I am often contacted by care homes with occupancy issues who need to either start marketing for the first time or who are considering invest more money in marketing. Often people think that their main problem is a lack of enquiries and that they therefore need to invest in promoting themselves. Often they have already invested in a new website or are considering investing in online marketing.
Whilst raising awareness is usually part of the answer, my holistic approach to working with care home managers usually uncovers one or more key reasons why doing more promotion will not in itself solve their problems.
Here are just some of the things that I have uncovered when working with a range of care homes:
- A new nursing home I worked with was invisible online because it’s CQC registration was combined with another of its care homes. Resolving the issue required the home to either separate out the CQC registrations or have a new approach of promoting the two homes together. It was critical that this decision was made and the issue resolved before any money was spent on their website or external promotion
- My in-depth questioning of a Registered Manager revealed some great things about the home, but the evidence had not been collated and they weren’t mentioned on the website or when I was shown round the home. Had this client invested in promotional activity they may have got more enquiries, but without clarifying and effectively communicating their key selling points they were going to find it hard to win any business.
- In one home I worked with the pricing of all the rooms in the home was the same, despite a wide variation in the quality of rooms. As a result the best rooms were always filled first (for a lower fee than they should have commanded) and vacancies were usually less desirable rooms. These were very difficult to sell and as a result the home were often forced to fill these with PCT clients for significantly less money. The solution was to price each of the rooms separately and make only the rooms that were difficult to sell privately available to Local Authority and PCT clients.
- In another home with vacancies, staff handling enquiries were turning away people with Dementia despite a high demand and the Home being able to support these clients. This required the home to do some work on defining which type of clients it could support, to ensure enquiries were routed to more appropriate staff and to better train the member of staff who was handling enquiries so that these opportunities were capitalised on.
- Despite having a “guide to show rounds”, my mystery shopping enquiry to this care home showed that staff were not following the documented processes and as a result opportunities were being missed to capture the details of the visitor and highlight the key selling points of the home.
- Rather than focusing on the quality of care or things that are specifically relevant to the would-be resident during another show round the member of staff got bogged down talking about the history of the home, using jargon (EMI, RGN etc) and showing me parts of the home that were irrelevant (the Dementia wing when my mum doesn’t have Dementia).
- In one home I was taken into a really untidy office for a meeting with the registered manage who appeared very flustered. It didn’t fill me with confidence. Apart from tidying the office, part of the solution I recommended was taking visitors to another room to discuss the home and the potential client’s needs.
- In several homes I mystery shopped the home manager was unaware of the telephone enquiry I had made because the person taking the call had not captured my details and instead asked me to call back at another time.
- During another telephone enquiry the person at the end of the phone told me the price of the rooms. When I expressed surprise at the cost, they suggested that the manager often discounts the rooms to £300 less than she had stated. There was no way I was going to pay the rate the home wanted after that conversation.