Mastering marketing in social care

Opportunities for change

2017 was a challenging year for the social care sector. Yet again we have been kept abreast in numerous reports of the funding crisis and lack of any clear government policy to address the issues. In the midst of the national crisis, businesses have to continue to focus their efforts on providing quality services each and every day to the people who need it and their families, despite the uncertainty of the external environment and economic climate.

In the past year we have undertaken a considerable amount of work to help companies tackle some of the issues within the sector and its impact on their business. Key areas of our work have concentrated on the issues of occupancy management/lead generation in an ever increasing competitive environment – helping companies to understand how they can create a niche to differentiate their offer from those of competitors, how to find new customers and indeed maintain existing client relationships to create loyalty and opportunities for further growth.

Bespoke training and development

Our bespoke training programme proved to be a success in our work with clients to develop specific tools and techniques to help their staff team in the management of the customer experience in what is often a very complex social care framework. The training was delivered to different levels of staff across their locations and helped them to identify how through relatively straight forward techniques, specific steps could be taken to improve a customer’s journey in a social care setting to improve the overall customer experience of people – a contributing factor to changing the negative perception and stereotypes often associated with social care services. 

Branding has also been a key area of our work. We are delighted to continue our work with a client to create a new brand for their assisted living business and our ongoing support to establish the brand in the marketplace.

A well-designed brand strategy can be one of the most valuable assets of a company and using our expertise we have been able to support companies in the sector to leverage the opportunities available to them by creating a strong brand value.

Over the past few months we have developed a series of comprehensive training programmes especially designed for health and adult social care organisations. The masterclasses starting on 6 February 2018 aims to improve the marketing capabilities of business owners and managers in their pursuit for business growth and development. 

We are often approached by social care businesses for advice on how to improve their marketing activities to increase their reach and revenue. As well as providing personalised one-to-one consultancy to help address specific issues, our new masterclass programme aims to up-skill professionals to enable them to become more effective and targeted in their marketing activities.

 
Mastering marketing in social care

The first masterclass will be held on 6 February 2018 covering the main principles of marketing a social care business. A further three masterclass courses have also been scheduled to cover the topics of improving customer journeys/experiences (28 February 2018), creating brand value (21 March 2018) and sales training (10 April 2018) to help companies wanting to generate leads or manage occupancy issues.

Each course will be small with limited spaces to make sure that participants have the opportunity to learn in a supported environment amongst peers. Real life case studies from participants businesses will be used to demonstrate theory into practice, so that delegates can begin to start using their learning straight away in their workplace.

We have used our knowledge and experience to design the masterclasses to make sure that in addition to providing a comprehensive learning programme, the topics especially address some of the issues facing providers and operators within the social care sector.

To find out more and book your place, click here.

Edna Petzen @EdnaPetzenis director and marketing consultant at Lynden Consulting, a marketing and communications company helping health and adult social care businesses develop marketing strategy, manage their brand, improve performance and achieve communication excellence. Get in touch today to find out how we can help.