More than 1.5 million Australians receive some form of aged care service with around 240,000 people living in permanent residential aged care. Australia’s population is ageing resulting in a significant increase in demand in age care services. In 2023, around 16% of Australians (about 4.2 million people) were aged 65 or over, and this number is projected to increase to 23% by 2066.

Given the rising demand for aged care more customers than ever are researching and looking for your services? So who is that customer and where are they looking?

At ADMATIC, we understand that a customers’ aged care decisioning process is both a complex journey and an emotional one. Aged care marketers need to truly understand who they are targeting and their media consumption behaviours. With a growing emphasis on data, multi-channel strategies, and precise targeting possibilities, navigating the media landscape has become more complex than ever, but it is simplicity that your customers yearn when navigating the aged care information landscape.

Let us explore three key trends that marketers need to prioritise in order to gain a competitive edge and to boost your market share presence.

The customer journey in 2024 is far more intricate than it was a few years ago.

In the digital landscape Google refers to the “messy middle”; a complex and often non-linear decision-making process that consumers undergo between the initial stimulus and the final purchase. It highlights how users loop between exploration and evaluation as they navigate through content. 

In the digital landscape if limiting your marketing strategy to just Google or Meta, marketers overlook steps along the customer journey, effectively taking your marketing investments out of parts of the market when consumers are ready to make a decision. Modern consumers are active across a multitude of platforms, from social media to search engines, across digital out-of-home billboards, and across a multitude of digital TV/Streaming/Video networks.

A customer searching for an Aged Care service might initially research options on Google, but their path to purchase extends far beyond this one platform. They could encounter recommendations on TV ads on 9Now or 10Play, engage with your company site on LinkedIn for insights, or even view ads on digital billboards at your local Westfield.

To drive high performance, marketers must first map out the entire customer journey, identifying the touch points that matter most at every stage – from evaluation to exploration. This allows brands to optimise engagement, reduce wasted ad spend, and ultimately boost conversions by meeting customers where they are.

As of 2024, nearly half of all customer engagement happens outside of Google and Meta ecosystems. While 52% of customer activity still occurs on these platforms, 48% happens on a wide array of other platforms including digital TV/Streaming/Video Networks, Spotify podcasts, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, digital out-of-home and many more.

Relying solely on Google or Meta limits your reach and overlooks growth opportunities. Marketers often over-invest in these platforms without considering their audience size and overall reach, leading to missed insights. While Google is essential for marketing, especially during the evaluation phase for age care facilities, there exists greater awareness and engagement potential for a multi-platform strategy that includes emerging and niche channels. 

At ADMATIC, we advocate for a bottom-up funnel strategy to determine optimal investment in conversion channels, that then frees up budgets for reaching audiences across the wider landscape. While these platforms can effectively target your middle-aged demographics, other channels such as podcasts, print, or educational content, play crucial roles during the exploration phase. Recognising the diminishing returns from single-channel investments and expanding beyond Google and Meta is vital for enhancing your marketing strategy.

Targeting lies at the core of successful marketing and so we must investigate targeting options across various platforms that offer distinct opportunities for segmentation and personalisation. With the decline of cookies and increased targeting restrictions on platforms, a data-driven approach is essential.

The questions must be asked. Who is an aged care marketer actually marketing to? Who is researching Aged Care options? Who is the eventual decision maker? With years of aged care marketing experience ADMATIC knows this more often than not to be the carer, the son, usually the daughter, who might be aged anywhere from 30-50 years. This cohort of carers are typically time poor and digitally savvy, making them prime targets for an aged care digitally centric marketing campaign.

For instance, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all offer targeting capabilities based on user demographics, interests, and behaviours that differ from what is available on Google and Meta. TikTok, for example, allows marketers to target users by age-groups, interests, and engagement behaviour, while LinkedIn’s targeting focuses more on professional data that can guide investments to those ages that may be researching for their elders under their care.

First-party data has emerged as a key component of effective multichannel targeting strategies. Utilising predictive modelling and creating lookalike audiences based on first-party data can greatly enhance targeting accuracy within multichannel campaigns. New solutions based on ID identification, rather than relying on cookies, DMPs, or CDPs, will help address the complex issue of targeting segmentation.

ADMATIC recommends developing a targeting framework that supports your omni-channel strategy, broadens reach, and engages customers at various stages of their journey through intelligent inclusions, exclusions, and predictive audiences that reflect the consumer journey.