Lead Generation with Roy Harmon

Roy Harmon is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of generating leads in the legal, political, automotive, higher education, software, and healthcare industries. His efforts have mobilized voters, enticed customers, and persuaded donors.

Advertoscope isn’t your typical lead generation company. Most of the time, business owners searching for lead generation services end up fighting for leads generated by third parties.

Those leads are sold to multiple competing businesses, and anyone buying them has to hope that:

1. the lead is qualified
2. their sales rep gets to the lead first
3. their sales rep closes the lead before the competition bombards them with other offers

You won’t have that problem with Advertoscope. We help businesses generate their own leads.

We’ll work with you to generate a detailed customer profile so you know the leads you receive are highly qualified and ready to close.

For more information, shoot Roy Harmon an email at [email protected].

www.advertoscope.com

www.seniorivingsalesandmarketing.com

Full Transcript Below 

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (00:03):

Hello, and welcome to another episode of senior living sales and marketing. I'm Roy. Yeah. This is the show where, you know, we try to focus our efforts on the senior living industry and specifically the sales and marketing. Uh, some things that we are seeing are things that may be able to help your community actually increase your occupancy or do it, uh, at a more reasonable rate, try to, you know, find cost-effective ma uh, lead generation devices. And so, uh, which brings us to our guests today, Roy Harmon, we're going to talk about lead generation and he's been in multiple industries. He's been in healthcare. Uh, he's been in the, uh, SAS law, politics, automotive and higher education as well. So, um, Roy, without further ado, we'll just bring you on and we'll get talking. How's your morning going

Roy Harmon (01:01):

One. Great. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (01:04):

Good, good. Yeah. Thanks for taking time out of your day. So yeah, lead generation, uh, you know, that's important an important part of, uh, the S uh, in senior living for sure, because, you know, when somebody moves out, hopefully we've got a waiting list, but as things go, sometimes the people at the top of the list aren't always ready to go. So we, you know, have to have an, uh, some way, not only to keep that wait list full, but also have, um, some method in place where we can constantly have leads coming in just to make it easier, you know, any, um, you know, a day with the, uh, with an empty room. We never recapture that revenue. So very important to, you know, cut that down as well. So first off, kind of, how did you get here? And I, I know that you've been in politics and I'm actually a lawyer as well. So kind of tell us a little bit about how you got here.

Roy Harmon (02:04):

Yeah, well, so I did, I graduated from law school, but I realized my mistake before I actually took the bar. So not actually not actually a lawyer, but, um, but I had the pay off the same student debt as the rest of them. So, um, yeah, I, uh, I started out in politics doing political marketing

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (02:27):

And

Roy Harmon (02:29):

Ma you know, a lot of grassroots stuff, mobilizing voters and things like that. And I really enjoyed that and I realized that that was easily applicable to anything else. So, you know, whether you're trying to get a donor to make a donation or a vote, or to show up for a, um, for a signed wave or to make a phone call any time that you're trying to get somebody to take action that's to the principals are going to be very similar. Right. And so I went from there to automotive and worked for an agency that did, um, did, did advertising for a tier three automotive dealerships. And from there just went to a number of different industries and, and found that I, my initial suspicion was correct. And these, these principles really do apply, uh, broadly across multiple industries. And, um, over that time, one of the areas where I found that it could really benefit from this kind of thinking is senior living, where a hundred percent occupancy is such a big, uh, important factor and the idea of having a full pipeline or having a, you know, having a waiting list, having these people who are familiar and ready to, to actually, uh, come on and become a, a resonant is something that's important because it's not a, it's not a short sales cycle on necessarily mean people are, there's a pretty big decision, right.

Roy Harmon (04:11):

And the longer the sales cycle, the longer the decision-making process, the more important it is to have these marketing efforts in place.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (04:22):

Yeah. Well, I'm just gonna needle you just a little bit about being, being out of politics before this cycle. That was probably a blessing in itself.

