Home Care U - How to Maximize the Number of Online Leads You're Getting (A Place For Mom Pt. 1)

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Very few home care agencies succeed without at least some amount of online marketing in their mix. We're bringing on the experts from A Place For Mom to talk about the strategies you should know if you want to make the most of the dollars you're putting into online lead sites and other digital marketing.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Hey, welcome to Home Care U, a podcast made by the team at Care Switch. Nobody went to school to learn how to run a home care agency, so we're bringing the education to you. Join our live audience by going to careswitch.com slash homecareu or listen on your own time wherever you get your podcasts. Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of Care Switch. Enjoy the session. All right, welcome to Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. All right, welcome to Home Care U.

I'm excited for today's episode. Before we get into it, let me just go through a couple housekeeping things. So first off, if you are joining Home Care U for the first time, know that this is both a live class and a podcast. So you can register for the live class at homecareu.careswitch.com. Or you can find the podcast as Home Care U wherever you get your podcasts. We highly encourage you to join live if you can to ask whatever questions you have, and then to re-listen as you want on the podcast afterward.

Just one little thing by way of introduction for those who may have not heard any of the podcast that I've done before, watching the events I've done. You'll probably see today that I do have a stutter. Sometimes that shows up. Sometimes it doesn't. It's pretty random. Just know that if there's a random pause when I'm speaking, that is probably not your internet. That's probably not Zoom buffering. That is me buffering. It's okay. We'll get through it. So just letting you know there. That is pretty much everything. Before I get talking about today's episode and how it links into the series we're doing right now, I want to take a second and introduce our guest, Jordan

Kant from A Place for Mom. We're really excited to have you on here, Jordan. Do you mind just taking a second and introducing yourself, what your background is, and a little bit about A Place for Mom? Yeah, thanks, Connor. I'm super excited to be here. My name is Jordan. I'm with A Place for Mom, and I am the sales enablement manager for home care specifically. So we do have kind of like two different sides of a place for mom we have our senior living side and we have home here so my role is dedicated to home care agencies more specifically my role is really enabling like the name suggests i enable our internal teams through like process development and implementation communicating and training on new product developments building collateral

and resources for the team, as well as providers. The way I like to look at it is I kind of add oil to the cogs of the machine and help day-to-day operations run a little smoother. Okay, very cool. And thanks again for joining and thanks in advance for the expertise you're bringing here today. So I've had lots of interactions with the A Place for Mom team. They've all been really knowledgeable and it's a really important topic. So I'm excited to get into it. This is part one of a two-part series we're doing with the experts from A Place for Mom. So today's episode will focus on how to maximize the volume of online leads you're getting. And then the next part, which will be next week, same place, same time, still with a place for mom, will be about how to convert the online

leads you get into paying clients. As you have probably already experienced or heard, online leads are one of the biggest sources for new growth for agencies, new clients, new revenue growth. And it's a very important part of a strategy, but also an easy one to get wrong and an easy one to waste lots of money on if you don't know what you're doing. And so the goal of these two sessions is to give you a strong foundation of how to use online lead sites and digital marketing to grow your business ultimately. So that being said, let's jump into our questions here. So my first question for you, Jordan, just kind of like a basic foundational background sort of question, like what is lead generation, especially online lead generation and how does it work?

Yeah, absolutely. So for those of you who maybe are not familiar with lead generation, it is a form of digital marketing and advertising that generates targeted referrals for your business. So lead generation platforms such as A Place for Mom have large advertising budgets that extend the reach of your individual sales and marketing efforts. So A Place for Moms specifically, we have such a large digital presence because we have over 10 affiliate sites and other channels as well, which gives us, like I said, a large

digital presence to generate leads in almost every market across the country. So when you sign up to join the network and you are signing up for a lead generation platform, such as a place for mom, not only do you get a listing in the care directory, so it actually increases your digital footprint. At the same time, you are sent care inquiries that are coming from families who are kind of dependent on a place for mom to help them find their care they're looking for. And then we are able to then deliver that inquiry. So a form with contact information and care details for a potential client directly to your email and phone to as many people in your office that you would like to receive that information. And then after that, the expectation is that once

you receive the lead information, you call a family right away and discuss services and try to win the client, so to speak, from there. So that's the process. That makes a lot of sense. So let me kind of like recap part of this, even though I think everyone kind of has a general understanding of this. So from like the client family side of this, this would be basically you realize mom needs care. You aren't sure where to go. You go to a place for mom. You type in whatever you're looking for is the type of care you need in your area.

