Online lead sites like APlaceForMom.com are one of the foundational ways for home care agencies to consistently grow their client base.

The transactional nature of their operations is appealing for a reason; it typically yields results much faster than strategies like referral marketing, which can take many visits over time to start yielding results.

However, as Lori Eberly of A Place For Mom says:

“We get agencies who tell us that almost all of their business comes from our site: ‘We love this, we’ve built our business on it.’ And then in the same day we’ll get a call from somebody who says ‘We’ve spent hundreds of dollars on this and gotten nothing.’ Why is one agency having wild success and another agency isn’t? It all comes down to a difference in their processes."

While lead websites can be a great source of business, they provide you with just that—leads. It takes consistent, well-built processes to ensure solid business growth from these sites.

With this in mind, we recently interviewed two experts from APlaceForMom.com (which owns a variety of similar websites as well such as AgingCare.com) to build a vision of what a high-converting process should look like.

You can listen to the conversations in full on our podcast here and here. We’ve summarized highlights from the information in this guide.

We’ll talk in terms of benchmarks and specifics from APlaceForMom.com, but these will be generally applicable with lead websites across the board.

Tips to Maximize Your Success With Online Lead Sites

#1: Use the benchmark 10% conversion rate (lead received to client starting services) to set your goals.

Setting budget is a straightforward math problem. Because these leads are nearly always shared with multiple agencies (both for the sake of the lead site’s costs and also to provide family with options), it’s critical to know that you’re competing with other agencies to convert the same leads into clients.

Leads are typically around $55 (delivered over the course of a month) and convert at 10%, so it’s a straightforward math problem to assume that you’ll need to budget about $500 for every one client that you’ve forecasted to add from this marketing channel.

While that may sound like a lot, it’s important to recognize that $500 is a fairly low client acquisition cost, which typically range from $400-800.

#2: Understand that these leads haven’t gone through an in-home assessment yet and adjust expectations accordingly.

This is important because it means you should take whatever level of hours/care the family or individual has requested with a grain of salt.

Their needs are self-reported at the time you receive the lead, so it’s very possible that the assessment you conduct will reveal they need a different level of care or hours then was originally reported to you.

#3: Use a unique phone number for online leads.

There are at least two benefits of doing this: 1) it makes it easier to track inquiries and keep good data, and 2) it allows you to have an after-hours message speaking directly to these clients, which will help keep the leads warm until you can contact them directly.

Do not sleep on this tip; it’s one of the easiest to overlook.

#4: Build out a consistent communication cadence for these leads, using scripts/templates and automated where possible.

Here’s the overall communication cadence that A Place For Mom suggests:

• First contact as fast as possible (statistically much more successful if it’s within the first 5 minutes) – phone call, double-dial if they don’t pick up the first time, immediately leave a voicemail and send a text if they don’t pick up.
• One other contact (email, text, or call) the same day
• 1-2 communication touchpoints a day for the first week. (Text, email, or call. If you call, immediately call again if they don’t pick up the first time and leave a voicemail afterward.)
• 2-3 communication touchpoints per week for the next 30 days.
• One weekly communication touchpoint per week for as long as you can on an ongoing basis, automated wherever possible.

Note that while double-dialing (immediately calling again if they don’t pick up the first time) can be perceived as annoying, it’s often a necessity in today’s day and age when most people screen calls from unfamiliar numbers but see the call as much more important/urgent if the number calls them twice. What’s more important than responding to their own request for information about care for their loved one?

#5: Know that you might not get to the lead before your competition, and have a conversation anyway.

It’s not unusual for families to chat with multiple agencies before settling on a choice. Don’t be deterred if you call and they say they’ve already talked with an agency; ask if it met their needs and go from there. They may be interested in exploring their options or getting a second opinion; they might simply choose your agency anyway if your staff is friendly and/or more helpful/professional than the agency they’ve already talked to.

#6: Track your success and conversion rates in as much depth as possible so you can identify which steps of the process to improve over time.

A few benchmarks from A Place For Mom that might be useful to you:

1. Based on historical data, agencies should anticipate successfully connecting with (speaking to) around 60% of the leads they receive.
2. Similarly, agencies should plan to successfully conduct an in-home visit with around 30% of the leads they receive.
3. Around 10% of leads will ultimately become paying clients, although some agencies with robust processes see conversion rates at 30-40%.
4. Most leads will convert in the 30-60 day timeframe, so don’t get discouraged if people are taking a little time to convert. Stay on top of your communications with them.

#7: Secret-shop your agency’s process every few months.

Test it for yourself. How is the experience? Is your staff responding rapidly? Are communications taking place at the rhythm you’ve planned, and are they interactions that speak well to your company and its brand?

I occasionally secret-shop both Careswitch’s demo request response process and our job application process; no matter how good we think our processes are, it’s always eye-opening in some way.

A quick ask

If this was useful to you, please send it to 2-3 colleagues or acquaintances who might benefit from it. We put quite a bit of time and resources into content we provide for free, so the more people we can help with it the better.

Further Resources

If you’ve read this far, you’re clearly dedicated to keeping solid operations and good scheduling within your agency. Here are some additional resources that might be useful to you:

1. The Home Care U podcast, where we have weekly interviews with experts about topics like this one
2. Our giant list of potential referral partners you should consider working with
3. How to decide which referral partners to work with and which to avoid
4. A super-successful former sales rep’s guide to the best and worst talking points with referral partners

Lastly, you can join our email list here and learn about our AI-powered home care software here.