Roy Harmon (04:35):

I've, I've always, I've always done a pretty good job of, uh, of knowing when to move to the next area. And so I got out of that, I'd say just in time

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (04:46):

And that was it. Yeah. I was going, it doesn't matter what side you're on today. Uh, everybody pretty much took a beating. So yeah, no, I think the importance of what you're saying is, um, can't be stressed enough is that we've got to keep that pipeline full and, and I don't ever want to, um, I guess inbound and outbound are complimentary when we'd never say, Hey, we're not going to do, we're going to do inbound. We're not doing any outbound or we're not, we're going to do outbound, no inbounds whatsoever. I think there has to be a good combination because, you know, Indiana, we got to pick up the phone, we got to build relationships, talk to people, do things like that. But the, um, what I like about inbound is number one is I think the, um, it works for you 24 seven. So if an adult child, you know, we, uh, adult children are, you know, I'm blessed because my kids are older.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (05:46):

So I'm not that sandwich generation, but, you know, adult children, they got jobs. They're working all day. You know, they come home at night and maybe, you know, there's nobody at the community they're interested in at 10 o'clock at night when they're doing the research. So they're able to, you know, go on the internet, wherever websites, social media, to look around at the different places. But also, um, I think it's easily eat easily, uh, scalable too. So we can start out find something that works. We can ramp it up versus, uh, you know, having to add employees. So, um, let's just talk to those two points. First off, we can talk about it, you know, work in 24 hours for us working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Roy Harmon (06:35):

Yeah. Well, and the great thing about it is you can automate it so much of it can be automated as long as you're creating the content and creating the, putting the processes in place. Most of this can be automated and then it can serve your outbound efforts as well. So they, they, they tie together in a way that each one together is going to be better than it would be on its own. Um, but so, yeah, that's, that's a really great thing about it. And it doesn't even require necessarily the investment in some really expensive marketing automation platform. There's some fairly automated things you can do just with, within the Facebook ads platform or within Google displays ad platform. If you're, if you're creating content and you say, let's just say, you've got you, let's keep it simple and say, you've got two personas. Let's say, you've got, you want to find your people who are, um, who are actual the parents who would actually be moving in.

Roy Harmon (07:44):

And then you also have your people who are, uh, the, the caretakers, the, the children who are providing care for the apprentice. Uh, you know, you want to have different content for each person, right? And as they go through the, the buyers journey as HubSpot calls, that they're going to have different questions, different problems that they're dealing with. And, and you want to answer those questions with your content. Then on Facebook ads, you can set up your audiences and based on what content they've gone to, you can, you can know about where they're at in the process and tailor your messaging based on that.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (08:26):

Yeah, that, that's a good point if, uh, somebody's spending a lot of time on the care component or aspect, then, you know, that would be a good touch point to talk about, you know, the safety, the meals, whatever they're interested in, whatever their needs, but also, you know, if they're looking at the amenities activities, you know, if it's more of a independent, active community, then, uh, you know, we can target them with that because it's important, everybody. Um, I think it's a good distinction to make that everybody has their kind of their own unique need for wanting to make changes, not just in senior living, but in any company. I mean, excuse me, with any product it's like different motivations. So it's so important that, um, we be able to, I guess it makes us sound intelligent, but also it, uh, you know, we can, without having to grill people to ask a lot of questions, we can get right to the point to address whatever their needs are.

Roy Harmon (09:28):

You're providing more value to them. You're, uh, and you're also not hitting them with irrelevant information. Right. Um, and just one thing that, that you, you kind of touched on, uh, there briefly is that it really it's important when it comes to these buyer personas. You have to understand who you're marketing to. Uh, you know, I mean, if it's a memory care facility it's going to be, you know, the people who you're, you're looking at, it's going to be entirely different. You know, the, the amount of direct marketing you're going to do to, to a resident in that case may be very low, but maybe you're, uh, you know, there, but there's still going to be different factors that come into play, and you have to know who you're marketing to, uh, in order to do that effectively.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (10:19):

