Marketing Automation to Drive Home Care Growth

Marketing Automation to Drive Home Care Growth

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Mike Paladino: Welcome to the CareSmartz360 on Air Podcast which is a home care Podcast. I’m Mike Paladino, an account executive here at Caresmartz.

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Mike Paladino: No, we all know the importance of marketing automation which transforms home care agencies to streamline and enhance their digital. Marketing efforts. But the real challenge is figuring out just how to kick things off.

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Mike Paladino: That’s why we’ve got a seasoned pro in the house today. Karina Tama, founder and CEO of Senior Care Clicks with more than 8 years of hands-on experience, Karina has spent most of her career working in the senior care industry as a digital marketing manager for home care and nursing home facilities. Karina. Thank you for taking the time today.

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Mike Paladino: Thank you for having me awesome. We really appreciate it now, Karina, I know you are someone who cares deeply for seniors. And with your expert skills and digital marketing, you are thriving in your space.

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Mike Paladino: Many home care. Agencies also want to do the same, but it is harder, and it seems, as you know, better than most. So, in your opinion, what are the key components of a successful marketing automation strategy for home care agencies? And how do these elements contribute to sustained success?

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Karina Tama: Well, when you want that, your home care agency drives. There are some specific things that should be present on the market automation strategy.

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Karina Tama: I will tell you which ones are the most important, get clients, obviously.

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Karina Tama: for that. Hong Kong uses different channels like websites.

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Karina Tama: advertising social media events.

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Karina Tama: But you know. Besides that, you need to be able to follow up.

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Karina Tama: pull up is key in any Shannon, even in events. Because other events you need to send email, try to build the relationships. So automation plays a big role here because it can automate all communications.

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Then we can talk about, you know, keep those leads warm

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Karina Tama: and engage. So automation will take care of that through sending communication via email Ccms. Even connecting calls, you know. So in that way the home can easily keep the communication there. Federal sources, all the communication with everybody.

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Then we can talk about referrals

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Karina Tama: are big, huge. In this industry. I have worked with companies that rely on big, tiny referrals. So having automation systems in place will allow Hong Kong to send email communications and use later to the referral sources to be on top of their mind and also expand

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Karina Tama: their territory and get more referrals, you know. Communicate with people in the area to get more referrals. Then, card giver recruitment, you know, having an automated system to recruit card givers is key, because as a company grows you need more care givers to take care of the cases.

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Karina Tama: It’s very costly to acquire. Ca, qualify card givers. So you have an automated system in place. The Hungarian country group, more caregivers

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Karina Tama: and can even increase the chances to bring those qualified candidates in House for interview, for an orientation.

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Karina Tama: Then reviews, reviews are huge, and I see many of my clients are struggling with this. They don’t know how to collect reviews. They don’t have anyone to collect reviews.

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Karina Tama: It’s a very hard industry to collect reviews, you know, because things happen, and then

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Karina Tama: The client is so happy anymore. So you need to know how to collect the review, when to collect the view and have a strategy in place. So

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Karina Tama: What automation does in our case in our pro is that we send our survey to make sure that the clients are happy, because feedback is really important for the industry. With positive feedback without feedback. In general, Hong Kong improve can become better.

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Karina Tama: and also other sort of a zone. The system will request a review. so this will help the Hong Kong to increase the reuse.

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Karina Tama: and will also help local SEO, because we’ll improve

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Karina Tama: that it will improve the online prices. Google Maps for the agency. So that will compare into more calls. This is to the website and more late. So you see, everything works together. Finally, I will say that, nor sure

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Karina Tama: You know you have to know short.

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Karina Tama: Everybody in your agency card giver is stopping referral sources, clients, all clients, even you can run refer? You can create a program to ask for referrals to your previous clients.

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Karina Tama: So these people. Everybody that has some relationship with your agency will really help the agency grow. So basically, the automation will send a newsletter. You know, holiday emails, communication. General, let no people.

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Karina Tama: What is your agency doing? Events? Everything to keep them engaged? Exactly so. This for me, in our experience as an agency. are the key components.

