By Carl Roberts, Associate Director of Sales and Marketing, Runwood Homes
It is no secret that over the last 2 years, occupancy levels across the industry have been heavily affected as a result of the pandemic and recovery remains, a key priority for owners and operators across the UK.
A core benefit to participating in Care Home Open Week is the ability to connect with future residents. Enquiry pipelines need to be layered with families needing care in the short, medium, and long term. Care Home Open Week allows you to reach a diverse network of families at different stages in their care journey.
It is important to plan how best to structure your week so that it meets the needs of your home. You should reflect on your pipelines, stakeholders and your market and ask three simple questions:
- Where are the gaps?
Consider whether the weighting of your enquiries reflects the weighting of care categories in your home. For example, if your care home has a 70% v 30% split on dementia to residential care, ask, does your pipeline reflect this? If the answer is no, then plan events that will attract that care category.
Furthermore, if your ambition is to rebalance to a more even weighting of care categories or to increase one type, then plan events that will attract this type to achieve your goals.
- Who are your top referrers?
All homes need to have a diverse network of referral sources that direct families to your homes. Care Home Open Week is the perfect opportunity to dive into your networks. We should be considering two points:
a) Who is referring that has a high rate of admission?
B) Who should be referring that isn’t?
With this in mind, you can plan events that reinforce your relationships with top referrers and connect with referrers that should be more active.
- Who is the primary enquirer, and what is their relationship to the resident?
This is a metric that can play a big part in the success of generating more enquires. In Q1 at Runwood Homes Senior Living, over 40% of all enquiries have come from daughters and yet, less than 15% have come from sons. This tells us that we need to be approaching our events with two thoughts in mind.
- What events can we run that will be appealing to daughters? As we recognise the importance of this referrer type.
- We acknowledge that our son enquirers should be higher, so what can we do to attract more?
Taking a data-driven approach to plan your week’s activities and events is vital in making sure you get the most out of your week for attracting future residents and building your pipelines.
Families considering care are more clued-up on our sector than ever before, and the sector is as competitive as it has ever been. So, it is critical this Care Home Open Week you position your events in a way that accurately reflects the needs of your home’s occupancy requirements, both present and future.
There is still time to register for Care Home Open Week! Register here!
