This story is a part of your SHN+ subscription
Earlier this week, we caught wind that SilverAssist had acquired Caring.com. The transfer expanded SilverAssist’s digital footprint into referrals, however greater than that, I feel it’s indicative of how senior dwelling gross sales and advertising and marketing is altering from a quantity sport to at least one measured in relationships.
By buying Caring.com, SilverAssist has assembled an organization with providers that embrace serving to older adults entry assets and pay for his or her senior dwelling keep, and now additionally referring them to communities that may serve their wants.
Senior dwelling prospects in 2025 are doing their very own analysis and are sometimes awash in a sea of data and choices. It is sensible to me that an organization like SilverAssist would give attention to steerage, monetary planning and extra correct knowledge relatively than solely offering extra results in companions. Certainly, that’s the philosophy of Greg Mason, SilverAssist’s CEO.
“Digital aggregators have forged an extended shadow on the business of their strategy of how they accumulate leads, and the way their name facilities drive a mentality round producing lead credit score,” Mason informed me earlier this week. “However it comes on the expense of the household expertise.”
Caring.com’s greatest competitor, A Place for Mother, is also taking the same strategy by pivoting towards empathetic messaging that displays “how households discover, fund, and really feel by means of the caregiving course of.”
As Mason alluded, senior dwelling operators haven’t at all times reported good experiences with their referral companions up to now. Giant firms similar to Sonida Senior Residing (NYSE: SNDA) and Brookdale Senior Residing (NYSE: BKD) haven’t eschewed working with massive referral companions solely, however they’ve labored to generate extra of their leads in-house. Gone are the times of leads in any respect prices. As a substitute, operators like Sonida are constructing advertising and marketing efforts “primarily based on what every group wants and what works greatest in every native market whether or not that be native outreach, smaller boutique referral firms, digital promoting,” as CEO Brandon Ribar informed SHN in 2024.
Senior dwelling operators and their companions are more and more constructing gross sales processes that ferry prospects by means of each level of their upcoming determination, from shifting out of their residence and paying for his or her preliminary keep to discovering the precise proper group for his or her needs and pockets.
The senior dwelling gross sales course of has at all times required empathy, however I imagine the referral panorama in senior dwelling is, with the rise of the newborn boomers, reforming round belief, customized, native market data and addressing affordability considerations. More and more, operators and their referral companions should not solely assist a potential resident see themselves dwelling in a group, but additionally how they’ll pay for it over the course of their keep or how they’ll entry well being care as they age.
Placing the items collectively, I feel SilverAssist’s Caring.com and slate of providers are one more indication that the development shouldn’t be slowing down. I additionally suppose it reveals they imagine that prospects want extra of a one-stop-shop for providers as they search for senior dwelling. And above all else, it speaks to the cash and a spotlight given to reaping demand because it grows within the years forward.
On this week’s SHN+ Replace, I analyze the latest SilverAssist acquisition of Caring.com and different gross sales and advertising and marketing strikes from operators and supply the next takeaways:
- Why SilverAssist acquired Caring.com
- How child boomer demand is altering the character of senior dwelling referrals
- How these and different strikes are reshaping gross sales and advertising and marketing
Caring.com deal geared toward taking business from ‘volume-driven’ results in ‘actual relationships’
SilverAssist’s Caring.com acquisition is geared toward serving to the business change what Mason sees as a scarcity of personalization and relationship constructing in senior dwelling gross sales and advertising and marketing, the place name facilities optimize for “lead credit score” relatively than offering essentially the most certified leads potential to enhance conversions. That in the end results in operators feeling burned out on sheer lead quantity alone contrasted with decrease conversion charges.
I don’t suppose operators are essentially burned out on leads, however they’re cautious to not duplicate their efforts or chase leads that aren’t certified. I feel gross sales and advertising and marketing groups are literally burned out from the uncertainty round leads offered to them. When prospect data doesn’t embrace vital knowledge like timeline, price range or care wants, it forces gross sales groups to do preliminary discovery work, in the end slowing down the method and doubtlessly jeopardizing the belief a prospect has with a group.
