How To Market Assisted Living Effectively

If your senior living community struggles to turn leads into residents, you aren’t alone. Many operators cite this as one of their top challenges. Building a stronger marketing strategy can help you connect with the right prospects, nurture trust, and move leads forward with confidence.

Effective marketing isn’t just about getting more leads — it’s about turning interest into action. Boost occupancy and drive meaningful growth by optimizing your online presence, strengthening referral relationships, and putting proven strategies into action.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

No matter how great your marketing materials are, they won’t see results if you send them to the wrong people. Understanding your target audience is the first step in marketing assisted living.

Consider the following when pinpointing your ideal resident:

• Age
• Service needs
• Values
• Lifestyle
• Financial capacity

To truly understand your audience:

• Listen to your current residents.
• Listen to visitor feedback.
• Read online reviews of your community.
• Pay attention to feedback from your sales team. 

Start by using the information you gather to create personas that guide how you build and share your marketing materials. You should target different personas with different messages tailored to their needs and preferences. And remember to update these personas frequently — generational needs continue to evolve, and today’s 70-year-olds aren’t the same as those from a decade ago.

2. Develop a Comprehensive Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is an actionable roadmap that keeps your marketing strategy on track and helps you monitor the ROI of your efforts. While every senior living community should have a marketing plan, it’s especially helpful if you have strong competition, or your occupancy rates might begin to fall.

A good marketing plan for assisted living includes:

• Marketing goals that outline what you want to accomplish.
• Objectives that identify the steps you plan to tackle in the short term as you work toward your goals.
• Key performance indicators that measure the success of your plan.
• Value propositions that set you apart from your competition.
• The target audience you want to reach.
• Your budget for putting the marketing plan into effect.

Once you have your marketing plan in place, use it to guide all your marketing decisions.

Expert Tip: Our senior living marketing plan template can help you craft the perfect marketing plan to help you reach your goals.

3. Use a Powerful CRM

The average sales cycle for assisted living is 317 days. This long cycle means prospects can easily slip through the cracks. 

A powerful CRM is a must for any assisted living community. The Aline CRM helps your sales team monitor a lead’s progress through the sales funnel and increases the likelihood a prospect will become a resident. 

When researching a CRM, look for:

• Configuration capabilities.
• Integrations with messaging, calendars, etc.
• Marketing automation.
• Tracks contacts through continuum of care.
• Designed specifically for the unique needs of senior living.

4. Foster an Online Presence

Contrary to stereotypes, 32% of senior living inquiries stem from the web or social media, which means if you don’t have an online presence, you’re potentially cutting your lead intake by almost a third.

To foster an online presence:

• Create a compelling website: Include images and videos that highlight the best features of your senior living community to grab users’ attention. Publish helpful content, covering topics important to seniors and their loved ones, such as senior health and caregiving tips, to establish your expertise. 
• Optimize your website for SEO: Ensure your site is logically organized with a site index and use descriptive URLs. Keep title tags short, and add alt text for images, so your content is accessible for people using screen readers. Use relevant anchor text or hyperlinks and add an author for credibility.

5. Target Potential Residents With Online Advertising

While print ads in magazines or mailers can be effective marketing strategies, online assisted living advertising is often more effective and has a better ROI.

Online advertising has several key benefits, including:

• Driving website traffic and brand awareness.
• Generating higher conversion rates through targeted outreach.
• Using analytics to refine your strategy.

There are two main types of online advertising: pay-per-click (PPC) ads and social media ads. 

Pay-per-click ads show up in search results for specific keywords. Since you only pay for the ad when users click on them, they are highly effective. 

For example, a user may search the keyword “caregiver tips for dementia.” If your memory care community has a PPC ad for this keyword, your page will pop up at the top of the search results. 

Social media ads are another example of online advertising. These ads specifically target people whose algorithm indicates they’re already predisposed to learning more about your brand. 

For example, they may follow other caregivers for people living in assisted living, so your social media ad for your assisted living community may pop up in their feed. Because they already have an interest in your offering, the ad is more effective.

6. Engage Potential Residents With Newsletters

Turn prospects into residents with targeted newsletters that focus on helpful information for your audience.

Aim for newsletters that are 90% informational and 10% promotional content, so recipients see the newsletters helpful rather than spam. For example, highlight public events and activities and include workout tips for seniors before talking about move-in deals.

Expert tip: Leverage a senior living CRM to automate your email marketing, so these newsletters are a breeze to send regularly.  

7. Participate in Your Community

Playing an active role in your community makes you a local resource, not just a residence.

Here are a few tips to become more involved in your community:

• Create volunteer programs for your residents, such as a Stories With Seniors partnership with a local elementary school.
• Host or sponsor public events, such as a Veterans Day celebration. 
• Leverage staff expertise by offering support groups for caregivers or senior exercise classes. 
• Join local networks, such as the local chamber of commerce.

By engaging with your community, you make your senior living community visible to everyone, not just those who have an immediate need for your services. When they do find themselves in need, they’re more likely to turn to you since they already have a relationship with you.

8. Eliminate Data Silos

Senior living communities manage a complex ecosystem behind the scenes — balancing sales and marketing, day-to-day operations, billing and leasing, regulatory compliance, care planning, and more. At the same time, leaders must also focus on keeping teams supported and residents thriving.

Managing all of this with disconnected systems only adds friction. Unifying your data and workflows in one place brings the clarity, efficiency, and insight you need to move faster and support better outcomes.

By unifying your software systems, you can:

• Automate sales and marketing.
• Decrease revenue leakage.
• Optimize resident care and medication management.
• Gain actionable insights from unified reporting.
• Improve decision-making.

9. Digitize What You Can

Administrative tasks are a necessary part of managing a senior living community, but without the right systems, they can eat up more time and energy than they should.