And then a place for mom sends the information to what seems like the most relevant agencies in the area. And then those agencies from their side of this, they receive the lead and then they reach out to contact the client schedule and kind of go from there. Is there anything I've missed there? No, that's exactly right. So the only caveat to that is, you know, home care is a little bit different because senior living is not dependent upon where the family lives. So when a family submits information

for their loved one for home care, and they can submit their information for both, you know, maybe they're interested in exploring home care and senior living. But a lot of the inquiries that we work with are actually explicitly home care. They are just interested in home care. They have no interest in senior living, which is great. And so they provide the zip code in which they live. And then our agencies and our network, we take their zip codes that they're able to service. And that's really primarily how we match them is based on the zip code first. And then kind of like you said, we give the information to the families and we provide them with a few options. It's never more than four providers that we offer to the agency as options. It's not up to the family to do that outreach. It is up to

the agencies to get the lead information and make the contact. So yeah, those are just some important call-outs. Great. Thanks. And you mentioned the fact that the leads are sent to multiple agencies. I think that's a really good point. And there are questions I want to ask about that and distinctions to make for our listeners. But we'll kind of address that further on in the episode at its own time. But that'll be a great discussion there too. Yeah. So I guess my next question here. So I think just to frame this a little bit, my background is also in digital marketing.

And one thing that I've learned is that generally speaking, what you put in really is what you get out. And that doesn't just mean in terms of dollars, that means in terms of the thought you put into having the right processes and strategy and everything. And so it's very likely that most of our listeners and those joining live are already using a place for mom or a website like it. That said, there is probably a decent percentage of them who may not be seeing the results they want, possibly as a result of not knowing how to maximize these sites. So I guess my question is, what are some specific boxes agencies should check to make sure that their online presence, the way they're using lead sites is performing well? Yeah. I love what you said about, it's not just about the spend that you put in,

it's about the effort. And I think one that's important for listeners to hear. But the second thing is when it comes to digital leads, it's really important to understand what the expected conversion rate would be. I think a lot of new providers, especially new agencies, we see this all the time who are just getting started with a lead gen or even those who have had experience with lead gen. But they they have high expectations for themselves as they should. I'm actually a business owner as well. And we can dig into that a little bit further on. But what I think is important to know with lead gen is that one of those things that you need to do, one of those boxes you need to check is track your conversion rate. But it's important to know that the expected conversion rate for digital leads specifically, like the A Place for Mom lead, is around a 10% conversion rate. But Connor, like

you said, it is about the effort that you put into that. So we do have providers that are at a much higher conversion rate and really much higher is somewhere between like 20 to 40%. It's not usually more than that. So don't be too hard. It's very high though. Yeah, no, it is very high, but 10% is good. And I would just really want our listeners to know that 10% is good. And that can be a hard pill to swallow as a business owner putting money into something like this. Trust me, I know. But 10% is good. And so I think what we see a lot is that agencies come in, they start, they're like, oh, I only got one of 10 leads. That's awful. And it's actually really good. So track your conversion rate is one of those boxes, but know what a good conversion rate threshold is. And that is around 10%. Another box to check, of course, is track your ROI. So be pretty robust in that tracking.

It's important to know which lead sources you are getting the majority of your new client's help from because you want to put more money into those, right? And maybe reduce money in other marketing areas that are not being as fruitful. And then for us specifically, I would say another box to check and to utilize is your provider portal if your lead platform offers it. So at Place for Mom, we do have a provider portal that allows you to track your leads, update your statuses, pause your referrals, change your monthly lead limit, look at your billing statement, change your service area.

We have so many self-service functionality that goes unused. And I think it's really important to maximize your volume and your conversion rate through the utilization of those tools. A couple other boxes to check would be to have a standard operating procedure in place for your office. So one, the point person who is taking the calls, it would be important to equip them if it's not you as the owner with communication templates, canned responses to objections, follow-up cadence. You just want to make sure that your business is being represented in the way you want it to be if you are not the person fielding those calls. And then the last thing I always suggest to providers if they have the

budget for it is to go ahead and hire a sales or marketing representative that can do a lot of that work for you. Somebody that is tenured and is very accustomed to having some of those tougher calls that incorporate objections. So those are just a couple tips. Love it. I have a few follow-up questions, but before we get to that, I think just kind of a side note here, we're seeing lots of questions about what the operating procedure should look like to convert those clients and what maybe some of the differences are between the agencies who are converting at, let's say, 5% versus the ones you mentioned who are converting at 20 to 40% and what they're doing differently besides obviously speed to contacting. We'll get into a bit of that here. But I think just for those asking, the bulk of those type of questions we'll be addressing

next week in a ton of detail. So we'll kind of start on them here, but expect the full meat of that next week. I guess that being said, another question I have is in regards to how much you're actually spending, because of course, that's a major lever here for the volume of clients you're getting. How should an agency decide how much to spend on online lead sites? Yeah, that's a great question. And really, it comes down to your agency and how many clients you are ready to take. So it depends on your

