Why There’s No Loyalty in Aged Care

Marketing practices within aged care are not the most sophisticated. In fact some key aspects of marketing strategy aren’t used at all. Kay Smith explores if and where loyalty marketing strategies could fit within our sector.

Tonight I came home to find my side gate open. After thirty seconds of my heart in my throat and images flashing through my head of trying to explain to our two year old where his beloved canine pal had gone, I looked over to the front porch and saw the ball of fluff sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for us where he always does. 

With my mind as it is, washed with the rhetoric of a marketing career and a love of music, I had two simultaneous thoughts. First came the refrains of Cat Stevens’ “I love my dog as much as I love you/you will see my dog will always be true”, and then the thought of ‘loyalty’.

Loyalty is not something I have to pay any real mind to in my current line of work. It is an integral part of marketing, but in all honesty, within the aged care sector there’s an understandable yet improbably high level of customer inertia.

For a start, those who choose to move into a retirement village generally do so as a combined lifestyle and housing option. Some people are attracted to it, some people aren’t. There are some definite and easily identified push and pull factors that come into play, and ultimately this is where the work/fun is when it comes to marketing and attracting customers. To a large extent though, retirement village living is a love or hate thing for most people.

Those who hate the idea are generally attracted to community care services, while those who love the idea go about shopping and learning the inordinately complex world of retirement village contracts. Regardless of their path, once they have chosen a provider there is generally very little that will cause them to change. Living somewhere or receiving care is such an essential part of someone’s life that trust builds quickly between customer and provider.

The complexity of retirement unit agreements, and the reluctance to go through the upheaval of moving, then make loyalty a non-issue. Sure there is still the opportunity for poor experiences to lead to poor advocacy, but the hassle involved in switching providers is prohibitive for most residents.  Even at key milestones such as moving from a retirement village into a residential home there is a preference to stay with the company that you already know, trust and have your money tied up in.

Those working in the industry accept that residential aged care is an “avoidance product”. It’s not something that anyone would choose, but a necessity for some with particular care needs and financial and social circumstances. Likewise, within the general community an almost vehement avoidance of residential aged care homes is still prevalent.

This is pushing the trend of people coming into care increasingly presenting with high high-care needs. Residential aged care homes are becoming ‘nice hospitals’. Places that deliver or source care services, that are run by friendly staff who know your name and care more about you than your clinical needs. A ‘normal’ place that is not so scary that friends or family have to deliberate on whether to visit or not. But still, not somewhere you’d choose to spend your days if there were a viable alternative.

Again, this reality of need not want, means that loyalty is not a common marketing consideration. At this point I should make clear that I consider the marketing to family members a whole other kettle of fish.

When it comes to community care services and the impending wide scale introduction of consumer directed care you could assume the idea of loyalty is suddenly relevant to aged care in a way it never has been before. In truth, I doubt the new packages will afford customers any significant change to their level of control and choice, especially between primary providers.

Forgive my crystal balling here, but in all likelihood the work/fun of the marketing process will still be at the front end of incoming customers. Once in, although some level of service brokerage will be required, there will still be a primary provider with whom the customer builds trust and familiarity. The hassle of switching will still be akin to trying to change phone providers in the 90s and the idea of loyalty holding any significant relevance in the aged care marketing process redundant.

There is currently, and will continue to be no requirement for loyalty marketing in the aged care product space driven by the introduction of CDC. However smart operators will quickly get their heads around a concept larger than CDC.

Smart operators will act to position themselves no longer an aged care provider, but rather as a provider of services for aged people. All kinds of services. It is once this true shift in customer orientation happens that these operators be positioned to benefit from tried and tested loyalty marketing strategies. Until then, who’s needs loyalty when you’ve got a litany of barriers?