Marketing Strategies for Filling Your Assisted Living Home: A Beginner’s Guide

Jul 07, 2025

Starting an assisted living home is exciting — but now you need residents!

In this blog, we’ll walk through simple, effective marketing strategies to help you fill your beds, grow your business, and serve more families.

You don’t need to be a marketing expert to make this work — just follow the clear, actionable steps below.

Check out this video, too;

Why This Matters

Many great assisted living homes stay half-empty simply because they don’t know how to market themselves.

By using the right marketing tools, you can:
✅ Reach the right families
✅ Build trust in your community
✅ Keep your beds full and your income stable

Let’s break it down!

🌟 1️⃣ Know WHO You’re Talking To

Your target audience isn’t the senior — it’s their adult children (usually 45–70 years old).

These are the people making the decisions, paying the bills, and looking for the best care for mom or dad.

👉 Tip: Focus your marketing on solving THEIR problems and answering THEIR questions.

🌟 2️⃣ Get on Social Media

✅ Facebook is a great tool for marketing assisted living. That’s where your target families are likely hanging out.

Post regularly:

Stories about your home (without resident names)
Helpful tips on senior care
Videos showing your facility’s warmth and personality

✅ Instagram is growing among this age group and worth exploring, especially with photo content. A nice think about Instagram is it's under the same umbrella as Facebook so if you learn one platform, especially with ads, you'll be able to handle the other.

👉 Tip: Show your personality! People want to connect with a real human behind the business.

🌟 3️⃣ Build a Lead-Capturing Website

You need a website that’s:

Simple
Clear
Designed to capture emails or calls

✅ Include:

A hero section (clear message of what you offer)
A call-to-action (e.g., “Download our FREE Senior Living Guide”)
Easy-to-find contact info

👉 Tip: Use Donald Miller’s Marketing Made Simple or Building a StoryBrand 2.0 to guide your website setup.

🌟 4️⃣ Improve Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Help people find you on Google by:

Using clear local keywords (e.g., “Top Assisted Living in Denver, Colorado”)
Setting up your Google Business Profile
Keeping your website updated with blogs, testimonials, and new info

👉 Tip: Small SEO improvements can make a BIG difference over time.

🌟 5️⃣ Use Online Directories

✅ Sign up for free listings on:

Caring.com
SeniorLiving.org
SeniorAdvisor.com
Assisted-Living-Direct.com
Senior-Living-Direct.com

These platforms rank high on Google and can funnel leads directly to you.

👉 Warning: Don’t overwhelm yourself by joining every site — pick a few you can keep updated.

🌟 6️⃣ Collect & Showcase Reviews

Families trust reviews!

Ask resident families to leave reviews on:
✅ Google
✅ Facebook
✅ Caring.com or other directories

👉 Tip: Offer a small thank-you (like a $5 gift card) as a gentle incentive.

Remember: A 4.5-star rating beats a 3-star one every time — just like you choose higher-rated products on Amazon!

🌟 7️⃣ Stay Engaged & Keep Learning

✅ Ask your audience:

What do they want to know?
What worries them?

✅ Keep showing up on social media, blogs, and emails.

Next Steps: Take Action Today!

🚀 Want to launch your assisted living business in the next 12 months?

✅ Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning.
✅ Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
✅ Step 3: Follow this guide, take action, and bring your vision to life!

Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! ⬇️

▶️ Watch on YouTube

Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:01 - 00:01:00
hey friend it is Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living investing excited to have you here with me today on the channel um today we're going to be talking about six ways to effectively Market your residential Assisted Living business so if you are interested in learning more about how you can do that make sure you stay tuned because we're going to be talking about that a lot in today's video all right let's dive into to uh let me share my screen here really quick and there we go okay so the six

00:00:31 - 00:01:27
ways to to Market your residential Assisted Living business if you are new and have not uh gotten your business plan checklist get over to the website at Assisted Living investing. netp checklist I've got a free checklist there that I've created for you to help you out through the process and then also uh if you just go to Assisted Living investing. net uh you will be able to get access to our underwriting calculator which is also free giving you a lot of really cool free resources to help you along your investment Journey

00:00:59 - 00:01:54
there excited to to be able to to provide you with that uh let's move on to the next side if you are new and you don't know who I am oh first off if you're new um type newbie down below and if you have been here for a while um put in operator um even if you're not an operator you've been following me for a little bit um I'd love to see who's who's here and who's who's watching and listening to the content here my name is Brandon gusterson I own and operate two assisted living facilities and I created

00:01:26 - 00:02:27
Assisted Living investing. net to help people like you learn the ins and outs of Assisted Living investing I uh operate those two facilities that I have out of state I live in Utah one of my facilities is in Colorado and the other one is in Idaho and I have also been able to secure over1 and a half million dollars in SBA funding so I know how to do this process I know how to build business plans and how to do underwriting it's going to help you get the funding you need and and really make it a no-brainer for these lenders and