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Karina Tama: Yeah. And I love that you pointed on how it all works cohesively together. It’s not just one single solution. It’s not one particular thing that works well. It’s really focusing on all the key practice areas that really set the team up for success, growth and nurturing clients to make sure they remain happy under your umbrella.

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That’s fantastic thanks for that response. Now, my second question is, how does marketing automation contribute to things like cost effectiveness for home care agencies and what strategies can agencies implement to maximize the return on investment in those automation tools.

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Karina Tama: marketing automation for home care agencies is really a game changer.

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Karina Tama: because, to be honest, completely, really harsh. But market automations in general could replace or can take care. Manual pass.

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Karina Tama: So that is a big time cost effective because they just can save money, you know.

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Karina Tama: So the people say, Oh, you know, automations will replace people. Yes and no.

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Karina Tama: but this is what happened you’re we’re talking about cost about business, the business side, right? So we really help because we take care of a lot of manual tasks.

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Karina Tama: For example, in customer interaction. Okay, I can give you a very specific sample. AI

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Karina Tama: can play a big role in website chat. Okay, when someone goes to the website and has a chat, and the person who wants to call the one to fill out the form was just to share this browsing. So AI can’t take care of this communication, can even

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Karina Tama: take this lead to a book, an assessment or to book a free consultation.

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Karina Tama: We can also apply the same principle to Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Google, my business, all the channels. So you know, it’s like you have 24 sending assistance. Then, if we are talking about saving time. Automations will take all view of the business owner or the team in the home way will take care everything that’s manager, repeated task daily task, you know, like sending an email

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Karina Tama: Automation has templates, you know. So is everything in there

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Karina Tama: to take a manual task. So save a lot of time. Therefore recruitment.

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Karina Tama: There are companies out there that provide recruitment services. Are they? Charge 100 dollars for one card game. But if you have a good automatic system in place for recruiters, the home can take care of the whole Rec. The ho! The whole recruitment process. They’ll need to go and hire a third party company.

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Karina Tama: You know. So then, it is a feature that I love that most of my clients love of course. Take back text text text back this call. For example, someone calls the agency. Nobody picks out the phone for different reasons, you know. So the system will send a text

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Karina Tama: to the caller and starting, getting with the caller showing that way, the automation will make sure that the agency does not lose any potential client.

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Karina Tama: So you see all the cost effective for the

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Karina Tama: It’s great. It’s a lot of things that automation can do. Yeah, I love that response. I think you you said it perfectly, Karina, where you know II do think there’s a bit of a stigma against AI and and automation and bots that kind of thing, and II do think that there’s so much value as you mentioned to be had with that end of it, because, like you said, you can automate a lot of the manual tasks. So the tasks that you know, really shouldn’t be focused on too heavily by the team, because there are tools that can do

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for us. And it allows you ultimately as an owner or as an administrator, to focus on those business growth activities and getting better and other practice areas that do require a human touch. So I really think that’s a perfect way to explain that.

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Mike Paladino: My next question for you, Karina, is now with regard to automation. What challenges have you observed? Home care agencies face when implementing marketing automation? And what advice can you provide to them to overcome potential obstacles?

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Karina Tama: This is a tough question, because implementing automation for the home care industry is your need.

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Karina Tama: And

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Karina Tama: you know, the challenge I seen is education and adoption

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Karina Tama: education, because

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Karina Tama: people in the industry, most of the people in industry they want to do things traditional ways, you know, like always cool. It’s very tough to change this mentality and also to convince them to try

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Karina Tama: technology that is evolving all the time or for them to invest. Money is investment. No, I spend invest money in your tools

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Karina Tama: usually. Hong Kong agency owners, or you know, there’s Rbc, so they don’t want to invest the time learning. because I don’t see the media benefit. Okay, even though we told them that this will say time, it’s still a learning course involved.

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Karina Tama: Then adopting is very tough for everybody, for all of us, because we are scared and also changing so fast, it’s very hard for everyone. So am I to put this on

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Karina Tama: okay against the owners. So these are the biggest challenges. For example, how we face this challenge.

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Karina Tama: Wow, it is work, you know. But we create what we call a Help center inside our dashboard.

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Karina Tama: I will have short videos like one may not very straight to the point

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Karina Tama: to show to clients or users how to help with the more specific features because even if the technology does a lot for them, they still need to interact with the technology. You know.

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Karina Tama: many software demonstrations. Things like that. I call it the Orange Extension Quirk.

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And you know, let’s just say you and I are working in an office, and we? We’re walking through every day, and we step over a cord that’s in the center of the room because it’s always been that way. We’d never mention it, or it just doesn’t bother us, even though we know in the back of our minds it’s a safety hazard. Likely somebody can trip on it right

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Then we hire somebody new who joins the office, and they say, Why is there that orange extension cord across the center of the floor? That’s not good. We can trip and fall and hit our heads, or something right? So somebody else came in, brought a new perspective, and allowed us to think differently as to why, something that’s always been a certain way

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Mike Paladino: is maybe a challenge that we should look at fixing. And I think that theory applies to home care in many other industries, right? Whereas there’s a comfortable way of doing something that’s more traditional, but maybe not optimal. And I think that’s where marketing automation and technology comes into play to again, give owners like you and many others more time. And your data focus on growing your business. So I love that perspective. And I think it’s a very valuable one as well.

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Mike Paladino: The next question, Karina, that I wanted to ask you is, how do you see marketing automation playing a crucial role in addressing the unique needs and challenges of the senior care industry.

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Karina Tama: Well, American automation

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Karina Tama: is really important to implement in senior care, because, as I said before.

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Karina Tama: save tons of tons of time, save money, make life easier, make your agency more effective.

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Karina Tama: You know we help you with your brand with your local SEO,

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Karina Tama: with everything, you know. But I can use some, for example, if

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Karina Tama: we’ll hell with

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Karina Tama: to respond faster to people that want to know? Your services. For example, a user lands on your website, okay and fills out the phone. You know, we’re humans. The person that is in charge of collecting these phones or taking these phones and calling back, maybe seeing an event in the bathroom.

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Karina Tama: You know you know anything happens. But if you have automations in place. the automation will trigger immediately.

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Karina Tama: Email Cms can even collect connect calls, call delete, and call the agency and connect it with the salesperson. So this is a huge wing

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Karina Tama: for any business. Okay? Morning, the homecoming, easy industry, you know. There is a very tight industry

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then.

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Karina Tama: for recruitment, having automation will speed up the process.

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Karina Tama: The pace how they will flow is on, you know. I don’t want to talk about detail, but I can tell you that

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Karina Tama: the workflow that we have will help agencies to recruit caregiver fosters and also will provide at the end of the workflow. It’s easy. Has a pool of carts. Give us a really pretty screening for

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Karina Tama: feature needs, because, for example, I need interview 10 from the 10, only, say are qualified. Other 2

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Karina Tama: no one is looking, but I only have 5 cases. So I have. I have 3 more in the database

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Karina Tama: to text them or call them or email them to take a case anytime tomorrow, if I’m gonna have a new case. So this is a huge value, you know.

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Karina Tama: But the coolest thing is that this cannot be. Only apply for home currencies. In our case we have differing workflows or team place, or you know, we call it snapshots

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Karina Tama: to apply, to assist any facility to book more tools. We also work with other daycares so it can be applied to any business in the singer care industry.

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Mike Paladino: Yeah, I think the most important takeaway that I got from that was the time to respond. Right? When you have automation in place, you get that form fill, or the potential new client inquiring. You know, it’s very likely they filled out your form and maybe a few other agency forms. And they’re gonna really focus on who got back to me the fastest cause. If I get a quick response on initial intake or or initial inquiry.

