15 Home Care Marketing Ideas

The daily ins and outs of running an agency can often take away time that would otherwise be spent on marketing. To help make this easier, we’ve done some of your thinking for you. Here are methods and tips for marketing your home care agency.

Running a home care agency may never be easy, but there are always ways to make it simpler. One important but often difficult aspect of running an agency is marketing your services.

What makes home care marketing so troublesome? For one thing, it’s an appendage to your core competency—providing care to your clients. The daily ins and outs of running an agency, especially unforeseen issues like a caregiver not showing up to work, can often take away time that would otherwise be spent on marketing.

To help make this easier, we’ve done some of your thinking for you. Here are 15 methods and tips for marketing your home care agency. Most agencies are using some of these already, but very few are using all these methods. Which of these can help your agency?

Home Care Marketing Ideas

1. Maintain a strong social media presence. Most agencies use Facebook in their marketing, but don’t neglect other platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. You can reduce time spent posting by using free tools like HootSuite or Buffer, which allow you to schedule posts in advance and mass-post to multiple platforms at once.

2. Consistently publish blogs on your website. Blogging gives you a chance to drive traffic to your website. Make sure to research relevant keywords and include them in your posts.

3. Optimize pages on your website to improve your SEO. While SEO is a long-term effort that requires strategy and patience, doing it properly will substantially expand your pipeline of clients.

4. Periodically seek referrals from your current clients. According to the 2021 Home Care Benchmarking Study, current and past clients are the top source of new referrals. Agencies who report clients as a top referral source say that their clients supplied an average of 73% of their revenue last year. Maintaining consistent communication with your clients is one of the keys to getting more client referrals.

5. Respond to negative online reviews and show that you take swift action to correct problems. Agencies who demonstrate that they are quick to acknowledge and thoroughly correct problems stand out from their competition.

6. Attend, sponsor, and help with community events. Consider having your staff organize or take part in a community service project or volunteer for a community event. This provides visibility, establishes your brand as service-oriented, and gives community members a chance to connect with your caregivers.

7. Invest in Google AdWords. With Google increasingly being a top channel for clients to connect with agencies, Google AdWords is a way to ensure that your agency is being seen by potential clients.

8. List your agency on internet lead sites. Internet lead sites are some of the top consumer marketing sources. If you’re not using these sites, now is the time to start. Internet lead sites include Caring.com, SeniorAdvisor.com, and CareinHomes.com.

9. Use ads in local newspapers. While newspapers have declined as the Internet has grown, they remain a venerable way to get visibility for your business.

10. Create a Google My Business profile. Doing this allows you to manage how your information appears across various Google services, including Google search results and Google Maps.

11. Buy ad space in local magazines. Ensure that your ad is simple, visually appealing, consistent with your brand, and has the necessary contact information.

12. Volunteer to speak at senior-related community events. Many communities have a calendar of senior-related events and welcome speakers. While this is a good chance to build awareness and trust in your company, take care to ensure that you deliver valuable insights rather than simply selling your services.

13. Seek referrals from healthcare professionals. Properly handled, referrals from healthcare professionals (including physicians, hospitals, homes, and other sources) can substantially increase your client base.

14. Ensure that you have a strong company brand. Maintain a compelling brand by designating your company’s core values and ensuring that your logo, marketing materials, and employees all act as ambassadors of these values.

15. Track how each of your existing clients found you and use this information to power your other marketing decisions. Good marketing starts with good information. Knowing how each of your clients found you will help reveal where to invest future marketing dollars. If you aren’t tracking how your clients first heard about your services, now is the time to start.

What Marketing Sources Are Other Home Care Agencies Using?

Thanks to our annual Benchmarking, we’ve good data to understand exactly which marketing sources home care agencies are relying on most. We’ve broken down home care marketing sources into two types: referral marketing and consumer marketing. Referral marketing entails networking, such as with a hospital or skilled nursing facility, while consumer marketing involves using advertising channels to market directly to potential clients and their families.

Here are the top home care marketing sources that agencies reported using last year, as well as the percentage of total revenue each source drove for the agencies who listed it as a top referral source:

It’s interesting to note how many of these marketing sources are digital – while traditional marketing channels are by no means gone, agencies that aren’t investing heavily in digital advertising are years behind the curve.

The Best Offense is a Good Defense

In sports, there’s a saying that the best offense is a good defense. It might be said that in home care, the best marketing is a great client experience.

While it’s important to avoid letting yourself get so bogged down with other duties that you don’t have time to focus on your marketing, it’s essential to remember that all of your marketing efforts will have greater impact when they are backed by an incredible client experience.