number of caregivers, right? It depends on the availability that you typically have. And then likewise, how many new clients can you take on? So for example, if your answer is four, I want four new clients, back to kind of that conversion rate we talked about, you would want to set yourself up to receive 40 leads in order to receive four clients. So the way that a place for mom works, we deliver leads on a monthly basis. So let's say, you know, you begin the program today and you say you want 20 leads over the course of this month, knowing that the conversion rate is about 10%, you would see probably two clients from those, but you also have to remember that there's a baking period. So typically those conversions take place after 30 to 60 days of

actually making contact with the family. There is kind of that transition period for families and making sure that they've got all the things in place to really begin care. So you're not going to see immediate conversion. There are some families who are looking for immediate care, but I will be transparent, that is not the typical customer and consumer looking for home care. But it's going to be all dependent on how many new clients you are wanting to take on. And then that will tell you the budget you will need to set for your online leads. Okay. That's interesting. That makes sense. So what you're saying here is

it basically is a straightforward math problem with an expected conversion rate of about 10%. And you may change that over time, depending on what you see your conversion rate in your agency is. Then you work backwards from that and how many clients you want to add within the next 60 days sounds like is a good horizon to look at here. And then basically, I'm just divide that so you can see how many leads do I need to get at the set conversion rate that I'm expecting to deliver the number of new clients that I would like to see here? Is that basically accurate? Yeah. Easy math problem. You're exactly right. And do you mind sharing kind of like a ballpark of like, what is the typical cost per

lead? This can be in a place for non-monetary stat or just kind of a general like lead sites stat. So people know what kind of ballpark we're talking about here? Yeah. Every lead platform is a little different. I know there are some bidding models and things like that out there. I'll tell you from a place for mom standpoint, because of course that's what I'm an expert in. We have a cost per lead platform and the cost per lead is around $55. So that is simply to get that information over to you. And it's the opportunity to convert that to a client. So you're paying for the information.

You're not paying for the client. There are some platforms that do cost per conversion. And then your cost is going to be upwards of like $300 plus because, of course, a conversion is more, you know, would be more costly. So we just do cost-per-me. We keep it simple. And around $55, the market, I think, in general is somewhere between $40 to $75. So yeah.

Great. Thanks. And just to kind of add some context to those, for those who are listening, I was actually looking at some stats about cost to acquire a client, things like that for home care agencies. And so the first number you mentioned, which I think was $55 per lead, when you consider even with the 10% expected conversion rate, that's a pretty strong potential ROI when the average lifetime value of a client, according to the benchmarking study by HomeCare Pulse, is around $12,000. So there's a pretty fast kind of payback time on that. And then

likewise, I think you mentioned it costing somewhere from $200 to $300 or more for the actual cost per acquisition, which likewise is pretty competitive because from what I've seen, the typical cost to acquire a client is usually going to be in the $300 to $500 range for a home care agency. And so that's both competitive and kind of in line with what you'd expect to see from other sources. So was there anything else you wanted to add to that, Jordan? No. I mean, I'm glad that you brought up the benchmark report. We also use that as kind of a standard to where, you know, where we see that that would make the most sense for providers. And so absolutely, if you are putting your due diligence and like you said, and putting effort into this program, it 100% will pay for itself and then some.

Love that. Next question, you know, since since we have you kind of here captive and we want to deliver maybe some extra insight to those listening, you know, what's an inside tip that providers can utilize to optimize the number of leads they're getting? You know what? What might not everyone know about how to make the most of this? Yeah, that's a great question. So I kind of alluded to this earlier. A Place for Mom has a great self-service provider portal and it allows you to do things like manipulate your service area. I think regardless of whatever lead platform you use, something that is a really important insider tip as far as setting yourself up for success

is to provide your lead gen platform with zip codes, of course, in your service area, but with the highest socioeconomic status. So what we see a lot of the time is providers will start our program. They'll say, here's all my service area. And they're going to just give us everything, which is fine. That's going to generate a lot of leads for sure. And that's a good strategy as well. If you're looking to get as many leads as you possibly can, but typically budgets, right? We're, we're small business owners. I understand you have to allocate a budget to this. And so if your budget is only, um, you know, within like, let's say 550, that's 10 leads for the month.

You probably want to be as strategic as you possibly can with the zip codes you provide and what will kind of produce a high quality lead. And so that's going to be your highest socioeconomic status zip codes in your area, whatever that is for you. Okay. That's interesting. And I want to kind of test your knowledge here with a little bit of a follow-up question that may or may not have an easy answer. But one thing that I've heard that I don't have any data for, I don't know if it's true or not, is just that there are differences in generally the income level of people who want in-home care versus something like senior living. I mean, which would imply that typically like the people who are seeking one of those over the other might be slightly different socioeconomic status. From your work at A Place for Mom and just, I mean, from whatever you've learned and seen, does it seem like the highest income demographics are typically more likely to

seek home care or senior living? That is a great question. To be honest with you, from what I know, the cost is going to be completely dependent on the like the hours of care needed so home care might be cheaper in the circumstance that they only need um you know a few hours a day versus maybe a 24-hour live-in case um so there's that element to it i have heard the same just in i, a general assumption that people with a higher socioeconomic status can afford home care over senior living. But there are great programs out there that can support seniors. We have Veteran Aid and Attendance Program that allows veterans to stay in their homes at an affordable cost. And of course, there are agencies who will accept Medicaid and Medicare.

