Shared Home Care Leads or Exclusive Home Care Leads? The answer to the question….

There are an increasing numbers of Home Care Agencies and Assisted Living Facilities who are using internet leads as their one of their primary marketing tools because they believe in the power of the internet to reach their target market and to increase their client base.

Seasoned elder care marketers and even new elder care marketers are interested to know if an exclusive home care lead marketing (or assisted living lead marketing) program will really make a difference in their sales….or would it be better to purchase standard shared leads (ie eldecarelink, service magic etc).

To help you decide which one is better, here are the advantages and disadvantages.

The cost of an exclusive lead program can, on the surface, appear to be more expensive than standard shared leads programs. However, the closing ratio is usually much higher with an exclusive lead.

Of course, this is not guaranteed because there is still a dependency on your delivering and selling skills.

Exclusive lead programs give the elder care marketing professional or home care agency owner an advantage because there is less competition, less wasted time, and higher Return on Investment (ROI).

Exclusive Lead Marketing Programs should include the following solutions. Missing any one of these could lead to a failed program.

1. A lead capture website- specifically designed with your target market in mind, these sites are designed to get the prospect to take an action- either make a phone call or fill out a short form.

2. Complete search engine optimization on your lead capture website for every local city/town/municipality that your home care agency or assisted living facility might service.

3. Natural search engine rankings (not just pay-per-click) on page #1 of Google for dozens of keyword phrases.

4. A minimum of weekly blog posting, 2x per month video production.

5. Call tracking and recorded phone number that dials straight through to the office.

6. A professionally managed Google Adwords campaign for more competitive markets that minimizes job seekers and increases quality leads. This campaign should be run by an organization that understands the nature of the research and buying process of the elder care market, not by a "generalist" organization who serves plumbers, roofers, car dealerships and construction companies.

Of course, there is still competition even when you purchase an exclusive leads program because the prospects may still shop around.

Here's a sample scenario:

• Sue the Home Care Agency Owner is buying 30 shared leads per month at a cost of $18.00 per lead.
• $18×30= $540 per month. These are shared leads.
• Three other Home Care Agencies in her area are also paying for these leads and marketing to these consumers.
• Sue closes, on average, 1 lead per month from this marketing strategy.
• She's paying $540 for one close per month.
• Some months none of the leads close.
• Her average client signs up for 8 hours per week.
• She charges $21.00 per hour for a total of $168 per week in billing.
• It takes her about 3.2 weeks to break even.
• The cycle starts all over again.
• Sue isn't making much money in the formula.

What if Sue's scenario looked like this:

• Sue the Home Care Agency owner spends $1050 per month on her own exclusive lead marketing program.
• $500 is for pay-per-click campaign clicks (ie Google Adwords Clicks, managed professionally at no additional charge), and the other $550 is for a completely optimized website designed for home care lead capture, weekly blogging, videos 2x per month, and within a short time her new website is on the first page of Google for several of her local towns for various keyword phrases.
• Sue gets 10-15 REAL leads per month, exclusive to her.
• These leads are usually phone calls to her office, and sometimes they come in via a form filled out on her website.
• Of those leads, she closes 3 each month.
• Her average client signs up for 8 hours per week.
• She charges $21.00 per hour for a total of $504 per week in billing.
• It takes her about 2 weeks to break even.
• She enjoys a profit each month, and the cycle continues, and gets better.
• Each week she watches her website move up the ladder in the search engine results because she is not relying solely on pay-per-click to attract leads.
• She is eventually seeing more exclusive leads because she dominates natural search.
• She can decrease the cost of her Pay-per-click campaign as she sees increasing natural results.
• Sue also has a built in e-newsletter that automatically follows up with all of her inquiries, even 6 months later.

Scenario #1 looks like the least expensive option, but the reality is that it doesn't do Sue much good at all. She has not made an investment in her own website, her own content, and her own internet presence. She running on a wheel that doesn't help her business very much at all.

Your scenario may be similar to one of these, or completely different.

Just remember that although a shared lead cost at $18.00 per lead sounds cheap, but at the end of the day, they may be more expensive than you think.

Invest in your own internet presence. Build a program that will benefit your business for years to come. One that you can help manage and direct, but that is completely done for you. Get back to working ON your business instead of FOR your business chasing shared leads every month.

Invest in you, and reap the rewards!

Regards,

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