Mason informed me that too typically, operators obtain intensive lead lists from referral companions, and lately, these “volume-driven” lead sources haven’t been as profitable as in previous years as potential senior dwelling consumers need an expertise that feels private and distinctive, he informed me.
The acquisition of Caring.com, will assist add a significant vacation spot on-line for shoppers contemplating senior dwelling and can broaden SilverAssist’s referral community attain throughout the nation, Mason informed me.
With rising wants from prospects, a quickly getting old group of older adults and a still-frozen fee of latest development, demand shouldn’t be a present downside for senior dwelling operators.
The place the business nonetheless struggles is in its capacity to translate search habits into discovering the “move-in-ready” households that operators truly need, and in breaking by means of the noise of fixed leads.
The winners in senior dwelling referrals would be the ones in a position to cancel out the noise and join with households and prospects on a private degree.
Boomers require navigation
Referral websites like Caring.com and its new proprietor more and more imagine they have to grow to be a one-stop-shop navigation platform. Not solely should they match prospects and communities, but additionally assuage affordability considerations and supply knowledge to operators that informs their native gross sales and advertising and marketing practices.
“We’re not coping with digits right here,” Mason informed me. “We don’t use the world leads, we’re speaking about households.”
SilverAssist, now with the scope offered by Caring.com, will proceed to gather “lots of data from the outset” the second a prospect visits its web site—this can permit for “larger predictability” of “precise intent” by potential senior dwelling prospects and pair it with the corporate’s current providers, Mason informed me.
These providers for SilverAssist embrace Oasis Senior Advisors, native networks of consultants that assist older adults perceive senior dwelling providers of their native space and ElderLife Monetary, an organization that helps older adults and their households financially plan for paying senior dwelling prices with assets and profit guides to attenuate prices.
Senior dwelling suppliers will want these close-knit partnerships with referral suppliers able to providing native perception and monetary teaching for households, and Mason stated it’s as much as third-party businesses to “earn the belief” of operators.
To do this, Mason hopes to create the “every thing” mannequin of senior dwelling referrals and providers, able to offering all providers prospects may want to be able to begin a transfer to a group. This to me indicators that referral platforms should grow to be a “navigation platform” that may assist households and {couples} searching for senior dwelling choices to manuever challenges simply.
One of these considering treats incoming senior dwelling demand, pushed by boomers, not as a demographic inevitability however as a second when referral platforms and operators can work extra carefully collectively to create a clearer path within the discovery part, offering academic assets and sharing data that in the end locations older adults in the best group for them.
Within the quest to slot in through the AI age, Mason informed me the corporate is positioning SilverAssist’s suite of providers to “enchantment to AI search.” Nonetheless, Mason believes the present hype round AI search and reply engines is “on the peak.” Mason additionally famous that typical shopping for profiles of these searching for third-party referral providers are normally grownup youngsters, usually an grownup daughter in her 50s. In Mason’s view, she is “not utilizing ChatGPT for essentially the most half.”
Whereas SilverAssist should put together for AI search developments, Mason informed me that conventional search engines like google stay a big share of inquiries for senior dwelling providers.
However that’s to not say that older adults are shying away from utilizing AI instruments. AI use amongst older adults rose from 18% in 2024 to 30% in 2025. Amongst those that use AI, 58% work together with particular AI platforms or apps. Based on a latest AARP report, older adults use the expertise for well being monitoring, similar to answering well being questions or offering well being or vitamin steerage.
On the finish of the day, I can see a world the place prospects use AI instruments to start out their search and shortly land within the arms of a referral associate that ferries them by means of the remainder of the method. Though I feel senior dwelling operators can supply a few of these leads on their very own, referral companions like APFM and Caring.com will be capable of do extra heavy lifting at scale. However all of this can hinge on referral companions’ capacity to work with operators, and vice versa.