Now our leads are private pay. Those are the type of leads that we offer. But generally speaking, I wouldn't necessarily assume that higher socioeconomic status individuals are having to go with senior living over home care because we do have great resources that allow all seniors, regardless of their status, to afford home care. Gotcha. That makes sense. And that's good to also kind of address that side of it that, like, yes, there is like the business optimization strategy of like targeting the areas that are most likely to bring a return, but also recognizing at the end of the day that

everyone needs care of all socioeconomic classes. And it's good that there are channels in place to serve all those people. And that's something that as an industry, we can continue to work on and get better on. So I appreciate you mentioning that. I want to talk a little bit about your listing on a lead site itself. One thing I've been curious about is how much does the information that's actually in your company's listing, like your business listing, determine which clients or which types of clients are sent to you as leads? And if so, in what ways and are there any specifics you can give? Yeah, absolutely. So we actually just recently segmented out the type of clients that we will send to providers. So I would say we do have like a standard type of lead that we send to all providers. And it really doesn't so much matter about the specifics you're looking for. And we can actually get into that in a minute with kind of like some misconceptions. But I think right now, it's important to know that if you are a companionship only agency versus private personal care, we can actually segment out those types of clients. So if you only accept, you know,

no touch clients, we can provide those leads. And then flip side of that, you know, personal care is your expertise, we can provide the personal care as well. The only type that we do not delve into as far as home care is home health. So we do not provide home health leads. It is all non-medical due to some kind of federal regulation constraints. But, yeah. OK, that makes sense. Let's talk about those misconceptions you mentioned. I'm curious. Yeah. So I think it's really important for kind of consumers, providers specifically, to be aware that A Place for Mom, and I really can't speak to any other lead gen platform, of course, A Place for Mom is such a great company in the sense that really our main and first priority is to serve families. And we assist them in finding care. Now, the cool second part of that, that also happens at the same time is that we allow and enable businesses to

grow at the same time. But the point there is that families are our first priority. And so what we are not doing is matchmaking. I think that is a common misconception, is that we have a specific order to fill for a provider. So a really common example of this is providers will come to us with their weekly minimum hours. They'll say, do not provide me with a lead that is saying that they want minimum hours. And what's really important to know as a lead gen, as a middleman, we do not have anybody in the field going out and completing home care assessments. An assessment is absolutely necessary to really, for a family who's never received home care before, to determine really how much care is needed. They need to hear that from a professional and not based on their assumption. And all we are getting from a family

is an assumption on how much care they need. So I don't know if that makes sense, but basically we don't want to do any sort of hard, like cold shoulder vetting on a family who really doesn't quite understand yet how much care they need. have a few kind of questions and thoughts both about that and then also kind of like stuff we've already talked about as far as listings go. So I'll kind of start with this one. First, you had kind of mentioned speaking from the perspective of you at least know that a place for mom always sells options to families in the sense of like always gives multiple agencies the lead and you kind of weren't sure about the rest of the industry. I know just speaking from my experience also having worked for one of these sites and done a lot of work with more of them that I've never heard of a lead site like this for home care that doesn't do what you've said as far as giving the leads to multiple

agencies. So that is useful, I think, for agencies listening to this to understand that that is kind of the industry standard to do that. I'm sure not just for like the economics of making it work for the lead site company, but also like you said, to provide families with options. So that's good for anyone who's getting into it to understand. And options. So that's good for anyone who's getting into it to understand. And I would assume that's part of the reason for the 10% conversion rate that's to be expected as opposed to maybe something that could be higher with some other sources. Yeah, potentially. And I just want to reiterate the fact that we do not deliver those leads to any more than four. And it's actually typically around three. So while it's not exclusive, it's definitely not an absurd amount. We definitely

are, of course, always in the favor of the family. We don't want to overwhelm them with, you know, tons of calls and things like that coming in. So that's kind of where we've landed with a safe option, a safe number of giving the family a few agencies to choose from. So, okay, thanks. That makes sense. And that addresses one of the questions that option, a safe number of giving the family a few agencies to choose from. Okay, thanks. That makes sense. And that addresses one of the questions that we have in the chat here that I was going to ask, which is kind of focusing on the number of agencies receiving the lead. And they were asking, can it be two? And it sounds like you're saying it is typically two to three agencies. Absolutely. In more saturated markets, there's a few different markets that, I mean, a few that come to mind that have always been

