The art of conversation

Assuming a competitive market does emerge in aged care, successful providers will be the ones with the best social skills, according to leading marketing experts.

Above: Rhod Ellis Jones at the ACSA National Conference.

By Stephen Easton

Aged care providers must engage with their local communities to survive in the competitive market expected to emerge from the aged care reform process, according to a presentation by one of the industry’s leading marketing experts at the Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) National Conference.

Rhod Ellis Jones told conference delegates that aged care providers could not afford to be complacent, now that the long-awaited reform process they had worked so hard to bring about appeared to be upon them.

“If you’re going to point a gun, you’d better be ready to pull the trigger,” he said, quoting the latest instalment in the Terminator movie series. “We’ve pulled the trigger, but what comes next?”

What came next, for those in the audience at least, was a crash course in using strategic communications and community engagement to drive demand for aged care services, in the context of ongoing global financial strife, and the more competitive market likely to emerge in coming years.

Low consumer confidence, such as that currently permeating society as a result of the global financial crisis, means people take longer to make purchasing decisions, according to Mr Ellis Jones. 

“You need to understand that, and think about how the message needs to be altered to take account of the way they’re thinking.”

About 44 per cent of people, he said, used word of mouth to make those purchasing decisions when it came to their health, making social media sites fertile ground to grow a positive identity within the community.

“People only trust language that’s conversational, and social media is driving that, providing a platform for that communication,” he said. “This is all great news for aged care, because what we do well is engage with people; what we do well is empathy.”

According to the marketing expert, many aged care providers could do a lot better at leveraging their core expertise as community service providers to engage with a wider range of people in their area, including local politicians, neighbourhood groups, the media and health professionals. 

“Those stakeholders, although they may not need as much attention [as clients, potential clients and their families], they still need to be very much part of your annual plan. They will potentially be advocates for your business, solve problems and provide information that allows you to improve your business over time.

“An example is a local councillor. Politicians need content and things to share – that’s their oxygen – they need to get out in the community, share issues and demonstrate knowledge about community life. That’s an example of a stakeholder who, if communicated with regularly in the right context, will be a great help to your business.”

Kate Cranshaw, director of engagement at the Ellis Jones marketing agency, followed with a presentation highlighting the huge numbers of people who can be engaged through social media, preferably in a two-way conversation.

“What we’re finding is that [those] aged care providers [who use social media] haven’t made the shift from traditional methods to engagement and conversations with stakeholders,” she said. “They’re still using traditional one-way methods.”

Social media, according to Ms Cranshaw, also allows organisations to carry on conversations and keep a line of communication open with important stakeholders, giving the example of the ACSA national Twitter feed.

ACSA’s first Twitter ‘follower’ was the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, followed closely by the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, who incidentally used it to communicate he would be attending the conference.

One of the biggest benefits of using the web to engage with the community, according to the Ellis Jones experts, is the ability to easily check how well a campaign is working at little or no cost, through the in-depth information available from popular online tools such as Google Analytics.

Other advantages included the ability to more easily gauge the demand for various services in a local area, and to communicate the unique aspects of your business that differentiate it from local competitors to the large and growing online audience.

Tags: competition, marketing, reform,

1 thought on “The art of conversation

  1. One advantage the aged care sector has is its experience working with multiple stakeholders; though the anticipated emergence of family and friends as influencers when deciding upon healthcare options will present new and yet to be tested challenges for aged care management teams.

    It is also important to understand the role of marketing – that is to get a customer to cross the threshold and enquire about your services. Marketing alone will never sell your service or product, even those engaged in direct marketing understand that, and it is debatable how many aged care services will be sold via mail order, or the modern day equivalent!

    Having enticed a potential customer to cross the threshold, to enquire about service delivery, the impact of customer service becomes a key marketing tool. This also introduces a fresh element into the marketing mix. Whereas the marketing methodology may be the domain of a marketing team or manager; customer service is something provided by every person involved in your aged care facility.

    Poor customer service can undo the impact and benefits of very expensive marketing at the drop of a hat.

    While the strategies and techniques of marketing may be taught in the classroom and honed from experience; customer service must be taught in the workplace, applied, reflected upon, reinforced and updated, constantly. Customer service is not a strategy or a tool, it is a set of values, an attitude and a behaviour. Which may go a long way towards explaining why we stuff it up with monotonous regularity.

    The champions of online space, and I am one of them, advocate the benefits of using technologies and applications driven by the Internet. While we are quick to extol the virtues of these communication channels we often fail to advise of the downside. Use of the Internet and online space for marketing is incredibly time consuming and is an artform that must be developed through experience. It is neither free nor cheap. That is without mentioning the challenges inherent in anonymous, open channels where people can say what they like, when they like, often without having to be accountable.

    Having said that, aged care provider teams have no choice but to learn how to utilise these mediums. Those that do will have a competitive advantage; those that do not . . .

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