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Mike Paladino: Then maybe that’s gonna set the table for how good my care is gonna be from them or my family members care is gonna be from them, and I think that no more automation really does solve that challenge because it’s almost like a set of forget it tool. And you’re not gonna miss a beat. And those prospects will get that Ni attention and nurturing that they need. So I think you’re super right in saying

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Karina Tama: company. This again is more reliable that somebody sent me 2 h later. That doesn’t make the agency better. But, this information is really big.

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Mike Paladino: first impressions usually are. Are there ways to stay right? If I get a bad first impression with software or with an experience somewhere, I’m likely not to return or continue with that service right? But if I get an amazing first impression, I feel like they genuinely care about me and my needs. They’re gonna get more attention from me and likely go. I’m gonna be a long term client.

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Karina Tama: And that can’t be understated. I work. I work before with a

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Karina Tama: a big CEO in the home care agency industry. I want to say his name. Very brilliant guy, and he says all the time, home care doesn’t sell a service, we say, like experience. So the experience that is the moment that people below the phone, the fish storage is.

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Karina Tama: It’s the beginning of the experience. So you don’t want people. Experience delays.

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Karina Tama: You know, you want to be proactive, and we are human, you know. Maybe somebody in the morning.

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Mike Paladino: So you have to be there for these people. Umhm. Yeah. Well, all care types are different as well right? Somebody might have a need for you know a care at 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning. And if that’s when they’re online, because their loved one is up, or they just were up helping somebody, and they know that they need help in the future. They’re gonna fill a format. And if they get a response quickly, that’s gonna be an amazing impact.

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Mike Paladino: Awesome. Well, Karina, the last and final question I have for you today is given the growing technology landscape. How do you foresee the role of emerging tools or platforms and shaping the future of digital marketing for senior care agencies.

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Karina Tama: II was, I kind of say, the feature. II can say they need feature or today, because it’s growing so fast, and you can see now, tools are already booking

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Karina Tama: calls, booking, assessment, booking meetings with the AI, and they feel really human. They feel the conversation feels really so. What I see

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Karina Tama: The new feature is that these tools of the platform will behave more like you months.

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Karina Tama: So that’s really impactful

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Karina Tama: can be a little scary for some people, for me, for me it’s exciting, because I really care about this industry. I’ve been working in this industry for about 10 years now at the main agency.

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Karina Tama: So I think this is amazing, because we really had to see your kind of businesses to provide better support.

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Karina Tama: And these tools that are marrying will become more and more productive. And you months will really will be able to help people

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Karina Tama: The need to scare, you know, immediately.

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Karina Tama: We are really excited. I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m

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Karina Tama: 100%. And II and II love that perspective because, you know, technology can be scary in all aspects of business or home care, whatever we’re working on. But it’s important to recognize the benefits, because generally, even though AI may be becoming more humanized nowadays, there’s a reason for that, and I think it’s just there for a tool to be leveraged by experts like you to make our lives easier.

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Make patient care more prevalent. And obviously the goal is to have a likely positive care outcome as a result of that. So

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Mike Paladino: I think those things, those points are immensely important, and I really hope that the whole industry can have that same mentality because it’s an important one.

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Karina Tama: The key point is that towards more than no hardware, you know, to put the tools to work for you. So Us. Services owner as a home owner or administrator, you can do. Things are more meaningful that AI kind of does for you than technology can do for you, because this is a people’s business. This is a personal touch.

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Karina Tama: Yeah, I think it’s brilliant no way to put it. Work smarter, not harder, and I’ll close off the final statement there with a quote from one of my idols, just a personal idol, Steve Jobs, former CEO, obviously of apple. And he always had a statement where he would say, I don’t hire smart people, so I can tell them what to do. I hire smart people so they can tell me what to do. And I think that same theory can be applied to technology. Let’s get some systems in place to tell us how we could be more efficient.

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I really love it. I really love that outlook on everything. So.

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Mike Paladino: Karina, thank you so much for sharing your invaluable insights with us. I hope all of our audiences also found it very useful. Thank you to those that have tuned in for watching, and until our next episode. This is Mike Paladino signing off.