12 Senior Living Marketing Strategy Ideas [2024]

As more families are looking for homes for their older loved ones, it’s crucial to have a senior living marketing strategy that reaches the right audience, entices them to visit the community, and makes them want to choose you.

Learning various strategies for senior living marketing can help you reach your primary demographic and generate qualified leads. We put together 12 senior living marketing ideas that include both online and offline methods to keep a high occupancy rate at your senior living community. 

1. Build an Ideal Customer Profile

The first step in your senior living marketing strategy for 2024 should be to create an ideal customer profile. Before marketing to people, you should hone in on who to target. This is the foundation for creating all your marketing strategies moving forward.

Each senior living home may be different with its own “ideal customer.” Here are some questions to ask to get you started:

• Are we marketing toward seniors or their children?
• What is the age of our ideal customer?
• What’s their annual income?
• Where are they from?
• What’s important to them in a senior living home? (price, location, activities, etc.)
• Where are they most likely to see our marketing materials? (Google, social media, newspaper ads, etc.)

It’s helpful to build a few customer profiles, so you can develop additional marketing strategies. For example, you may want to create marketing materials for seniors and some for their children. Knowing who you’re targeting with which materials can help you speak to their specific wants and needs.

2. Have a High-Quality Website

Before visiting your community, many potential residents or their children will visit your website to understand what your community is like.

You want your community to look enticing when people visit for a tour, and you should feel the same about your website. Your senior care marketing efforts will be much more difficult if your website looks outdated or is difficult to navigate.

If you don’t have someone in-house to work on your website, many companies and freelancers can help. You should have an idea of what you want on your website, so you can give them as much guidance as possible. Research your competitors and note what you think is working for them and what isn’t.

3. Use a Senior Living CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions are a must-have for businesses these days. The best senior living CRM software can help increase occupancy and create efficient workflows to better communicate with potential residents and their families. CRMs track all of your communications and can also leverage one-click text messaging, emails, and calls. 

This marketing software can also provide you with valuable data, and you can even  customize your reports to focus on the most important data for your marketing efforts.

4. Implement Content Marketing

Nearly six million Google searches happen every minute. Google is one of the best places to reach your target audience, and you can do this through content marketing. 

One impactful content marketing strategy is to create educational content on your website, targeting popular keywords. For example, if you’re located in Arizona, you may want to target the keyword “senior living in Arizona.” 

Ideally, you will show up at the top of the Google search page for your target keywords. This can take time and work, but it’s worth it. Readers will find valuable content and come to your site as a trusted source, which can boost brand awareness and lead to conversions.

Content marketing involves effort as well as knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO). Some senior living communities may have a content team as part of their marketing department — otherwise, they can outsource it to an SEO company. 

5. Start a PPC Campaign

Organic traffic from your website’s blog is a great way to bring more people to your website, but you can also pay for your spot at the top of Google searches. When you search Google, you may notice that the first few results say “Sponsored” above them. This is from companies using Google’s Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC).

PPC allows you to find specific keywords, and you pay each time a person clicks on your link from the sponsored section. The price can vary from keyword to keyword, depending on its value. If you have a budget for senior living ads, this is an impactful way to get in front of your audience.

6. Use Social Media

Similar to Google, millions of Americans of all ages use social media. This is where your customer profile is beneficial as well. Different demographics use different platforms. Data from Statista shows which age groups are using which platforms the most:

• Ages 18 to 29: Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram.
• Ages 30 to 39: X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
• Ages 40-49: LinkedIn, Facebook, and X.
• Agest 50 to 59: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

You can build a social media presence on various platforms for free by understanding what type of content works best on each one. This can take some experimentation and research. Once you determine where your target audience is, you can use hashtags, keywords, and other social media strategies to reach them.

7. Try Paid Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms also have paid options for advertising with specific targeting, such as age groups, locations, interests, and much more. These advertising programs can also put your advertising in front of people who regularly look at related content. 

For example, someone may look for a senior living home for their parents on Facebook or Instagram. Since Meta owns both Instagram and Facebook, it can use that search data to learn about the person looking for this topic. They can then place your ads in front of the person if they’re within a certain distance of your community.

This is when knowing the audience on the specific platform is helpful. You can use specifics like age, location, income level, and more to target the right audience with your ads.

