Getting Strategic in 2011

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Excerpt

Bob Mullaney, owner of Plymouth-based Comfort Keepers, said much the same thing is happening at his private-pay, home care business. As company CEO, Mullaney said he holds weekly meetings with department heads to review dashboard financials.

"We're much more on top of everything from where our business is coming from, to what we're spending," he said.

Mullaney owns and operates five Comfort Keepers locations with about 200 employees in Massachusetts, working with his wife and company president, Raquel. While Comfort Keepers had a rough 2009, the franchise business rebounded in 2010 with about 29 percent growth for the year, he said.

One of the biggest shifts, Mullaney said, came in the way new clients are sourced.

"Instead of trying to tap the people being discharged out of hospitals and rehabilitation sites, which is historically where we've gotten our business, we're targeting elder law attorneys and trust officers who are handling people at a higher net worth that don't' necessarily know that these services are available," said Mullaney.

"It's worked out pretty well this year," he said. "We're still targeting other areas but we would not have had the growth we did if we were relying on where our business had come from historically."

Next to sourcing differently, the strategy that has paid off most has been increasing the company investment in marketing as well as marketing in new ways. Comfort Keepers began spending significantly more for its television and radio advertising, Mullaney said, and hired a web company to redo its website, help with search engine optimization, and create industry blogs.

"That has definitely helped," said Mullaney. "Not so much TV and radio, but the web - we're getting a lot more business from the web.