Yeah. And we've talked a lot about that, that it's, it's very good to sit down, especially at the beginning of a campaign or when you're retooling a little bit and give a lot of thought to, you know, who is our customer, what is the avatar, you know, back in the day, we, you say, create an avatar of that, that buyer persona. And the other thing another we've taught prior to this about, uh, sometimes that the person that we are sometimes the person that we may be, uh, need to message to may not be the buyer, you know, especially with kids, kids products, we, you know, we may get them hooked in the same thing with senior living. It's just like, you know, my mother, she is, um, you know, we're starting to talk about that, but she's going to be a very big part of that. So, you know, we need to reach her, communicate the message that she needs to hear, but then also, you know, as the adult children, me and my sister will be very heavily involved in that decision. And so, um, you know, we have to get our own messaging about the safety and things like, you know, she's worrying about playing cards and social activities and doing all that stuff where we're worrying about, you know, safety care

Roy Harmon (11:38):

And 10 that's where inbound marketing is, is really powerful because you have the opportunity, the opportunity to speak to people on that one to one level. Right. Whereas where, you know, when they actually show up for a tour, I mean, you know, you have things in place to try to kind of like maybe, uh, maybe you'd have an opportunity to do that a little bit, but it's never going to be as direct as when somebody is out there trying to find the answer to their problem. And you can be there anytime of the day and have the answer and have your name be associated with, um, with that moment where they, they found that information that either gave them comfort or, you know, settled their mind about something or, you know, whatever the case may be.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (12:27):

Right. Right. Yeah. So, um, you know, in handling these leads, that's another thing is, uh, when you set up these campaigns, you have to be ready. Cause sometimes we get surprised with the overwhelming response that we may have. And so if people are taking the time to respond in some manner, uh, us as the, the marketing sales and marketing team, we have to be able to respond to those in a timely manner because we never know really, if this is a needs driven or, you know, a lot of it is typically somewhat needs driven, but some of it more urgent than not. And so, you know, being sure that we can have a response to that. It's an important part of that equation as well, because we want to feel like, Hey, I've took the time to research this company. I've took the time to reach out.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (13:20):

And then, you know, for me personally, having somebody take a, a day or two, or I actually had one the other day where it's been like three or four months since I reached out to them and I got an email from the guy like, well, I've already bought it, moved on and maybe fixing to make another decision, but now, so right now we just have to be sure and take, you know, leads or leads or just like manna from heaven. And so when we get one, we have to be sure and take care of it and nourish it. And, um, which kind of gets us to the, uh, you know, we'll go with the aggregate aggregation, uh, model of, uh, plant, uh, you know, we so nourish or cultivate, and then we harvest. And so with any campaign, we may get lucky and get some bumps.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (14:08):

But I think that we need to take a long-term approach to this and realize that w we're not only looking for that low hanging fruit of today, but we're also trying to build that pipeline of, like you said, maybe, uh, maybe you don't really have, maybe you've begun to think about it for your parents or, uh, something happens like a thought in the back of your mind. So you're not ready today, but if, um, you know, kind of dripping on you and have these campaigns in six months from now, when things really change, I've been in front of you enough that you feel like you have some knowledge of my company, my community, our service. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, how we, the, you know, making sure that we not only have patients, but we think about the long game as well.

Roy Harmon (15:00):

Yeah. Really crucial element of it. Then the, the biggest value of the inbound. Well, well, I mean, there's so many, so many benefits, so, well, let's just say one of the big, one of the big benefits is that unlike with advertising or leads that you get from somebody else, some, you know, like maybe you buy a mailing list and you're only allowed, but they tell you, you can, you can send them, uh, you can send a mailer to this group one time or two times, or however much you pay for. But anytime you want to contact that mailing list, you have to pay again. Right. Um, if you have a remarketing list through, you know, Facebook or Google or any other platform, you can advertise it to that and remarketing lists, but you don't have any other access to it. So the great thing about inbound is that you bring these people in, you provide value, and you say, if you'd like further value, give me your email address and I'll, I'll send you this, uh, maybe it's a downloadable offer, or if there's the bottom of the funnel, or maybe it's having them come in for a tour or getting a phone call for more information, but then you have the ability now, depending on how much information you get, you can, at the very least you should be able to email them.

