Modern Marketing for Home Care Franchises: What Works Now

Modern Marketing for Home Care Franchises: What Works Now

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Hello dear listeners, welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a Home Care Podcast. I’m Dennis Gill, Senior Sales Consultant at Caresmartz. In today’s episode, we are joined by Jennifer Axelrod, National Accounts and Growth Strategist at A Place at Home Franchise. A powerhouse when it comes to helping

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franchise owners build thriving people first businesses with 13 plus years in sales, marketing and franchise growth. Jennifer bridges heart and strategy guiding homecare brands through the fast-changing world of modern marketing. So, from AI tools to authentic storytelling, she’s here to

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unpack what’s really working for homecare franchises right now. So, welcome to the podcast, Jennifer. Thank you very much for having me. Oh, we’re really glad that you were able to take out the time today for our listeners and they’ll be able to learn from you the experience that you have

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and it would be a great session today. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay. So, let’s straight away jump on with our first question for you. So, uh Jennifer, which digital marketing channels yield the best ROI today according to you? Okay. So, first we’re going to just put

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right out there. I’ve worked with franchises for many years and franchises are not marketers. Would you agree? Yeah, definitely. I agree. Completely agree on that. Yeah. So my first thing is to partner with an experienced digital marketing company instead of going at it on your

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own. By far that that is one way to get an ROI. The second piece would be the main thing would be local SEO. So local SEO, you know, some people think it’s just has to do with keywords. It is not just keywords. There are so many components to local SEO and to keep the

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local feel to all of it. That’s the most important thing and that’s the responsibility of a franchise owner and a franchisor looks at the bigger picture. So let’s just go into some of these components. Um so obviously you know search engine optimization has to

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do with keywords and how you’re found on Google. Then there’s Google business profile and you know I have worked with so many owners with this and the importance of keeping this up to date um with pictures localize it to your community. Um you know post things

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weekly. Post blogs there. Um respond to all reviews. And we’ll get into reviews. That’s a totally other part to this. um but really keep it optimized. And so again, a digital partner can help you with this, but it really does fall on the owner to do this because you know

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your community better than anybody else and what will resonate to who you’re targeting and who you’re targeting in in most cases adult children like myself who have aging parents. Um, and so you really want to capture that in your images, in your content, and be really

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authentic because you know what we see a lot of is um stock images, you know, and stock images are great, but when you see them on every single home care agency website and even in their Google business, what makes you stand out? And that’s the key with Google business. You have to stand out.

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So that’s Google business. Your website is by far the best tool that you have, but it is local SEO that drives people to your website. So again, the website has to be, you know, it has to have the keywords. It has to generate the content that’s going to attract people to your

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website. And it’s got to be relevant uh content to keep people there, right? So they convert. So Google business again can be your secondary website. And I and I love this because I’ve shared this with owners before is like if you build out your Google business profile like to

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the way that you should and keep it completely up to date. It can be a website where you will convert right there, you know, through chats, through contact, through mobile. Um now they just AI and of course we’re going to go into that. Um, so it is your digital

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storefront. By far one of the best easy ways to have um ROI that’s very no cost. Really no cost, right? Okay. So now let’s go to reviews because and here’s another important piece. Reviews have to be part of your sales process. You cannot just ask for reviews, you

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know, I’ll ask this time or oh, I didn’t get around to doing it this time. It has to be something that you are intentional about. And we had an owner that in her first year, she got a hundred reviews. They were all real reviews. They were not generated by computers. They weren’t

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her friends and family. They were real customers and real caregivers. And it’s huge. It’s huge because it, you know, it speaks to the trust factor. Um, and it really shows what your client satisfaction and experience is, which is so important. And also on the caregiver side, right? And in

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this business, it’s unique because you are always marketing to both. You are always hiring caregivers and you are always looking for clients to be successful. So when it comes to caregivers, um, recruitment’s changed. You have to market to caregivers. You are not just an HR person going and

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finding people to fill a space. These people are, you know, this is a really important decision people are making and caregivers sacrifice their time, their energy, sometimes their health to provide this service for your community. So that’s a really important piece that

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comes out in reviews and we share at a place at home like we share numbers of reviews on our weekly update you know this location got this review and look seven reviews coming from here and so we’ve really become intentional with reviews and so that’s really important

