Rossmoor.com, already generally aimed at non-residents, can become a true marketing tool

 

By Sam Richards

Staff writer

 

Wednesday, February 19 (9:30 a.m.): Rossmoor may have a website designed to answer the outside world’s questions about this community. The GRF Marketing Task Force, however, wants the existing Rossmoor.com to become a laser-focused marketing tool, taking a more pointed approach in convincing potential Rossmoor residents that this community is where they belong, and why.

At its Feb. 11 meeting, the task force made giving Rossmoor.com a sharper marketing focus its next top priority during the remaining three months of the task force’s lifetime. Other priorities determined on Feb. 11 included an upgrade of the website MyRossmoor.com (aimed mostly at the needs and interests of people who already live here), stronger social media presence on several platforms (especially Facebook), getting the recently crafted Rossmoor mission and vision statements out into the public consciousness more, and to establish a Rossmoor “brand guide” to help ensure that Rossmoor’s brand gets the best possible play via website, social media, press releases and, ideally, word of mouth.

To do this properly, GRF Director of Communications Ann Peterson said, will require a substantial capital budget spend. The task force on Feb. 11 voted to recommend to the GRF Planning Committee that up to $100,000 be budgeted in the near future for remaking both the marketing (Rossmoor.com) and the residents’ (MyRossmoor.com) websites – or to at least get that funding need on GRF officials’ radar. The 2025 GRF capital projects budget was set to be approved on Feb. 27, and this $100,000 isn’t part of it, at least not yet.

Such funding, Peterson said, could be used to help minimize problems with the two main GRF websites, as uncovered in an SEO audit (https://tinyurl.com/3rk92vt8), including missing and duplicate searches, broken links and missing meta descriptions that help search engines find websites.

In January, the GRF Board moved to support the task force’s recommendation to secure a legal DBA (“doing business as”) for the name “Rossmoor Walnut Creek” and to explore consideration of that as Rossmoor’s formal brand name for future marketing purposes. Peterson said that, while changing Rossmoor.com to RossmoorWalnutCreek.com might be the obvious move, several slight variations of RossmoorWalnutCreek.com have already been taken.

It could cost $1,500 or more to hire a broker to work out an arrangement to gain rights to one of those “Rossmoor Walnut Creek” website URLs.

And changing that website URL, she said, may not even be the best move.

“We’ve got a lot of power behind Rossmoor.com,” said Peterson, who noted that visitors to that website have gone from approximately 13,000 in August 2023 to almost 60,000 visitors in July 2024, before dropping a bit since then.

Content on a new-and-improved Rossmoor.com would be beefed up, too, and there were several suggestions on Feb. 11 for prospective additions – virtual tours of Rossmoor, video neighborhood “walk-throughs,” “Life in Rossmoor” stories, educational and seasonal content, perhaps even an “Ask anything” Q-and-A-type segment.

As for social media, task force member Kevin Dowling said he believes Facebook is used by many of those Rossmoor most wants to reach, specifically seniors weighing their options and the adult children helping with that search. “That is what adult children look at, and that’s what seniors look at, too,” he said.

Peterson also shared the results of a survey (https://tinyurl.com/4ayzhuhw) of Rossmoor residents who have lived here up to three years, which asked what they like about Rossmoor, why they moved here, and whether they had considered other 55-plus communities, among other questions. The most common answers were the amenities Rossmoor offers, its “low-maintenance lifestyle,” proximity to family in the Bay Area, security/safety, and opportunities for social interaction.

Such survey results should play into marketing efforts, task force members said, but Aya Nagai, one of two student fellows from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business helping the task force, suggested that Rossmoor could also learn from people who ultimately didn’t choose Rossmoor as their home.

Barring another move to extend its lifespan, the Marketing Task Force will continue to meet through May. Its next meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 10, at 9 a.m. in the Mulligan Room at Creekside (not the usual GRF Board Room) and over Zoom.