Roy Harmon (16:25):

You can potentially call them. You may have, uh, you may even have their mailing address and be able to send them as much mail as you want. And, and that's the lead nurturing process, you know, that's, once you, that you now have the ability to cost-effectively nurture those leads, instead of just hoping that the you're the one they remember when the time comes, you're actually proactively ensuring that that you're there, that you're top of mind, uh, when they're ready to make a decision.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (16:56):

Yeah. And our it's a, it's a high percentage play are higher percentage play as well because these, what you gather from your own inbound marketing through those, you know, lead gathering or what I would consider warm leads, because somebody has reached out to you versus that list that you've purchased. I mean, a lot of times we don't know where they are, you know, maybe, maybe that name was a good, uh, lead two years ago, but now you're, you know, they've already made a decision. And so you can spend a lot of time and effort, not really knowing the quality of what

Roy Harmon (17:33):

And third party data, for example. And I'm a big believer in third party data through programmatic advertising and things like that. But you have to look at the duration because some of those lists there, you know, can be, this person has been in market for this since six months ago. Yeah. And well, I mean, you know, that may be really effective for some, um, for some air, you know, industries, but if somebody is, for instance, really meaning to put their mother, for instance, in a memory care facility, they may not be able to wait around six months. And so you may be, you may be hitting a hit and a bunch of people who were like, Oh yeah, I actually already made a decision. And, uh, on another note, some of these companies where they'll, they'll give you leads or sell, you leads, there's some, a little bit of five people at one time, right?

Roy Harmon (18:35):

So first of all, you're not controlling the messaging from the start, right. Because they're coming in through somewhere somewhere else. And then you're fighting with, you know, three, four, five other people to get that business. And that's not to say you shouldn't, you, I I'm, I'm a, I'm a big believer in using everything that makes sense financially, if you're, if you get leads and they're, uh, you know, through some website and they're converting at a profitable rate, then I would say, continue to do that. Right. But you also want to keep an eye on, on your ROI and make sure that you're looking towards the future to have this pipeline in place that we've been talking about. Um, so that you're not fully reliant on, on somebody else on, you know, being able to out-compete these people, uh, when it comes to, you know, making these phone calls, which mean, you know, if you're buying leads like that, you need to be calling them back within five minutes. Um, so that's something to think about when you're, when you're making your decisions about how to allocate your marketing budget.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (19:47):

Yeah. It was kind of a funny story. We had a client, this has been a few years ago that they had actually got a lead. And as we were looking down through some of the names, it's like, they, it was a smaller market, so it wasn't a big city, but looking down through the names are like, Oh yeah, both of these people are Hardy residents here. So, you know, the it's not. And like you said, I think it needs to be a part. We just, if we can build this really good inbound marketing machine where we have control, uh, you know, I think our, I think we would see that the conversion rates are going to be much, much higher. Right.

Roy Harmon (20:23):

Well, and if you're paying somebody like the first month, if you're paying the first month rent or, you know, to somebody, um, you know, the, there may be a more profitable way to get those people in the door because that could be sometimes it's just a huge expense for those kind of weeds. Right, right.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (20:49):

Yeah. So what are, um, you know, there's so many different channels out there, but give us an example of, you know, maybe, uh, a strategy that somebody could put into play. Of course, content, I think it, it's gonna all pretty much start with good content. No matter if we're talking about our website, if we're talking about messaging on, uh, social media platforms, or even a snail mail, you know, whatever we choose to do, we really need to have good thoughtful content.

Roy Harmon (21:29):

Yeah. And so one thing that, um, that I think is pretty interesting way to go is direct mail retargeting. So based on what, where people go on your website, if they don't convert, you can send them a postcard. Right. Um, and if you are creating the content, like we've talked about where, you know, the kind of person who's going to be looking at it and where they're, if they're looking at a content X, they're probably at the top of the funnel, and they're probably this persona, so these, this is the kind of messaging we want to send them. And if you can do that for each stage of the funnel, and let's say you just divided in the three, uh, top, middle and bottom of funnel, you can not only be generating that, that SEO by answering people's questions, providing value in a way that will eventually rank, but you can also send traffic there through Facebook ads.

