Assisted living marketing fills suites when it reaches two people at once. One is the older adult who will move. The other is often a grown child who helps with the research. So your marketing has to show up in local search, win trust through reviews and clear pages, and turn inquiries into tours. Then it has to stay in touch for the months a family takes to decide.
We researched how real senior living operators handle each step. We opened community pages from Sunrise, Brookdale, Atria and Erickson Senior Living. We also read the referral terms of A Place for Mom and Caring.com. Then we read the Google, HUD and HHS rules that shape senior living ads. Then we compiled 12 ways to fill suites.
| Way to fill suites | What it does for you |
|---|---|
| 1. Map the family journey | Shows which message each stage needs |
| 2. Fix Google Business Profile | Gets each campus into map results |
| 3. Rank locally for care levels | Brings in families searching by town and care type |
| 4. Use referral sites on clear terms | Adds inquiries while you watch the cost |
| 5. Publish prices and floor plans | Answers the first two questions families ask |
| 6. Book tours that feel like visits | Turns calls into in-person visits |
| 7. Host events and seminars | Gives undecided families a low-pressure first step |
| 8. Write money and care content | Earns search traffic from early researchers |
| 9. Ask for reviews after move-in | Builds trust on Google and referral sites |
| 10. Follow Google Ads housing rules | Keeps paid search running without disapprovals |
| 11. Keep legal claims accurate | Protects you under fair housing, HIPAA and Medicaid rules |
| 12. Nurture with email and measure | Keeps long decisions moving and shows cost per move-in |
- Map the Journey From First Search to Move-In Day
- Best Strategies For Assisted Living Marketing
- Claim and Fix Your Google Business Profile for Each Campus
- Rank Locally for Care-Level and Town Searches
- Work With A Place for Mom and Caring.com on Clear Terms
- Publish Prices, Floor Plans and Tour Slots on Every Community Page
- Book Tours That Feel Like a Visit
- Host Luncheons, Seminars and Self-Guided Visits
- Write Content That Answers Money and Care Questions
- Ask Every Family for a Review After Move-In
- Follow Google Ads Housing and Health Rules in Paid Search
- Keep Fair Housing, HIPAA and Medicaid Claims Accurate
- Market 55-Plus Housing the Way HUD Expects
- Get Written Permission Before Using Resident Health Details
- Describe Medicaid and Medicare Coverage Correctly
- Nurture Long Decisions With Email
- Measure Occupancy and Cost per Move-In
- Settle the Questions Operators Ask About Senior Living Marketing
Map the Journey From First Search to Move-In Day
First, write down who does what in a move. Plan for two audiences. One is the older adult who will live with you. The other is any grown child who helps research, compare costs and book tours. So your ads and pages must speak to both at once.
Next, split the journey into stages. Each stage needs a different page, message and measure.
| Stage | What the family is doing | What you should offer | What to measure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Searching care types and costs | Plain guides on care levels and paying for care | Organic visits to guides |
| Shortlist | Comparing communities on maps and referral sites | Complete Google profile, reviews, community page with prices | Calls and form fills |
| Tour | Visiting two or three places | Online tour booking and a lunch invite | Tours booked and held |
| Decide | Talking it over, often for weeks | Follow-up email, a second visit, a care assessment | Deposits |
| Move | Packing and downsizing | Move-in checklist and a named contact | Move-ins and review requests |
Also, ask every inquiry how they heard about you. Sunrise of Livingston does this on its tour form. That one field later tells you which channel produces move-ins.
Best Strategies For Assisted Living Marketing
Claim and Fix Your Google Business Profile for Each Campus
Every campus needs its own Google Business Profile. Google’s guidelines say not to create more than one profile for each location. So check for duplicates left by past managers or old brand names, and merge or remove them.
Next, set up the profile the way Google asks:
- Name. Use the real-world name on your sign and website. Google lists marketing taglines as not acceptable, so leave out phrases like “Best Memory Care in Town.”