extremely saturated is like Connecticut and Philadelphia, places like that. Almost in every case, it will go to four because there's a lot more providers. So it will depend on market, but yes, it is typically two to three. Awesome. So we have lots of questions flowing in here and I want to get to those. So let me just ask one more question here, which is in regards to like, what's actually on like my home care agency's listing, are there common mistakes specific to what information is on the listing that you see? And then kind of the other side of that, are there agencies you see who do just an exceptionally great job of making sure their listing is working in their favor? And if so, like, what are they

doing right? Yeah. So there might be a misconception that agencies have the ability to really edit and update the listing themselves. They do. So we have a very, we want our care directory to seem very clean and consistent across the board. So we do have some requirements. Now, agencies can provide us with a handwritten, you know, customized description. We will plug that into the listing. And then what you also see on the listing are the types of services that they offer. And those will be checked. And that's all from a back-end mapping standpoint.

So they are very clean and consistent. And then, of course course you can upload your logo as well. But the support team would handle that. So you can access your agency listing directly from your portal. But at this time, we don't have, we don't get to do any customization. That makes sense. So basically you upload the description or like we send or upload the description to you guys. And that's really the key lever to make sure that whatever is important for someone to understand about our agency is happening. Yeah. And it's just your time to like, let yourself kind of shine and explain to a family, um, kind of a little bit more about your agency and what sets you aside from other agencies, because what the listing does, another purpose it serves, aside from, of course, expanding your digital footprint, which is great and essentially free marketing just from being a

partner, you also, your listing is provided to the family in their family letter. So here's what happens. When a family inquires for care and we vet them, we are going to send the agencies the lead information. At the same time, and actually probably a little bit before, the family is going to receive a letter that says, hey, we matched you with, let's say, these two agencies. Here's a link to their listing on our care directory to learn a little bit more about them. And they expect them to reach out very soon is essentially what we say. And then we also provide them with a list of frequently asked questions and some good interview questions for the families to ask the agency to dig into

what the agency offers. So just some inside tips there. Great. Thanks for that. And that actually addresses, I think, two questions we have here. So I want to repeat these for the benefit of those listening who asked them and just make sure that I have them right. So you mentioned first that you do send the person or family who's requesting the information. You do send the information about the agencies that they should expect to hear from, correct? Yeah, that's correct. I'll go ahead and answer this question.

Is there a certain amount of leads that you are required to receive per month? So there is not a specific number of leads that you have to receive per month necessarily. So what I will say, we do require agencies to set their minimum lead limit to 10. Reason being kind of as we talked about earlier, your expected conversion rate is 10%. So if you're not willing to at least receive 10 leads, you're not going to see a conversion rate and you're not going to see a return.

And then you're going to kind of, you know, you're going to leave the program. So that's why we set the minimum to 10. But you only pay for what you receive. So if your minimum is set to 10, but you only receive, let's say, three leads that month, all you're paying for is the three leads that you received. So there's not like a monthly minimum in the terms of spend. There is a monthly minimum and the lead limit is set, if that makes sense. Gotcha. Thanks for addressing that, Jordan. And it's important, I think, from what you said to recognize that these are inquiries that have not received assessments yet. And so because of that, there might be a

difference, sometimes a pretty big difference in the level and type of care that the family and the person seeking care thinks is needed versus what would be determined in an assessment. And so, sometimes agencies might see those and receive them and like think they're bad leads or something where it's simply the problem inherent to the burden of the assessment is on the agency. And sometimes that can change what is needed. Is there anything that you would want to add to that just to make sure we have this accurate for the benefit of those listening? Yeah. And I think that's, I'm glad that you said that and reiterated that. And it is important to know that in almost every case, the family has not received home

care before. And in almost every case, after the agency goes and completes the assessment, there's going to be more care that is tacked on in the sense of hours and maybe even services. It's usually both. So yes, a home care assessment is really needed in order to determine kind of that quality of that lead for you. But regardless, it's important to remember that a lead is simply an opportunity, nothing more. So yes. Got it. Thanks for that. Let's get into more of our live questions here. So somebody asked a really good question. They said, you mentioned 10% conversion

is a good result. Do you have a similar stat for lead engagement, meaning the percent of leads received that we as an agency actually have discussions with? So I think like a different way of phrasing this would be like, what's a good percentage of like people you actually successfully contact and talk to? Or if you have any other stats about milestones along the way before they actually convert to paying clients? That's a great question. And that's something that, you know, I would maybe like to dig into further. The complicated part of our platform is because of the cost per lead model, and we simply have providers paying per lead, we actually, sometimes we get zero feedback. I mean, I, to be honest with you, I have a

really strong feeling that the average conversion rate is higher than 10% because of the amount of conversions that take place that go unreported. And likewise, we're not giving the feedback as far as who was making contact. So now we can run reports absolutely about that. And that's actually a really great point. Within the portal, you can update your status to made contact, sent an email, sent a text. This is what I'm doing with the lead. And we can kind of see that activity. But again, that would require that all of our providers are actually updating the portal. context this is what I'm doing with the lead and we can kind of see that activity but again that

would require that all of our providers are actually updating the portal and as some of you probably know and maybe you work with a different CRM maybe WellSky a lot of agencies are updating leads there and that does not feed back into our system and so it would be really hard to get a good grasp on kind of those milestones you're talking about but I think it's a great point yeah that makes sense and I would just say to that person, like you are asking the right questions, though we don't have a good response for that here. That is a signal that you're tracking the right types of things so that you can optimize where you need to. So for those who aren't doing that, I would definitely encourage you to be tracking each kind of step of the lead process so you can improve it. And we'll

get to that more next week. Another question we have here, you've kind of addressed this, but I want to make sure we touch on it for them. They said, can you change your monthly budget? Absolutely. So there is the ability, really, you're not setting your budget so much as you're setting your lead limit, which is your budget. But I just want to be clear in that in the portal, you're not saying, okay, I want to spend no more than $800 a month. And that's that. So we are considering maybe updating or maybe allowing for that kind of segmentation. But really right now, we have a standard lead price and you're just setting your monthly limit and of course do the math. And then as long as it's more than 10 per month, you can decide how many leads a month you want. That can be 11, that can be 12, that can be 50, whatever you want. So you do have the ability

to set that. It's completely customizable. That makes sense. We have a couple people asking about how to get in touch with you guys to potentially start using A Place for Mom. For those either joining live or listening, what's the best way to kind of get started with A Place for Mom or at least talk directly to you and ask the questions they want? Yeah, I'll go ahead and throw my email into the chat here. So definitely shoot me an email with your information and just let me know that you were kind of on this webinar today. And we'll probably include a promo in that because of course we love a good webinar promo. And then of course, yeah, just let me know what you're interested in. We do

just to be clear and candid with everybody. We have of course, family leads. That is what we, you know, that's our expertise. We do also offer caregiver leads. If you're looking for more staff, or maybe if you need to kind of staff up and then take on clients and then vice versa, you can do that. So we do offer caregiver leads as well. I have a feeling that'll be very interesting to a lot of people. For the sake of those who are listening to the podcast after this and aren't seeing the chat. So the email to reach out to is jordan.kant at a place for mom.com and spelling that that's j o r d a n dot k a n d t at a place for mom.com. So reach out to Jordan. If you're listening to this, you're not with a place for mom yet,

but you're interested in learning more. We have another question. So someone says, how do the current rates on your website compare to what agencies are billing today? For example, hourly rate for the cost of senior care being $23 on your website, where most agencies may charge 40 today, for example. Thank you. I appreciate the question. That's an interesting tidbit. I'd like to also know where you grabbed that from. It's not incorrect. So what I will say, we did a survey last year on to our network, our current network on what the cost of care was with the intention that maybe

we could start at least by market, start kind of getting, providing families with ranges of care, because that is important. They need to know kind of like what they're walking into. Now, what's interesting is across all markets, across the whole United States, there are agencies that are charging $20 an hour, all the way up to like $60 to $70 an hour. So in every market. So you have to consider there are new agencies who maybe were a caregiver that wanted to open up their own agency and they want to be competitive with their costs. And so they are going to go with the lowest hourly cost. And then there's on the flip side of that really large franchise groups and corporates that have a lot of elements built into their costs. And so they might be on the higher end and then everything in between. So based on our findings, we actually did see that

in pretty much every market, maybe aside from rural markets are anywhere between 20 to $70 an hour, which I know is an insane difference, but that's just how it is. Wow. That is interesting. And a question that I think ties into this, and this may be a dumb question based on things you may have already said or something, but I think part of my job here is to ask the dumb questions on behalf of whoever may be afraid to ask them. Does this differentiate by payer source? So for instance, if someone is planning to do private pay as opposed to Medicaid, as opposed to long-term care insurance? Are all those people eligible to be connected with options for agencies through

