A beautiful new community. An impressive setting. Amenities designed to make life easier and more enjoyable. On paper, The Village on Morehead had a compelling story to tell.
Yet the on-site team was struggling to understand why the community was not leasing up as expected. In my agency work supporting The Aspenwood Company, that question led us to a more fundamental one: did the marketing reflect the people making the decision?
We needed to understand the audience before deciding how to reach it.
The product was clear. The buyer was less clear.
Morehead’s rental model offered a different financial proposition from continuing-care models that require a substantial entrance fee. That distinction deserved a clear explanation. But a financing structure, a list of amenities and a beautiful building do not tell you everything about why someone chooses a community.
Who starts the search? Who evaluates the options? Who asks the difficult questions? Who needs reassurance before the family moves forward?
In the audience work across our senior living engagement, women and adult children emerged as important people to understand. The person receiving the marketing was not always the prospective resident. An adult child could be helping a parent explore the next stage of life, comparing options and influencing the decision.
That did not make the older adult’s preferences less important. It meant we had to understand more than one perspective. And at Morehead, a luxury independent-living community, we needed to speak accurately about the lifestyle being offered rather than blur it with care services.
Activity was not the same as alignment.
The team was advertising and building local connections. But we questioned whether the publications and organizations receiving that attention were reaching the right audience.
There was a focus on the Chamber of Commerce and tourism and entertainment organizations. Those relationships can have a place in a local business strategy. The question was whether they connected this particular community with the people most likely to consider it, recommend it or influence a decision.
Buyer personas gave us a way to make those choices more deliberately: examine the audience’s interests, questions, influences and information sources, then use that understanding to guide advertising, networking and business development.
Luxury needed to be expressed, not simply claimed.
We also reconsidered the brand’s presentation. The existing blue-and-gold approach felt too conventional for the experience the community wanted to communicate.
We took inspiration from the restrained sophistication associated with Ritz-Carlton branding. The aim was to bring a more considered luxury sensibility to the advertising, visual direction and language, so that the presentation better reflected the community itself.
That required more than changing colors. It meant helping the team connect the idea of luxury with the audience’s expectations: how the community looked, how it spoke and what its message emphasized.
A persona should change what you do.
The value of this work was a clearer shared understanding of the audience and a stronger basis for decisions about branding, advertising and outreach.
I do not view buyer personas as profiles to finish and file away. They should help a team decide which publications belong in the plan, which relationships are worth developing, which questions content should answer and how sales conversations should begin.
Understanding your customer. It may not be who you think.
If your marketing is active but the response is disappointing, start by examining the assumptions underneath it. You may know your offering exceptionally well. The next step is understanding who needs to hear its story—and why it will matter to them.