Assisted Living Marketing for a Small Home: A Plan for Six to Sixteen Beds

A woman sits in a hospital parking garage at 9:40 on a Wednesday night. Her father was supposed to go home Friday. An hour ago the doctor said he cannot go home. She types "board and care near me" into her phone.

Three homes come up on the map. Three sets of photos. Three star ratings. Three phone numbers.

She has never heard of any of them. She will call one of them tonight.

That is most of assisted living marketing for a small home. A map listing, a few photos, some reviews and whoever picks up the phone. The long agency lists cover a lot more, and nearly all of it was written for a building with a marketing department.

What is assisted living marketing?

Assisted living marketing is everything that gets a family to call your facility, plus everything that happens in the first few minutes after they do. For a board and care or small residential care home that comes down to a few things done well. A map listing a family can trust, a reason for professionals to send you families, a short website that answers the hard questions and a phone that gets answered.

Big communities add billboards, paid social and a content calendar. A small home rarely needs them, because its families usually live nearby and arrive through a handful of doors.

Most marketing advice was written for a building you do not run

Search "assisted living marketing" and the first page is agency lists. Eleven strategies. Twenty-five ideas. Forty-one curated tactics. Nearly every one assumes a hundred units, a sales director and a budget line called marketing.

In California a six bed board and care home carries the same license as a hundred unit community. It is called an RCFE, short for Residential Care Facility for the Elderly. Other states have their own name for the small end of it, so use whatever your state's license says.

Same license, very different marketing problem.

A large community is always filling several apartments at once. A six bed home fills one bed at a time, and every empty bed is a sixth of the house. For the national picture, here are the latest senior housing occupancy rates. So the useful question is short. Who calls this week, and does somebody catch it?

What a family checks before they call

Families do this homework fast, at night and on a phone. Here is roughly what it looks like, in the order it usually happens.

The map

Your Google Business Profile is the first thing most families see, often before your website. Hours, photos, reviews and a phone number, all in one box. If the photos are three years old or the hours say closed, the family scrolls to the next home.

The reviews

A family reads the newest reviews first and the bad ones second. A calm reply to a hard review tells a family more about you than the stars do, because it shows them how you behave when something goes wrong. Keep the reply about how you handle problems, and never name a resident or describe anyone's care.

The photos

Show a real bedroom, the kitchen table and the backyard. The daughter in the parking garage is trying to picture her father at that table. A stock photo of a smiling stranger tells her nothing.

The license

California's Community Care Licensing Division lets anyone look up a licensed facility and its inspection record online. A careful family will check, and so will a discharge planner. Put your license number on your website so the lookup takes ten seconds instead of ten minutes.

The phone

Every item above exists to produce one phone call, and that call is where a family decides whether to visit.

Where the effort actually pays under sixteen beds

A small home gets new residents through a handful of doors. The map listing, the professionals who refer families, the families already living with you and the inquiries you already have. Work those four doors, with a short website behind them, before you spend a dollar on advertising.

Most of them cost time more than money.

Your map listing and reviews

Fill in every field on your Google Business Profile, including the care levels you take. Ask happy families for a review in person, in a week when things are going well, and make it easy by texting them the link. Reply to every review, good and bad, within a few days.

The professionals who refer families

The people who meet your next resident first are usually clinical. The discharge planner at the hospital, the case manager at the rehab center, the home health nurse. A straight answer about what care you can and cannot take will keep you on their list. Here is the full rundown of assisted living referral sources and how to earn them.

A website that answers the hard questions

One good page can do the job. Say which care levels you take and which you do not. Say how you are paid. Put the phone number at the top, on a line that rings somewhere a person can answer it.

A family at 11pm wants to know whether you can take her dad. A mission statement does not answer that.

The families already living with you

A daughter who sees her mother doing well in your home is the most believable advertisement you will ever have. Most operators never ask her to say so. Ask her directly, and tell her you are always glad to talk to a friend of hers.

The inquiries you already have

Families who called last spring and never moved in did not stop needing care. Many of them simply ran out of time to decide, and the reason they called is still there. Keep every inquiry in one list with a date and a reason. More on working that list, and on the channels above in depth, is in lead generation for assisted living facilities.

What to skip under sixteen beds

Billboards and radio pay to reach a whole county to find the few families who need you this month. Paid social reaches the adult children, but rarely in the week they are choosing. Broad Google Ads put a small budget up against placement agencies and national directories bidding on the same family. An agency retainer priced for a hundred unit community buys you a content calendar and a monthly report.

Each of these works for somebody. That somebody has a hundred units.

An assisted living marketing plan that fits on one page

Fix your map listing in week one, ask for reviews in week two, call three referral sources in week three and test your own phone after hours in week four. Then repeat the middle two every month.

Each season, swap in new photos. Each month, run weeks two and three again. Once a quarter, run week four again.

Assisted living marketing ideas that cost almost nothing

• Host a free talk on paying for care at a library or church hall. Nobody in the room needs a bed that night, and that is fine. They will remember who helped before they needed anything.
• Send a handwritten thank you to anyone who sent you a family, whether or not that family moved in.
• Write down where every inquiry came from, so in three months you know which door actually works.
• Put the same phone number on your map listing, your website and your sign, so a family never dials a line nobody checks.

How do you increase occupancy in assisted living?

In a small home you increase occupancy by winning the families who already call. Tell your referral sources the day a bed opens and make sure a call at night reaches something that can book a visit.

The woman in the parking garage did not plan to shop for care this week. A doctor changed her plans an hour ago, and Friday is still Friday. Families in assisted living decide in days, because most searches start like hers, with an event.

A family working a short list at night usually stops at the first home that answers and books a visit. She is frightened and tired, and the moment a visit is on the calendar she has done the thing she sat down to do. She stops looking.

At 9:40 at night she cannot tell your home from the other two yet. She has not met your caregivers or sat at your table. Your home may well be the best of the three, but she has no way to know that from a parking garage. The tiebreaker is who picked up.

The line every marketing plan leaves out

Every plan above spends time and money to make the phone ring. Almost none of them say who answers it.

In a small home the person who answers is often the caregiver on shift, in the middle of helping a resident who needs her right now. Nobody is slacking. One person cannot help a resident and answer the phone at the same time. That is physics. And at night there may be one person awake in the whole house.

The problem is common in larger buildings too. In 2017, Enquire Solutions analyzed inquiry and referral records from more than 2,700 senior housing communities and skilled nursing facilities across the US and Canada, reported by Senior Housing News in 2018. It found that 19% of incoming calls went unanswered every day, and that count excludes calls sent to voicemail. Enquire sells CRM and contact center software to senior housing and drew the figure from its own customer base, which makes it a conservative floor rather than an inflated number. More on which missed-call numbers survive a source check is in the speed to lead statistics audit.

The time between a phone ringing and a person answering it has a name. Call it the Voicemail Tax. It comes out of the same effort that made the phone ring in the first place.

An AI Admissions Agent for Senior Living is one answer, and that is the category Sloane belongs to. You choose how many rings your team gets first. During the day she picks up the calls your team cannot get to. For the hours you choose, say overnight, she answers every call on the first ring, asks the questions that tell you whether the family is a fit and books the visit before they hang up.

Your voicemail is on duty every night, every weekend and every minute a caregiver is with a resident. Perfect attendance. Never once called in sick. It also never asks a family a single question. Never books a visit. Never calls anyone back. It has never even mentioned that a family called and gave up. Any person with that record would have been fired years ago.

Your voicemail is the only employee Sloane replaces.

For the larger-community version of this plan, paid channels included, here is the full guide to senior living marketing.

What to do this week

Do week one of the plan. Then call your own number tonight after 9pm and listen to what a family hears. To see how your line compares with the homes near you, grade your own line and five competitors after hours.

Call Sloane at (949) 779-6255 and try to break her. Be the daughter in the parking garage whose father cannot go home on Friday.