Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
We see more text testimonials than we do video testimonials. And why? And are they as effective?
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
In this episode, Dallas & Luke talk about why you can’t treat referral leads and web leads equally. You’ll need a system in place to handle these two very different types of leads.
Click here to view the spreadsheet.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear says, “Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable — sometimes it isn’t even noticeable — but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.”
In part two of this series, Dallas and Luke talk about the results you can see if you just improve each step of the sales funnel a little at a time.
To buy Atomic Habits on Amazon, click here.
To download the ROI Google Sheet Calculator, click here.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear says, “Improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable — sometimes it isn’t even noticeable — but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.”
Dallas and Luke talk about the results you can see if you just improve each step of the sales funnel a little at a time.
To buy Atomic Habits on Amazon, click here.
Luke Adams: So today, what we want to talk about is really just the idea of improving different areas of your senior living sales cycle by just 1%, and that came from a book that Dallas and I both read recently. I highly, highly recommend it. It’s called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It was probably one of my favorite books that I read in 2022. If you feel the same, Dallas, but it’s just such a good book.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah. So I’m actually reading it right now. I’ve listened to it before, but when I’ve listened to books, it goes in one ear and out the other for me. I can’t listen to books. So anyway, I decided to pick up the book. I went to a conference a few weeks ago and they were talking about it. And I was like, you know what? I really need to improve my habits. And so I’m reading it again. And when I was reading this a few weeks ago, I was like, man, we need to do a podcast on that because for those of you that have never read the book or those, it’s been a while since you read the book. So the British cycling team was awful. They were like the Pittsburgh Pirates of cycling, right? Just had not done anything in centuries actually, or decades or I don’t, I mean, I don’t even know how long cycling has been around, but they really struggled for a long time. And so they hired a new coach and he went and looked at every single thing that went into cycling. Like they redesigned the bike seats. They rubbed alcohol on the tires to get a better grip. They asked the riders to wear heated over shorts so they can maintain ideal muscle temperature. They used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete responded to different workouts. They tested various fabrics in a wind tunnel so they could pick up just marginal improvements everywhere. They even looked at different types of massage gels to see if one helped the muscle recover faster. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands so it reduced the chances of them catching a cold, which would sideline them for a week or two. All these different things that when you really sit down and analyze the minutiae of whatever you’re trying to accomplish. When you pick up these incremental improvements at each area, it can make a massive, massive impact. And we actually have a spreadsheet that I used to use it in sales calls because it’s just such a great illustration that this immediately made me think about that. And so we’re going to share that here with you today as well. So you can see in senior living sales, what would this look like in real numbers, every step of the sales process sales funnel. But just a quick spoiler alert as well. Five years after this coach took over the British cycling team. They dominated the Olympics games. They won the British cycler won the Tour de France. And they won five, five Tour de France victories in six years. Right. And this was a team that had been terrible. So for those of you that are like, oh man, our team really struggles. Right. Like we’re, we’re really struggling. We’re not getting leads. We’re not getting tours. We’re not closing tours. Wherever it is, I would highly, highly encourage you. Number one, just read these two pages of Atomic Habits. It’s page 13, 14, 15. A few more pages, but read the first chapter. It will get you going, right? And you think about, okay, in the traffic, how do we get more traffic? How can we get 5% or 10% more traffic to our website? How can we get 5% or 2% more of that traffic to turn into a lead? How can we get 2% more of those leads to turn into a tour, right? What can you do incrementally at every step along the way that is going to make massive, massive, massive improvements for you and your team?
Luke Adams: Yeah. Yeah, so we want to start right at the top and just kind of talk about getting more traffic.
Dallas Shipp: And by the way, guys, real fast, like. There’s probably more to this and I actually would love for you to reach out to us and let’s let’s build this out. Let’s you know tell us what we missed. But where are where are the areas? We’ve got we’ve mapped out a pretty good one I think right. So anyway Luke start at the top. How can how can people get more traffic and again we’re not trying to double your traffic. We’re gonna say okay five ten percent right. How can we get 10% more traffic to the website?
Luke Adams: Yeah. So I think when most people think about hey we need to get more traffic to the website. They think you know usually two things one would be SEO and we all know SEO can pay big benefits but it’s it’s a long-term game. You’ve got to wait for SEO to happen and then the second one would be ads right. The anti SEO you just pay big you know you pay upfront but then you also get results pretty quickly. But I think there’s another area that is really neglected and we see this all the time and that’s your Google business profile. And if you don’t know what I mean when I say Google business profile, if you just go to google.com and search for your community name, you’ll see kind of like a little profile show up of your community on the Google search result and it’s going to have the hours that you’re open. It’s going to have photos. It’ll probably have your logo links to your website and it will have your Google review rating. Your Google review rating is I think probably the most neglected part of a senior living community’s presence online. And I sometimes it blows my mind that we’ll spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get people to see us. And then when they, I mean, when they go research us, when they research your community, they’re going to look at your Google review and then it says it’s a 3.7, you know, with nine ratings. What kind of message does that send to someone is thinking, you know, I’m trying to find a place for my mom or dad where they can go live and be cared for and loved and nourished. And I see this place as a 3.7. I’m not going to spend any more time looking into that place.
Dallas Shipp: The senior living industry is already not trusted very highly. Right. Like if you look at the trust score index across different industries, senior living is already before they even know you exist. They already have a trust issue with the industry. So then if you have a 2.5 or 3.5 or whatever, Luke is absolutely right. You’re off the list. They’re not even coming to your website.
Luke Adams: Yeah. And the challenging part about having a good review rating, whether it’s Google. Amazon doesn’t matter is that once you get a negative rating, it gets harder and harder and harder to get that up to a positive rating. So if you’re at a 3.7 with nine reviews, that’s going to be a lot easier than trying to, you know, take a 3.7 with 40 reviews and get that over, you know, maybe a four and a half. So if you’re thinking, okay, I hear you. Our community’s Google rating is clearly a problem. How do I increase it? Let me give you two ways to increase your Google review rating. One would be is to ask for reviews after a tour. So you ask for for a review after a tour. So someone comes in your building, they have a great tour with them. Maybe they even put down a deposit. Well, then you send an automated text message later saying, you know, hey, Dallas, thanks so much for touring our community. Would you like to leave a Google review? And. Oftentimes people will go in there and say, hey, you know, Luke gave us a great tour. He was super nice. I think this could be a really great place for my dad. If you’re thinking about senior living, I highly recommend that you come in at least just tour this community. So that’s one area. The second area is when someone actually moves in 30 days after they move in. Send a message saying, hey, would you like to leave us a Google review? And if they’ve already left one, they can just update the review they sent previously.
Dallas Shipp: And by the way, not just occasionally doing that, but making this part of your SOPs. When they move in, something’s going to automatically reach out to the resident if they are, you know, especially independent living. It’s going to reach out to the resident. If it’s a city living in our memory care, skilled nurse, or whatever. You know, it’s going to automatically reach out to the adult child. Or whoever is the point of contact. And I’ll tell you what else is interesting about. this loop is we’ve seen communities that that act of reaching out in 30 days. They uncover some issues that aren’t going well and it gives them a chance to correct it before the family pulls the member pulls their family member out of the community and before they go blast you on Google. Right. So having this is actually is a double benefit because number one, the people that love you, yes, you know, sure, 20%, 30% will go and leave a review. But the people that are not satisfied, you uncover it before it escalates. So having this be part of your process really is critical.
