Do you run a private duty nursing business but lack marketing ideas for growth? If YES, here are 20 best tips on how to get clients for private duty home care.
A private duty home care business can be quite profitable if it is run properly. These days, most insurance companies have a specified number of days in which a patient can stay in a hospital and still be covered by insurance. In addition, the number of elderly people in the United States of America keeps increasing day by day, and a lot more people are in need of private duty home care.
With almost 48 million seniors aged 65 and over this year in the United States, the market for senior services is booming.
Just like any other business, the success of your private duty home care business is dependent on your ability to get new clients. Private duty home care businesses that are thriving know the huge advantage of learning to find families that are in need of your services.
As the owner, manager, or marketing representative of your private duty home care agency, here are some tips that you can implement in order to get new clients.
Best Tips to Get Clients for Private Duty Home Care
1. Have an elevator pitch
You should take your time to create a short script of about two to three minutes that gives a concise description of your business and the quality of service you provide, sometimes referred to as an elevator pitch.
Having this type of pitch ready gives you the ability to deliver a sales pitch anytime and anywhere; tell everyone you know about your business; talk it up among friends, at parties, in line at the Grocery Store, and your family.
2. Offer your services through an a la carte basis
When you develop a menu for the services you offer, it is best for you to allow your clients to choose from the list of the services they want.
This can be your competitive advantage in the sense that many of the larger home-care service companies only offer a bulk of services and don’t give clients the opportunity to choose just those services they most need. As such, your clients can just purchase the services they need or can afford. They’ll appreciate your cooperation and provide you with plenty of referrals.
3. Offer additional services
You should do well to add services that might not be offered by larger companies that could make your business more attractive to wealthier clients. For instance, provide hot prepared meals, offer to go grocery shopping, take clients’ pets to the vet, or any other convenience services they might need.
Pair up with a cleaning service to provide one-stop shopping for clients who need more than just home care. These services will allow you to provide more value to your clients and as such, they will be more likely to continue to use your services and refer people to you.
4. Offer clients an incentive for referrals
Word of mouth is one of the oldest and most effective forms of advertisement. In order to encourage your existing customer to tell others about your services, you could offer them a discount, a gift, or a free service.
You should not limit incentives for referral to just your clients. You should also provide your caregivers with incentives as well. Set up a form of commission that your staff can earn when they bring in new clients or they bring you referrals that turn into paying customers.
The caregivers you hire are on the front lines and spend the most time with clients. They are in the best position to learn about new opportunities in the marketplace. The boost in pay they can earn is another tool you can use to retain competent staff, too.
5. Volunteer
You should get the people in your community to trust you and the services you provide. A very good way you can cultivate and grow this trust is through volunteering opportunities. For example, you can host a blood drive, collect clothes for the needy, volunteer at a soup kitchen et al. Engage in activities that will get you noticed in the community, and interact in a caring, compassionate way.
6. Sponsorships
Another way to get yourself noticed in your local community is to sponsor local senior events. Get your name out there and people will be saying your name. Sponsoring and attending those local senior events can be fun and full of opportunities to find clients.
7. Exceptional Care
In order to get new customers and keep the ones you already have, you must provide exceptional care to your clients and caregivers.
You have to go the extra mile to make sure that you preserve the strength of your reputation. If you are able to provide exceptional service, you will find out that clients will be referred on a constant basis to your business. Then it is just a matter of taking the next set of steps and tools to build your referral sources.
8. Know what your competitors are doing
Do background checks to find out about your competitors. You can call them or check out their website to find out what services they offer and their hourly rates. This can be a big help in determining what you can charge.
If you charge too much, you’ll have trouble finding new clients and the existing clients may leave you for your competitor who offers the same service for a cheaper price. If you charge too little, you’re cheating yourself out of the income you deserve.
9. Have a website
In this day and age, a website is a very valuable tool for almost any type of business. In a lot of cases, it is usually the adult children who search for private duty home care, and they will likely be using the internet to do so.
A website allows you to list all your senior services, create a personal profile so prospects can get to know you better, and you can build trust, and post testimonials from happy customers. Having an easy-to-read website, containing all the information about your care service, will naturally bring some leads to you.
You can also go with doing some local advertising on the likes of Google Adwords by specifically targeting those that are looking for new care services in their area. If you are not on the internet, you will be missing out on a lot of potential customers.
10. Partner with complementary businesses
You can partner with complementary businesses like rehab centers, hospice agencies, or skilled home health agencies. Although a hospice or home healthcare agency may be providing a daily nurse or therapist visit, there is often a gap in personal care and other support services.
11. Partner with your competitors
You can come to an agreement with your competitors that in the event that they should encounter a client that they are unable to provide the required services, they should refer such a person to you and you will do likewise. This type of relationship benefits both parties.
12. Get relevant accreditations
Join local, state, and national home care organizations and pursue accreditations that demonstrate your agency’s commitment to quality care. Promote your achievements in the local media to build your reputation in the community
13. Advertise
Effective advertising is not usually cheap and determining the best way to advertise may not be easy for some care providers. Are your clients the decision-makers themselves, or is it generally a family member or friend that would decide on a care provider? How do you reach your decision-makers?
There are a number of different ways to advertise, but importantly it must be targeted on a local level; there is no point in advertising to those that are based in urban areas if your agency is based in a more rural area. Try to make sure that the communities are being targeted as well.
You can advertise your new senior service business in local senior publications and at local senior centers. Print business cards with a special deal – 20% off the first week of home care, for instance – on the backside. This will help you draw in new clients, but still allow you to make money.
In addition to inexpensive classified ads in the local senior newsletters, prepare a simple flyer to post at senior centers and care facilities. You can also run a free ad for your senior home care business at craigslist.org. In addition, you can also make use of social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter to advertise your services.
Even though social media may not be extremely popular with the elderly, some of them still make use of it. What’s more, these social media websites allow you to target a particular demographic when creating your ads. You can tailor your ads in such a way that it will only be visible to people of a certain age.
14. Network with people who can get you new clients
Introduce yourself to everyone in your area who works with seniors, such as those who work or volunteer at your local senior center, care facilities, and senior care managers.
They can help you find new clients. After you are established, most of your new clients will come from client recommendations, but when you are just starting out, these professionals who work with seniors every day can be very helpful.
In addition, you should meet with discharge planners at local hospitals and nursing homes to educate them about your agency’s non-medical services. Request that social workers keep your agency on file as a referral source when skilled care agencies are not appropriate.
15. Interact with hospitals and physicians
It is important to know those that would diagnose, treat and discharge patients because they have the ability to bring you more clients.
If you do your homework properly, with the aid of this category of institution and people, you will be able to capture clients before they have even considered options for a private duty home care provider. By networking with staff at hospitals or with local physicians, you can make your brand better known, and recommended by them.
Personally visit each office with a well-organized summary of your home care services, and you can see more business being referred your way. Here are some tips that can help you obtain referrals from doctors and hospitals
- Create a list of professionals who are potential referral sources: you will first have to think about the options that are at your disposal. For instance, who, in your area, would be able and willing to send you referrals?
- Reach out to professional referral sources and educate them about your business: when you have listed out the possibilities, you should not just reach out to all of them at once. As a matter of fact, if you try to reach out to too many sources at once, you may end up not impressing anyone.
It’s better to choose only one local family physician and become close friends with him than trying to be friends with ten physicians haphazardly. Cultivating a good working relationship takes time; so to begin with, give yourself time to focus closely on just a few promising referral sources.
- Make it a two-way street—benefit each other: if possible try to give the source that offers you clients on a referral basis some clients. Professionals are much more likely to work with you if their business is gaining from it.
What problems can you help your potential referral sources solve? Make it all about taking care of their customers and the services you will provide them. And in return, you can also refer clients to their services when the need arises. Work together to benefit all businesses involved.
This works on a small scale, by doing things like passing out each other’s business cards or occasionally referring customers. Or it can be done on a larger scale, sharing booths at industry events or sharing advertising space. If the situation calls for it, work together to create a referral plan that benefits both businesses.
Update and communicate: Working with a referral source is not a one-time occasion. This is a relationship that requires dedication and persistence. Check back with your referral sources on a regular basis. Make sure they have a steady supply of your business cards and brochures. Answer any questions or concerns they may have
Reputation Capital: The most important component is Trust. People won’t refer potential clients to you unless they can trust that you will take good care of them. If you refer someone and it doesn’t work out, the value of your own reputation goes down a bit. If they come through, the value of both parties’ reputations goes up.
The people you want as referral sources have a sense of this, even if it’s unconscious. If they recommend you and you don’t come through, their own reputation will be damaged, and you’ll never get a referral from them again. For them to stick their necks out, they have to trust you.
Once you start receiving referrals, always contact the referral source and thank them. Update them when a referral becomes a new client. Focus on the problems you are solving for your new client. This shows referral sources that you are reliable, trustworthy, and dedicated—and they will be more likely to continue to send you referrals.
16. Working efficiently with technology
Care Management software can help improve the reputation and the quality of care that your clients receive. Trust in your brand is important, from both a client’s perspective but also those who offer care. Those who offer care are your front-line team, the ones actually doing the important work in the community.
If they have the information and tools needed to do their job quickly, efficiently, and instantly, then this leaves more time to develop relationships with current clients. For instance, there are applications that can tell a carer all duties they need to perform for every visit, the location of each visit, and information about the client to help them do their job better.
17. Contact Nursing Homes
Although a nursing home can accommodate a patient who cannot care for herself, the facility also serves patients who need temporary nursing care or rehabilitation. When this facility-based care ends, nursing home staff can arrange in-home care to further the patient’s recovery. Provide detailed information on your home care services to nursing home supervisory staff.
18. Contact Disease-Specific Organizations
You can visit organizations that assist with patient management of specific diseases. For instance, the American Cancer Society, or ACS, provides information on private duty home care services for cancer patients. Obtain national accreditation for your agency, as ACS recommends that patients confirm agencies’ credentials before considering that agency for home care work.
19. Provider Directories
You should buy a space for your agency in local home care provider directories. These directories are available online, and may also be distributed to medical offices. Local newspapers commonly feature a medical services directory in which you can advertise your home care agency’s services.
In conclusion,
Set up a feedback system and monitor your caregivers closely to ensure your clients consistently receive top-quality care. All the good work you did to get a new client will not mean anything if your service leaves a lot to be desired.
Call clients personally to check on their satisfaction with the services you’re providing. Send clients feedback forms shortly after they first sign on with your company. No matter how good you get at marketing, if you develop a reputation for poor or unreliable service, your sales will suffer.