00:01:57 - 00:02:58
potential business partners to work with you as you're getting on your investment journey and uh yeah so I I love what I do I love helping people out uh get over to the website if you need help and you can get in there contact I also have a mentorship so scroll down on on the site there let's get into what we're talking about today we're talking about the six ways to help you Market your residential Assisted Living business the first one I'm going to share with you is inperson marketing or network marketing this is

00:02:27 - 00:03:27
something I honestly think this is the best way for you to get referrals for your business as you are getting up and running starting your assisted living facility your assisted living home the reason for that is the more personal connection you can make with people the more likely they are going to be to want to work with you and so the more that you can get out there into the community and talking to people the more likely they are to be like oh yeah you know when when something comes up I remember

00:02:57 - 00:03:51
that that that house um they served this PO population uh they sound really cool I'm going to give them a referral um another thing you want to do so some of those areas that you could be doing this right here with network marketing to get you a little more focused on who you should be talking to uh you could be talking to Social Services uh so this could be at the State uh there's going to be social workers or or people like that that can kind of help you along your journey so Social Service Services

00:03:24 - 00:04:21
social workers at local hospitals or just local hospitals in general oftentimes you're going to have resident that um ultimately is going to need to go to rehab but maybe they had something happen or they're older and they were in rehab and they had to go to the hospital and now they get need to get into an assisted living home and if that's the case networking with the hospitals to see who is in there and who might need the services is is going to be better and is is going to give you some really

00:03:52 - 00:04:38
good leads and so networking with those hospitals and getting in and having conversations with them is going to be beneficial talking with the social work ERS there at the hospital is going to be your best point of contact and who you want to be reaching out to as you're developing those relationships don't go try to talk to the doctor um they're not going to care uh they're not going to have the time to talk to you uh but talking to a social worker or somebody that is like in administration so you

00:04:15 - 00:05:09
can figure out and filter down to who you're supposed to talk to that's going to be one of your best spots to start when it goes to hospitals next is other facility administrators and I talked about this in a previous video you don't need to be scared to talk to other houses other facilities that are out there because sometimes they're going to have a waiting list or they're going to have residents that just don't fit their culture or the type of care that they're providing but they still might be a good

00:04:42 - 00:05:40
fit for you and so developing those relationships with with other facility administrators and other Facility Owners is going to benefit you quite a bit you don't need to be scared of it yeah they are your competition but in reality there's so many people that need these services that it's not going to matter if you are talking to to another uh facility administrator I think you're going to be able to to find those those people that that can give you some some good references there as well next would

00:05:11 - 00:06:09
be inhome care agencies so these are the the companies that come in and they provide service to uh to you uh to to the residents in your home but they are going around to other homes as well and so developing relationships with them is going to be beneficial because they're out in the community already and they're actively working there and so getting out and and talking with them developing relationships and showing that you are a good facility is going to lead to some referrals for you which is which is

00:05:40 - 00:06:43
exactly what you want group homes is another one so group homes we talked a little bit about this and this one kind of uh rolls into the next one women and homeless shelters as well uh these group homes women's women and homeless shelters um they are people that that might need to be shifting into this level of care of assisted living or memory care or whatever type of of of a home you're trying to run and developing those relationships with those people so that when it's a natural point for them

00:06:10 - 00:07:09
to transition over into uh your Assisted Living it's going to be a no-brainer and they're going to want to come to you because you've already started establishing that relationship with them and and caring for them and and talking to their uh to the people that are running those types of homes and shelters uh so it's something that you want to do now how do you how should you be kind of in I guess addressing or or going into these types of conversations with people when you do your network marketing you want to work on a pitch um

00:06:41 - 00:07:40
so what you would call this is typically going to be like a 30 second Pitch that's going to tell other people who you are and and what you do so for me I would say hey my name is Brandon Guston I own and operate two assisted buing facilities we have one in NAA Idaho and we focus on elderly care and we are we actually cater to a a population that that needs Medicaid and we know that's something that a lot of people have but they can't find facilities and so if you know anybody that has Medicaid and needs

00:07:11 - 00:08:06
Assisted Living Services I'd love to talk with them and see if we'd be a good fit for them well that's kind of the the the type of commercial that you want to be giving to people um you see I I said my name um and I didn't do a great job at this but I said um who my facility is I said where we're located I said who we serve um and gave a little bit of information there and then what I need to do and I didn't do a good job of this but I need to end again again I'm Brandon gusterson with you well assisted living right and

00:07:38 - 00:08:33
so that's the name of my my facility is is be well Assisted Living um and that's how you do that 30- second commercial and the more that you practice that the easier it's going to be to to talk to somebody about it you don't have a long time to talk to somebody and help and and get them to see who you are you need to give them this 30 second thing and then if there's interest now you can dive deeper but you need to start off with that quick 30 second this is who I am this is who I serve and this is who I

