Senior living marketing in a tight market.

Senior living marketing in a tight occupancy market is a different game than senior living marketing in a strong market. The funnels look the same. The math underneath is not.

In a strong market, paid media works. Tour velocity is a function of impression volume. The community that spends more on media gets more tours. The conversion rate from tour to deposit is high enough that the math holds at almost any reasonable media cost. The marketing director’s job is to keep the top of the funnel full.

In a tight market, paid media stops working at the same input. Tours come in. Tours do not convert. Deposits stall. The cost per move-in inflates. Budgets get cut. The marketing director gets blamed for a problem that lives below the funnel.

The work that actually moves occupancy in a tight market lives at the tour. Specifically, in the qualification of who comes to the tour and the experience of the tour itself.

The communities that hold occupancy in a tight market share three traits. They pre-qualify aggressively. The phone team turns away tours that do not fit the price point or care level. They tour fewer people. They convert more of them. The net is positive even though the top-of-funnel volume looks worse.

They redesign the tour. Not the building tour. The conversation tour. The questions asked, the materials shared, the follow-up cadence. The communities that invested in tour redesign in 2023 and 2024 are outperforming communities at similar price points by three to five points of occupancy.

They stop running brand campaigns. In a tight market, brand campaigns subsidize competitors. The community spends to build awareness. The buyer becomes aware. The buyer evaluates the category. The buyer chooses a competitor. Brand campaigns work in strong markets because awareness converts. In tight markets, awareness shops.

The pattern holds across portfolios. Tight markets reward operations. They punish theater.

The funnel did not change.

The math did.