Luke Adams: Yep. And the last thing I’ll say about reviews and this is, I know it’s very common, there’s people that will still encourage you to do this and I would discourage you from doing this. Do not review gate. And what I mean by review gate is you can set it up to where you send someone to a link and it says, hey, write your experience from one to five. And if they click three stars or below, then it just sends them to a form that says, hey, sorry, you had a bad experience. But if they select four or above, then it sends them to Google. That’s review gating. And definitely, you do not do that because there have been companies who were found out, and they were financially penalized. And so it’s just a really, really bad situation. So I highly recommend that you do not review gate when someone has an experience with your community, whether it’s a tour or they’ve moved in, just ask them for the review and take away completely that option of being called out for review gating.
Dallas Shipp: 100%. So you get more traffic, right? Let’s just say that this helps you get 5, 10, 15% more traffic. Maybe more. If you increase ads, you can quickly grow that traffic. Ninjorson 100% whatever. So how do you get more of that traffic to turn into a lead? Right? Well, number one, what do your calls to action look like on your website? Do you have the Buy Now button of senior living, which is schedule visits, schedule tour, or book a tour? What have you want to say that doesn’t matter? But that’s the Buy Now button. And a lot of senior living communities, I mean, we’ve missed reached out to 2,500 communities last fall. A lot of them don’t even have that button. Right? So make it easy for them to take the next step. First of all, number two, what does your website, how does it come across? Is it just you talking about your amenities and your features and your floor plans and your dining and your activities? Or is it touching a nerve? Is it resonating with the family or the senior who’s on it? I always tell people, you know, when they look at the website, if you had the ability to see into their webcam, they should be like kind of nodding their heads or like, oh, like deep in thought, right? The Elonzo morning, Jeff, I’m like, oh man, that’s a good point. You know, or is it just spewing amenities and dining and activities and floor plans? You know, the infamous drone photo of the building from 500 feet up and you know what? What does the website convey? Is it all about you or is it all about them? Because guess what? People don’t like to hear other people talk about themselves. It’s no different on a website, right? You need to engage them in that story. If you’ve never read the Donald Miller StoryBrand books, fantastic. Can you have any questions about that? I’m happy to chat with you sometime about that as well. I used to be a StoryBrand certified guide and coach. But what is the website conveying, right? Is it resonating with them on an emotional level? Sure, you’ve got to have information on there, absolutely. But if you want a website to convert, it has to hit them emotionally so that they want to take the next action, right? Like we all make decisions based on emotion. And then we take action based on facts. So you do have to have it all in there, but you have to have the emotion. And this is one of the most emotional decisions people are ever going to make, right? Like deciding what to do with mom and dad. You know, I’ve got family members that are dealing with this right now. And so what does that look like? So, again, the call to action, make them easy, make them simple. The language, also the photos, right? So show real photos of your community, people happy in your community. Yeah, I’ve said this before on podcasts, but like, you know, if all I see are stock images, my first question is, what are you trying to hide? Right? Like what do you not want me to see? And again, the fact that this is already an industry that people don’t have a high level of trust in. Everything you can do to build that trust, include also testimonial videos. We’ve seen this, we’ve seen this help many of our partners really, really increase the number of people that engage with them on their website. It’s not you doing the talking about your community, but your residents, your adult children of the residents, letting them share their stories, which guess what, are just like the people’s stories that are on the website. It’s the same story. So the more you can incorporate, especially video testimonials, the more powerful they are. And so again, so if you do all of these things, if you improve your language, you improve your photos, you improve your call to actions, you increase the number of video testimonials, I guarantee you, guarantee you that you will have at least a five to 10 percent increase in engagement.
Luke Adams: So absolutely, absolutely. And if you have a community or multiple communities that are struggling occupancy-wise and you’re trying to think, what can I do immediately to see results the fastest in terms of getting more tours in my community? I would say in this step that we’re talking about just getting the calls to action right on your homepage is going to make an immediate impact right away because we’ve seen that happen with our own partners. We don’t have them change anything about their design even though there’s areas where they could definitely improve it. Definitely add photos of their residents and we’ve just had them add in the right calls to action and within hours they’re seeing the positive results of that. So I would say if you’ve got a community that’s like the occupancy is really struggling. I’m having, you know, the board, the C-suite just kind of breathing down my neck on, hey, we need to increase occupancy. That’s where I would make a change today. Get the calls to action right on your website.
Dallas Shipp: And you know, I’m going to show the first part if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see this easily, right? I’m going to go and share my screen and just see, okay, if you do these two things, what does that look like in terms of growth? Let me share my screen. If you’re listening to this on a podcast, don’t worry, I will try to explain this as best I can. But if you get a chance, go to our YouTube channel and watch this, you can see this screen share here. But let’s just say these are kind of some average numbers. Let’s just say that your average rent is $4,500, which is the national average.
Luke Adams: And let’s say you’re in a little bit down.
Dallas Shipp: Sure. Is that better? Yeah. There we go. So let’s say that your traffic is averaging about 700 visitors a month. From that, you’re getting about 55 leads. And from that, you’re getting about seven tours booked. Six of them show up. And on average, you’re closing about 20%, which is one out of six, right? So let’s just say that we increase traffic by, what do you think, Luke? 5%, 10%, let’s just say 5%. Let’s say you increase traffic by 5%, so obviously everything else plays out the same, you have 5% growth. Well, let’s say that we also turn more of those leads into a booked tour. How do we do that?
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
In this episode, Dallas and Luke talk about a recent senior living marketing survey that was released. The survey shows that most communities are still focused on producing more and more leads. However, generating more leads may cause problems for your community and staff without the right systems in place.
Click here to download the survey.
Luke Adams: All right, welcome to this episode of the 100% Occupied Podcast. I’m really excited about the conversation that we’re going to have today. I would call it myself because there was a report that came out last week called “Senior Living Marketing in 2023.” And in case you want to download this report, read it for yourself, we’ll put the link into the show notes. I think all they needed is contact info. So you just put in your name, email, phone, and you can take a look at this report. But it was done by a group called Dreamscape and combined with Senior Housing News, and in 2023, they surveyed a bunch of directors, VPs, and people in the C-suite about senior living marketing. And there are some thoughts that Dallas and I had on some of their key takeaways that we want to chat about.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah. And I think that they had five key takeaways. And I’m going to list all five of these, Luke. We’re going to talk about one of them today. But just so you know, like what was in this report. So number one is that competition is the number one challenge among senior living marketers in 2023. There’s obviously new communities being built every day. Everyone knows that. And so it is much more competitive than it was even just a couple of years ago. So number two, takeaway is a creative digital strategy is paramount to success in today’s saturated marketing landscape. That’s what we’re going to focus on today. So I’m not going to talk about that a whole lot because that’s kind of our wheelhouse. Number three, senior living marketers need to prioritize online research in the years ahead because that’s the predicted top driver of census growth. And so what they mean by that is how do they target the adult children or the relatives or the friends or whoever’s helping these seniors find a community. How do they target them the right way? And I would agree with that. That is absolutely something that you should be working on. Number four, senior living organizations are willing to invest more in marketing. So it sounds like about nearly 40% say they’re increasing the marketing spend over the last 12 months and that 43% believe the increase will continue into 2024. Again, the more competitive it is, the higher the acquisition cost is going to be. And I think it was Donald Miller that was talking about the fact that it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, whoever can spend the most money to get a customer is going to win that marketplace. And then finally, their fifth takeaway is targeting third-party decision makers is critical. So this kind of ties into number three as well. But respondents indicated that the majority of their marketing focus is on third-party decision makers, but more than 88% say they are struggling with the challenge of marketing to those audiences. So that’s just kind of a snapshot of a lot of good data, a lot of good trend lines that you can pick up on and really analyze this against what you guys are doing in your company. How do you compare? I’d be curious to hear from some of you guys as well. If you email us or message us on LinkedIn or whatever. Let me take a look at this. What are your thoughts? What are your reactions? What do you see stand out to you as well? But today, what we’re going to talk about is that second key point, right? Everyone says we need a creative digital strategy, right? And one of the things that really stood out to us when we were looking at this, right? When you go through it, it’s on page nine. Okay, so what are people focusing on for their digital strategy? And kind of list out these different things. And at the very top is SEO and PPC paid search, digital advertising, and right behind that is social media. What do you think about that, Luke?
