How to market to seniors in 2026: what works for senior living and senior care businesses

Who actually searches for senior living, and who decides?

Start with the resident. In the CDC’s 2022 survey of residential care communities, the federal term that covers assisted living, 53% of residents were 85 or older, 6% were under 65, 67% were women and 44% had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or another dementia (CDC NCHS Data Brief 506). A woman of 86 with a dementia diagnosis is rarely the one typing "assisted living near me" at 10 p.m.

The one typing is usually the adult child. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving count 63 million family caregivers in 2025, about one in four adults, and only about one in three of them is under 50 (AARP, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025). A Care.com survey of 500 of its users found nearly three-quarters of senior care seekers were adult children, and among those children it was the daughter 71% of the time (Senior Housing News). That survey is old. Nothing we hear on the phones at assisted living communities suggests it has changed: the caller is a daughter, between 50 and 65, calling from work.

The exception is independent living. In Promatura studies of independent living residents in 2001 and again in 2012, 28% said they and their spouse made the decision with no adult child involved, the same share both years (Senior Housing News). That buyer is in her late 70s, reads the local paper and opens her own mail. So before you pick a channel, decide which reader leads. For assisted living it is the adult child, though the senior still had a say about 70% of the time in the Care.com survey. The daughter shortlists, the parent vetoes. Your ads convince the first. Your tour convinces the second.

Where do older adults and their adult children spend time online?

More places than most operators assume, and the gap between the two groups is smaller every year. Pew Research Center’s 2026 surveys, fielded January 30 to June 18, 2026, give the picture.

Sources: Pew Research Center Internet and Broadband Fact Sheet, Mobile Fact Sheet and Social Media Fact Sheet, all from the same 2026 survey.

Read the table as a media plan. The adult child is on Facebook, YouTube and her phone, and four in ten of her age group are on Instagram. The 65+ buyer is on Facebook and YouTube too. But a fifth of people 65 and older have no smartphone and one in nine is not online at all, which is why we keep mail and print for independent living. TikTok reaches 11% of older adults. Skip it.

Our senior living marketing guide walks through every channel in order. This post is about which channels fit which reader.

How do you show up on Google when a family searches?

Be in the map pack. When the daughter types "assisted living near me" or "assisted living" plus your town, Google answers with three local listings before any website. Google says those results rest on relevance, distance and prominence, that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking", and that "there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google" (Google Business Profile Help). The profile is work, not a purchase.

Google Business Profile

• Set the primary category to what you are: "Assisted living facility" or "Retirement community". Nothing you do not offer.
• Add real photos every month: the dining room at lunch, a resident room, the entrance, the staff.
• Keep hours accurate and the phone number pointed at a person. A profile call that reaches voicemail at 6 p.m. is a family who calls the next listing.
• Seed the Q&A with the questions every tour call starts with: "Do you take Medicaid?", "What does it cost?" Then answer them yourself.

Reviews

BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of U.S. consumers found 97% read online reviews for local businesses, 49% trust them as much as a personal recommendation, 74% look for reviews written in the last three months and 89% expect the business to respond (BrightLocal). Ask the adult child, not the resident, by text, thirty days after move-in. Respond to every review within the week. For a community with nobody to own this, our Google Business Profile service does the monthly work. The full search picture is in our senior living SEO guide.

Search ads

Search ads catch the same searches on the days your profile is not in the top three. Keep them to care terms plus towns, add a call asset, and send the click to a page with the phone number above the fold. One rule operators learn the hard way: in the United States and Canada, Google treats senior living as housing, and housing ads cannot be targeted by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code (Google Ads personalized advertising policy). You target by radius and by what people type.

Do Facebook and Instagram work for both audiences?

Yes, with different jobs. Facebook reaches 71% of adults 50 to 64 and 59% of those 65 and older, so it is the one place both readers are. Instagram is for the adult child: 41% of her age group against 21% of her parents’ (Pew Research Center).

Meta applies the same housing rule Google does. For housing ads, age is fixed at 18 through 65+, a specific gender cannot be chosen, ZIP codes are not supported, and any location you pick must cover at least a 15-mile radius in the U.S. and Canada (Meta Marketing API, Special Ad Categories). So "women 50 to 65 within five miles" is not an option. Facebook for senior living is a creative problem, not a targeting problem. The ad picks its reader with what it says and shows.

• For the adult child: a 40-second video of your executive director answering "what happens when Mom falls at night?" A post with the real price range. A "what to ask on a tour" guide with no form in front of it.
• For the senior: residents in their own words, the dining room at lunch, an open house with a date and a phone number in the image itself. Large type, because she is reading it on a phone at arm’s length.
• Lead forms: Meta’s instant forms fill fast and go cold faster. Use them only if a person calls the family back within minutes. Otherwise send the click to a page where the phone number is the first thing on the screen.

That is the shape of our paid ads work for communities: search for the daughter in the middle of a crisis, Facebook for both readers before the crisis, and the same person answering the phone for both.

Do direct mail, local print and radio still earn their cost?

For independent living, often. For assisted living, rarely. The assisted living decision is made in days by an adult child on a phone. The independent living decision is made over months by a senior who still watches the evening news.

Nielsen’s Audio Today 2026 report puts monthly reach among adults 50 and older at 95% for radio and 94% for live and time-shifted TV, against 87% for smartphones (Nielsen, Audio Today 2026). Older adults are the one audience where broadcast still outreaches the phone.

Direct mail has a second advantage. It is the last channel where you can buy a list by age and income inside a ZIP code you choose, which Google and Meta no longer allow for housing ads. Use it for something with a date: an open house, a lunch, a talk on how Medicaid works in your state. One piece, a reason to call, a tracking number. We do not quote a response rate, because the published figures are vendor averages across every industry and they contradict each other. Count the calls yourself.

Local print and radio work when the community is the only one in a small market and the ad names a person. In a metro with twelve competitors they cost more than the tours they bring. Run either for 90 days on a dedicated number. If it does not ring, stop.

Which referral partners and events bring the families who move in?

Everything above finds families who are already searching. Referral partners find families before they search, and those families tour faster, because someone they trust sent them.

• Hospital discharge planners and case managers. The highest-urgency referrals in senior care. They refer to whoever picks up the phone and can take a resident this week.
• Home health, hospice and skilled nursing. They see the family at home when the house stops working.
• Placement agencies. A Place for Mom and the local advisors send tours and charge a fee when the family moves in. Know the terms before you sign. We explain the model in how A Place for Mom makes money.
• Elder law attorneys, financial planners and realtors. They meet the independent living buyer a year before she moves.
• Senior centers, churches and the Area Agency on Aging. They meet both readers, and most of them will list you if you ask.

The work is simple and most communities skip it. One visit a month, in person. A one-page sheet with current availability, the price range and a direct number to a named person. A same-day call back on every referral, and a note to the referrer when the family tours. A discharge planner who hears nothing after two referrals stops sending them.

Events and open houses

Events pull the independent living buyer and the adult child who is not in crisis yet. What works is a lunch with a talk on a real question (how Medicaid works in your state, how to sell a house after forty years in it), a date, and an RSVP by phone. Invite by mail to nearby households 70 and older, by Facebook to the adult children, and by hand to the referral partners. Ten families in the dining room beat ten thousand impressions.

Is your website readable by older eyes?

The 65+ reader is dealing with "reduced contrast sensitivity, color perception, and near-focus" and "reduced dexterity and fine motor control" (W3C Web Accessibility Initiative). W3C says the accessibility guidelines already cover most of what older users need. Four matter most for a community website. A contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for text, or 3:1 for large text, which means 18 point or 14 point bold (W3C, Understanding WCAG 2.2). Text that can be enlarged to 200% without breaking the page. A label on every form field. Errors explained in words, not a red outline (W3C, Developing websites for older people).

• Body text at 18 pixels or larger, dark on light. No light gray on white, which is what most templates ship with.
• The phone number in the header on every page, as a tap-to-call link, in type as large as the headline.
• One form, three fields: name, phone, best time to call.
• Buttons big enough for a thumb, with the words "Call us" or "Book a tour" on them, not an icon.
• No text inside images, no autoplay video, no carousel. All three are unreadable at 80.

Most of this is a half-day for a developer. Our post on senior living website design covers layout and calls to action. If the site needs rebuilding first, see websites.

What should you stop doing?

• Stock photos of hands. The wrinkled hand held by the young hand is on ten thousand senior living websites, and families read it as "we have nothing real to show you". Use your dining room, your staff, your residents, with permission.
• Jargon. "ADLs", "continuum of care", "person-centered". Write "help with bathing, dressing and medications".
• Forms with no phone call back. A web form that lands in an inbox is a family who tours your competitor. If you cannot call back within the hour, publish the phone number and take the form down.
• "Call for pricing." The daughter searching at night will not call to find out she cannot afford you. Give a range and say what moves it.
• Marketing to one reader. A piece written only for the senior loses the daughter. A piece written only for the daughter loses the parent with the veto.

The third one is the expensive one. Bild & Co. analyzed more than 250 web and phone mystery shops of senior living communities in 2023 and found 53% of web inquiries got no response within two hours, 13% of calls never got a response at all, and inquiry-to-tour conversion was 22% (Senior Housing News). Everything in this post produces an inquiry. The next hour decides whether it was worth the money. That is why we built lead handling into every channel we run: a person calls the family back within minutes and books the tour.

How do you measure it by tours and move-ins, not clicks?

Clicks are the cheapest number to report and the one least connected to your census. A senior living marketing report should read from the bottom up: move-ins, then tours, then inquiries, each by source. Six things make that possible.

1. A tracking phone number per channel: website, Business Profile, mail piece, radio spot, and one per referral partner if you can.
2. A source field on the web form and a "how did you hear about us" question on every call, logged by the person who takes it.
3. The Business Profile performance report, which counts calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile itself (Google Business Profile Help).
4. Inquiries by source, monthly.
5. Tours booked by source, monthly.
6. Move-ins by source, 90 days later, because the gap between inquiry and move-in is weeks to months.

Read it quarterly. A channel that brings 40 inquiries and 2 tours is worse than one that brings 8 inquiries and 5 tours, and only the bottom rows show it. Most agency reporting stops at step four. That is why we pair every channel with lead handling and analytics that tie each move-in back to its source. We don’t promise a specific number of leads, tours, rankings or move-ins. We do report all three, by source, every month.

Care Growth is based in Denver and works with assisted living communities and senior living groups across the country, on a fee per move-in rather than a retainer. To see which of these channels your community is missing, ask for a free growth audit.

Related: Paid ads · Google Business Profile · Lead handling · Senior living marketing guide · Senior living SEO guide · Senior living website design