Knowing the logistics of your senior living organization’s services is vital, but knowing the unique value your community offers prospective residents is even more critical.

What Is A Unique Value Proposition?

A unique value proposition (UVP) is a statement that succinctly communicates how your senior living community differs from competitors to solve an important issue your target audience is facing. Your UVP should speak directly to your target customer, leaving a positive and lasting impression that keeps you at the forefront of their mind.

Why Is It Important To Have A Unique Value Proposition?

Many senior living organizations make the mistake of simply marketing the objective
features of their communities when more is needed. As your brand or community grows
your service and these needs must remain united. To maximize your success, you must also know your customers’ needs and pain points inside out, marketing the benefits you provide.

How To Write A Unique Value Proposition

1. Do Prior Research
A UVP may be a small piece of writing, but that doesn’t mean extensive research isn’t needed to get it right. On the contrary, creating an impact using just a few words is typically more complex; you need to know exactly which point of differentiation to emphasize to your target audience.

Carrying out detailed customer and market research is a great place to start. Look at your competitors and find out what unique value they are offering. Take a deep dive into your target audience: who are they, what are their wants and needs, and what problems are they facing? Most vitally, what are they struggling with that your competitors still need to manage to solve?

2. Focus On Problems And Solutions

Once you have established what your target audience needs from you, it’s time to start drawing up your UVP. A great UVP should focus less on what your business is and more on what your business can do. Link your UVP to the problems your audience is looking for a solution to – can you clearly define how your community will help?

Depending on the levels of care your senior living organization offers, your UVP might tap into your audience’s wants, fears, and needs. For example, you might find that your target audience wants to continue living life as they choose, fear losing independence, and need an advocate to help organize specialist care from multiple practitioners. With this deep understanding of what your customer is looking for, you can connect the issues that resonate with the solutions you provide.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Get Creative

The last thing a UVP should be is a boring list of facts and statistics. Creativity is key if you want your UVP to stay at the front and center of your audience’s mind. When your target customer is seeking a solution to their problem, your UVP must stand out amongst a sea of competition. If possible, tell a story. Relate to prospective residents
and family members by empathizing with their needs; demonstrate how you solved a current resident’s problems or provided the support family caregivers needed.

4. Keep It Short and Snappy

Now more than ever before, attention spans are brief. If content doesn’t spark curiosity in a few seconds, there are always more options to scroll to. Your UVP should be no more than a few sentences. As a guideline, your prospective resident and family caregiver should be able to read and fully understand the message in five seconds.

This is often the most challenging part of creating a showstopping UVP. It might seem borderline impossible to tell an engaging story that communicates your customers’ problem, how you can solve it and how you are different from your competitors in just a few words. To hit every key point, aim to cover the following three areas as concisely as possible:
1) Who do you help?
2) What do you help them with?
3) How do you help them?

5. Test and Revise

No UVP will be perfect the first time, and that’s not a problem. Enlist residents of your community to help review your UVP. Ask for feedback and establish the clarity of your message. With this valuable information, you can continue tweaking your UVP until it morphs into a unique message that resonates with your target audience.

If you’re going to spend time on one element of your marketing strategy, make it your UVP. While short in length, a great UVP can become the most recognizable and impactful depiction of your brand identity. A few brief words or sentences can distinguish mediocre marketing from skyrocketing success.

Unique Value Proposition Checklist
1) Have you researched your prospective residents’ wants, needs, and fears?
2) Have you researched your competitors?
3) Does your UVP communicate how you are different?
4) Does it address your customers’ key concerns?
5) Can it be read and understood in five seconds?
6) Has it been tested and revised?

Even with all the guidance, creating a UVP is rarely easy. If you need support in crafting a UVP for your senior living or healthcare organization, SMCG can help. Our team comprises senior living marketing experts with decades of experience. Get in touch to find out how we can boost your marketing efforts with an outstanding new UVP!