How to Market Your Assisted Living Business (Without Wasting Money)

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Want to fill your beds with high-quality residents? 🛏️
Then you need a simple and clear marketing strategy — not random flyers or overpriced ads that never lead to a single call.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to market your assisted living facility the right way — using both network marketing and online tools. You’ll learn how to attract the right families, stand out from the crowd, and build trust fast — even if you’re starting with no leads.

Let’s get into it. 👇

Check out this video, too:

Why This Matters

Most assisted living businesses don’t have a real marketing plan.
No website. No email list. No system to consistently get leads.

That’s a problem — because if you’re not marketing, your beds will stay empty.
And if your beds are empty, your business won’t last, no matter how great the care you provide is.

This blog will help you:

✅ Identify your ideal customer
✅ Learn where to reach them
✅ Use simple tools to stand out
✅ Start building a waitlist (without hiring a big marketing agency or paying for SEO)

🎯 Step 1: Know Who You’re Marketing To

Here’s the truth: You’re not marketing to the resident.
You’re marketing to their adult children — usually a daughter, age 45 to 65.

This generation often:

Watches the nightly news
Uses Facebook daily
Still has cable TV
Googles everything before they call
Looks for trustworthy, high-touch providers with real testimonials

📌 Your Avatar:
Women, age 45–65, who are looking for care for their parent (in their 70s, 80s, or 90s). They’re busy, overwhelmed, and looking for someone they can trust.

Write any marketing materials you create directed at them.
Make sure your message speaks to their concerns, not just your services.

🌐 Step 2: Build a Simple Website

Still don’t have a website? You’re leaving money on the table — and making it harder for families to find and trust you.

Here’s what a good website should include:

✅ Clean, modern design (mobile-friendly)

✅ Clear contact info and address

✅ Services and pricing

✅ Amenities and awards (photos help!)

✅ Google reviews and testimonials

✅ A lead magnet (like a checklist or guide)

Most mom-and-pop facilities don’t do this. If you do, you’ll stand out fast — and families will feel confident reaching out to come check out the facility.

📸 Step 3: Highlight What Makes You Special

Don’t just say “we care.”

Show it — with photos, videos, and real examples.

🏆 Any awards or recognitions you’ve received

💇 Salon day, game nights, or family events you host

🛏️ 24/7 care or memory care services you offer

⭐ Great Google reviews from families

👥 Real testimonials from adult children

These details build trust. And trust fills beds faster than any sales pitch.

Bonus tip: Post these on your website, social media, and even in emails. A good repetition helps to build credibility.

🤝 Step 4: Use Network Marketing

This is a long-term play, but it works — especially for getting consistent, high-quality referrals.

Here’s who you should build relationships with:

🏥 Hospital discharge planners and case managers

🏘️ Independent or senior apartment communities

♿ Rehab and skilled nursing facilities

⚰️ Hospice and home health agencies

👩‍⚕️ Other AL owners or small operators (collaboration, not competition)

You don’t need to know 50 people.
Just pick 5 key contacts and stay in touch.

✅ Visit regularly (even once a quarter works)
✅ Bring value (pamphlets, cookies, a checklist)
✅ Build trust through follow-up
✅ Stay top of mind when a family needs placement

This isn’t about handing out flyers and disappearing.
It’s about becoming the go-to option when they’re looking for a safe, trusted place for someone they care about.

💻 Step 5: Do Internet Marketing

Online marketing includes:

✅ A professional, helpful website

✅ Active social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram)

✅ Email marketing with real value

✅ Running simple ads (Google, Facebook)

These tools let people find you, learn about you, and trust you — before they ever pick up the phone.

Here’s how to do it step-by-step:

Build your site (or fix it if it's been neglected for a while)

Offer a free resource (called a lead magnet)

Collect emails through your website (that's what the lead magnet is for)

Send value-packed emails every week

Post on social media often — stories, staff shoutouts, daily life, etc.

Here are some lead magnet ideas to help get you started:

Free checklist for choosing a care home
Short guide to senior living options in your area
A sample daily schedule or answers to common family questions

The goal is to build trust before they even visit your facility — and show them you know what you’re doing.

