Content marketing is a necessity of business life. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’re marketing to the retirement community you don’t need to deliver content. Research shows that more than half of all U.S. adults over the age of 65 years are active online. In addition, many seniors have their adult children and other family members looking out for them, and that 70 percent of all consumers prefer content that is customized to their needs. This means you have a great opportunity to reach both your primary and secondary target markets with your content marketing, as long as you have a variety of quality material to offer.
Producing it doesn’t have to cost a lot, either. Here’s how to stretch your budget to deliver excellent content:
Idea #1: Find the Right Topics
Figuring out what to write about is the hardest part of business blogging and content production in general. Enlist the help of your staff, colleagues and customers by:
- Providing an incentive for content ideas. This could be a $5 Starbucks voucher or a gift card from your nearest Ikea or home hardware store. Ask for them online or place a suggestion box in the retirement community, marketing the idea via the monthly newsletter.
- Setting up news alerts on topics of interest to your community. This will tell you what others are writing about and help you to identify the trends in your industry.
Idea #2: Focus On Fewer Channels
You can’t do everything. Well, maybe you can if you have the right content marketing help, but either way focusing on fewer channels enables you to really zero in on your target audience. In B2C retirement community marketing, for example, your consumer is more likely to be on Facebook than on Twitter or LinkedIn. So if you aren’t able to distribute your content across all the social media platforms, focus on the one or two that really reach the people you want.
Idea #3: Use Video
People are lazy. It’s a fact that 45.4% of internet users watch online video each day. That’s in excess of 100 million people. Stats from Forrester Research back in January 2009 showed that one minute of video had the same content marketing value as 1.8 billion words of text, and that was before video exploded to its current popularity levels.
You can make a short, one-minute video using a smart phone camera:
- Film yourself talking about your retirement community
- Record satisfied tenants giving testimonials, or
- Video people engaged in day-to-day activities in the community.
Upload your video to YouTube in a few seconds and your content is available for sharing.
Idea #4: Curate Content
There’s no reason why everything your content marketing delivers must be original. Content curation is big news at the moment, and as long as you provide a link and credit your source there are few marketers who don’t appreciate their material being shared. Try to focus on using information from authoritative sources, such as government and non-profit organizations that serve the retirement community market, and focus on providing commentary to add value to the material if you can.
Idea #5: Repurpose Material Across Platforms
Use your content more than once. One of the drawbacks of business blogging is that usually the most recent posts get eyeballs, while older ones are consigned to the dusty shelves of online storage.
- Keep them fresh and use them again by turning collections of blog posts into white papers and eBooks for free download from your site. Make them into downloadable PDFs and add an original Meta description to avoid being penalized in search for duplicate content.
- Use your blog material to create articles for your local newspaper, and print out copies of your eBooks and white papers for hard copy distribution during your in-person retirement community marketing to prospective clients.
Content marketing doesn’t need to be a high-cost budget item. It can be as simple and low-cost as you can make it, by putting some of these ideas into practice.
Thanks to the following additional sources: Custom Content Council, Social Media Today and TopRank Blog.
