Marketing Analytics in Senior Living: How Does Your Organization Stack Up?

According to a recent study, spending on marketing analytics and data infrastructure is predicted to jump from $22 billion in 2022 to $32 billion in 2026 in the U.S., U.K., and E.U.

Across industries—including senior living—the data and technology landscape for marketers is shifting so rapidly it can be difficult to keep up. But with all the competition to attract future residents and families, senior living marketers can’t afford not to use the most effective tools to get the job done.

That’s where data and analytics come in. When senior living facilities combine the two effectively, deeper insights can be created and marketing efforts optimized to help attract new residents to the community. 

The Growing Role of Marketing Analytics

Conducted by the Winterberry Group, the study was based on a 2023 survey of 200 U.S. and European marketers and interviews with industry experts. From Data to Insight: The Outlook for Marketing Analytics “examines and defines the present and future state of marketing analytics as well as use cases, industry challenges, and factors for success as demonstrated by companies that are utilizing analytics most effectively.”

“As the use cases for analytics continue to expand, marketing teams must innovate and overcome challenges such as privacy regulation and loss of data identifiers to engage with customers effectively,” said Winterberry Group Managing Partner, Michael Harrison in a statement. “Organizations leading the charge in analytic decision-making have demonstrated that a cohesive strategy across data, technology, people, and processes is key to success. Winterberry Group predicts strong expansion in marketing analytics investments and use cases. Organizations must be flexible and capable to adapt to an evolving environment.”

An introduction to the report captures the current and anticipated environment.   

“The use cases for analytics are expanding across companies and marketing teams, driven by rapid advances in technology, a proliferation of customer touchpoints and a heightened need for faster and better data-driven decision-making,” the report says, also noting there are “significant obstacles to growth,” which include factors such as:

• The loss of data identifiers
• Evolving privacy regulations
• Entrenched organizational cultures that inhibit progress

Advances in technology mean that marketers have access to more granular data than ever before to inform their efforts. According to the report, several trends are driving the value of marketing analytics, including:

• Consumer choice and data protection
• The growth of advanced privacy-focused technologies that “aim to preserve individual anonymity whilst enabling meaningful marketing and advertising use cases.”
• Rapid technological advances related to computing speed and power
• Fragmented approaches to measurement

From Laggards to Leaders

Based on survey results, the Winterberry Group categorized the organizations of respondents into five levels of maturity, based on “the complexity and type of use cases” for which marketing analytics are being leveraged:

• Laggards: “Primarily leverage basic descriptive analytics across use cases and domains to understand what has happened in the past.” 
• Emerging: “Rely on descriptive and diagnostic analytics across use cases and domains to understand historical data and identify causes and trends.” 
• Progressing: “Combine descriptive and predictive analytics across use cases and domains to forecast and predict future outcomes as a guide to decision-making.” 
• Established: “Combine descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics to understand data, forecast/predict future outcomes, and assess optimal course of action.” 
• Leaders: “Combine analytics with artificial intelligence and machine learning for intelligence and to automate the delivery and activation of marketing analytics.”

Results indicate that: 

• 10% of companies are “truly leveraging” marketing analytics to obtain insights and automate “the optimization of business decisions.”
• 15% of organizations are still early in transformational efforts, and some show minimal or no interest in “truly being analytically driven.”
• 75% of organizations have made progress in embracing the use of marketing analytics, but still have a long way to go to realize its full potential

Five Ways Analytics Can Help Marketers

With so many use cases for analytics, the report notes that it can be difficult for marketers to know where to start. Fortunately, survey results helped researchers identify five key areas of marketing for which analytics can be a big help:

• Audience and customer intelligence: “Segmenting, understanding and targeting customers.” 
• Customer journey and experience: “Designing customer journeys and experiences to define how brands engage with consumers.” 
• Commerce: “Promoting and selling products and services, both in-store as well as online.” 
• Creative and content: “Creating, developing, versioning and optimizing assets.” 
• Media measurement and attribution: “Tracking, analyzing and evaluating the impact of various media activities.”

The report also notes that despite all that marketing analytics has to offer, certain obstacles inhibit its optimization, including a shortage of talent; sketchy data quality and data silos; a “black-box” approach to media measurement; and—of course—the deprecation of third-party cookies.  

But the good news is that there are specific steps organizations can take to make the most of marketing analytics. According to the Winterberry Group, they include:

• Handling data strategically and effectively 
• Making the most of cutting-edge technologies and clearly defining the working relationship between marketing and IT 
• Building an organizational culture that embraces the critical role of marketing analytics
• Creating and following standardized processes related to data and analytics that support consistent objectives between departments and across teams
• Building analytics partnerships “to improve data quality and storage, audience measurement and attribution, and media planning and reach.” 

Making the most of marketing analytics to inform your efforts can be both valuable and overwhelming—which is why building partnerships is a key part of the equation. 

At AMG Healthcare Marketing, we can help by building strategies centered around the prospects and audiences you need to attract. We use data to build custom search strategies and custom audiences. Ad creative and messages are engineered, tested, and optimized to produce the results at the highest return. Plus—we deliver clear, concise reporting along with campaign reporting that you can take to the board room or your internal marketing partners. Each campaign is customized to fit your needs, meet your goals, and fit your budgets.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you ramp up your marketing efforts, please contact us today.