Aged Care INsite’s No Vacancy? article, yesterday reported on warnings of an impending baby boomer “tsunami” as a result of Australia’s ageing population, and, at the same time, residential facilities are not providing enough beds due to low government subsidies. According to the article, aged care providers are losing around $13 per day on high care beds. With such high costs, many aged care facilities are introducing Extra Services wings to raise capital.
However, filling Extra Services beds requires time and effort to ensure potential residents can see the value of paying an extra daily fee for features such as big flat-screen TVs, larger rooms, a wider variety of meals and beer or wine served with dinner.
Arcare provides aged care facilities in Brisbane and Melbourne and offers a complete range of aged care services, including low care, high care, dementia and Extra Services. In 2007 Arcare Greenhill opened in Epping. Originally offering low care and high care services, Arcare Greenhill is currently undergoing a transition from high care to Extra Services. With competitors in the Whittlesea City Council area, a strategic approach to marketing is required.Ellis Jones was commissioned to develop a Facility Marketing Model which would act as a filter in order to develop a clear and concise marketing communications plan.
The model has been designed to be used by Arcare’s marketing team and Admissions Coordinator to investigate the market in which the Greenhill facility operates and guide an integrated, multi-channel response. From the information gathered, Arcare will be able to determine and segment its target market, where they congregate and the most effective methods of communication and engagement.
To assist the investigative stage, Ellis Jones developed a family and residential survey which helped identify a number of factors, such as where residents first found out about Arcare, what they most like about Arcare, which suburb they lived in before moving to Arcare and their cultural background and spiritual beliefs.
Analysing the results and matching them against a range of other inputs, Ellis Jones was able to locate the most popular social groups in the top three catchment suburbs as well as the most popular cultural and faith community groups and sport clubs. Ellis Jones also identified additional health and government stakeholders.
A marketing material audit of Arcare and its competitors within Whittlesea LGA revealed Greenhill had key points of differentiation which can be mapped to market need.
The full process will be repeated at all Arcare sites, ensuring the most sophisticated approach to attracting, admitting and building relationships with residents and families.
