Senior Living Marketing That Grows Occupancy

It depends on your market, your census goals and how many communities you operate. Most of our senior living clients run SEO as the long-term foundation for organic tour requests, paired with paid search to fill beds now.

We’ll right-size a plan to your community, your local competition and your occupancy goals, and tell you exactly where each dollar goes.

Very. At the typical healthcare organization in the calls we've listened to, 34% (about 1 in 3) of calls went to voicemail or were never picked up: 28% during business hours and 51% after hours. And most of those callers do not try again: 73% of callers who reached voicemail did not call that business again within a week.

That is why we track every call from your campaigns, flag missed calls, and help you set up call routing, after-hours coverage and fast call-backs, so the leads you pay for are not lost at the front desk.

Based on calls to 26 healthcare organizations we market, Apr to Sep 2026.

We classified a sample of 288 new-customer calls to the healthcare organizations we market by what the caller wanted (all healthcare, not only senior living communities). The most common reasons to call were booking an appointment or checking availability (40%), a consultation or estimate (15%), whether a specific service is offered (12%) and insurance, financing or payment (11%).

Typical questions: “Can I schedule an appointment?”, “Can I come in for a consultation or evaluation?”, “Do you offer this specific treatment or service?”. Your website, ads and Google Business Profile should answer these before the phone rings, and your team should be ready to answer them when it does.

Based on calls to SmartSites clients, Apr to Sep 2026; questions paraphrased, no caller or client identified.

Mostly business hours: 20% of calls came outside Monday to Friday 9 to 5 (4% on weekends), and the busiest day is Monday. Of the calls that were answered, 45% were new-customer inquiries, 40% were existing customers, and 17% were sales pitches or wrong numbers.

That mix is why we report on qualified calls, not raw call counts.

Based on 39,000 calls to 53 healthcare organizations we market, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026 (timing) and Apr to Sep 2026 (call types).

Across the Google Ads accounts of the 49 healthcare organizations we manage, the median cost per lead over the last 12 months was $90, with a median cost per click of $5.40 and a median conversion rate of 6%.

Your number depends on your market, services and how well the landing page and phones convert. We use these medians as a starting benchmark, then work to beat them.

Source: Google Ads accounts managed by SmartSites, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026; a lead is a tracked call or form conversion as set up in each account.

For the 55 healthcare organizations whose Google Business Profiles we manage, the median profile got about 910 views, 34 calls and 66 direction requests a month over the last year.

Reviews, photos, accurate hours and categories move those numbers, which is why local SEO is part of every plan we build for a senior living community.

Source: Google Business Profile performance data for profiles managed by SmartSites, Oct 2025 to Sep 2026.

You don’t have to choose. The best results come from doing both, with experts who know how to use AI responsibly:

• AI-assisted audits: our audits combine years of human expertise with AI to spot opportunities a person alone would miss.
• Enterprise-grade data: professional SEO and ads tools give us visibility into organic, AI and paid search.
• Always human-in-the-loop: every output is reviewed by a strategist before it ships, and you own all work product.

A good in-house marketer is only one person, and multi-community portfolios need a team. With SmartSites you get a strategist, SEO specialist, paid media lead, web designer, email specialist and social manager for less than the cost of a single hire, with no recruiting and no learning curve.

No, and we’ll always be straight with you about that. Filling a community takes time; operators who expect instant occupancy from SEO are usually disappointed. Here’s what to realistically expect:

• SEO can be a roller-coaster, but the long-term curve bends up and compounds.
• Paid search typically generates tour requests within the first 30 days.
• Web rebuilds pay for themselves through higher inquiry-to-tour rates.

Yes. We optimize for generative engines (GEO) as well as traditional search, so your community shows up in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and the AI assistants families increasingly use when searching for care options. Our tracking includes AI mentions and citations, not just rankings.

Map-pack rankings for “senior living near me” come from your Google Business Profile, your reviews and how locally relevant your website is. We optimize your profile, build location and care-type pages, keep listings consistent, and set up review requests. For The Camellia at Gulf Breeze, our work lifted site traffic 355%.

Operators don’t think in impressions or vanity metrics. They think in:

• Cost per tour
• Move-in rate
• Occupancy
• ROI

We do too. The wins we drive are more tour requests, more qualified inquiries for independent living, assisted living and memory care, and a phone that keeps ringing.

Multi-community brands need location pages that rank locally while a strong brand story ties everything together. We build a scalable page and campaign structure that lets each community compete for its own local searches without cannibalizing the others. TerraBella Senior Living’s 36-community network saw leads up 4,233% with this approach; Morada Senior Living’s 27-community network saw leads up 4,144%.