How Marketing Can Help Care Businesses Through Covid-19
Posted on | Posted in Care Home Marketing, Home Care Marketing, Care Recruitment, Blog
Sadly, it’s likely that these numbers are only going to increase as we get into the spring and summer season. Now is the time to put your head above the parapet and utilise marketing to convey your resilience to the families of current residents and home care clients.
Additionally, you want to be clearly seen by those who are potentially going to move their loved one into a care home during this period. Therefore, to help you, we’ve gathered a number of ways you can use marketing during these challenging times.
Proactively communicate your protection measures
As a care home owner, your first priority is to ensure the safety of your residents, staff and any visitors in your home. Similarly, as a home care owner, your priority should be ensuring that any of your care staff and home care patients are as safe as possible. No doubt the families of their loved one in care will be worried about the outbreak of COVID-19, especially because their age demographic is one of the most vulnerable.
To guarantee that you’re putting the minds of their loved ones at ease, it’s imperative you reassure people that your first priority is the current resident’s safety and protection, which is of utmost importance. It needs to be clear that the care home is continuously assessing the pandemic on a local and national level and thereby placing measures to reduce the spreading of the virus in the care home.
Processes and vital precautions should be in place for staff to be screened to eliminate the risk and this should, in turn, be communicated to residents and their peers. The way to communicate this to people needing care and their family members is by including a message on the home page of your website. State that your care home/home care business understands the concerns surrounding COVID-19 and that your utmost priority is to ensure the safety and protection of your residents, clients and staff.
A COVID-19 FAQ’s on your website can be so helpful to people and reduce the burden on your staff responding to an influx of the same questions. For example:
Care Home business FAQ example
- “Are all care homes registered and thoroughly inspected?”
- “What is the visiting policy?”
- “How can I arrange a visit to one of the homes?”
- “How can you ensure that your staff are safe to care for my loved one?”
- “What measures have you put in place for new residents coming into the home?”
- “Are all care homes registered and thoroughly inspected?”
Home Care business FAQ example
- “How can you ensure that any carers coming to my home are safe to work?”
- “Will carers be taking extra measures when entering the home e.g. washing hands, sanitising to reduce the risk of COVID-19?”
Get your staff together and quickly brainstorm all of the questions they have been getting during this period and put them into your FAQ list. Plus, make sure you keep this updated as things progress.
Ramp Up Recruitment
Those who have unfortunately lost their jobs will actively be seeking a new role and most likely in a completely new sector. Now is the time to amplify the career opportunities available in your care business.
You can imagine the number of stressed families being forced to take their loved one out of the hospital and into a care home or consider live-in care. The need for good care staff is therefore at an all-time high. Carer recruitment campaigns should be ramped up to cope with this demand. Facebook is a great platform to use for creating recruitment campaigns to source top talent. Of course, there are job boards and other websites available, but Facebook has a whole range of internet users which these other mediums fail to provide. These users will possess a variety of great transferable skills, which can be utilised in your care business and will help you meet the increase in demand in care. However, that flight attendant or waiter that has recently lost their job will not have considered working in care because they don’t know it’s an option for them.
This is exactly why you need digital marketing: so people discover that your care opportunities exist. Most of these people are going to be at home on the internet frantically searching for a new job and at this time more than ever they would be willing to work.
There are going to be a few more precautions than normal during the recruitment process. Interviews are likely to be done digitally where the use of video conferencing and email communication will be heavily adopted.
Final words
Of course, we understand that this is an extremely difficult and unpredictable time with the spread of Covid-19. However, now is the time to rise to the occasion to firstly ensure, then reassure current residents, their families and the staff that your business is safe and hygienic. That you’re doing the utmost possible to ensure the risk of spreading the virus has been reduced.
Secondly, marketing efforts during this period should be used to its full potential and by utilising digital marketing channels and targeting those that have just recently lost their job and are actively seeking employment.
If you have any questions and would like more information on how you can recruit more staff and how you can help your current clients during this period then you can reach out to the Smooth Team on team@smooth-digital.co.uk.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be dedicating time to help #HomeCare & #CareHome businesses recruit more staff using digital marketing. If you too would like help to recruit more staff, you can set up a free strategy session with our experts. Book in your free one to one call, here.