- Categories. Choose the fewest categories that describe the core business. Google’s test is whether the category completes “This business IS a,” not “This business HAS a.” A salon inside your building fails that test.
- Phone. Use a local number your team controls. Google prefers a local number to a central call center line whenever possible.
- Hours. List the hours families can visit or call the front desk.
However, be careful with separate profiles for memory care. Google allows a department profile only when it operates as a distinct entity, with its own name and its own primary category. A memory care wing inside the same building may not qualify. So read the department rules before you add a second listing.
After that, post photos of real suites, dining rooms and grounds every month. Our local SEO guide covers posts, photos and Q&A in more detail. Also, track where each campus ranks across your town with one of the local rank tracking tools we reviewed.
Rank Locally for Care-Level and Town Searches
Families search by care type and place. For example, a family might type “assisted living in Fairfax” into Google. So build one page per care level per campus, and put the town name in the title, the H1 and the first paragraph.
Next, list the phrases you want each page to rank for. Group them by care level, town and money question. Our keyword research guide shows how to size each phrase. Then fix the basics on every page:
- Put the full address and local phone number in the footer, matching your Google profile.
- Add LocalBusiness or a more specific schema type with the address, phone and opening hours.
- Keep each care level on its own URL, so assisted living and memory care do not compete.
- Link each community page to its Google Maps listing.
Also, check that your name, address and phone match across directories. A mismatch confuses both Google and families. Our list of business citation checkers can find those errors fast. For the ranking signals behind map results, read our breakdown of local SEO ranking factors.
Work With A Place for Mom and Caring.com on Clear Terms
Referral sites bring a steady flow of inquiries. However, you pay for that flow, so read the terms before you sign. Both of the big national services are free for families. The community or care provider pays.
A Place for Mom says its guidance is always free to families. Partner communities pay it when a referred family moves in. Also, the company lists 400+ advisors, 11k+ senior living communities and 400k+ community reviews in its network.
Caring.com publishes a page on how it makes money. It names three ways providers pay. Some pay a referral fee when a family hires them or moves in. Others pay a lead fee when Caring.com sends a family’s contact details, whether or not the family moves in. Still others pay a yearly subscription for extra directory features, such as more photos.
Neither page publishes fee amounts. So ask each service for its fee in writing, and ask whether it is a move-in fee or a per-lead fee. That difference changes your cost per move-in a lot. Also, tag every referral-site lead in your CRM, so you can compare it with your own channels later.
Publish Prices, Floor Plans and Tour Slots on Every Community Page
Put cost and space on the community page. Sunrise of Livingston in New Jersey is a good model. Its page lists a starting monthly rate for each suite type in assisted living and memory care. It also notes that care-level fees are added on top.
In addition, the same page has a “View in 3D” link for each floor plan. It gives one phone line for pricing and availability and a separate line for residents and families. Its tour form asks for a preferred date and a one-hour slot between 9 AM and 6 PM. Finally, a short FAQ answers move-in timing, cost, pets and billing.
Next, explain the floor plans in plain words. Sunrise has a separate page on choosing a floor plan. It describes studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and companion suites. It also says most suites come furnished, residents may bring their own furniture, and many plans include a kitchenette and an emergency alert system.
If you will not publish exact prices, publish ranges. Brookdale does this on its assisted living costs page. It shows monthly price ranges by US region, with a dated note that the numbers can change. It also answers how families can make senior living more affordable.
Book Tours That Feel Like a Visit
Make booking a tour take less than a minute. Put a “Book a Tour” button in the header of every page, as Sunrise does. Then confirm the time by text and email, and name the person who will meet the family.
During the tour, show what daily life looks like. For example, time the visit for lunch, so the family can taste the food. Next, introduce one or two residents who like to talk about the place. After the tour, send a short note within a day with the floor plans and prices you discussed.
Also, offer a care assessment before the decision. Atria, for instance, explains that it reassesses each resident’s care level before move-in, within the first 30 days and at least every quarter. Saying that up front answers a question many families are afraid to ask.