Digital solutions can help you free up time, simplify workflows, and refocus your team on what matters most: delivering exceptional care. Here are a few simple tools that can help you streamline administrative tasks and create a smoother experience for both your team and prospective residents:

• Use scheduling apps like Calendly for easy booking.
• Digitize signature capture with platforms like Docusign.
• Track calls with CallRail.

Digitizing the process helps your sales team and makes it easier for your future residents. Just ensure the apps you select integrate your systems with your existing tech stack.

10. Read and Engage With Reviews

If 98% of shoppers read reviews before buying a product as simple as a toaster, imagine how much reviews matter when choosing a senior living community. Online feedback heavily influences prospective resident and family decisions, and it’s essential to actively manage your reviews.

Respond authentically to reviews on sites like Google, Caring.com, or A Place for Mom. Potential residents want to know you care about how your community is viewed and how you respond to criticism.

To respond to negative reviews, offer a thank you and an apology if appropriate, and always offer to speak with the customer more in depth to solve the problem. Refrain from arguing with the reviewer and move follow-ups to a different channel, such as a phone call.

11. Expand Your Referral Network

Market research shows that 64% of market source conversions for senior living move-ins come from unpaid referrals. Expanding your referral network is one of the most effective — and cost-free — ways to grow your lead base. You can strengthen your network by:

• Building professional networks with doctors, social workers, senior centers, or hospitals: These referrals come from an authentic, trustworthy source. 
• Fostering resident referrals: Provide exceptional care to your residents and offer the amenities seniors want, so they’ll refer to you to their friends and family. 
• Streamlining the referral process: Make referring patients quick and painless by standardizing the referral process and automating what you can.

12. Create and Share Videos

Capture leads’ attention and drive conversions with strategic video content. After all, your future residents are active on YouTube: People ages 55-plus make up almost 20% of YouTube’s audience, suggesting that seniors are receptive to video marketing materials.

When making your videos, keep them short and to the point. The average adult attention span is just over eight seconds, but the average time spent watching a single internet video is nearly three minutes.

Make sure your video has a clear message and includes subtitles, so it’s easy to watch without sound. End with a strong call to action, like encouraging viewers to schedule a visit. Once your video is ready, share it strategically on YouTube and the social platforms where your target audience is most active.

13. Be Active on Social Media

More than 62% of the world is on social media daily, so if your senior living community isn’t, it’s time to re-evaluate. 

Your social media accounts should:

• Run social media ads.
• Share videos and thought leadership.
• Engage in conversations important to senior living audiences.
• Share news and updates about your community to build brand awareness.

You can also take advantage of influencer marketing. Most baby boomers will make a purchase based on a recommendation from someone they follow on social media. Influencer marketing must be authentic, so reach out to people your audience follows, such as senior wellness influencers, and ask them to give reviews or share your content.

When creating and sharing content on social media, be mindful of where your audience spends their time:

• Baby boomers spend the majority of their time on Facebook, so focus your Facebook social media efforts on reaching potential residents directly.
• Millennials and Gen Xers who might be looking for senior living communities for their parents spend the most time on LinkedIn and Pinterest, so focus marketing materials for that audience there.

14. Share Stories, Not Jargon

The senior living industry is filled with alphabet soup: AL, ALF, ANP, CCRC, LTC, MC. These acronyms can confuse your leads, especially at the beginning of the sales cycle. They also make your community feel more like a medical institution than a place where they can relax, make friends, and have fun.

Focus on sharing stories with potential leads. Not only do people remember stories 22 times more than facts, but emotional connections created through narratives are known to drive brand loyalty. 

Some ways to share stories include:

• Talk about specific residents’ experiences in your marketing materials. 
• Ask residents to share their favorite part of your community or describe their experience. 
• Save the facts, statistics, and finer details of your community for later in the sales cycle. 

15. Schedule Tours

Video ads and social media are great for raising brand awareness, but you need face-to-face interactions to effectively move a prospect to the next stage of the sale. 

Get potential residents in the door and experience what life is like in your community by:

• Giving them a tour.
• Letting them speak with residents.
• Providing a free meal in your cafeteria.
• Encouraging them to participate in games and other activities.
• Allowing them time to experience the community without a sales rep.

Tours should be personable, well-planned, and include follow-up. Administer a survey afterward to find out how you can improve future tours.

16. Never Miss a Phone Call or Chat Message

The average lead response time is 47 hours, but conversion rates drop by eight times after just five minutes. The longer you wait to respond to a lead, the less likely that lead is to convert.

The solution for senior living community sales teams is to never miss a phone call or chat message, but that can be hard for your sales staff to tackle on their own. That’s where Aline Contact Center comes in. 

Our Contact Center works as a virtual arm of your sales team, responding to phone and digital leads within five minutes and boosting conversions. In fact, our clients report an average of 35% increase in leads and a 20% increase in tours with the  support of our Contact Center. By responding faster and more consistently, you can capture more opportunities, build stronger relationships from the very first touchpoint, and turn more prospects into move-ins.

17. Measure and Analyze Your Results

Longer sales cycles correlate with longer stays, but keeping your communities full means consistently moving prospects through the funnel. To do that, you need clear visibility into every stage of your sales process.

A high-quality CRM can help you monitor prospect movement, track performance, and generate reports that show the true ROI of your marketing efforts. By measuring what’s working, you can focus your resources on the strategies that deliver the greatest impact.

Streamline Senior Living Marketing With Aline

Once you’ve explored new marketing strategies, the next step is making them easier to execute. Using sales and marketing software built for senior living can help your team move faster, nurture leads more effectively, and boost occupancy.

Book a demo to see how Aline simplifies the sales and marketing process — and helps you turn more prospects into residents.

Looking for more ideas? Download our free guide to optimizing performance with better lead generation.