00:08:05 - 00:09:03
am again just so you can remember um who so they can remember who they are talking to let's get into private referral websites and I I think a lot of people have heard about these A Place for Mom or caring.com you can put your your facility your home on these types of websites what I found and we don't use them because there's a feat associated with it and I think for smaller homes it doesn't make a lot of sense but it is is still an option that you would want to consider if you're a smaller home and you're charging High

00:08:34 - 00:09:34
fees it might be worth going with it uh it it's something that for me it doesn't make a lot of sense financially because I work with Medicaid residents but for you if you're working with a lot of high high-end private pay clientele you might want to consider it uh and so I don't I can't give you a lot of Deep dive into each of these but I I would suggest that you go in and do it if you are interested in learning more about A Place for Mom or carrying comment that down below and I can work on building out some content specific to

00:09:04 - 00:10:02
that um and how those sites work and and see if I can give you a little bit more of a deep dive and what that's going to look like for you if if that's a a route that you want to go in in in trying to get placement in your facilities next is social media so this is going to be you know things like uh Facebook Instagram even Tik Tok um I know there's there's some houses out there that do Tik Tok dances and things with their residents which is it kind of makes people look at it and be like oh man that's that's

00:09:33 - 00:10:33
really cool I'd like to have my grandma or my dad working there and and uh having that kind of a fun um atmosphere with Facebook we have a Facebook page uh for each of our facilities and we'll post little fun things that happen uh to our residents when we have um we're celebrating holidays or um actually this last week in Idaho we had a snowstorm and we had we're having some issues with our fire suppression system and it kept going off so the fire department came out to go and reset the fire suppression

00:10:03 - 00:10:59
system and while they were out there they started shoveling the walks for us um and it was like this is awesome like how cool is this let's let's share this type of a thing on our Facebook page um so that people can see uh just you know kind of promote the the local fire department but also just kind of let people know what's going on um at the house and that we're taking care of the residents uh that type of stuff is is going to be really really important as uh as you're trying to to do this and

00:10:31 - 00:11:30
building out some just kind of camaraderie and creating an atmosphere where people feel comfortable um sending their loved one to your facility to your home so using social media in that manner is going to be really really beneficial as well what you want to do is kind of be consistent with it and I think there there's two things you can do here you can have the Facebook page that is you know here's the update it's kind of more of a Blog for um the residents and their families or you can have one that is a little bit more

00:11:01 - 00:11:57
Promotional and you know we're talking about Elderly Care Awareness Month um this month or um women's health month uh those types of things you can like really kind of dive deep into it and you could do some promotions um and you could even do some advertising on these social media platforms um if you wanted to do that and get in front of more people because with especially with meta uh Facebook and Instagram you can get really specific into the group of people that you want to be advertising to uh

00:11:29 - 00:12:29
which is a really nice feature um and something that you might want to consider looking into more if you are interested in figuring out how to do this and the other thing that I'll point out to you is um Facebook and Instagram is really where your target market is going to be because you are targeting the the children of the people that are in assist that need the Assisted Living Services and oftentimes what you're looking at there is people that are like 45 to 65 70 um and a lot of that population is on Facebook not quite on

00:11:59 - 00:12:56
Instagram but they're they're kind of getting there but a lot of them are on Facebook so it's actually a really good spot for you to be advertising and to be um to be talking to people because that's just where they are it's where they spend their time the next one is search engines so SEO um search engine optimization um a lot of this is going to happen through um having your website built out and and putting blog content on there and making sure that it is it's really clear that um you know if you

00:12:27 - 00:13:30
have an assisted living home in in Denver Colorado you put you know something like uh number one assisted living in Denver Colorado or if you won awards or things like that you want to put that on your website so that when somebody is going in and doing an internet search for something like um top assisted living homes in Denver Colorado you're going to hit up high on that you can also um have your Google profile which is going to help you out there and you can rank based off of that and again here you can run ads that

00:12:58 - 00:13:57
could potentially bring people into your um into your ecosystem what you want to do there and there's a lot of um information on this there's a great book actually by Donald Miller um it's called the oh my gosh do I have it up here um I'm blinking I do but it's it's turned sideway so I can't see the the thing uh marketing Made Simple um and the story brand concept um those are some really good ways to build a very simple but um lead capturing website so what you want to be able to do is go in um have a

00:13:28 - 00:14:21
website that is really clean you can see this on Assisted Living investing. net actually so use that as your example but I have in the top right corner um I've got a thing to get your free calculator and then I have what's called a hero image um or just like a a section there that says you know this is what you're going to get at Assisted Living investing. net and then there's another button that says get your free underwriting calculator it is very clear to you what I want you to do um on my website I want you to under get that