Roy Harmon (22:36):

Like we talked about earlier, creating those audiences, then you can add on the direct mail retargeting aspect to where not only did they see your Facebook ad and then look at your content that was relevant to them, but then they received a postcard with further information. And you can do that down the line throughout the funnel until you get to the point where maybe at the bottom of the funnel, you have some sort of an offer or something like that to get them to come in for a tour. And, um, you know, just really hit them, have a lot of touch points where your, your brand awareness is just topically, you know, really top of the charts at that point.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (23:24):

Yeah. And, you know, direct mail still works fairly well. I know, um, I was involved in the, uh, it's been a few years ago, but we had a smaller, uh, church congregation and, you know, we didn't do a lot of outreach, but one of our members was, you know, fussing one day. He's like, I get mail from this church up street, you know, all the times that I know more about what's going on in that church than I do, what's going on here. So, you know, uh, it's important to realize that everybody gets their, receives their information in so many different ways. There are people that love the mail. They wait by the door every day for the mailman to come. You know, some people are more email centric or a text or whatever. So, you know, we, we got to, I think we have to work to kind of, uh, spread that message out over a lot of different, um, channels, just to see what works best. I mean, you never know.

Roy Harmon (24:24):

Well, and something to note about direct mail re-targeting is it can be a lot more affordable. Uh, the company I use does, um, it's like 81 cents a postcard. Yeah. And they only charge you when a postcard is sent. So depending on your traffic, I mean, you may not be spending that much on it, but you're able to get that extra touch point for less than a dollar. Right. And, uh, you know, sort of be able to capitalize on the other things you've been doing.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (25:01):

Yeah. And our touch points too. You know, we kind of mentioned that earlier about the, um, you know, being sure that we cultivate our leads, that it can be, I've read anywhere between, you know, eight to 12 touches for a typical buying. And that's across a lot of industries. I know, but th unless it's somebody who is very, very needs driven, they have an immediate need today. You know, you need to expect to be able to touch people eight or 10 times at a minimum, which kind of leads us into not what, this is not what this conversation is really about, but I think that it amplifies the need, uh, for CRM. And I know that, um, there's a lot of pushback. People don't want to take the time, don't have the time, but I think it's just one of those tools that you have to live and die by when you, especially when you have these campaigns going, because you got to know, well, who's queued up for me to send something to what's my next touch point time. What was the last thing I said to them? Because if you are good about writing your conversations down, you may pick up other things that are good, uh, touchpoint items

Roy Harmon (26:20):

They're going to, yeah. You're going to have more ideas for things to content, to create. You're going to know more about, I mean, that the CRM, to me, that's a no brainer and a must have, because when they come in, you need to remember the things that they've said to you, you need to, they need to feel like, you know them and you need to have everything. Um, I think one thing that sort of turns people away from the CRM is that it can be difficult to, to implement, but, you know, you just, it's definitely worth it. Whether you have to find somebody who, who can set that up for you initially and let it pay dividends for forever, or whether you just sit down and say, I'm going to watch, HubSpot's free training on it and learn it.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (27:09):

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a good point because I've tried four or five over time and, uh, some of them are beating, but, you know, hubs to me, I use HubSpot and it's very, user-friendly, you know, I can sit here while I'm having a conversation and type in notes. I think you bring up a good point too, that if, uh, I've talked to five people this week and they've all asked the same question, or, you know, the similar topic has come up with them, then that may be somewhere where we're short on our content, that we can create that piece of content that, uh, you know, may answer these questions. But, um, yeah, I think that don't want to overemphasize it, but I just feel like we have to, um, we have to utilize the CRMs that are available. And, you know, I guess kind of a note to management is that, you know, I think, uh, w w found a lot of times are found a group that, you know, they were manipulating their numbers because they were just getting beat up by management over their numbers.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (28:17):