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because that can be your conversion and it can be your referral easily right um so within that again builds trust boosts visibility reviews Google loves seeing reviews. Here’s the important piece, and this goes right back to the Google business profile. You have to respond to

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reviews, good or bad, have to respond. You can’t leave them um for Google to say you don’t care about these people. And that’s, you know, if you want to keep showing up on the Google search and high in the rankings, that’s a really important piece. Now the nice thing is there are platforms and

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partners and you know we work with consumer fusion um and they help us with reputation management and so if there is a negative review sometimes they can help get it down so it doesn’t hurt the reputation um there’s canned responses if someone can’t answer but we still like to be

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authentic and have our owners answer all reviews and we’ve had no issues with that so that’s an amazing piece and you know reviews drive decision. Google business drives decision. When people are looking, they are, you know, they are looking for this special service and maybe they don’t even

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know they need it. Yeah. But then you come into intentional intent based marketing searches and that’s Google ads. So, you know, some people will say Google Ads is not so good for home care. I disagree. I think when it’s paired with SEO, especially local SEO, it does balance

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together. You need both, right? But the one thing with Google Ads, and here’s the benefit with Google Ads, it’s, you know, it’s pay-per-click. So, you’re paying only if they click. You know, they want the service, so that it’s already intent based. So, conversion should be high. You, you

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know, they’re searching, they’re ready to buy. And I you know home care is not really buying a service but anyways um you can track results which is really good for ROI because you get to know your numbers. You control the budget. This is important because um when it

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comes to Google ads can become very expensive very fast if you don’t control that budget and you’re not measuring is it an ROI. Um and then target your local area. So only people in this area. So, Google Ads does give that that benefit. So, all in all, I mean, really, it’s

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local SEO and local SEO and SEO is the long game. It takes time. Um, and you really should build that SEO with that digital marketing company first and then consider Google Ads and pair them together. Um, but that’s yeah, that’s how I would answer that question.

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Okay, perfect. And how much should franchises in an AI automation tool according to you. Okay. So obviously in marketing there’s you know the shiny object and AI and automation seems to be the shiny object for all of us now. Um you know it starts with notetaker and help with our

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meetings. So we stop taking notes which is amazing and once you start to implement that in your system it’s like lifechanging. Um, but you know what, and I heard a statistic, I’m not going to be completely accurate, but it’s just about over 50% of home care businesses, and

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I’m going to probably say franchising specifically, have invested in some form of AI and automation. And I I’m proud to say that a place at home has on a small scale um with certain uh partners that we work with um to simplify some of the things that could just save time, right?

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So automate anything that can be automated in my opinion should unless there’s a real strong human component. So you start simple, you test it out, you see what works, what doesn’t work. Um you know lead follow-ups, reminders. One of the biggest things in home care with cl with

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with caregivers is no shows. So when my owners tell me, “Look, I had all these demos.” I’m like, “Well, do you do a reminder that’s automated? Let’s hope it’s automated.” Um, you know, the day before, the hour before, are they getting those reminders to their phones because then the chance

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of them not showing up is less than the other, right? So, you know, we use a platform called deploy application tracking system. There’s lots of automation emails that go along with that. There are other ones out there. Um, we’ve introduced Hello Hire to the recruitment side as well to

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do some of that automation and help save time when it comes to recruiting and screening because we know going through hundreds of resumes manually is exhausting, a waste of your time because you’ll probably find a needle in the hay stack. And if it’s something a computer

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can do and only send you a small amount, well, that’s amazing. and that’s something we’re, you know, moving ahead with. Now, some home care companies will also say scheduling could be something that could be done by AI and automation. You know what? Some are

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going to be hesitant because scheduling is a scheduler is one of the most important pieces to your office team. Could we replace it in the future? I’m thinking maybe, you know, I mean, if a computer can do a proper scheduling, never make a mistake um with the address, you know, all these kind of

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little things, reminders, um messages, maybe that’s an AI opportunity as well. Mhm. Yeah. That would definitely Yeah, there are many jobs as you are also aware many jobs where people were really fighting that AI would take their place. Some places it did but some places still uh

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human touch is still required. Yes. And we never want to replace people for machines like if it and this is a special industry. You have to have the care. You have to have the heart. And this is this is personal care. You’re not going to replace it with a robot. I would never be okay with being

