Many new executives in the retirement village sector have a wrong perception of the basics of marketing retirement villages to generate real leads that become sales.
What they fundamentally miss is the basic fact that very few village homes are available for sale so the objective is not a high number of leads but rather a low quantity of quality enquiries by customers prepared to act.
In 2018 just 20,000 new and pre-loved retirement village units will be available for sale. This equates to 91 units per working day across 2000 villages.
A village of 100 units will have the target of 10 to 12 sales per year – one per month across 20 working days.
Marketers have to consider how much time can be spent with each potential customer in guiding them to the last big decision of their life, with each customer being a unique story.
The reality is, salespeople can’t attend to large numbers of enquiries. They need to be delivered a steady, small stream of educated potential customers who have a real need for the retirement village solution.
Big lead generation campaigns therefore do more damage than good because they swamp salespeople.
Before AdWords and Facebook existed, the standard rule of thumb was 10 enquiries would lead to 3 people walking down the drive, resulting in one sale.
Now marketers look for hundreds of leads hoping for one sale. This is actually inefficient.
Consistent local campaigns, word-of-mouth and directory listings like villages.com.au (acknowledging our self-interest) generate consistent quality, educated leads who are putting up their hand saying they have a need now.
This is efficient marketing for salespeople and a responsible investment in marketing dollars.