A Place for Mom? Great question. If you are an agency that accepts Medicaid and Medicare, you can absolutely partner with us. There's no restrictions against the partnership element of that. What there is restriction against is providing agencies with leads that have communicated to us that their payer source is Medicaid or Medicare. We have to turn those clients away. And we do actually give them resources and we steer them in the direction that is appropriate and federally accepted to find the care that they need. Of course, we want to help them um we just we do have some restrictions that we work with so um and then i will say we also

work with pace so if you are a pace provider and we have i mean we pretty much communicate with every pace provider if you're not familiar um that's just a a type of provider that can accept medicaid and we can actually legally refer clients who are stating that they are going to pay with Medicaid to those PACE providers. So that would be the only exception. Gotcha. Thank you for that. Somebody else says, do you only partner with licensed agencies? I would assume that would depend on the state because some states don't really require licensing. Exactly. Right on the nail. So if your state does require licensure, yes, we do require that we have a copy of your license on hand

in order to deliver leads to you. But of course, if your state doesn't require that, you are welcomed further. Gotcha. Thanks for that. Just as a reminder to those listening, thanks so far for all the great questions. This has been a super engaged session. We're nearing the end of our questions. So if you have more questions that you want us to address, drop them in here, either in the Q&A or the chat. But we'll kind of start winding down on these potentially. I guess one question just broadly here, Jordan, is with everything we've already discussed, is there anything that you feel like is important to communicate about this topic that we haven't touched on yet or anything else that just you haven't been asked, but you wish you'd been asked? Yeah, there's only one

question. And I know Lori will dig into this with everybody next week on a great session. So definitely don't miss that because she's going to dig into converting leads but the one thing i will always preach to providers that's really important is texting your leads so i think it's a really underrated communication method and very effective so there's actually two components to this so we do actually text with our family inquiries as well so if they don't take our call we will send them a text like, hey, we got your inquiry for care. And that is very successful. We see a lot of responses in that. It's typically not the senior that is reaching out on behalf of themselves. Sometimes it is, but in most cases it's not. It's typically the son or the daughter or the family member.

And they are typically pretty tech savvy and they do text. So utilize that as a form of, yeah, exactly. I can see I've gotten some people agreeing with that. So definitely utilize it. The only other tip I can provide aside from texting is a double dial. So at A Place for Mom, we also do double dials. So if a family inquires about services, they don't answer our first call,

we'll hang up and we'll immediately call again. That just tells the family, hey, this is not spam. This is not a someone trying to sell you something. This is a legit call. And so just keep that in mind. Somebody that maybe doesn't have your number taped. I know I do that. I will not answer on the first call. Remember, I don't have saved. But if you're going to call me again, you probably know me and it's probably something serious. So double dial is another good tip. As someone in 2023 who also screens all of my calls and only answers them if I feel like there's a specific reason to, I completely get that thing of like, I'll see a number I don't recognize. I don't answer it. Then they immediately call again.

And I'm like, oh, shoot. There's always this response of like, oh, I should probably consider this more. So that makes a lot of sense. And just to reference what you kind of talked about in the chat here, someone says, in our agency, we have seen that texting makes a world of difference. So some good kind of backup there. A couple of people saying, thanks for all the info. Great session. We appreciate that. Glad it's helpful. Someone's asking, you may have answered this question, but if your company is recommended as a lead and you don't get to the client in time, are you still billed? I think I would need a little more context in the question. So definitely provide more detail if you have it. I'm assuming this just means if you get the lead as well as maybe a couple other providers and they beat you to the punch, are you still billed? And the answer is yes. And in fact, I actually used to do support in this role.

So I used to work very closely with providers on their conversion rates and tips and stuff like that. And what we found and we have reports to back this up is not the first agency to speak to the family is necessarily the one that gets the client. So if you speak to the family and they're like, Hey, and I already spoke to another agency, give them your pitch. Don't say, Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Sounds like you're taking care of by, that is just a bad sales tactic. And unfortunately, digital leads in marketing is sales. So take the opportunity, give them your pitch, send them the email, send them the text, give them your information, tell them why you are a better agency than the other and what you have to offer and what sets you apart. You know, maybe offer a free free assessments are great. Always. I mean, I've always encouraged that.

So, yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean you're not going to win it. But to answer your question candidly, you will still be billed. You are paying for the opportunity and you're paying for the lead information. So you're not paying for the conversion. Thanks for that. And something I would add to that, just kind of to build off. As a reminder, since you're paying for the lead and not for a paying client, so to speak, that is also reflected in the actual cost you're paying. And so, like the average cost to acquire a client, I forget the stat we mentioned is, you know, somewhere in like the $300 to $500 range, I think. And you're paying an amount average cost to like acquire a paying client, but then you only have a 10% chance of converting them. It's like you're paying like a 10th of the cost of acquiring a client in exchange for

like a 10% chance of converting that client. So it's a little more, you know, kind of balanced and sensible that way than it might immediately sound. And if it sounds like I'm kind of trying to plug for a place for mom or lead sites, it's just because coming from a background in digital marketing and running things like the benchmarking study, I just think that even though there's a role for different forms of marketing and getting clients and the different role that different channels will have in your agency strategy will change as it grows. It's pretty hard to grow without having some strong reliance on online lead sites, at least for like a stage of your agency's growth, if not as a continual thing. Yeah.

