Brands Winning at Franchise Marketing: BrightStar Care

The private home health care industry is in a boom period. The Baby Boomer generation is more than a decade into their retirement age, and an ever-increasing average lifespan is creating a greater demand for home health care. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, revenue in the home care industry more than doubled between 2002 and 2012 and has continued to grow since.

That growing demand has not gone untapped in the franchise industry. A number of home health care franchises have stepped in to serve the healthcare needs of an aging population, and some of those brands have been richly rewarded for their efforts.

BrightStare Care, a franchise that offers a full suite of care services, including companion care, personal care and skilled care, boasted the highest average revenue for franchisees in the segment in 2015, and the brand currently operates in more than 300 territories across 38 states.

We spoke with David Campagna, BrightStar Care’s vice president of franchise development, to learn how the brand has been able to attract the best franchisee partners to support the brand’s continued growth.

1851: What are some of the ways BrightStar Care markets to prospective franchisees?

Campagna: BrightStar uses both traditional and non-traditional strategies to find candidates. Some of the standards avenues include portals, brokers and email campaigns, but we also use digital targeting to drive potential candidates to our website. Organic leads and referrals are golden, but newer methods, such as embedding video into our messaging and utilizing LinkedIn have been producing great results as well.

1851: What are BrightStar Care’s key points of differentiation from other home health care concepts, and how are those points communicated through marketing?

Campagna: We have the highest average unit volume in the industry, with five proven revenue streams. Our National Accounts team alone generated over $70 million of business for our franchisees, and that doesn’t even include their local marketing efforts. These and other differentiators, such as joint commission, are featured prominently our white papers, social media content, handouts and advertising campaigns.    

1851: Has BrightStar Care’s approach to franchise marketing changed in the past five years?

Campagna: Obviously Google and its ever-changing keywords is a game changer. Yellow Book advertising is dead, and even 70-year-olds are using search engines to find assistance or to answer questions. Digital marketing has come a long way in allowing us to manage our messaging to the market and find qualified candidates, who we can compile into an internal database and market directly to.

1851: How does BrightStar Care tailor its marketing to attract qualified franchise investors?

Campagna: We utilize A/B splits, which allows us to test messaging and tailor the message directly to our intended market. We do a lot of social media research and track the online history and behavior of our best owners, which allows us to get in front of candidates with similar backgrounds, interests and work history.   

1851: Does BrightStar Care market to existing franchisees to promote expansion?

Campagna: We take a cautious approach to expansion to make sure an owner is ready to add additional staff and office space in a new territory. If an existing owner feels ready to expand, we treat it like a new owner coming on board and start the vetting from scratch.