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definitely and obviously the personal caring that term would not work then personal caring. Yeah, definitely. Yes. Okay, moving on. Uh, next thing. Uh, how do you balance franchise versus local marketing efforts? Okay, this always comes up um probably at the beginning when a franchisee

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starts. That expectation has to be set at the beginning because it does it can cause issues down the line. If they come in with the wrong expectation that the franchisor is going to be doing all their marketing, the truth is that the franchisor has the brand. Um

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they give the assets, they give you the, you know, the playbook, right? um the how to do this. They give you the direction, the voice, all of it. The local team, the local the local franchisee gives the heart and tells the stories and that’s what sells to tell you the truth. Um the

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other is brand awareness and you know in some bigger franchises there’s you know corporate campaigns radio television um lots of PR but the real build for small business owner is right in their community right in their community. Yep. And which content types convert best uh for home care leads?

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stories. Stories sell. Client testimonials sell. I like video uh short videos will sell over ads any day. Um and caregiver spotlights. I think owner spotlights too from a franchisor perspective and we do that a lot. I think it’s important to show what these people actually do and what they’re

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doing for their community. Um but a caregiver spotlight is you’re more than just a job to us. You’re more than just um you know uh someone that’s going to go and do a shift for us. You’re part of our team. You’re you mean something to us. Um and it that creates that emotion and that trust. So

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definitely. And then stories. Always stories. Stories. Okay. And how do you track marketing efforts to real client conversations? Okay. So that would be a CRM. Gone are the days where we use spreadsheets. You know what? You need something stable. Um and you need to know your

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numbers. You need to have call tracking. You need to track your calls. For a franchisor, this is golden because we can listen to the calls and coach owners to even better have better closing ratios. You got to know your closing ratios. you got to know your

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your conversion rates. Like without this information, you’re just I don’t know throwing darts. That’s how I kind of see it. Um so yeah, I mean the thing in our business is the cost uh per acquisition is really important. How much marketing you’re doing and you know, let’s face it, the

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majority is still relationship building in the community by far. But you have to balance it with digital. I truly believe that because if you’re going to walk into the local hospital, rehab, sniff, senior living, you could then tag them. You know, it goes back to SEO and showing up on

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Google and your support. You’re partnering with them. You’re not just asking for uh referrals. So, that piece is always important. this piece has to show up because you still have to drive traffic to your website. Um, and you know, and now there’s even no click AI

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searches. So, you just have to make sure your content is, you know, strong. I it targets who you’re looking for. It’s um consistent across platforms. Um, so Google or AI knows exactly what to drive this person that’s searching. And you know, you just always have to be

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authentic. And just to give you a story that just happened yesterday, it was so cool. But one of my owners, um, she that that I coach, because I’m also a franchise business coach, um, she wanted to develop one of her caregivers and one of her caregivers wanted to be a CNA and

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she just didn’t have the resources to do it. So, the owner put in the investment beyond the paid um caregiver wages and she just she just graduated. So, now she’s a CNA, right? And there’s a future goal to actually make her a lead caregiver um as we tap into some new revenue streams, which is

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so cool because that story is now shared in the recruitment process and we can use they can use that. Look, this person we invested in, they moved in their career because we really care about you and now we’re going to get more caregivers. So, I love stories. Oh, definitely. That’s awesome. That’s

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awesome to hear that. And finally, the last thing, what low cost but high impact tactics work for smaller franchises? Again, it goes back to Google business profile. keep that active, keep that going, keep that consistent. So, you know, if you if you um add a new

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program, a new service line, it has to go into your Google business because now it’s another piece of your business that people need to know about. Yeah. Um so, they’re not going to go to Google Business and not see it, but then go to your website and see it, and then

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they’re confused already, and you’ve already lost credibility. Um engage locally. I kind of said that. and you know just steady actions beat big budgets. You don’t need big budgets in digital marketing for home care. You need to do relationship building and use digital marketing to help you with the

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conversion piece, the client acquisition, the caregiver acquisition, and the credibility and trust for your agency. Perfect. Perfect. Good to hear that. Uh so thank you. Thank you Jennifer for sharing your expertise today with us with all our listeners and hope

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listeners had a great time and they will definitely learn a lot from this new things they might have learned about and new franchises more franchises that are coming up must be a great session to them. All right and to our lovely audience thank you for tuning in. Until next time, I’m Dennis Gill

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signing off and we’ll meet you soon. Thank you.