🧠 Recap:

Here’s how to get started today:

✅ Write out your ideal customer profile (45–65-year-old daughters)
✅ Build or fix your website
✅ Add a lead magnet and have a way to capture their emails
✅ Highlight your amenities and awards
✅ Reach out to 3–5 local referral partners and start building a relationship with them
✅ Post something valuable on Facebook this week
✅ Sign up for free tools like our business plan checklist

Remember — the goal is trust and visibility. Do that, and the calls will come.

🎁 Want Help With Your Business Plan?

Get my free Business Plan Checklist to make sure your foundation is solid.

🎓 Want Coaching and Step-by-Step Help?

Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.

▶️ Watch on YouTube

🎙️ Listen to the podcast

Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:00 - 00:00:55
Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. In today's video, we're going to be talking about assisted living marketing. How to fill your assisted living business with high quality residents. If you're interested in learning about that, make sure you stick around for today's [Music] video. Hey friend, welcome back to Assisted Living Investing. Excited to have you here with me on the channel today. Before we get started, I want to

00:00:30 - 00:01:17
remind you to go and grab your free underwriting calculator from assisted livinginvesting.net. It's the big blue box in the top right corner and you can go and grab that free resource to help you determine, hey, is assisted living actually as profitable as people say and is this opportunity going to work for me. So, make sure you go and grab that. Again, it's assisted livinginvesting.net. Let's get into the topic for today's video. Today, we're talking about assisted living marketing.

00:00:53 - 00:01:44
you know, the secrets to filling your facility with high quality residents that are consistent and good residents to keep your beds full. Now, when it comes to assisted living marketing, the first thing that you have to understand is who you're marketing to. It's really important for you to grasp that your market, the person that that you are marketing to is generally not the resident themselves. That's your consumer, but the person you want to market to is going to be their children.

00:01:19 - 00:02:15
So, if you think about this, you're you're looking at a baby boomer generation. You're looking at individuals that have parents that are in their 80s or 90s, maybe in their 70s in some instances. So, generally, your population is going to be like a 45year-old to a 65year-old. Um, that that's kind of the group. And their parents are are going into assisted living. Now, you have to start thinking to yourself, where does that population spend their time? What type of media are they consuming? And what you're going to

00:01:47 - 00:02:42
find there is a lot of that group of people are on Facebook. They're watching the nightly news still. They'll they'll look at cable television. So this is the the generation that is looking at that. That's who you want to be working with. And more specifically, not only is it that generation, but often times it's going to be a daughter that is the one that's making the decision. So you're wanting to be looking at a female population that is between 45 and 65. So what I just gave you there is your

00:02:14 - 00:03:05
avatar for who you are trying to market to as you are starting your assisted living business. Now there may be some different things but typically like that's the group that you want to be working with and who you want to be trying to advertise to. Now when you do that you also want to be highlighting the things that are going to help you stand out from the rest of the crowd. And one of the one good way for you to stand out is actually to just have a website. There are so many small mom and

00:02:40 - 00:03:32
pop type facilities that don't have websites, don't have good websites, their SEO, their search engine optimization is not good. And so you if you can hone in on those things, really gives you a leg up because you're going to start popping up in people's search results. That's number one. Number two is amenities. Um so you got to talk about, hey, these are the extra things that we do or these are awards that we have or this is the types of services that we offer. These here's some

00:03:06 - 00:04:01
testimonials. You want to have those things in place so that people will see it and say, "Oh, cool." Like they know what they're doing. They do, you know, they do salon day once a week or they were best in Kansas City or whatever place you have your facility. You want to highlight those awards and you want to make sure make people feel confident that, hey, they're doing the things that my parent wants at a facility. They've got these three, five little amenity things. They're winning awards. They

00:03:33 - 00:04:27
have really good reviews on Google or on their website. they have these testimonials and and people want to be in those facilities. There's also a few different marketing channels that you can go down, a few different ways that that you can market and and really there's two big ones that you can hit on. One is network marketing and this is a long-term play. It takes a while to build out that network of people that know who you are, but the more that you're out there in the community and

00:04:00 - 00:04:52
building those relationships, the more successful you're going to be. So you can do this with the discharge nurse at the local hospital, rehab facilities, case managers, hospice companies, nursing facilities, independent living, even other assisted living facilities. You can build these relationships with these types of organizations and make sure you are consistently doing it. Doesn't mean that you have to do this with 20 to 50 different locations. It could just be five, but you need to be

00:04:26 - 00:05:18
consistent in doing that and very very quickly going out and and regularly going out and and talking with those people that you want to be building your network with so that they think of you next time they have somebody that is looking for the services that you provide. So really important for you to do that. Network marketing is huge. Something that's really overlooked, something that takes a long time to do. It's not a, you know, go out and and give somebody a flyer and and be like, "Dude, hey, we're down the street. This

00:04:52 - 00:05:43
is so cool." and then you never see them again. You have to be consistent with it. And if you do that, then you're going to have a lot of success. But if you just are canvasing the the neighborhood with a business card or a flyer, this is it's better than nothing, I guess, but it's not going to be great. You have to do put in a lot of effort as you're doing that. That's what true network marketing is. The other one is going to be internet marketing. So, this could be social media, this could be

00:05:17 - 00:06:08
your website, both of them preferably. So, you want to build those things and and you want to make sure you're staying up to date with good, fresh content and you're putting out things consistently and everything looks nice and professional and and you're engaging with people and showing the the things that you do inside of the facility there and the awards that you have earned and the amenities that you offer and all of those things. You want to have all of that on your social profiles and and on

00:05:42 - 00:06:38
your website. that internet marketing piece is is really crucial and you need to have that as a hub where you can do things because from there you're going to have some breakoffs. Um, one big one is email marketing. So on your website and so I want you to go to assisted livinginvesting.net. So once you're there uh what I want you to notice is make sure you go there um you yeah go to assisted livinginvesting.net. Okay. And what you're going to notice there in the big blue box in the top right corner I'm

00:06:11 - 00:06:54
giving you my free calculator. And you come down a little bit and there's the the the other blue box. Hey, get your free underwriting calculator. Okay. And then there's this this spot down here and it says fill out your questionnaire. I want you to fill out the questionnaire. So go to assistedlivinginvesting.net. Look at that questionnaire. Click that button. It's going to scoot you down on the page. You're going to fill out that questionnaire. I'm going to tell you how I can help you out. Okay? Now, the

00:06:32 - 00:07:22
reason why I wanted you to do that is because I'm showing you exactly how to do email marketing. You're going to have your website. You're going to have these buttons. and you're going to get people's email address, okay? And and that's going to give you something that you can then work with. Now, if you get on my email list, what you're going to find is I give you a ton of content for free. It's valuable. So, if you do that and and you go and grab something like

00:06:57 - 00:07:42
that, I'm giving you extreme value. Like, yes, thank you for giving me your email. I'm going to give you as much value as I possibly can, and I'd love to work with you as your coach. And you can do that by filling out the the questionnaire there on the site. But if not, I'm still going to coach you and I'm still going to help you out. Okay? So, I want you to go to the website there and I want you to use that as your example and be like, "Okay, how how's Brandon doing this?" And you're going to

00:07:20 - 00:08:17
replicate that for your assisted living facility. This is how you do email marketing. This is how you leverage your website in a way that's going to help people get value so that they think of you when their loved one needs assisted living services. This is how you do that. Okay? So, you're going to do that. add extreme value and provide information to them that's going to really help them make some progress and make good decisions. Okay? So, you want to find a good it's called a lead magnet

00:07:49 - 00:08:35
that you give away for free. Could be a guide, could be a calculator, could be a checklist, could be any number of things. I I give away so many free things. If you scroll down on YouTube, you're going to see all the free things that I give you. It's because I want to help you, but I'd also love to continue a relationship with you, okay? So, I'm just being totally transparent with you there. So go and grab those free resources. Look at what I'm doing and you're going to replicate that for your

00:08:12 - 00:09:10
assisted living facility. Maybe not exactly, but you know the idea of it, it's going to help you make some good progress. The other thing is when you have these this hub of your website, of your Facebook page, of your Instagram feed, whatever it is, you can now run ads to those locations. This could be Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube ads, whatever it is, where your population is going to be. And remember who your population is. If you don't, then you know, go rewatch that part of the video.

00:08:40 - 00:09:27
It is that baby boomer population right now. Females generally 45 to 65 just in case you don't want to rewind it. So go and that's who you're going to be advertising to. That's going to really allow you to hone in on that group of people and now you're doing ads that are specific to that group of people and it's going to allow you to get in front of them and get them to your website and download that lead magnet and now you can interact with them because you have their email address and you can really

00:09:04 - 00:09:57
move things forward. Okay, that's how you do internet marketing. It's how you do email marketing. It's how you get those leads to come in and how you're going to do that. Okay, once you have that, you have to provide that extreme value. You have to show that you are going to care for their loved one. Like they are they're putting so much trust in you to do this. And so this is very different. This is a service-based business, but it is like it is literally the lives of their most cherished

00:09:30 - 00:10:23
individuals in their lives. It's their parents. And so you have to provide extreme value and demonstrate to them that you are different from other people and that you're going to provide that level of care. That's what you're trying to do as you do your marketing. So it is you got to get in front of people and you got to build these relationships and build trust and you have to maintain that trust and you have to do so much to make people feel comfortable to trust trust their loved one with you as you're

00:09:57 - 00:10:43
starting their assisted living business. such a crucial part of the marketing kind of ecosystem inside of assisted living that you build and maintain that trust because you have to remember these are people's lives and they're at the end of their life and they want to make sure their loved one has a good experience as they are in their golden years and you are the person that is tasked with doing that. So you have to be really good at it. If not, you're going to get negative reviews. People

00:10:20 - 00:11:06
are going to pull people out and it's not going to work. So you have to maintain that as you're moving things along in your assisted living facility. Now, a little bit more like specific marketing tips here for you. As you're trying to do this, you have to create this compelling marketing strategy. A lot of that's going to be building your brand. Make sure you have consistent messaging, consistent logos, consistent look and feel with social media and and your website. You want to your business

00:10:43 - 00:11:32
cards, flyers, everything needs to look nice, look the same, um, and be very consistent in the way that you're doing things. You need to refine your messaging and have it be very simple. There's a ton of books out there on marketing that will teach you how to do this. So, go and do those. I'll try to link some of them down below. Um, that that can really help you out along that path. Donald Miller, Marketing Made Simple is a great book that can really help you out along that path in in in

00:11:07 - 00:11:58
creating that brand and your messaging. And another thing you want to do is this elevator pitch, which is, hey, here's a 30 secondond. This is who I am. This is my business. This is what I do, who I serve. This is who I am. My name is Brandon Gustoson. I am with assisted living investing. Go check me out at assistedlivinginvesting.net. that that's a a really quick example of an elevator pitch. It's what you want to do as you're trying to build people. You have to say things repeatedly. Say your name,

00:11:33 - 00:12:21
say your business, say what you do, say your name, say your business, say where they can go find you at. You have to say it and you have to do it very quickly because people don't pay attention very long. So, you have to do this consistently and consistently. That's why I say the same thing at the beginning of all my videos because I want you to remember who I am and where to go to get your free stuff. Okay? That that's why I do that. If all of that fails, you can't do things, you can

00:11:57 - 00:12:42
check out placement agencies as well. I have a video specifically to placement agencies. If you want to learn more about placement agencies, type in placement down below and that will let me know, hey, this is something valuable. I can create another video for you on that and and see what I can do to help you out along that along that path. So, to recap this video, we have been talking a lot about marketing. We talked about understanding who you're marketing to. We talked about some of those

00:12:20 - 00:13:09
different marketing channels that you can leverage and and how to go about doing that. also how to create that compelling marketing strategy. I give you some really incredible tips in here. If you found this video helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time I put out this super valuable content to help you launch your assisted living business. I go live on Tuesdays. We put out content on Thursdays. I love helping people. And if you need some help and some guidance, go

00:12:44 - 00:13:26
fill out the questionnaire, aliastermind.com. lets me see where you're at and see how I can help you, point you on the right path to make sure you get the help that you need as you're trying to launch your assisted living b business. Does residential assisted living sound interesting to you, but you don't know how to get started? At assisted living investing, I'm here to help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. And remember, it doesn't take a

00:13:05 - 00:13:30
lot, just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you will be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]

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