What to Include in Your Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Website to Increase Tours and Proactively Build Goodwill with Medicare A Patient Prospects

Who should read this? SNF administrators and marketing staff who believe the pre-need site visit will deliver more commitments and is an important part of the patient acquisition process with high focus on short-term Medicare A patients. 

This will inform you what your web developer should have placed on your website to proactively reach more SNF short-term Medicare A patients at the pre-need stage due to an upcoming or predictable event. It is understood the pre-need visit / tour of the facility gives the SNF the opportunity to put its best foot forward and get the commitment. 

Schedule a Tour Today! Every skilled nursing facility (SNF) should have this as a button on its website. Every, single, one. And your website should make it really easy to schedule that tour. 

A meaningful portion of the SNF short-term Medicare A population can be marketed to proactively because the cause of the SNF stay can be predicted. These are the knee, hip, and other orthopedic related procedures which will occur. Patient sees GP, referral to a specialist, test, test, test, and surgery is scheduled. Sometimes, surgery and replacement is forecast, “Mrs. Jones, let’s target completing that hip replacement in the next 3 to 9 months.” Or, it is weeks. Sounds like someone needs a tour to select her SNF. 

Your SNF prospects are increasingly screening, shopping, and reviewing SNFs online. The susceptible population for the above procedures is a nice bell curve going upward slowly in the 50’s, peaking in the late 60’s and waning in the late 70’s and flattening out in the 80’s age ranges. Today’s 65-year-old was 45, and in the prime of his or her career, in 1997. Today’s 60-year-old was 50 when Apple’s first iPhone was sold. If the adult children of these patients are involved in the decision making they are definitely consulting the internet in selection of the SNF. Your SNF digital footprint already is and will become increasingly more important and looked at as a differentiator because today’s younger senior citizens and their adult children are using your digital marketing as an information filter. Prospects are making decisions based on your digital footprint. 

So how can your website deliver site visits?

Schedule a Tour Today Button

The button should be placed on every page of your site. Yes, every page. If you have struck oil stop drilling, so let’s allow the viewer to click that button once he or she is ready. The button should not move, not float in the middle of the page, and should be placed in the same location on each page. The colors of the button and its font should contrast with the rest of the page. 

Should you do a pop-up, instead? Maybe, but consider the negatives. One, some people block pop-ups and will not allow yours. Two, when should it pop? Have your web developer set it on a timer or once a particular number of clicks, page views or scrolling has occurred. I strongly prefer the latter. If you hit a viewer too hard and too fast they leave. 

Suggested Data Fields

This section illustrates the list of information fields a viewer-prospect will be able to enter once they have clicked the “Schedule a Tour” button. For each, consider what you do and do not want to mark as a requirement.

These are the common data fields:
• Name
• Phone number and Email
• Where coming from (city, state) 
Want to go deeper?
• Additional attendees and relationship
• Check box for texting 
• Reason for the visit. No, do not put in only a big comment box and force the user to enter a creative writing exercise. Use checkboxes. Examples of checkboxes can be: upcoming rehab, joint replacement, general inquiry, etc. This allows you to posture your return phone calls.
Stickiness

Stickiness means lowering potential cancellation rates or no call/no shows.

1. Schedule it! When a viewer-prospect clicks the button there should be a live, up-to-date calendar. Let the visitor-prospect schedule her tour right then and right there. A good web developer will not have an issue with this. Your SNF internal marketing needs to build the habit of living off this calendar.

2. Confirm it! Send the visitor an automatic message saying (a) the tour is scheduled, (b) an email with confirmation information will be sent, and (c) someone will be calling for a pre-visit call. Be specific about who is calling. You know who makes these calls. Do not say “someone from our staff”... Do not say “Alice will be calling” if Alice, Burt, and Carry make the calls. Instead, write “Alice, Burt, or Carry will be calling you.” 

3. Engage it! Pre-Tour Call will confirm the appointment and allow information gathering to custom tailor the appointment for all stakeholders. Also, set expectations. You know what causes cancellations? People do not know what to expect. Take out the anxiety. Take out the fear. Yes, call them. Yes, they might cancel. But isn’t that better than leaving it on the schedule, telling your SNF administrator I have six visits this week, and at next week’s meeting when asked how those went saying only two showed up. Also, it is a shared calendar. You are blocking out someone who has wants a visit. 

4. Lock it! Call or text message for a final confirmation very near the actual tour. Afraid to call because they might have changed their mind, see step 3.

Lastly, everything should always be very mobile friendly. When is the last time you looked at your smartphone? 

If you would like to speak with me more about this my name is Charles. My friends call me Charlie. I can be reached at charles@BusinessYETI.com.  Most of our firm’s clients number one goal is to increase revenue. We’re good at that.