals are now a large focus of our marketing, advertising less so. I’d happily recommend any business looking for a smarter way of marketing to get in touch with Andy.”