Senior dwelling advertising groups are pivoting from search engine marketing to AI searches, and within the course of embracing authenticity of their messaging.
Latest survey information from Pew reveals that AI-powered instruments like Google’s “solutions overviews” are pushing viewers to click on on fewer precise search engine outcomes. For senior dwelling operators that spent years gearing their digital gross sales and advertising practices for web optimization, AI searches might symbolize a brand new and vital stumbling block.
Certainly, Omaha, Nebraska-based Heritage Communities is in 2026 seeing a dip in inquiries stemming from Google searches, in keeping with Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Lacy Jungman.
However whereas digital searches are altering, senior dwelling operators nonetheless have instruments to market their providers and communities to new residents with methods geared towards displaying up within the new AI search outcomes. Authenticity, data and assets for residents are on the middle of that effort.
“Conventional advertising is nice, and there’s a spot for it right here and there in relation to billboards and print ads. I feel there’s a spot for it,” Jungman mentioned. “However the high of the funnel immediately exists in these AI overviews. And so it’s a special technique, which requires a special set of expertise.”
New age of content material advertising
Senior dwelling operators have shifted their advertising methods as AI modifications the best way their potential residents seek for senior dwelling. On the coronary heart of these efforts is content material advertising corresponding to weblog posts, Q&As, quizzes and different on-line assets.
With the assistance of a third-party company, Heritage shifted its weblog efforts to be extra full of data with formalized attribution to rank increased for AI.
“We realized that that is one thing that we don’t wish to should fight alone and do you actually overcome it, or do you study to work with it?” Jungman instructed Senior Housing Information. “It’s an ever-moving goal, and but in our trade, I really feel like we simply will not be capable of sustain with that.”
Whereas Heritage Communities has “blogs for days” on its web site, the operator is teaming up with a advertising company to create much more data that prospects can discover and use. The corporate is also now attributing weblog posts to particular authors to spice up credibility amongst prospects and earn a spot in AI search overviews.
Heritage additionally employed an extra advertising specialist together with an AI advisor final 12 months.
Roswell, Georgia-based Phoenix Senior Residing is also working with third-party companies, together with advertising company Wingspan, to create extra written blogs or guides, to assist carry older adults searching for getting older providers to their web site, in keeping with Justin Harden, vp of gross sales and advertising. However senior dwelling entrepreneurs cannot depend on generic content material advertising or “purchase their option to the highest” with the modifications to web optimization and new emphasis of AI solutions, Harden mentioned.
Phoenix modified its digital technique with weblog posts on subjects corresponding to monetary help, planning for senior dwelling and the assorted varieties of senior dwelling choices that prospects can simply entry.
Bonita Springs, Florida-based Discovery Senior Residing’s prospects are doing their analysis, and that’s the reason the operator has made efforts to restructure web sites to be simpler to navigate and highlighting the variations between its signature manufacturers whereas selling choices like its podcast, in keeping with Laura Lepore, company and investor communications for Discovery.
The corporate is highlighting “program-level experience corresponding to mind well being, culinary excellence and hospitality-forward care,” that AI searches can latch onto in summaries, Lepore mentioned.
“As we construct and roll out these choices and experience, we’re structuring it in methods AI programs can confidently floor, so households obtain a transparent, reliable understanding of our choices, packages and expertise from the very begin of their choice course of,” Lepore mentioned.
AI methods bear fruit
Whereas AIO continues to be an rising discipline for on-line entrepreneurs, senior dwelling operators imagine they’re already seeing early advantages of constructing the pivot to it.
Phoenix’s net site visitors has remained across the similar as earlier than it shifted to AI, but it surely has grown the variety of certified leads flowing into its gross sales funnel, Harden mentioned. He attributed that to the operator’s content material advertising, which helps prospects do their analysis and are available into the gross sales course of with extra data.
Phoenix Senior Residing’s advertising technique has had unintended results, like the corporate displaying up in an AI-generated advert in Phoenix, Arizona, the place it doesn’t have any communities.
Discovery is shifting its key efficiency indicators away from net site visitors as an entire to monitoring certified engagement and conversions, and is working to make use of new monitoring platforms to offer perception into how the operator is showing in AI environments like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, Lepore mentioned.
“If households are discovering our telephone quantity, requesting data or initiating contact by way of generative AI whereas studying about our manufacturers or packages, that’s nonetheless a profitable consequence, no matter the place that discovery occurs,” Lepore mentioned.
Nonetheless, precise conversion charges and hyperlink clicks to operator websites inside AI overviews nonetheless have quite a bit to be desired. Heritage is noticing a roughly 1% conversion charge for getting prospects to click on out of an summary to a sourced hyperlink from the corporate web site.
Heritage’s content material technique wanting forward is centering on movies, infographics and PDF downloads, which it distributes by way of a wide range of channels.
“The extra locations you will get your distinctive data and distinctive content material, the extra doubtless you’re to get picked up as a result of it sees that very same content material connected to Heritage and all these totally different locations … there have to be authority and credibility behind that,” Jungman mentioned.
Phoenix has usually elevated its promoting funds throughout its communities to spend money on further content material that performs into AI overviews, and Harden famous he’s excited concerning the potentialities.
“It’s a brand new frontier for everyone. We’re all attempting to determine it out collectively,” he mentioned. “And I feel the person who figures it out the quickest goes to be the one which advantages probably the most from it.”
