In the 20 years we’ve been working with clients, one of the biggest mistakes we have seen companies make time and time again is that they make their messages all about them. Home care and elder companies are not immune to messaging mistakes, either.

Often companies are so focused on what they think is special about their business that they don’t pause to consider what their ideal patients or families, employees or partners, consider important. Effective messaging should always focus on the highest priority audiences: it’s not about what you want to say; it is about what the audience wants to hear.

Another common mistake we run into is that very few companies have thoughtful, intentional messaging in place. Instead, they just have the bullet points the sales team uses or the headlines from the website. Often, these have either been done in a complete silo, as is the case with the sales presentation bullets, or they have been done by committees in the case of the website headlines. Either way, they are developed by people who are not marketing professionals, who have not put their priority audiences at the center, who have not considered the competitors, or who have not tested the messaging. Let us review each of these common messaging mistakes and how to overcome them.

Your audience is not everyone

The biggest push-back we often receive when we begin audience-centered messaging is that everyone is their audience. This approach will sink a marketing strategy before it even takes shape. That is because when you try to talk with everyone, you end up saying nothing to no one. To avoid overwhelming your audience with muddied or confused messaging, it’s important to identify two to three key audiences you must communicate with. When it comes to home care the messages you communicate with your employees and partners should be completely different from what messages you are communicating with patients and their families. 

The messaging to your employees should focus on potential training and development opportunities and showing appreciation for their often thankful and undervalued work through employee spotlights. As for patients and families, the messages to share with them are about your services and benefits ensuring they’re receiving compassionate care from skilled caregivers.

Making your messages memorable

The most effective audience-based messaging is either visual or visceral. It either helps them see something or feel something. Most people turn words into pictures. It is how they understand concepts, opportunities, and of course, messages. However, most messages do not make this easy. They are too complex and too filled with jargon for a person to be able to understand them. The best messages make it easy by creating similarities to what people already know and can already see. For home care providers, this can be done by sharing stories of patients, testimonials from families, and your overall point of view as a company. Once a visual thinker can see the benefit the company provides in their mind’s eye, they are much more likely to remember it and envision themselves receiving the solution or accomplishing the goal.

Different is better than better

We have a saying at our company: Different is better than better. Another messaging mistake that companies often make is saying the same thing as their competitors. Often, this is caused by a lack of knowledge about what is being said outside of the company’s walls or in the market.

There are two key approaches to differentiating yourself. 

  1. Understanding Context. Just saying something different than what your previous messaging had been will not work. Instead, you need to understand the external. Survey your current employees, partners, patients, and families to receive their honest feedback. Find trends in their responses to understand what is the current status quo and how those that matter most think/talk about you. You can also look outside your organization to see what home care competitors are saying in their marketing messages. 
  2. Identifying provable facts. Many companies say that “it’s our people,” that makes them different. Did you notice the first word there? Many. Many, many, many companies say that. Is that different? No! Is it provable? No! Look at your organization and identify what is factually different. Are the services you provide different from others? Is your cost more affordable than others? Do your caregivers have specific certifications or training requirements? Make sure your differentiators are objective and independently observable. Otherwise, it will not ring true.

If your new messages check all three boxes of being audience-centric, memorable, and differentiated you are well on your way to getting the types of attention you want and need from your targeted audiences.

Dana Schmidt, chief strategy officer of Slice Communications, and Cassandra Bailey, founder and CEO of Slice Communications, are the authors of “Pay Attention! How to Get, Keep, and Use Attention to Grow Your Business,” published by Business Expert Press.