An online live-in care agency contacted me to help them grow. They were offering a good value service, had a dozen or so clients and were getting quite a steady stream of enquiries from one marketing source. They were also trying to compete with some well-established organisations and wanted to position themselves to generate more business.
The process
The day of consultancy was split into three parts over a couple of days. An initial 90-minute telephone call was enough to talk through what was working well, what issues they faced, what their goals were and who they felt their main competitors were.
I then went away and reviewed how well their website communicated what the client had told me about their business. I also did some online and telephone mystery shopping of their key competitors. During the mystery shopping exercise I captured information about the service offered by these competitors, their pricing (what was and wasn’t included), the processes these organisations go through and how all of this made me feel as a would-be customer. At every stage I was comparing this to what I was seeing on the client’s website and what they had told me about their own internal processes.
My findings and recommendations were then presented back to the client in a 2-hour zoom call. At the end of the day I sent the client my summary notes.
Recommendations
The final part of “the day” was a zoom call where I talked through my findings and recommendations. I helped my client to more clearly see how potential customers might first be trying to work out which “type” of care they need (visiting care, live in care or a care home). I also helped them to see that those looking at live-in-care then need to understand the pros and cons of booking carers directly, using an agency to recruit staff, getting a live-in care provider with 24/7 support or a CQC registered provider. And that’s before choosing the actual provider they’ll go with.
I walked the client through my online searches showing them which organisations I had found when searching for a service like theirs and why I had selected two organisations to mystery shop in depth.
I showed them how their main competitors’ websites worked well and where their own website was and was not working. I highlighted some inconsistent messaging, information they should really be including on their website and places where their process would be a barrier to winning customers. I showed them some of the information that competitors were providing and challenged them to provide evidence to back up some of their claims. I also helped them to think about their pricing and when in the journey they would mention it. Given that they were at the lower end I suggested that price would be a selling point that they might want to mention early on in the user journey.
Finally, I helped them to think about other potential places to advertise and how to set a marketing budget and track return on investment. I advised them to make the changes to their internal processes and website before spending any money on promotion.
I provided the client with the notes I had taken and left them with a list of clear action points to implement on their website, promotional activity and when handling enquiries.