Question

What would you do?  We have a client that wants to fill up an Assisted Living home that is being built on the west side of town and boss suggested running search ads for that side of town ONLY.What would you do? We have a client that wants to fill up an Assisted Living home that is being built on the west side of town and boss suggested running search ads for that side of town ONLY. City population is 390k. Budget $3, 500-$7, 000 to play with over 6 months. I suggested running search ads for a radius of the city with a mix of retargeting display ads. If the goal is to collect leads to fill beds, which do you think is the best strategy?  

Answer 1

Yea I would open it up to derive general interest and use retaret ads to drive the conversation. If you can generate interest from a certain persona that's shows intent, you can leverage the retarget audience to gain better performance for your top of funnel placements. Start small until you find something that shows potential, then scale. To add to what @kato said, research your market and find out what makes people choose one facility over another and play that tune to your advantage so to speak. By understanding buyer motivations you can hyper target high intent prospects. Look at reviews and competitor sentiment, as this is a lifestyle offer and customer satisfaction is going to probably be to be your best angle, followed by amenities.  

Comments

If you do go broader, you can always highlight the location (suburb etc) in the copy to allow people to disregard. Even run a short A/B on with and without. You might get less clicks on the 'location mentioned' (save $) but a higher CR and ROAS.  

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Exactly, broader audience, more targeted copy, on ad and landing page, as it's not just about the click it's the conversion. In this suggestion you are assuming location is the immediate motivating factor for prospects (not my niche so I have no idea, but suggest backing up the theory with data), so making it clear in the copy is a definite. Take a look at the journey of your quickest conversion cycles and measure that against you're test results.  

Answer 2

Suggest them to make a test on smaller budget to prove your point.  

Answer 3

One immediate key question is what impact does geography have on a decision of where to choose assisted living vs other items like facilities, reputation etc. How far are most people prepared to travel to visit? Time is probably more a concern than distance, so look for traffic corridors etc perhaps.  

Comments

Exactly. My thoughts were that people would come from out of town or the other side of town to have their loved ones at a nice care home. It's weird saying only "west siders" would care about this home.  

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So its still being built? There are no existing residents to gauge how far their families are away etc? Do they have other facilities they can draw insight from?  

Answer 4

Id test the cpc for that area but expand and use a mix of display as well. Google’s geo-margin of error is pretty broad. 390k is a medium sized city. Folks from one side would easily travel to the other for good care

Answer 5

Test both. Still wouldn't do big radius. 5miles max. from city.  

Answer 6

I worked in that space before. A lot of times, clients that moved in would actually be from other states because there wasn't any availability at any of the assisted homes.  

Answer 7

And a thorough brief with the client on key points like customer avatars, decision makers VS service users, USP, etc. The client's been running the business a while? They've got all the answers just don't know what the questions should be. That's our job.  

Answer 8

Certainly target the market at some of the older assisted living facilities in and around the area. Direct mailers to residence

Comments

@cyprian I wish they were doing direct mail! I’ve worked in the industry for 5+ years and print still works wonders on that demo.  

Answer 9

Wonder how FB ads targeting hospitals in the area would do. people sitting there with family browsing FB thinking about what to do next.  

Answer 10

Lol. Run YouTube ads by zip code to the area. I would also test neighboring states to see if people bite.