While many seniors make their own decisions when choosing a senior living, some may enlist the help of their children or grandchildren for research. This is why it’s helpful to know which age groups use which platforms. If you’re specifically marketing to seniors, it’s beneficial to know which platforms they are and aren’t using as well.

8. Increase Community Tours 

Showing prospective residents and their families everything your community offers is difficult if they don’t visit. Yes, you can feature pictures of your community on your website and social media, but in-person visits are a much different experience. Work with your sales team on ways to increase the amount of people visiting for tours.

When people tour your community, they get a feel for the rooms’ sizes and layouts. They can talk with current residents who can share their experience at your senior living home and staff to discuss their unique needs, especially those with higher acuity levels.

9. Get Good Reviews

Online reviews aren’t just for restaurants. They’re a primary source of information for people who are considering spending money. 

Entering a senior living home is a big commitment that involves significant trust. Sometimes, people feel skeptical when talking to people who work for the company, so they turn to online reviews.

Your marketing strategy should include collecting those online reviews. The first step is to provide an excellent experience and resolve issues as they arise.

People will naturally leave reviews, but staff should also encourage people to leave online reviews if they’re happy with the community. By promptly addressing problems, many people who had a less-than-great experience may turn around and give you a positive review.

10. Add Automated Support

As mentioned, great service is key for spreading word of mouth, and with the rise of AI, you can automate some of your support.

For instance, you can add chatbots to your website to answer simple questions and reply to people after hours. Marketing technology is getting better by the day. As AI continues to learn about your business, it can help visitors to your website and your staff.

There’s no replacement for great service that comes from a human, so live support from your staff is still crucial. When people have more complex, personal questions, you want a human to respond. An AI chatbot can free up your staff to handle communications that need a human touch rather than questions about hours of operation or booking a tour.

11. Use Additional Lead Generation Strategies  

There are many different ways to increase lead generation, so it’s helpful to use a variety of them to test and try different methods. Social media marketing and utilizing Google is helpful, but here are some other strategies to try:

• Landing pages
• Lead capture forms
• Automated marketing software
• Webinars and events
• Email marketing
• Special discounts
• Social media influencer marketing
• Email marketing campaigns and newsletters

Related: For a more detailed look at how to leverage lead generation, download our free guide “Improve Sales Performance With Better Lead Generation.”

12. Partner With Local Organizations

Building a local presence is key when marketing for senior living, and a great way to do this is to partner with local organizations. Research your area to find different organizations in related fields that can help reach the right people. Reciprocity is a powerful marketing and sales tool, and by providing leads to other organizations, they will often provide referrals in return.

There are many different types of organizations to partner with, like: 

• Health care providers
• Social service agencies
• Schools and universities with volunteers
• Pharmacies and medication management services
• Transportation providers
• Financial planning and estate services
• Religious organizations

Bonus tip: Although it might not feel intuitive, consider partnering with other local senior living communities. If your community is at capacity or doesn’t offer a specific service a senior needs, referring them to another local community can get you referrals in return.

Senior Living Marketing Strategy FAQ

Now that you have an idea of some of the best ways to attract new residents, here are some of the most common questions people ask.

What audience should you target for senior living marketing?

The two primary audiences to target are seniors and their family members. It’s helpful to create content that caters to both audiences because everyone’s situation is different.

What type of content is the most effective for senior living marketing?

When creating content for your blog or social media accounts, remember to provide value. People often don’t want to be sold to when engaging with content. They want useful information to answer common questions about senior living and caring for seniors.

Is print advertising helpful when marketing a senior living community?

Print advertising is still a viable marketing strategy, but digital marketing provides much more data. With digital marketing, you can see how many people click on ads, where leads are coming from, and more.

Use Aline To Improve Your Senior Living Marketing Strategy in 2024

Ensuring you have the right tools for the job is one of the best ways to improve your senior living marketing strategy. Aline offers a wide range of solutions built specifically for senior living communities that can help you increase your leads and occupancy in 2024. 

In addition to our best-in-class senior living sales CRM, we have solutions for automating your marketing, improving your care and engagement, and managing accounting and billing. We also have a free senior living marketing plan you can download. To learn more about our senior living tools and solutions, book your demo today.