And Connor, I want to echo that because I know, you know, I work for a police or mom is my job to advocate. But what I will tell you is I kind of mentioned this earlier. My husband and I own a foundation repair company here in Kansas City where we live. And what we do not do is purchase digital leads. Because if you've ever looked for digital leads for construction, they're not good quality. And there's definitely not a good conversion rate. So just listen to what other people are saying, listen to other home care agencies, listen to what's happening in the market and what you are hearing is successful and go give it a try. That's all I

can say. So yeah. And what we have seen and what I can tell you from looking at the data all the time is that this is very successful and we are able to grow so many home care agencies. We have some great testimonials and if you'd like grow so many home care agencies. We have some great testimonials. And if you'd like some of those, I'm happy to provide some. Sounds good. Thank you for that. And I'm sure that we'll get some outreach to you guys who will want that kind of thing to kind of hit on a couple of our last questions and comments we're getting here because they're still flowing in. Someone's asking for like, what are some other lead sites like A Place for Mom? I think my response to that would just be like, you know, search home care near me in Google and you'll see, you know, a whole list of like some of the other options there.

And even searching that from a consumer perspective will tell you which sites are active in your area and available, you know, options to you as a provider. And that'll be more effective than trying to give a general answer here that might not address some of the ones that aren't as effective in your area, since it is kind of geographically based a little bit. Someone else says, how many days in between follow-ups do you recommend? Yeah, that's a great question. It's very timely. I actually just built a cadence for lead follow-ups do you recommend? Yeah, that's a great question. It's very timely. I actually just built a cadence for lead follow-up and we have that in our provider resource center, which is in the portal. So if you are a partner, we actually have a resource center that I'm constantly creating content for and uploading to on, you know, cadences and templates. So maybe like a

text template or an email template, best practices and tips to converting leads. So maybe like a text template or an email template, best practices and tips to converting leads. So that's a great, great resource if you are a partner. And what I would say for the follow-up is if it is a new, it's really based on how old the lead is. So if it is within just received the lead and you're in your first week, you really want to put a touch point each day. And that sounds like a lot, but when I say touch point, that could be three different types of touch points. That can be the call, that can be the email, that can be the text. And with every call, you should send a text or an email follow-up if they do not answer.

So always follow up your call with some sort of written communication. And then that first week, you really want to put, I would say around eight to 10 touch points. And then you'll kind of like drop the number of follow-ups per week, you really want to put, I would say around eight to 10 touch points, and then you'll kind of like drop the number of follow-ups per week, but you want to continue to follow up, up until really like the 60th day. A lot of leads do convert and do contact you back within the 30 to 60 day window. So if you're not hearing back within those first two weeks, don't get discouraged and definitely do not give up.

Families are just kind of taking their time. It is a hard transition. I love that because I can see that being a really critical place where agencies can underestimate what they can do. So just to kind of repeat that, keep following up through day 60 because a high number of leads actually convert between days 30 and 60. And that's really actionable. I think we'll go ahead and end it here where our remaining questions are more focused on, you know, more kind of like

how to convert the lead type stuff. And so we will address those, you know, very deeply in next week's session, which will likely be Lori from A Place for Mom and Miriam from CareSwitch. So another great episode there. Just to kind of back up something you said, someone in our chat says that portal is essential. It has helped us tremendously. So glad to hear that.

Are there any other thoughts you want to leave us with, Jordan, before we close out? The only thing I would say is if you do partner with A Place to Move On, we take all of our feedback very seriously. All of our kind of portal developments and resources that we have there is based on providers giving us the feedback. That's my job is I'm trying to be here to enable our providers and find more care for families. So we are very receptive to that, open to it. And please reach out to me if you have any questions or any feedback. Great. Thanks, Jordan. Just a few things to add here for those listening or joining us. So as a reminder, this is both a live class and a podcast. If you want to join it live, you can register free at homecareu.careswitch.com. That's you as in university. You can also listen to the episodes afterward as a podcast called Home Care U, wherever you get your podcasts. I sometimes will

join live to the ones I don't host and also listen to them later because sometimes there's more to be absorbed multiple times. Just a couple other things to mention as far as free resources available from CareSwitch. So we just made our home care compensation report publicly available. You can see state by state pay data for caregivers, staff, and even owners for free. It's available on our site. Just go to our site and click the resources dropdown, look for compensation report. All the data is filterable by state and agency size.

So if you're in California and your revenue range is, you know, 250K to 500K, you can go look up what are agencies paying their schedulers and caregivers in my agency size range in California. Like I said, that's all free. It's on our site. We also have what are called the frequently asked questions of home care, where you can see short, bite-sized, but very meaty responses to the tough questions that every home care agency owner asks at some point. That's also available on our site, careswitch.com under the resources dropdown. And we welcome feedback on those and thoughts on whatever else, you know,

you may want to see that you're not as far as content goes. So thank you for joining. Join us next week and have a great rest of your day. Thank you. That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.