Storytelling is powerful. So why aren’t more senior living marketing campaigns focused on actually telling a compelling story? Go on, take a look at your last campaign. Stories grab us, even the bad ones. We’ll spend hours watching a movie because we’re hardwired for stories. But most senior living marketing campaigns focus on the same-old marketing tactics of direct mail and digital ads talking about luncheons and their amenities. And those messages aren’t always resonating with their audience. If you’re ready to let go of what isn’t working, Sabal Strategy offers you a chance to tell a more compelling story with a Connected TV ad campaign.
Humans have been telling stories since we could string a sentence together. We know what makes a good story (for the record, four-year-old storytellers don’t). Engaging stories need a character the audience connects with, someone like them, someone they understand and empathize with. This character faces a challenge or a problem to solve. In the course of the tale, they discover the solution or achieve their goal, and the result is revealed. It sounds like a simple formula. But we’ve all seen too many stories/movies/videos that prove effective storytelling isn’t that simple. (What’s the worst movie you’ve watched?)
Whether it’s a Hollywood movie, a favorite novel, or even a great commercial, each one tells an engaging story. Great commercials as effective storytelling? Absolutely. Memorable commercials are simply full-length stories distilled into a 30- or 60-second ad. Apple did it. Lay’s just did it with a Super Bowl ad. And you can do it too.
A Connected TV ad campaign offers the opportunity to tell an engaging story about your community. It’s an opportunity to avoid sterile images of nicely staged, empty rooms, unused amenities, and impersonal floor plans. Imagine the power of hearing and watching an actual resident tell their story in the warmth of their home. Why did they choose you? How did they make new friends? Maybe they’re engaged in a new hobby, or sharing a festive meal. What a powerful way to actually reimagine retirement for those who haven’t considered senior living!
For the skeptics, yes, there is a large audience of older, qualified prospects who have cut the cord and joined the streaming nation. Big Pharma knows this is true. A recent study by DeepIntent and Roku revealed:
- 79% of adults aged 50+ are streaming viewers;
- 21% of this demographic exclusively use streaming platforms.
- The older a viewer, the more likely they watch ad-supported content;
- 69% of people aged 60 to 69 years prefer ad-supported streaming because it’s less expensive.
- Big Pharma is responsible for a 59% surge in Connected TV ad spending in order to reach this older audience.
Sabal Strategy’s Connected TV ads can reach your adult child audience, qualified prospects ready for a bespoke homecare experience, or qualified leads ready to choose independent living. How? By targeting your customized MicroModel data list, which allows us to determine who sees the ads and who does not. This means even with a modest budget for your ad spend, the right audience is seeing and connecting with your message. And if you’re telling a compelling story, your audience is focused, able to ignore distractions, and enjoying a dopamine hit in their brain that helps them recall the details of the story long after it’s over. The neuroscience behind storytelling explains why we recall certain stories decades after our first encounter with them.
Science also explains why PowerPoint lectures, with endless bullet-point filled screens fail to deliver the goods. All that dry information fires certain parts of our brain and leads us to make up our own story to make sense of the dry info. The problem is that our story isn’t going to be the same as the presenter’s story. (Can we all agree to ditch those bullet-point slides NOW?!)
There’s another reason to add a Connected TV ad campaign to your next senior living marketing campaign. Our good friends at The Baldwin Senior Living invested $1,650 in a Connected TV ad spend targeting 8,000 qualified prospects. The ads reached 86% of these prospects; 98% of viewers watched the full ad instead of clicking away from it.
It’s time to leverage the power of Connected TV ads. Reach the right audience, deliver a compelling message wrapped in an engaging story, and fire up their brains. Are you ready to make that emotional connection to drive conversions? Give Maribeth a call today! Let’s get together to tell your story to the audience waiting to hear it.