Luke Adams: I would say that’s probably where the focus has been?
Dallas Shipp: Is that right?
Luke Adams: Certainly. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, where, where you think it should be focused or where you think most people are focused?
Dallas Shipp: Well, no, just in your, I mean, because for those that don’t know, Luke and, you know, our background, I mean, Luke was in-house for a good-sized senior living company. I mean, did you feel like this has always been the focus as long as you’ve been?
Luke Adams: And PPC and social, and then on that chart right behind that is content marketing. So yeah, I mean, that has been the focus. That’s just been the name of the game. That’s where people have been pouring their money into those channels for years. So it’s not surprising. Well, it’s not surprising in a sense that that’s still the focus in 2023. But I’m sure we’ll talk later about maybe why that is still slightly surprising because there are some other things happening in marketing.
Dallas Shipp: I think the reason, and this may be one of those things, if you’re listening to this, and this may sound very, very simple for something that’s complex, but I do think that the root cause, the root issue here, is very simple. Because everyone spends so much time on, “We need more leads, we need more leads, we need more leads,” they don’t spend a whole lot of time, from what I’ve seen, and this is not just senior living, this is a weakness for a lot of businesses and a lot of industries, is they focus on leads and they don’t focus on how to handle those leads. Right? So, and we saw this when we mystery-shopped thousands of senior living community websites, right? 48% of the time, we never got any follow-up whatsoever. So how much money you got spent, I mean, and we didn’t click on a Google ad or anything to cost that click, we were just going through websites, but how many people clicked on an ad and came to your website that you paid, I don’t know, $20, $50, whatever your pay-per-click rate is, and they never interacted with your website, or they did fill out a form, they did become a lead, and no one ever followed up with them. So what’s interesting about this slide to me is that there’s three times as many people surveyed that are focused on SEO than marketing automation, and three times as many people that are focused on PPC and paid search and display ads than marketing automation. So what I would hypothesize here is that people have to think through the funnel, right? It’s not just about leads. I would venture to guess that most senior living community websites have enough web traffic to generate enough leads to keep your team busy with tours, right? The problem is the website’s not turning that traffic into enough leads, and then the leads that are coming in are not followed up with. Yep, does that make sense?
Luke Adams: Yep, totally makes sense. It reminds me of something that happened recently here in Kansas City. So Kansas City just got a brand new airport. It’s beautiful. It’s got all the bells and whistles, but for some reason, they built the departure lane too short and they didn’t add in enough lanes. And so you’ve got this beautiful airport now that people are coming to and then people are sitting in line to drop someone off at the airport for like 30, 40 minutes. So they spend all this money to make something beautiful, but then they don’t think about how do we have a system on the back end, so it’s a really great experience for everyone. That’s what’s happening here. You spend all this money to get more people to come to your website, but you don’t spend as much money on, okay, what about marketing systems? What about sales systems to make sure that when people do come to our site, we do follow up within one minute, two minutes, and we make sure we’ve got different things in place to keep them engaged, to get them into the community. I think obviously you and I would clearly agree focusing on SEO and PPC. That’s great, but there also needs to be a focus on what do we do when those leads come in.
Dallas Shipp: Well, I think you’ve got to break it down into sections, right? Like if, and we have a great calculator, Luke, maybe we can convert our spreadsheet into a little calculator on our website one day because I would love for people to go play with it. Whenever I’m talking to some of our partners, let’s just say you have SEO and PPC, and if you can increase that by, let’s just say, 5%, you’re getting 5. Let’s say you increase it by 10%. Well, then everything else stays equal, you can increase your opportunities by 10%. But if you increase that by 10% and then you increase your conversion of traffic into leads by 5% and increase the number of leads that turn into a tour by 5%, then it leads to massive 30%, 40% increases. I would challenge you, if you’re listening to this and you’re working on your digital plan, to not ignore the middle part of that funnel. What I mean by the middle part is, how do we get them from website visitors to lead to a scheduled tour or at least a phone call, some sort of one-on-one interaction, and then convert to a movement? So that basically from web lead to initial tour, what does your system look like? And really dive into that because how you follow up, how fast you follow up, not only that if you’re the first community to follow up with them, you’re five times as likely to get a movement out of it. So you’ve got to be fast because they’re reaching out to more than one at a time. And then the multiple touches are equally critical. For all the partners we work with across the country, if they’re an initial lead, so they download pricing or they’re starting to investigate your community, typically there are seven to nine text messages, emails, whatever different touches before they say, “Hey, yeah, I’ve got a question. I want to talk to somebody,” or, “Hey, I like that. Can I take a tour?” And so, you know, having that system in place, which, yes, we sell automated marketing automation, but the reason we sell it is because it works. Right? Like this is not us trying to sell you on something. It’s just this is what we’re really good at. And what we find when we see reports like this, it just stands out because it’s like, man, it’s it. You hate to see someone go spend thousands of dollars more for more leads when they could have spent just a few hundred dollars and converted the leads they’re already getting in. So, you know, just to be clear and transparent. Yes, this is what we sell.
Luke Adams: People out there need it.
Dallas Shipp: So. And again, go ahead.
Luke Adams: If you don’t have any of these systems in place and you spend all of your money on getting more leads coming in, how’s that going to affect your salespeople? They’re going to feel completely overwhelmed. The follow-up they currently have for their leads is going to, I mean, the quality of that is going to decrease. So yeah, it’s great to get more leads coming in, but at the same time, you’ve got to support your sales team with more systems, more people to help them manage those leads.
Dallas Shipp: So the… When I sound like a broken record, but, man, if you have not read “The Machine” by Justin Roff-Marsh, read the book. I mean, dividing up this labor because here’s the other part of this. As you’re building this system out, right, as you build this sales engineering process, as he calls it, if you crank up that SEO and then you add in the automation, it is going to inundate your salespeople with new leads, right? And so you do have to be mindful of this. And this is something that we consult our partners on all the time. So if you’re in the process of building this and you just want to have a discussion about, hey, how should this work? How should the leads go from lead form filled out to, you know, a system that handles, let’s say, 100, 200 leads a month and whittles that down to the 20 tours and maybe another 20 phone calls that the sales director can actually handle, how does that look? I’d be happy to sit on a call and chat about that, right? Because there is a, that there are some key things that you want to do that we can chat about and they kind of map out. And the reason I say also, it’s hard for us to talk about that, just sitting depth on a podcast is that there are different factors and different processes at play in different communities that you kind of just have to think through and also some of the ingrained culture and status quo. Sometimes you have to overcome more of that than others.