Host Luncheons, Seminars and Self-Guided Visits
Some families are not ready for a sales tour. So give them a softer first step. Erickson Senior Living’s Woodleigh Chase community in Fairfax, Virginia, describes several. It runs informational luncheons, where guests tour, eat and meet residents in a group. It also offers one-on-one appointments to go over finances and floor plans.
In addition, Woodleigh Chase runs a Priority List. Members get the right of first refusal on homes, invitations to events and community updates. Guests can also visit on their own, eat in the restaurants and talk with residents. One couple in the story attended seminars on dining and downsizing before moving in. Now they volunteer as resident ambassadors.
Next, pick event topics that families search for anyway. Downsizing, paying for care and memory loss support are good examples. Sunrise of Livingston, for instance, lists a monthly memory care support meeting on its community page. Events like that bring caregivers through the door long before they need a suite.
Write Content That Answers Money and Care Questions
Early researchers want facts about cost and care. So write guides that answer those questions in plain language. Atria’s financial planning page is a useful model. It covers tax deductions, the VA Aid and Attendance pension, bridge loans and long-term care insurance.
Also, it ties the advice to the community. Atria says it has more than 2,500 veteran residents and offers a $1,000 Welcome Home credit to veterans. Then it sends readers to pick a community, which opens a local cost calculator.
Next, plan a short list of guides for your own site. We suggest these topics, because families ask them on every tour:
- What assisted living includes, and what costs extra
- Assisted living vs memory care vs nursing home, with your own care levels
- How to pay for assisted living in your state, including Medicaid waivers if you accept them
- How to talk to a parent about moving
- A downsizing checklist for the move
Also, write each guide so AI search can quote it. Put the answer in the first two lines, then the detail. Our Google AI Overviews guide explains how those summaries pick sources.
Ask Every Family for a Review After Move-In
Families read reviews on Google and on referral sites. So ask for a review at a happy moment, such as two to four weeks after move-in. Send a direct link to your Google review form by text and email. Then reply to every review within a few days, good or bad.
Also, show reviews on your own pages with their source. Sunrise of Livingston posts five resident and family testimonials and labels each one as from Google or A Place for Mom. That label makes the quotes more believable. Our review statistics for local businesses show how much weight shoppers give to recent reviews.
However, never offer gifts or discounts for reviews, and never write them yourself. Also, keep health details out of your replies. A reply that confirms someone is a resident can reveal private information.
Follow Google Ads Housing and Health Rules in Paid Search
Senior living ads can fall under Google’s housing policy. In the United States and Canada, Google’s housing definition includes retirement residential communities. So for those ads, Google does not allow targeting by age, gender, parental status, marital status or ZIP code.
So set up campaigns with the targeting Google still allows:
- Radius targeting of at least 1 km around each campus
- City targeting for the towns you serve
- In Canada, the first three characters of a postal code
- Predefined Google audiences, minus the blocked demographics
Next, watch the health side. Google treats health as a sensitive interest category in personalized advertising. When an ad promotes in a sensitive category, Google does not support advertiser-curated audiences such as customer match, your data segments and lookalike segments. So memory care ads that focus on dementia may lose those audiences. Plan to reach those families through search keywords and location instead.
If an ad gets flagged, Google gives three options. You can fix the targeting, edit the ad or landing page, or appeal. Repeated violations can lead to account suspension, so fix flags fast.
Keep Fair Housing, HIPAA and Medicaid Claims Accurate
Senior living marketing sits close to housing, health and public benefits law. So ask an attorney to review your main ads and pages once a year. Also, keep these three rules in mind.
Market 55-Plus Housing the Way HUD Expects
If part of your campus relies on the Housing for Older Persons Act, your ads count as evidence. HUD’s question and answer guide on the rule lists advertising as one factor it weighs. Under the rule, at least 80% of occupied units must have at least one person aged 55 or older.
Also, HUD says the word “adult” or “adult community” alone does not show an intent to serve older persons. So say “55 and older” plainly in your ads. In addition, HUD says units marketed to younger households must still present the community as housing for older persons.