00:13:55 - 00:15:02
underwriting calculator because that way I'm going to be able to get your email and we can have a conversation from there so you want to use that exact same principle um in in capturing leads for your assisted living home you want to have a very clear clean website that it's very clear that says something like um you know give us your contact information to learn more uh to learn about availability or have um something on there that's like you know the The Ultimate Guide to to Senior Living in Denver Colorado or wherever it is that

00:14:28 - 00:15:24
you're in and have this little PDF that like gives people some really good contacts um at the state with uh for Medicaid um and and what price ranges are and some of the other programs that might be available that type of a thing people are going to be like oh yeah this is really cool I'm going to give you my email address so that I can have access to that little tool and now you've got their email and now you can talk to them directly and when you have openings in your facility you can say something like

00:14:56 - 00:15:47
hey we've we're we're opening up two beds in our home um if you're interested um please reply to this email and we'll give you a call or something like that you know those types of things is is what you want to do this is where search engines are going to be beneficial because you need to build your website in a way that you can capture those leads and and help you find people to live in the home the next one is going to be online directories and there's a lot of them here um a lot of them do the

00:15:22 - 00:16:25
same kind of a thing but you basically it's kind of like a place for mom um and you can see caring.com is on here as well but these are are free generally and you don't have to put anything on there um but there's senior living.org which is I've got to be honest just an incredible site incredible YouTube channel for seniors um for you that are wanting to invest in Assisted Living not so much for you um but they talk directly to seniors and and how to navigate things um in the Senior Living World whether that's assisted living or

00:15:53 - 00:17:00
nursing homes or Independent Living whatever it is they have a ton of content on there highly recommend I don't know the people there but I've been really impressed um as I've gotten deeper into uh researching content is going to be valuable to you um as as my listeners I find a lot of stuff on Senior Living do.org so a great site to go to assisted-living ddirect.com and senior-living ddirect.com I'm guessing they're open owned by the same people but um you know those are good ones as well caring.com senior livingg guide.com

00:16:27 - 00:17:28
senioradvisor.com and care these are all ones that you could go on and you can set up kind of a free profile there's a ton of other ones out there and you can put your your contact information on there um so that when people are looking for something they're going to find one of these like they're going to search for something like um assisted living homes near me and then these websites right here that I have on my list they pay advertising dollars to rank higher in Google so they can be put on there so people click on them and

00:16:58 - 00:17:55
then they would get over to senior living.org and then if you have your profile on there they they've got something on there that can filter down to homes in Denver Colorado they're going to be able to do that and see the five homes that have set up a profile on their website so doing those types of things keeping them updated it's going to be beneficial I caution you to you could do all of them but it could be a lot of work to try to go in create it maintain it remember all the passwords and everything like that um so you know

00:17:27 - 00:18:32
do your own research figure out what's going to work for for you and the next one is asking for reviews and whether that's on one of those sites that we just mentioned or if it's on your own Google or Facebook um your Google um uh business page or your Facebook page uh those types of places regardless of where it is try asking for those reviews try getting people to give you the festar review um The Honest festar review ask you know try to incentivize them with little things like a $5 gift card to a local gas station a

00:17:59 - 00:18:53
grocery store um ask ask your resident families to go in and do that those types of reviews mean a lot to people when they're researching when you think about it um when you find something when you go on Amazon if you find a product that has a three star review and there's another one right next to it that has 4.2 Stars you're going to go with that one that's 4.2 Stars even if it's like $2 more right and and so you want to just get those reviews make sure you have those and and say thank you to

00:18:26 - 00:19:20
those people because they are help can grow your business so asking for those reviews is going to be key now if there are any questions here I see there's a couple people live U make sure you comment those if you're new type newbie down below and if you are you're currently an operator type an operator down below as well I would love to kind of interact with you see what content it is that that you need and if you have other questions or if you're like oh here's another marketing strategy that I've thought about or I've used that's

00:18:54 - 00:19:56
been successful comment that down below as well so that people can just kind of get a feel for what um what's working for you in the industry um make sure you like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well we go live every Tuesday um so make sure you're you have that Bell rung so you get notified every time I go live with these and you can just kind of stay up to date on what's going on and then get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net uh VP checklist Assisted Living investing. netb checklist to get

00:19:25 - 00:20:19
access to the business planning checklist as well I see there's a comment in here by yenna I'm I'm probably butchering your name I am so sorry but uh says appreciate the info and resources thank you I I I love kind of being here and providing that with you so um thanks for for chatting that in I love providing you guys with with all these resources and just want to thank you again does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we're

00:19:52 - 00:20:29
here to help you through the process and start to finish I want to thank you again for for being here uh if you found this content to be helpful make sure you hit the like button and get over to the website Assisted Living investing. netb checklist to get access to your free business plan checklist thanks for watching and have a great day

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