By Stephen Tweed
What makes your home care company different from your competitors?
What is the core marketing message that sets you apart from the other home care companies in your local marketplace?
Our research has led us to identify the Seven Sources of Competitive Advantage.
One of those is Caregiver Quality.
When you put your focus on recruiting, selecting, training, and retaining only the very best caregivers, you will be different from most other companies out there. If you add on special programs to show your caregivers how much you value and appreciate them, and they demonstrate high levels of employee satisfaction, that will translate into higher levels of client satisfaction. (See the related article on The Top Five Team Members Impacted by a Solid Quality Management Program).
So how do you use Caregiver Quality to help craft your marketing message?
Let’s begin by looking at what clients and family caregivers want most. Our research shows that what they want most are:
- Dependability – they want a company and caregivers that show up on time as scheduled
- Continuity of Care – they want the same caregiver every time
- Peace of Mind – they want to be worry free
- Quality of Life– they want to stay in their own homes as long as possible with a high quality of life
- Independence at Home – they want the freedom that living at home brings
When you focus on caregiver quality and hire only the best caregivers, you reduce your turnover, increase reliability, and improve continuity of care. By tracking turnover data, and comparing it to the results from the 2013 Private Duty Benchmarking Report, you can show your referral sources and your family caregivers that you are statistically different from your competitors.
Crafting Your Marketing Message
There are four steps to crafting our marketing message:
- Capture their attention with the headline
- Tell ’em exactly what you are offering and why they want to buy it
- Tell ’em exactly how to buy
- Offer something for FREE
Whether you are writing copy for a brochure, a web page, an email campaign, or a sales presentation, stick to these four points. What to offer for free? A free in-home assessment or home care consultation. Add value to that assessment and offer it for free.
Or, offer a free information sheet on the top ten questions to ask when selecting a home care company.
Support your Marketing Message with Evidence
Any sales or marketing claim you make needs to be supported by evidence – facts, data, information. One
such piece of evidence that will attest to your focus on caregiver quality is the Caregiver Quality Assurance seal. As a member of CQA, and someone who uses the CQA selection process, you are entitled to use the gold seal on your web site, your marketing materials, your business cards, and your emails.
Like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, the CQA seal is a testimony to the fact that you are focused on caregiver quality, and that your company is different from your competitors.
Learn more about how you can become a member of CQA, and how you can use the CQA Seal as a marketing too by visiting www.caregiverquality.com
Using Video to Send Your Marketing Message
One great way to get out the marketing message about Caregiver Quality is to use video. Here’s a terrific example of how one member of CQA is using a video from a live interview on local TV to differentiate her company from her local competitors.
Take a look:
