Care home marketing agency
A care home marketing agency should do one thing above all others: make sure the families who would choose your home actually find it, and feel something about it before they compare it with anyone else. We work only with elderly care homes, which means nothing is being learned on your budget. And we are paid on results rather than a standing retainer.
The job itself
Not a list of channels. Three outcomes, and everything an agency proposes should sit clearly under one of them.
Directories, Google and local search, your Google Business Profile, and a website that loads quickly on a phone. All of it works, and all of it has a ceiling, which is that being on a list is not the same as being wanted.
An honest picture of daily life, in the words of the families who already know you. This is the part most agencies quietly skip, because it needs a day in a working home and a proper understanding of consent and dignity.
A simple path from an advert to a real conversation, and reporting that tells you which enquiries came from where. Ten relevant enquiries from your catchment beat a hundred from anywhere else.
How agencies charge
There are four models in this sector, and each of them is legitimate. A monthly retainer, where you buy ongoing attention. A project fee for a defined piece of work such as a website or a film. A percentage of your media spend. Or payment tied to an outcome, such as a qualified enquiry or a resident moving in.
Price varies with scope, so a single figure would be meaningless. What is not meaningless is where the risk sits. A retainer puts it entirely on you. An outcome-based fee puts it on the supplier, which is why it is the hardest of the four to find.
We work on results rather than a standing retainer. You keep control of your own advertising budget, and our fee follows a resident actually moving in. The specifics depend on your home and are walked through properly on a call, never guessed at on a page.
Side by side
All four of these work. Plenty of homes do well on each. The question is not which is best in the abstract, it is which ceiling you would hit first.
| Route | Does well | Where it hits a ceiling | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house, usually the manager or an administrator | Knows the home, the families and the tone better than anyone could from outside | Time. Marketing is the first thing dropped when the rota breaks | Homes with steady occupancy that need presence, not growth |
| Local general marketing agency | Websites, branding, paid social. Responsive, easy to meet, invested in the area | Learns the sector on your budget: consent, capacity, regulation, and how families actually decide | Operators who want a competent generalist and can direct them closely |
| Large full-service agency | Depth of specialism, strong reporting, proper process behind the work | Your account is small to them, and care rarely gets their most experienced people | Groups with enough scale to be a meaningful client |
| Care sector specialist | Starts with the family journey already understood, and knows what is defensible to say about a home | Smaller choice of suppliers, and a specialist can get formulaic if they run the same play everywhere | Operators with private beds to fill who want the learning curve already paid for |
Before you sign anything
Including us. The answers tell you more than a portfolio does, because they reveal whether an agency has actually worked inside a care home or only written about one.
There is a fuller version of this in the guide on choosing a marketing partner for your home, along with the answers that should give you pause.
Honest fit
We would rather tell you this now than three months into work that was never going to suit you.
A poor fit
A home that is consistently full and needs presence rather than growth. A home whose beds fill through local authority placement with little private enquiry. An operator wanting a broad brand campaign rather than occupancy. And any home where the care itself is the problem, because marketing does not fix that and should never be asked to.
Why us
Which means nothing about your sector is being learned at your expense.
Common questions
A care home marketing agency helps a home be found and trusted by local families who are looking for care. In practice that usually means some combination of the website, local search and Google Business Profile, reviews and reputation, paid advertising, and photography or film of daily life. The better ones also work on the enquiry itself: how quickly it is answered and what happens in the first hour.
A good general agency can do competent work, and many do. The difference is the learning curve. A general agency spends its first months discovering what the care sector already knows about consent, capacity, regulation and how families actually decide, and that learning happens on your budget. A specialist starts with the family journey already understood. Both routes work; they hit different ceilings.
There are four common models: a monthly retainer, a project fee for a defined piece of work, a percentage of your media spend, or payment tied to a result such as a qualified enquiry or a resident moving in. Each is legitimate. Price varies with scope, so the useful questions are which model you are being offered, what happens if it does not work, and who owns the work at the end.
Two things. We work only with elderly care homes, so nothing is being learned on your budget. And we are paid on results rather than a standing retainer: you control your own advertising spend and our fee follows a resident actually moving in. We are the wrong choice for a home that is consistently full, a home filling beds through local authority placement, or an operator who wants a broad brand campaign rather than occupancy.
Paid social and paid search can produce enquiries within the first few weeks because they reach families already looking. Website changes, search visibility, reviews and referral relationships build over months and then keep paying. Be wary of anyone promising a filled bed in a fortnight, and equally wary of anyone who cannot tell you what should happen in the first month.
Read further
Worth reading first: how to choose a care home marketing agency, how we compare with the other routes, including where we are the wrong choice, the types of company that market care homes in the UK, and what makes this discipline different at all.
