Editor’s note: This article was revised and updated in August 2025.
When it comes to marketing senior living communities effectively, our industry tends to overlook or treat the following as an afterthought:
- Google Business Profiles
- Hyper-local online publications
- Facebook ads promoting events
- Traditional advertising (radio and print)
Below, we discuss how to remedy any oversights in these areas. Let’s get to it!
Regularly review and refine your Google Business Profile.
The problem isn’t so much that communities don’t have a Google Business Profile—it’s that they treat it like a once-and-done marketing task. Ask yourself: When’s the last time your team took a hard look at yours?
Maintaining an active and current Google Business Profile matters for three reasons.
- The majority of searches still happen on Google, even in the AI era. Google’s global market share hovers just above 89%, according to Semrush, which refers to Google as a “digital giant.”
- Google is always quick to serve up relevant and well-maintained Google Business Profiles in its results. (Makes sense, right? Google is loyal to its own products.)
- A strong Google Business Profile is critical to local search.
Consider your Google Business Profile an off-shoot of your main website. Just as you update your website, you need to regularly update your GBP listing.
What to focus on:
- Complete all info, particularly the About section. Make it compelling! And make sure it’s accurate.
- Monitor and respond to reviews. Thank people for giving positive reviews. For negative reviews, tread carefully and respond mindfully. Avoid sounding defensive or dismissive. Don’t make every response (to either positive or negative reviews) sound the same. For negative reviews, invite the person to contact someone on your end to discuss things further. Provide a real name and real phone number, and make sure the person is on top of fielding these calls.
- Regularly add new photos and videos. Swap out older ones. Add in fresh views, new scenes, amenity shots, etc.
- Audit the page every quarter (at least). Get in the habit of buzzing through your profile to make sure everything is current.
Check out more tips for auditing your Google Business Profile. Or better yet: Have us audit your GBP for you.
Add hyper-local online publications into your marketing mix.
Running ads or advertorials on local online publications, like your region’s Patch.com or Nextdoor.com, is an excellent way to build brand awareness and name recognition. Plus, you can easily measure traffic that comes to your site via these ad channels.
- Patch.com, which has over a thousand hyper-local sites across all 50 U.S. states and Washington D.C., offers a self-serve ad platform that lets advertisers get super granular with their targeting. Whether you operate a national chain of senior living communities or only a handful in one state or region, you can run ad campaigns on the Patch site that makes the most sense for each community.
- Nextdoor.com offers advertising options designed specifically for local businesses as well as an option for regional and national companies. The former allows you to target people within a certain radius of your location, while the latter allows you to reach prospects across multiple markets, making it ideal for senior living communities that operate properties across multiple states.
By the way, these aren’t the only players on the hyper-local scene. Your town or city might have its own online publications
Of course, with any advertising, you must have compelling creative assets in terms of both the message and the design. Need help? We have a library of compelling digital ads that are ready to go—you simply customize with your information. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.
Promote events via Facebook ads.
In general, we’ve found that organic social media plays a minimal role in helping prospects discover senior living communities. Our client data shows that social media platforms like Facebook rarely serve as the primary attribution source for prospects who tour and move in.
Instead, social media is more of a secondary support channel—a tool prospects often use later to validate what they’ve already learned about a community.
And we’ve had similar experiences when it comes to running “general” social media advertising (the kind that builds brand awareness).
That said, we have had lots of luck promoting events through Facebook ads (think “lunch & learn series,” as just one example). So, consider giving this a try the next time you have an event you want to promote.
- PRO TIP: Setting up effective Facebook ad campaigns can be challenging for smaller in-house senior living marketing teams to manage on their own. That’s why working with an outside agency like ours can be an excellent way to make sure your campaigns are poised for maximum success.
Don’t dismiss outbound methods like radio and print.
OK, we know this suggestion probably sounds odd since the other tips are all about online marketing channels. And the truth is, we don’t if we’ll be making this suggestion a decade from now.
But for now anyway, at least some people in your demographic, still listen to the radio and read daily newspapers. So running campaigns on these channels can be a smart strategy to consider, provided you do them right.
Speaking of doing things right, check out our guide to senior living advertising on the radio. It goes into the nitty-gritty of pricing and how to create winning copy. We also discuss the pros and cons of print advertising in this article about print vs digital ads.
Bonus tip about marketing senior living communities: ALWAYS think strategy first.
You can’t expect your marketing or advertising to work over the long haul without a sound strategy. And sometimes the most important thing you need when it comes to strategy is an objective opinion. That’s where we come in. Let’s discuss your senior living marketing strategy—get 30 minutes on us!