Luke Adams: Yeah, yeah, I don’t know if you have any other thoughts on the survey though. The only other thing I wanted to touch on as I’m sure we’ll talk more about this survey in other episodes is there are a couple of data points that talk about how many senior living companies are going to be willing to spend more money over the coming months. So the question says, “How do you expect your company’s marketing spend to change in the next 12 months?” 43% say it’s going to increase, 50% say it’s going to stay the same. And again, this is a marketing survey. They weren’t asked sales questions. But if you’re listening to this and you’re a VP or you’re managing the sales and marketing for communities, while you may be looking to increase your spend on marketing, you also need to be looking at increasing your spend on how do I help my salespeople through systems, through sales coaching. So whenever you start thinking about if you’ve got room to adjust your budget for this year, for next year, try to balance that out, find a good balance of getting more leads coming in, but also making sure we’re spending some of our budget on actually helping our salespeople with coaching and systems.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, and I think that goes into it. Maybe this is maybe I’ll dive deeper into this next week, but I mean that is exactly what I was kind of talking about a while ago of examining your full sales process. The very top of the funnel is where the prospecting happens, right? The advertising, the content, all the stuff that drives people into the funnel. And yes, you got to focus on that. That’s a key focus. But then what’s that gap between that and the salesperson look like? And then what are you providing with the salesperson in order to close more of those opportunities? So that’s kind of three big areas. Traffic, increased traffic, increased conversion into tours, increased tours into movements, right? Keep it simple. Anyway, so maybe we’ll dive into what are the different components within each of those that you can, if you increase this by 1%, increase this by 4%, increase this by 5%, and I’ll get my little calculator spreadsheet out as well. We’ll share my screens if you’re going to watch it on YouTube or whatever, you can actually see it and see the impact of that as well. I like that actually.
Luke Adams: Well, that’s what we’ll do next week, Luke. So if you want to take a look at this survey, I’ll put the link to where you can download it in the show notes. But Dallas, I’ve enjoyed this conversation. I hope it’s open to our listeners.
Dallas Shipp: Absolutely. These are always fun. It’s always great to get feedback once in a while. We get emails or some notes. It’s always fun to hear from everybody out in the field.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
Luke Adams: That’s been, I think, the word of the year for marketing in 2023. Is chat GPT or GPT AI, machine learning, all of that. It’s everywhere. I can’t get it out of my social media news feeds. Do you feel the same about it?
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, it’s probably the term of the year for a few years. I mean, because it’s flipping so many things on its head.
Luke Adams: You know what I mean?
Dallas Shipp: It’s for people that have a good understanding of the strategy and whatnot, it’s going to be really, really good. And it’s really going to allow you to optimize your teams, but it is a little scary to think about how much it’s going to change things.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah, I mean, we were chatting before this about, you know, now they’re kind of slowly rolling this out. If you’re looking for a house, you can eventually be able to hook it up with Zillow. And instead of having to search through listings, which, you know, may still be fun for you, but for a lot of people, they can just use like the Zillow chat GPT thing to say, “I’m looking for a three-bedroom, one and a half bath in this area.” And then GPT will hook up to Zillow’s results and pull all the information in three seconds, give you the exact kinds of houses you’re looking for. And it’s all like a chat format. So you can say, “Maybe something with a little more square footage.” So it just feels like this natural conversation you’re having. And I think a lot of people are going to like that.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, for sure. So how would you describe chat GPT to people? Specifically senior living marketing execs, marketing VPs, community marketing directors, EDs, how would you explain this tool?
Luke Adams: Yeah, so the… I think like a technical definition, and here I’ll give chat GPT’s definition of itself. It says chat GPT is an AI language model created by OpenAI that can communicate with humans in natural language. So that’s its own definition of itself. But I think really what most people think of it as is like a 24/7 chatbot response. It’s like a chatbot with much more advanced capabilities. It’s not just looking for keywords or phrases, it can understand and respond in a more customized and intelligent way. So it’s a phenomenal tool that’s changing many things, and it’s getting better really quickly.
Dallas Shipp: Absolutely. The improvements they’ve made in just the past two months have exponentially improved the tool already. And they’re going to continue to do it. So, I mean, if you haven’t had this discussion and here’s the deal. This is going to change everything when it comes to especially your online marketing. If you are not having discussions internally about how to use AI, how to leverage this, how to work it into your sales engineering process, which, by the way, if you have not built that sales engine, if you’re not engineered that sales process, you also need to do that, right? Because what’s going to happen is a lot of companies have already done this where they’ve taken some of the responsibilities away from the sales director, right? Historically, the sales director is responsible for generating leads, cultivating those leads, turning those leads into a tour, getting them, and then closing the tour ultimately into a move. What the really successful companies are doing, though, is dividing up the labor in sales just like we do in every other part of the company. It’s the same thing. For as long as, and this isn’t just senior living, I mean, sales has historically been like this independent lone ranger out there doing it all. And the speed at which things are moving is really making that harder and harder to do. Because for you to have a good website and especially now with these AI tools that are able to respond to people, you can turn more of your web traffic into leads. If you do this right, right now I would say on average when we talk to somebody, if they’ve got 500 visitors coming to their website a month, they’re probably getting about two to five tours a month. The issue is that so many people come to the website and they don’t get the information they’re looking for, they don’t get the questions answered that they’re looking for. So when you put tools like this on your website, now all of a sudden, instead of getting two to five tours and 20 leads, now you’re getting 100, 150, 200 leads and turning that into 15, 20, 30, 40 tours, depending on your sales process. One person can’t handle that, two people can’t handle that probably. And so you’ve got to have these systems in place that can efficiently but accurately move people through that website on its own. That’s why we call our tool a move-in machine, because that’s what it does. We’re in the business of turning your website into a machine that books those tours for you. So, you know, this is going to change things. And if you haven’t read the book, “The Machine” by Justin Roth Marsh, it really talks about this in depth, about how to go from the old school mentality of having your sales director do everything for the community, and how to break that up. It’s really, really fascinating. I’m working on getting Justin on for a podcast as well, but it’s a really, really good book if you’re not familiar with this model. And a big piece of this model is automating the stuff that can be automated. And AI makes it significantly easier than it was a year ago. So first of all, you need to get the understanding of why this works and why this is going to change everything, and then start building that plan to make it part of your process. And I will tell you, you’re going to get some resistance at the community levels of this. Marketing directors are used to having full control over the whole sales process. So when you’re doing this and you’re thinking about doing this and integrating these engineered sales processes into your company, just know that you’re going to have to explain the why again and again and again. Like, hey, if Judy has worked in the industry for 25 years and she’s great at the development and getting leads in, there are probably some elements she can continue to do. But as far as the website goes, especially, we want that to be a different flow. And by “we,” I just mean if you’re going to use this system and say, “Yes, this makes sense,” then that’s got to be separate because they simply can’t handle the flow of leads. So the other thing too, why you’ve got to make this happen is that as this becomes more and more ingrained into people’s everyday life, right? As we all start using AI in everything that we do, you know, think about what Amazon did to the review world, right? When Amazon started having a review for every single product on earth, it just became part of our psychological makeup to start looking for, “Oh, what’s the review score?” You can’t buy anything now without seeing that if it’s three stars, four stars, five stars, including senior living communities. So, you know, this is going to be just as, maybe even more embraced by people. And so as your adult children get younger and younger and younger into the other generations, you’re going to have to have this in place. And when I say younger and younger, I mean, like you need it now because the 45 to 55 year old crowd, they are using Amazon, right? And Amazon is going to use this in all of your shopping, all of your buying habits. It’s going to be integral. They’re going to create it into your smartphones so that it’s just so sleek and easy. Right. Like this makes Alexa and Siri seem 100 years old.
Luke Adams: Yeah, I can’t say.
Dallas Shipp: The power that this has, right? The power that this has, I get so upset when I say something to Alexa and she doesn’t play the song I want or do whatever I want because I’m so used to now having this kind of response. So you’re going to see this integrated. I guarantee you Amazon is going to build this into Alexa. It’s going to get added into Siri. Google’s already using Bard, which is, by the way, the worst name ever for any of the tools I’ve ever heard of. But this is going to be the next big technological revolution. And actually, it’s not going to be, it is. It’s here. And so you’ve got to have this plan in place because this is going to change everything, and the communities that don’t do this, you’re going to be left behind.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah. So let’s talk about how you can actually use chat GPT with everyday items or everyday situations that you’re coming across. So again, how you access it, just go to Google, type in chat GPT, it’ll probably be the first result. You click on that link, and then you’ll see a link that says “Try chat GPT,” and then you sign in or whatever. So how can you use this? One thing would be you can have it read your content, your brochures, your website copy, and reproduce it in a way that’s more understandable, more engaging. Because when we were on websites all the time reading copy from senior living communities, and as I’m sure you could imagine, it is all the same. Everyone thinks that they really are a family. Everyone thinks that it’s really a home away from home. Everyone has the same vision and mission. And so that just doesn’t make them stand out with their copy. So I mean, the first thing I would do is just go to GPT and say, “Hey, rewrite this in a way that’s more vibrant and engaging.” And if you have a favorite author, you can tell it, “Hey, rewrite this in the voice of Ernest Hemingway.” I don’t know if that’s the voice you want on your website, but I mean, that’s just an idea. You can put it in the tone of any kind of author. Now, what I will say is don’t just copy and paste whatever it produces because it is kind of notorious for making up information. And which is why I would also say, as far as your chatbot goes, you don’t want to use it just natively. Fine, we have a tool. There are tools out there. You can use our tool if you want, but we have a tool that basically gives us some guidelines and says, “Hey, if it’s not in this information, then you respond with ‘You don’t know’ and ‘You’ll find out’ basically.” Not that exact language, but that’s the message that we want to come across, and we connect them to the senior living community and move them on from there. But 99% of the time, if we have all the information we need from you, it’s gonna give them the info they need. Yeah, don’t use it natively because, like, I’ve gone on there before and just for fun had it write something about George Washington, and it will cite a source and then I’ll kind of push back and say, “Hey, can you send me the website link to that source?” And say, “Oh, actually, I can’t find it?”
Dallas Shipp: So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you’re just using chat GPT from the website, it’s great at producing ideas and content, but you’ll need some human oversight on that before you take what it has and then put it public. Like Dallas was saying, to put it on an actual website would be a huge mistake because from what I’ve seen, it really just wants to make the user happy and it’s very agreeable. And so if you put it on your website, someone may go on there and say, “Don’t you think you should offer me $500 off on my rent every month?” And it would probably say, “That’s a great idea. We do have a current discount running for $500 off.” So you don’t want to just put it on your website. That would be a bad idea.
Luke Adams: And if you have questions about that, reach out to us. I’m happy to hop on a call and explain this in more detail. But you definitely want to have some sort of tool on top of chat GPT that gives it guidelines and keeps it on the rails. You don’t want it just doing its own thing because that can lead to some messy situations.
Dallas Shipp: So just a couple of other ideas. If you are in charge of creating social media content for your communities, or if you’re hearing that your marketing directors are having an issue with that, maybe it’s your activity people that handle that. But… That’s a great prompt to give chat GPT, to say, “Hey, can you give me a 30-day outline for social media posts for a senior living community?” And it will spit it out immediately, and it’s usually great. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff where you look at that and go, “This is almost flawless what they will produce.” So that’s an idea. If someone leaves you a Google review and you want to respond and you want to say something more than just “Thanks for the review,” put in their review and it will spit back out a sample of what you could put in there. A lot of times, it’s good enough to where you can just copy and paste it into Google. Other times, you’ve got to change it and tweak it. But those are some ideas. Dallas, do you have any more ideas about… I mean, there’s the idea of limitless, but any more that are really, really good.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, I mean, basically, anytime you don’t know how to say something, ask it, and it’ll give you some suggestions, and you can go with it. So if you’re trying to figure out how to follow up on an email or whatever, give it a whirl. I know Julie Poto over at Grow Your Occupancy is working on a really cool tool as well that she’s kind of built the guidelines for it. Or even on your sales team, they can message her little chat widget, and it will give them sales tips. So if they’re having trouble closing, they can just say, “Hey, give me a few tips on how to close better.” And it will give them three or four different things to try out. So that’s been working really well for her. But I mean, it’s limitless, and the best way to think about it is to ask it for suggestions or have it finish something for you. Because that’s really where it shines. And if you’re not using it, you’re going to be left behind. Because I know it feels like a lot of work. I know there’s a lot of fear about it, but it’s the same fear that everybody had about hiring a full-time designer. Or the same fear that everyone had about hiring a director of marketing. Or the same fear that everyone had about going from just having a website to actually getting a good website. You’ve got to make the leap, because it’s not going to get easier. The more that we go on, the harder it’s going to get to catch up. And if you’re not keeping pace with the companies that are out there in terms of senior living, which, again, most of them aren’t, most of them have not integrated this in yet. You’re going to be left behind. It’s just the reality of it. And you can fight it all you want, but this is where the industry is headed, and it’s going to continue to go this way.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah. So let’s talk about how you can actually use chat GPT with everyday items or everyday situations that you’re coming across. So again, how you access it, just go to Google, type in chat GPT, it’ll probably be the first result. You click on that link, and then you’ll see a link that says “Try chat GPT,” and then you sign in or whatever. So how can you use this? One thing would be you can have it read your content, your brochures, your website copy, and reproduce it in a way that’s more understandable, more engaging. Because when we were on websites all the time reading copy from senior living communities, and as I’m sure you could imagine, it is all the same. Everyone thinks that they really are a family. Everyone thinks that it’s really a home away from home. Everyone has the same vision and mission. And so that just doesn’t make them stand out with their copy. So I mean, the first thing I would do is just go to GPT and say, “Hey, rewrite this in a way that’s more vibrant and engaging.” And if you have a favorite author, you can tell it, “Hey, rewrite this in the voice of Ernest Hemingway.” I don’t know if that’s the voice you want on your website, but I mean, that’s just an idea. You can put it in the tone of any kind of author. Now, what I will say is don’t just copy and paste whatever it produces because it is kind of notorious for making up information. And which is why I would also say, as far as your chatbot goes, you don’t want to use it just natively. Fine, we have a tool. There are tools out there. You can use our tool if you want, but we have a tool that basically gives us some guidelines and says, “Hey, if it’s not in this information, then you respond with ‘You don’t know’ and ‘You’ll find out’ basically.” Not that exact language, but that’s the message that we want to come across, and we connect them to the senior living community and move them on from there. But 99% of the time, if we have all the information we need from you, it’s gonna give them the info they need. Yeah, don’t use it natively because, like, I’ve gone on there before and just for fun had it write something about George Washington, and it will cite a source and then I’ll kind of push back and say, “Hey, can you send me the website link to that source?” And say, “Oh, actually, I can’t find it?”
Dallas Shipp: So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you’re just using chat GPT from the website, it’s great at producing ideas and content, but you’ll need some human oversight on that before you take what it has and then put it public. Like Dallas was saying, to put it on an actual website would be a huge mistake because from what I’ve seen, it really just wants to make the user happy and it’s very agreeable. And so if you put it on your website, someone may go on there and say, “Don’t you think you should offer me $500 off on my rent every month?” And it would probably say, “That’s a great idea. We do have a current discount running for $500 off.” So you don’t want to just put it on your website. That would be a bad idea.
Luke Adams: And if you have questions about that, reach out to us. I’m happy to hop on a call and explain this in more detail. But you definitely want to have some sort of tool on top of chat GPT that gives it guidelines and keeps it on the rails. You don’t want it just doing its own thing because that can lead to some messy situations.
Dallas Shipp: So just a couple of other ideas. If you are in charge of creating social media content for your communities, or if you’re hearing that your marketing directors are having an issue with that, maybe it’s your activity people that handle that. But… That’s a great prompt to give chat GPT, to say, “Hey, can you give me a 30-day outline for social media posts for a senior living community?” And it will spit it out immediately, and it’s usually great. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff where you look at that and go, “This is almost flawless what they will produce.” So that’s an idea. If someone leaves you a Google review and you want to respond and you want to say something more than just “Thanks for the review,” put in their review and it will spit back out a sample of what you could put in there. A lot of times, it’s good enough to where you can just copy and paste it into Google. Other times, you’ve got to change it and tweak it. But those are some ideas. Dallas, do you have any more ideas about… I mean, there’s the idea of limitless, but any more that are really, really good.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, I mean, basically, anytime you don’t know how to say something, ask it, and it’ll give you some suggestions, and you can go with it. So if you’re trying to figure out how to follow up on an email or whatever, give it a whirl. I know Julie Podewitz over at Grow Your Occupancy is working on a really cool tool as well that she’s kind of built the guidelines for it. Or even on your sales team, they can message her little chat widget, and it will give them sales tips. So if they’re having trouble closing, they can just say, “Hey, give me a few tips on how to close better.” And it will give them three or four different things to try out. So it’s a really cool tool. The short answer is, it can give you pretty much any information that you want, right? So if you’ve got a staff situation, get its input. I mean, you know, it’s pretty endless. But yeah, content is a big one. Again, don’t just use it and spit it out and copy and paste like Luke said, but it’s a really good. If you’re like me, right? If you give me a blank white screen, I might stare at that thing for days, right? But if you give me something to just start with, something to go on, and I edit it and I make it mine and I change it up, I’m gonna get it done significantly faster, you know, from what might take me hours or even days is gonna take me a matter of minutes. And so you can really get a lot more material out there, a lot more content out there. And in a world like we live in today, content is king, right? The more information, just like this podcast, every time you put a podcast out, we get phone calls. It’s the same thing for you guys. Every time you put content out there, excuse me, you’re gonna get emails and messages and people going to your website to chat and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, you know, the opportunities really are endless with this.
Luke Adams: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, really to wrap up, just kind of going back to what Dallas said, we’ve taken the power of GPT and built guidelines around it to where you can actually put it as a chatbot on your website. And it’s going to pull information from your website. It’s going to pull information from your pricing sheet, from your brochures, anything that you want uploaded to that. It’s going to pull. And if it doesn’t know the answer, it’s not going to make up an answer, like GPT. But it is really intuitive. It’s really smart. It can be integrated with any CRM.
Dallas Shipp: Let me add this too. We talk to a ton of senior living communities every week. And it seems like everybody is always constantly updating their website. And I think the reason for that, and I’m literally thinking out loud here, but this kind of just hit me. But I think a big reason for that is that people either read into the website, and then it’s not getting engagement. And so they’re like, “Oh, well, and what they’re ultimately trying to figure out is what information do my website visitors want when they come to my website?” And so they redo it, they spend all this time, all this money, all these resources to redo the website. And then guess what? It’s not the information they want again. And so then you spend all of more money and more time, more resources, trying to figure out what they want. Instead of just having this simple tool that they can tell you what they want, because for 25 different prospective families, there might be 35 different things that they’re looking for. And so if you put these tools in place, it can eliminate a lot of that work that frankly isn’t necessary, because as long as you give our last episode, actually, we went really deep into what the three areas you really need to have on your website. So if you didn’t listen to that podcast, go back and listen to it. There’s a ton of value in there, but they’re not engaging. Give them this one simple tool to just tell you what they want. Catch them before they go to one of the aggregate sites, and then they want to sell you the lead for thousands of dollars. This is really a simple way to take it. Let’s go back to using those numbers and say you have 500 visitors a month and right now you’re generating 20 or 30 leads from that. Well, put this in there and start a conversation with 100 of them or 150 of them and turn that into 15, 20, 30 tours.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
Most of our partners were able to get our widgets onto their website in a week.
After just one month, you’ll see more tours & move-ins generated from your website.
Luke Adams: That’s been, I think, the word of the year for marketing in 2023. Is chat GPT or GPT AI, machine learning, all of that. It’s everywhere. I can’t get it out of my social media news feeds. Do you feel the same about it?
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, it’s probably the term of the year for a few years. I mean, because it’s flipping so many things on its head.
Luke Adams: You know what I mean?
Dallas Shipp: It’s for people that have a good understanding of the strategy and whatnot, it’s going to be really, really good. And it’s really going to allow you to optimize your teams, but it is a little scary to think about how much it’s going to change things.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah, I mean, we were chatting before this about, you know, now they’re kind of slowly rolling this out. If you’re looking for a house, you can eventually be able to hook it up with Zillow. And instead of having to search through listings, which, you know, may still be fun for you, but for a lot of people, they can just use like the Zillow chat GPT thing to say, “I’m looking for a three-bedroom, one and a half bath in this area.” And then GPT will hook up to Zillow’s results and pull all the information in three seconds, give you the exact kinds of houses you’re looking for. And it’s all like a chat format. So you can say, “Maybe something with a little more square footage.” So it just feels like this natural conversation you’re having. And I think a lot of people are going to like that.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, for sure. So how would you describe chat GPT to people? Specifically senior living marketing execs, marketing VPs, community marketing directors, EDs, how would you explain this tool?
Luke Adams: Yeah, so the… I think like a technical definition, and here I’ll give chat GPT’s definition of itself. It says chat GPT is an AI language model created by OpenAI that can communicate with humans in natural language. So that’s its own definition of itself. But I think really what most people think of it as is like a 24/7 chatbot response. It’s like a chatbot with much more advanced capabilities. It’s not just looking for keywords or phrases, it can understand and respond in a more customized and intelligent way. So it’s a phenomenal tool that’s changing many things, and it’s getting better really quickly.
Dallas Shipp: Absolutely. The improvements they’ve made in just the past two months have exponentially improved the tool already. And they’re going to continue to do it. So, I mean, if you haven’t had this discussion and here’s the deal. This is going to change everything when it comes to especially your online marketing. If you are not having discussions internally about how to use AI, how to leverage this, how to work it into your sales engineering process, which, by the way, if you have not built that sales engine, if you’re not engineered that sales process, you also need to do that, right? Because what’s going to happen is a lot of companies have already done this where they’ve taken some of the responsibilities away from the sales director, right? Historically, the sales director is responsible for generating leads, cultivating those leads, turning those leads into a tour, getting them, and then closing the tour ultimately into a move. What the really successful companies are doing, though, is dividing up the labor in sales just like we do in every other part of the company. It’s the same thing. For as long as, and this isn’t just senior living, I mean, sales has historically been like this independent lone ranger out there doing it all. And the speed at which things are moving is really making that harder and harder to do. Because for you to have a good website and especially now with these AI tools that are able to respond to people, you can turn more of your web traffic into leads. If you do this right, right now I would say on average when we talk to somebody, if they’ve got 500 visitors coming to their website a month, they’re probably getting about two to five tours a month. The issue is that so many people come to the website and they don’t get the information they’re looking for, they don’t get the questions answered that they’re looking for. So when you put tools like this on your website, now all of a sudden, instead of getting two to five tours and 20 leads, now you’re getting 100, 150, 200 leads and turning that into 15, 20, 30, 40 tours, depending on your sales process. One person can’t handle that, two people can’t handle that probably. And so you’ve got to have these systems in place that can efficiently but accurately move people through that website on its own. That’s why we call our tool a move-in machine, because that’s what it does. We’re in the business of turning your website into a machine that books those tours for you. So, you know, this is going to change things. And if you haven’t read the book, “The Machine” by Justin Roth Marsh, it really talks about this in depth, about how to go from the old school mentality of having your sales director do everything for the community, and how to break that up. It’s really, really fascinating. I’m working on getting Justin on for a podcast as well, but it’s a really, really good book if you’re not familiar with this model. And a big piece of this model is automating the stuff that can be automated. And AI makes it significantly easier than it was a year ago. So first of all, you need to get the understanding of why this works and why this is going to change everything, and then start building that plan to make it part of your process. And I will tell you, you’re going to get some resistance at the community levels of this. Marketing directors are used to having full control over the whole sales process. So when you’re doing this and you’re thinking about doing this and integrating these engineered sales processes into your company, just know that you’re going to have to explain the why again and again and again. Like, hey, if Judy has worked in the industry for 25 years and she’s great at the development and getting leads in, there are probably some elements she can continue to do. But as far as the website goes, especially, we want that to be a different flow. And by “we,” I just mean if you’re going to use this system and say, “Yes, this makes sense,” then that’s got to be separate because they simply can’t handle the flow of leads. So the other thing too, why you’ve got to make this happen is that as this becomes more and more ingrained into people’s everyday life, right? As we all start using AI in everything that we do, you know, think about what Amazon did to the review world, right? When Amazon started having a review for every single product on earth, it just became part of our psychological makeup to start looking for, “Oh, what’s the review score?” You can’t buy anything now without seeing that if it’s three stars, four stars, five stars, including senior living communities. So, you know, this is going to be just as, maybe even more embraced by people. And so as your adult children get younger and younger and younger into the other generations, you’re going to have to have this in place. And when I say younger and younger, I mean, like you need it now because the 45 to 55 year old crowd, they are using Amazon, right? And Amazon is going to use this in all of your shopping, all of your buying habits. It’s going to be integral. They’re going to create it into your smartphones so that it’s just so sleek and easy. Right. Like this makes Alexa and Siri seem 100 years old.
Luke Adams: Yeah, I can’t say.
Dallas Shipp: The power that this has, right? The power that this has, I get so upset when I say something to Alexa and she doesn’t play the song I want or do whatever I want because I’m so used to now having this kind of response. So you’re going to see this integrated. I guarantee you Amazon is going to build this into Alexa. It’s going to get added into Siri. Google’s already using Bard, which is, by the way, the worst name ever for any of the tools I’ve ever heard of. But this is going to be the next big technological revolution. And actually, it’s not going to be, it is. It’s here. And so you’ve got to have this plan in place because this is going to change everything, and the communities that don’t do this, you’re going to be left behind.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah. So let’s talk about how you can actually use chat GPT with everyday items or everyday situations that you’re coming across. So again, how you access it, just go to Google, type in chat GPT, it’ll probably be the first result. You click on that link, and then you’ll see a link that says “Try chat GPT,” and then you sign in or whatever. So how can you use this? One thing would be you can have it read your content, your brochures, your website copy, and reproduce it in a way that’s more understandable, more engaging. Because when we were on websites all the time reading copy from senior living communities, and as I’m sure you could imagine, it is all the same. Everyone thinks that they really are a family. Everyone thinks that it’s really a home away from home. Everyone has the same vision and mission. And so that just doesn’t make them stand out with their copy. So I mean, the first thing I would do is just go to GPT and say, “Hey, rewrite this in a way that’s more vibrant and engaging.” And if you have a favorite author, you can tell it, “Hey, rewrite this in the voice of Ernest Hemingway.” I don’t know if that’s the voice you want on your website, but I mean, that’s just an idea. You can put it in the tone of any kind of author. Now, what I will say is don’t just copy and paste whatever it produces because it is kind of notorious for making up information. And which is why I would also say, as far as your chatbot goes, you don’t want to use it just natively. Fine, we have a tool. There are tools out there. You can use our tool if you want, but we have a tool that basically gives us some guidelines and says, “Hey, if it’s not in this information, then you respond with ‘You don’t know’ and ‘You’ll find out’ basically.” Not that exact language, but that’s the message that we want to come across, and we connect them to the senior living community and move them on from there. But 99% of the time, if we have all the information we need from you, it’s gonna give them the info they need. Yeah, don’t use it natively because, like, I’ve gone on there before and just for fun had it write something about George Washington, and it will cite a source and then I’ll kind of push back and say, “Hey, can you send me the website link to that source?” And say, “Oh, actually, I can’t find it?”
Dallas Shipp: So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you’re just using chat GPT from the website, it’s great at producing ideas and content, but you’ll need some human oversight on that before you take what it has and then put it public. Like Dallas was saying, to put it on an actual website would be a huge mistake because from what I’ve seen, it really just wants to make the user happy and it’s very agreeable. And so if you put it on your website, someone may go on there and say, “Don’t you think you should offer me $500 off on my rent every month?” And it would probably say, “That’s a great idea. We do have a current discount running for $500 off.” So you don’t want to just put it on your website. That would be a bad idea.
Luke Adams: And if you have questions about that, reach out to us. I’m happy to hop on a call and explain this in more detail. But you definitely want to have some sort of tool on top of chat GPT that gives it guidelines and keeps it on the rails. You don’t want it just doing its own thing because that can lead to some messy situations.
Dallas Shipp: So just a couple of other ideas. If you are in charge of creating social media content for your communities, or if you’re hearing that your marketing directors are having an issue with that, maybe it’s your activity people that handle that. But… That’s a great prompt to give chat GPT, to say, “Hey, can you give me a 30-day outline for social media posts for a senior living community?” And it will spit it out immediately, and it’s usually great. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff where you look at that and go, “This is almost flawless what they will produce.” So that’s an idea. If someone leaves you a Google review and you want to respond and you want to say something more than just “Thanks for the review,” put in their review and it will spit back out a sample of what you could put in there. A lot of times, it’s good enough to where you can just copy and paste it into Google. Other times, you’ve got to change it and tweak it. But those are some ideas. Dallas, do you have any more ideas about… I mean, there’s the idea of limitless, but any more that are really, really good.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, I mean, basically, anytime you don’t know how to say something, ask it, and it’ll give you some suggestions, and you can go with it. So if you’re trying to figure out how to follow up on an email or whatever, give it a whirl. I know Julie Poto over at Grow Your Occupancy is working on a really cool tool as well that she’s kind of built the guidelines for it. Or even on your sales team, they can message her little chat widget, and it will give them sales tips. So if they’re having trouble closing, they can just say, “Hey, give me a few tips on how to close better.” And it will give them three or four different things to try out. So that’s been working really well for her. But I mean, it’s limitless, and the best way to think about it is to ask it for suggestions or have it finish something for you. Because that’s really where it shines. And if you’re not using it, you’re going to be left behind. Because I know it feels like a lot of work. I know there’s a lot of fear about it, but it’s the same fear that everybody had about hiring a full-time designer. Or the same fear that everyone had about hiring a director of marketing. Or the same fear that everyone had about going from just having a website to actually getting a good website. You’ve got to make the leap, because it’s not going to get easier. The more that we go on, the harder it’s going to get to catch up. And if you’re not keeping pace with the companies that are out there in terms of senior living, which, again, most of them aren’t, most of them have not integrated this in yet. You’re going to be left behind. It’s just the reality of it. And you can fight it all you want, but this is where the industry is headed, and it’s going to continue to go this way.
Luke Adams: Oh, yeah. So let’s talk about how you can actually use chat GPT with everyday items or everyday situations that you’re coming across. So again, how you access it, just go to Google, type in chat GPT, it’ll probably be the first result. You click on that link, and then you’ll see a link that says “Try chat GPT,” and then you sign in or whatever. So how can you use this? One thing would be you can have it read your content, your brochures, your website copy, and reproduce it in a way that’s more understandable, more engaging. Because when we were on websites all the time reading copy from senior living communities, and as I’m sure you could imagine, it is all the same. Everyone thinks that they really are a family. Everyone thinks that it’s really a home away from home. Everyone has the same vision and mission. And so that just doesn’t make them stand out with their copy. So I mean, the first thing I would do is just go to GPT and say, “Hey, rewrite this in a way that’s more vibrant and engaging.” And if you have a favorite author, you can tell it, “Hey, rewrite this in the voice of Ernest Hemingway.” I don’t know if that’s the voice you want on your website, but I mean, that’s just an idea. You can put it in the tone of any kind of author. Now, what I will say is don’t just copy and paste whatever it produces because it is kind of notorious for making up information. And which is why I would also say, as far as your chatbot goes, you don’t want to use it just natively. Fine, we have a tool. There are tools out there. You can use our tool if you want, but we have a tool that basically gives us some guidelines and says, “Hey, if it’s not in this information, then you respond with ‘You don’t know’ and ‘You’ll find out’ basically.” Not that exact language, but that’s the message that we want to come across, and we connect them to the senior living community and move them on from there. But 99% of the time, if we have all the information we need from you, it’s gonna give them the info they need. Yeah, don’t use it natively because, like, I’ve gone on there before and just for fun had it write something about George Washington, and it will cite a source and then I’ll kind of push back and say, “Hey, can you send me the website link to that source?” And say, “Oh, actually, I can’t find it?”
Dallas Shipp: So it’s like, okay. I mean, if you’re just using chat GPT from the website, it’s great at producing ideas and content, but you’ll need some human oversight on that before you take what it has and then put it public. Like Dallas was saying, to put it on an actual website would be a huge mistake because from what I’ve seen, it really just wants to make the user happy and it’s very agreeable. And so if you put it on your website, someone may go on there and say, “Don’t you think you should offer me $500 off on my rent every month?” And it would probably say, “That’s a great idea. We do have a current discount running for $500 off.” So you don’t want to just put it on your website. That would be a bad idea.
Luke Adams: And if you have questions about that, reach out to us. I’m happy to hop on a call and explain this in more detail. But you definitely want to have some sort of tool on top of chat GPT that gives it guidelines and keeps it on the rails. You don’t want it just doing its own thing because that can lead to some messy situations.
Dallas Shipp: So just a couple of other ideas. If you are in charge of creating social media content for your communities, or if you’re hearing that your marketing directors are having an issue with that, maybe it’s your activity people that handle that. But… That’s a great prompt to give chat GPT, to say, “Hey, can you give me a 30-day outline for social media posts for a senior living community?” And it will spit it out immediately, and it’s usually great. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff where you look at that and go, “This is almost flawless what they will produce.” So that’s an idea. If someone leaves you a Google review and you want to respond and you want to say something more than just “Thanks for the review,” put in their review and it will spit back out a sample of what you could put in there. A lot of times, it’s good enough to where you can just copy and paste it into Google. Other times, you’ve got to change it and tweak it. But those are some ideas. Dallas, do you have any more ideas about… I mean, there’s the idea of limitless, but any more that are really, really good.
Dallas Shipp: Yeah, I mean, basically, anytime you don’t know how to say something, ask it, and it’ll give you some suggestions, and you can go with it. So if you’re trying to figure out how to follow up on an email or whatever, give it a whirl. I know Julie Podewitz over at Grow Your Occupancy is working on a really cool tool as well that she’s kind of built the guidelines for it. Or even on your sales team, they can message her little chat widget, and it will give them sales tips. So if they’re having trouble closing, they can just say, “Hey, give me a few tips on how to close better.” And it will give them three or four different things to try out. So it’s a really cool tool. The short answer is, it can give you pretty much any information that you want, right? So if you’ve got a staff situation, get its input. I mean, you know, it’s pretty endless. But yeah, content is a big one. Again, don’t just use it and spit it out and copy and paste like Luke said, but it’s a really good. If you’re like me, right? If you give me a blank white screen, I might stare at that thing for days, right? But if you give me something to just start with, something to go on, and I edit it and I make it mine and I change it up, I’m gonna get it done significantly faster, you know, from what might take me hours or even days is gonna take me a matter of minutes. And so you can really get a lot more material out there, a lot more content out there. And in a world like we live in today, content is king, right? The more information, just like this podcast, every time you put a podcast out, we get phone calls. It’s the same thing for you guys. Every time you put content out there, excuse me, you’re gonna get emails and messages and people going to your website to chat and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, you know, the opportunities really are endless with this.
Luke Adams: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, really to wrap up, just kind of going back to what Dallas said, we’ve taken the power of GPT and built guidelines around it to where you can actually put it as a chatbot on your website. And it’s going to pull information from your website. It’s going to pull information from your pricing sheet, from your brochures, anything that you want uploaded to that. It’s going to pull. And if it doesn’t know the answer, it’s not going to make up an answer, like GPT. But it is really intuitive. It’s really smart. It can be integrated with any CRM.
Dallas Shipp: Let me add this too. We talk to a ton of senior living communities every week. And it seems like everybody is always constantly updating their website. And I think the reason for that, and I’m literally thinking out loud here, but this kind of just hit me. But I think a big reason for that is that people either read into the website, and then it’s not getting engagement. And so they’re like, “Oh, well, and what they’re ultimately trying to figure out is what information do my website visitors want when they come to my website?” And so they redo it, they spend all this time, all this money, all these resources to redo the website. And then guess what? It’s not the information they want again. And so then you spend all of more money and more time, more resources, trying to figure out what they want. Instead of just having this simple tool that they can tell you what they want, because for 25 different prospective families, there might be 35 different things that they’re looking for. And so if you put these tools in place, it can eliminate a lot of that work that frankly isn’t necessary, because as long as you give our last episode, actually, we went really deep into what the three areas you really need to have on your website. So if you didn’t listen to that podcast, go back and listen to it. There’s a ton of value in there, but they’re not engaging. Give them this one simple tool to just tell you what they want. Catch them before they go to one of the aggregate sites, and then they want to sell you the lead for thousands of dollars. This is really a simple way to take it. Let’s go back to using those numbers and say you have 500 visitors a month and right now you’re generating 20 or 30 leads from that. Well, put this in there and start a conversation with 100 of them or 150 of them and turn that into 15, 20, 30 tours.
Let’s find a time to chat to see if the Move-in Machine would be right for your website.
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