And I don't, um, I think we need indices. We need to measure results. We need all that, but we've gotta be careful on the management side about not using our, um, our results measurements as a stick, to beat people up. I think we have to use those as a utilization tool. And especially when we have these campaigns, because if we, if we're putting our money in the wrong place, we may have a lot of phone calls, but, you know, if we're getting phone calls from 20 somethings that are, you know, looking for something else, or they thought it was something else, then we can conclude that. Obviously we have done not done something right. With our messaging. And we, you know, that that's the bad thing is in, and in my CRM, it looks like, wow, he handled, you know, a hundred leads this week and sold zero. Yeah. But if they were all, you know, teenagers or 20 somethings then, yeah.

Roy Harmon (29:13):

Where are they? Good leads? Are they qualified where they all, you know, where they, you know, like stale, I bet all different kinds of theirs. Cause you know what I mean? Sometimes marketing just didn't do a good job. Or sometimes, I mean, there are times where, whether it's seasonality or something else, you know, varies by industry. But, um, I haven't seen where sometimes people are almost, you want everybody's incentives to be aligned so that everybody is working in the same direction and you don't want to, um, you know, you want to make sure you're being fair because a lot of times there's only so much the, you know, your sales team can do. Yeah.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (29:57):

And our marketing team needs to be sure. And this is where cohesiveness is so important because a lot of times those people are the same people, but it may be somebody at a corporate is doing the messaging. And that's where it's important for marketing to reach out to the frontline sales people to say, what are your results telling us, you know, are we, is this messaging good? Are we putting it in the right place? Have you had some traffic? Uh, you know, we have to ask those questions because we always want to be tweaking these campaigns as we go forward. Uh, you know, doesn't matter if it's a really good one. I think we can always make it a little bit better. So, uh, yeah, it was great to, uh, you know, kind of tie all this together every week. I don't know that we, we talk about things in kind of in silos a lot, but you know, this is really a team effort.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (30:50):

It starts at the very top and it runs to the receptionist. You know, they are one of the Mo more important individuals in, in the community, first voice on the phone. First person you see, when you come in. And so, you know, we all have to take all that into account and it's always good to, if we're running some kind of a special campaign to let everybody be on the same page, there's nothing more embarrassing than somebody walking in and mentioning this thing they saw on an ad and everybody at the community levels are, huh, wait, what are you talking about? We didn't even know anything about that. So good communication. It's always important to make our, you know, our marketing programs work as best as they can. Yeah. Well, Roy, thanks again for taking time out of your day to be here with us, uh, before we let you go, a couple of things first off, what is the tool that you use either in your professional life or personal life that you just couldn't live without?

Roy Harmon (31:55):

I really, these days. So I've started doing a daily newsletter and I've been using mailer Lite, just their free version. And I have I'd loved it. It has marketing automation that I would not expect to have available for free. And so I've really, I've been enjoying that and it's been fun to use. And, uh, so far people, um, once I moved to the daily newsletters, I was wondering, are people going to want to hear about lead generation every day? Um, and so far it seems that Mo the vast majority of people do so. Yeah, it's, that's good.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (32:40):

Good. All right. Well, tell everybody, uh, who's your customer, what you can do for them, and of course, how they can reach out and get ahold of you.

Roy Harmon (32:48):

Yeah. So I work with companies that are, you know, anybody who's got a, a longer sales cycle needs to do more, um, really has, uh, something where they need to educate people along the way, and really make sure they, they understand so that they they're increasing their sales velocity, their, their leads are qualified. They're getting the right people in their pipeline. And, uh, people can find me on LinkedIn, um, or at, at Virta scope.com where I write about lead generation and digital marketing, and a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about today.

Roy - Senior Living Sales and Marketing (33:29):

All right. Awesome. Well, thanks again. And just to our listeners, thanks for listening. You can find [email protected]. Also we're on all the major platforms, iTunes, Google play, Stitcher, Spotify. Uh, so if we're not on the platform that you listened to send me an email and I'll be sure and get us submitted until next time, keep selling.