Creating your home care marketing plan should never be a one-and-done task. If you haven’t taken the time to review yours lately, now is the perfect time to check for some common mistakes many home care owners make that could be making life harder for you, and less successful for your business, such as:
- Letting the Company Run You Instead of You Running the Company. This is something stressed by Aaron Marcum, past owner of several major home care agencies as well as Home Care Pulse. If you own a home care agency, performing a lot of work is unavoidable. But if you’re doing things right, you should be able to set boundaries to have a more healthy work/life balance. To do this:
- First, have clear accountability systems for your employees. Each staff member should have a clearly defined position agreement along with two or three performance metrics to measure the most important outputs of their position.
- Second, have processes documented for every part of your business, so it is repeatable and teachable.
- Not Having a Differentiator. Pause here and do a Google search for “home care near me.” Then look at the first five home care agencies that come up. There’s a good chance that all of them talk about some variant of providing “high-quality,” “best in area,” or simply “compassionate” home care. You need something that truly separates you from your competitors. Your differentiator should meet the following criteria:
- It plays to your strengths
- It’s not widespread in your market
- It meets existing demand
- It can’t be easily copied
- Viewing Other Agencies as Competitors Instead of Allies. Although it’s true that you need to compete for both clients and caregivers, you’ll be more successful if you realize that home care isn’t a zero-sum game. For instance, home care companies can accomplish more by working together through:
- Referring to each other when a client is not a right fit
- Sharing best practices
- Working together to launch community events
- Sharing caregivers
Running Your Home Care Company Should Be Both Challenging and Fulfilling
It will never be easy, but running your business should be fulfilling work that motivates you while still leaving you time for the things in your life that matter most. Let the senior care marketing team at MOST help you ensure your home care marketing plan sets you up for success! Contact us to learn more about how we can help at 800.370.6580.
About the Author
Connor Kunz is VP of Growth at Careswitch, the first free home care agency management software. Careswitch makes their money from agencies upgrade to use their payroll processing, so any agency owner can get the software they need to run their business for free. Learn more about Careswitch and sign up in five minutes.