Get Written Permission Before Using Resident Health Details
If your community is a HIPAA covered entity, the Privacy Rule applies to your marketing. HHS says covered entities generally need a person’s written authorization before using or disclosing protected health information for marketing. A face-to-face talk and a promotional gift of nominal value are the two exceptions.
So get signed permission before you use a resident’s story, photo or care details in an ad. Ask your compliance lead whether your community is a covered entity. Even if it is not, written consent is the right practice.
Describe Medicaid and Medicare Coverage Correctly
Medicare does not reimburse assisted living services. Also, Medicaid does not pay room and board. Some state Medicaid programs do cover services in assisted living, often through home and community-based services waivers. Nearly one in five assisted living residents relies on Medicaid for daily services.
So state on your site whether you accept your state’s Medicaid waiver, and for which care levels. Never imply that Medicaid covers rent if it does not.
Nurture Long Decisions With Email
Senior living decisions can take months. So send a short email series after every inquiry and tour. Keep each email to one idea and one next step.
| When | Email topic | Next step you offer |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | Thank you, with the floor plans and prices discussed | Book a second visit |
| Day 3 | A guide to paying for assisted living | Call the community’s financial contact |
| Week 2 | A day in the life: menus and the activity calendar | Join us for lunch |
| Week 4 | Invitation to the next seminar or support group | RSVP |
| Month 2 | A move-in checklist and downsizing tips | Schedule a care assessment |
| Every month after | Community news and events | Reply to talk to a named person |
Also, stop the series the moment a family books a visit or says no. Then a named staff member takes over by phone. Finally, send each email from that same person, so the family always knows who to call.
Measure Occupancy and Cost per Move-In
Two numbers tell you whether marketing is working. The first is occupancy, which is occupied suites divided by total suites. The second is cost per move-in, which is marketing spend for a channel divided by move-ins from that channel.
For example, take a made-up community with 100 suites and 88 residents. Its occupancy is 88 divided by 100, or 88%. Next, take one month of channel data. The figures in our table are example inputs to show the math. They are made up, so swap in your own.
| Channel (example inputs) | Monthly spend | Inquiries | Tours | Move-ins | Cost per tour | Cost per move-in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | $4,000 | 40 | 12 | 2 | $333 | $2,000 |
| SEO and content | $2,500 | 30 | 9 | 2 | $278 | $1,250 |
| Events | $1,200 | 15 | 8 | 1 | $150 | $1,200 |
| Referral site | Your invoices | 20 | 6 | 1 | Invoices / 6 | Invoices / 1 |
Here the math is plain division. For Google Ads, $4,000 divided by 12 tours is $333 per tour. Then $4,000 divided by 2 move-ins is $2,000 per move-in. For a referral site that bills per move-in, the cost per move-in is simply the fee on each invoice.
However, a month is too short for a fair read. Move-ins lag inquiries by weeks, so use a rolling 90-day window. Also, count a move-in toward the channel the family named on the first inquiry. Then compare each channel’s cost per move-in with the monthly revenue one suite brings in. If a channel pays back within a few months of rent, keep funding it.
Settle the Questions Operators Ask About Senior Living Marketing
Who Should Assisted Living Marketing Target First?
Target both. Write search ads and guides for grown children who research care. Then plan tours and events for the older adult who will live there.
Can I Target Seniors by Age in Google Ads?
Usually not. In the US and Canada, Google’s housing policy covers retirement residential communities. It blocks targeting by age, gender, parental status, marital status and ZIP code.
Do Families Pay A Place for Mom or Caring.com?
No. Both say their service is free to families. Communities and care providers pay them instead, through move-in fees, lead fees or subscriptions.
Should We Publish Our Prices Online?
We think so. Sunrise publishes starting rates by suite type, and Brookdale publishes regional ranges. Clear prices filter out poor-fit leads and save your team time on calls.
How Long Before Marketing Changes Show in Occupancy?
Expect a lag of a few months. Families take time to tour and decide, so judge each channel on a rolling 90-day window.
Also See:
