Take two minutes with me to look deeper into the journey a family or senior follows when choosing a retirement community. Specifically, let’s look at what happens toward the end of the sales funnel. What are they looking for after they’ve talked to you?

First of all, families continue researching after they’ve visited your website or toured your community. As we noted last month, a focus on measuring clicks gives marketers a limited perspective on assessing campaigns. For one thing, people might not mention “finding” members on Comfort Life for a few different reasons, most of which are misleading. What’s more, 43% of consumers read reviews during their final decision process, just one way they still seek validation. When family members, especially, research online, they find Comfort Life. They discover our curated and third-party reviews as well as our in-depth family insight videos.

Our platform is about much more than discovery. Many users doing research on Comfort Life already know what their options are. In fact, in any given month, an average of 14,000 visitors to our website are people researching specific communities like yours. They already know about you but they’re curious what our third-party website says about you.

These are the prospects that your sales team might have exhaustively followed up with. They’re seniors and families that have been to your website, or even your communities. As they’re considering you among a few other choices, Comfort Life plays a key role in influencing them in the right direction, when your sales team has no more leverage.

In addition, people always want more information. ComfortLife.ca gives them exclusive insight they won’t find on your website, information that’s incrementally more valuable to them. They see value in the way it’s presented clearly and consistently, in an objective and valuable form. Aside from our in-depth community profiles and reviews, prospects find value in videos by management and industry leaders, and in ebooks like our tour checklist and preparing for the move. They’ll find even more information in our upcoming Manager FAQs and hand-curated transcripts of videos.

They want a way of comparing your apples to other apples and confirming that your community is right for them and their loved ones. The decision process doesn’t end for them until they sign on the dotted line. They seek comfort with their decision, from their initial prospecting right through to closing.

• Update on the new ComfortLife.ca profile. We’ve interviewed a group of our users, probing their research experience. They shared personal journeys and cogent insights, telling us how they use our site, and how we can optimize its effectiveness for them. We’re moving forward with initial design specifications for a reinvigorated, expanded profile to be launched later in the year.


• Guest attendant addition. We’ve added a new designation, Guest attendant, under Staffing in your admin panel. Add it and you’ll find it on your profile beneath personal support workers in the list of “Medical and other support staff.”


• Don’t forget: Submit contacts, stories, and photos for the 20th annual Comfort Life Retirement Living Guide. We want to hear from you as we begin writing and planning the 2022 guide. We’re looking for the following:
  • Stories about residents whose lives have improved notably since moving into your community.
  • Confident, caring seniors who make your community better and who are willing to be interviewed.
  • Stories about the renewal of social activities in your community and how that impacts residents in your care.
  • High-quality photos of life in your community.
  
  

  Share your ideas and photos now to get first consideration for inclusion in this year’s magazine, home-delivered to families across Canada. If you have a resident who’s particularly gifted at talking about any of the things above, please get their permission, then reach out to [email protected], and I’ll happily interview them. Please share links to stories, posts, or photos (using Google Drive, WeTransfer, DropBox, etc.) with me and our designer, Alodie.



• Reminder: Book your Family Insight video to drive move-ins if you’re a Gold Member and haven’t already done so. These videos, along with the hand-curated highlights of them we’re adding this year, will provide powerfully personal, relatable testimony to the value that your community offers both families and their loved ones.


• Your Comfort Life print profile is part of your brand. All Comfort Life members receive a ⅓-page community profile in the magazine. Please submit clean copy through your admin panel. We also want to remind members to review previously-submitted print profile content to ensure all spelling and punctuation errors are removed, so that your brand is well-represented.