Results

Numbers, with the caveat attached.

We do not publish our client list, so these are anonymised. What is not anonymised is the arithmetic: what was measured, what it is being compared against, and where each figure is weakest.

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28×

Return on ad spend

Peak, annualised contract value over ad spend
41%

Lower cost per lead

Against the community's own prior baseline
Up to 65%

Below national cost per lead

Best case across engagements
Up to 60%

Below national cost per move-in

Best case across engagements

Presented at SMASH 2025. How we measure these.

Two case studies: 01 Census growth 02 Hire faster

01 Census growth Paid media Assisted Living · Independent Living

Financially qualified leads at $50, repeated across market sizes.

A luxury AL and IL community in a competitive metro market

$50

cost per financially qualified lead

Situation

A luxury assisted and independent living community competing in a metro where every operator is bidding on the same terms. The problem was not lead volume. It was that most of the volume could not afford the community, so the sales team was spending its week disqualifying people.

This is not a single fortunate campaign. The same approach has been run and the result reproduced across markets of every size, from competitive metros to small regional ones.

What we did

Campaigns built at the community level rather than the brand level
Qualification moved earlier, into the ad and the landing page, so the screening happened before the sales team's time was spent
Separate treatment for independent living and assisted living, which do not share a buyer or a budget

What a move-in costs, by route

Referral aggregator, per move-in $3,500-12,000

Charged as 50 to 100% of first month's rent and care. Nothing is owned at the end of it.
Annual cost of the care being sold $70,800

A private one-bedroom in assisted living. This is the number a lead has to be able to sustain, and roughly 82% of residents fund it privately.
Our cost per financially qualified lead $50

Barely visible at this scale, which is the point.

Bars are strictly proportional, so the $50 bar is almost invisible against the annual contract value it is competing to win. These are deliberately different units: a lead, a move-in, and a year of revenue. They are shown together because they are the three numbers an operator is actually weighing, not because they are interchangeable.

Against the national picture

$3,500-12,000

per move-in through a referral aggregator

This is what the same move-in costs through the largest referral service, charged as a share of first-month rent and care. It is a cost per move-in rather than per lead, so it is not a like-for-like comparison. It is, however, the alternative most operators are actually choosing between.
SeniorLiving.org, 2026 review of A Place for Mom (opens in a new tab)
$70,800

annual cost of a private one-bedroom in assisted living

This is what financially qualified has to mean. Roughly 82% of assisted living residents fund care privately rather than through Medicaid, so a lead that cannot sustain this figure is not a slow lead, it is not a lead. Screening for it is the whole job.
Genworth / CareScout Cost of Care Survey (opens in a new tab)
50-100%

of first month's rent and care, as a referral fee

Referral pricing drew a US Senate probe in 2024 and is the subject of an FTC rulemaking on fee disclosure. The direction of travel is toward operators owning their own demand.
NBC News (opens in a new tab)

Where it is weakest

Cost per qualified lead, not cost per move-in. What a qualified lead converts at afterwards depends on the community's own tour and follow-up process, which sits outside what marketing controls.

02 Hire faster Recruitment marketing

RN and LPN applicants between $23 and $28 each.

Senior living operator recruiting licensed nursing staff

$23-28

cost per new RN or LPN applicant

50%

landing page conversion rate

Half of everyone who reaches an applicant landing page starts an application. Typical landing pages convert in single digits; this is what qualifying for licensure and location inside the ad does to the traffic that arrives.

Situation

Licensed nursing is the most expensive and most contested hire in senior living. Job boards charge for exposure rather than for outcomes, and the applicants that arrive are frequently unlicensed, out of area, or already placed.

What we did

Recruitment run as a sales funnel: targeted ads, dedicated applicant landing pages, automated screening
Licensure and location qualified up front, so the cost is per usable applicant rather than per click
Measured on cost per hire rather than cost per click

Three costs in the same hiring process

Losing one bedside RN $60,090

National RN turnover runs 17.6%, so this is not a rare event.
Average cost per hire in healthcare $9,000-12,000

Against $5,475 for non-executive roles across all industries.
Our cost per RN or LPN applicant $23-28

Roughly a four-hundredth of the cost of the hire it feeds, and a two-thousandth of the turnover it prevents.

Not three alternatives. Three separate costs inside one hiring process, drawn to scale. Applicant acquisition is the only one of the three that marketing controls, and it is the smallest line on the chart.

Against the national picture

$9,000-12,000

average cost per hire in healthcare

Against a US all-industry average of $5,475 for non-executive roles. Applicant acquisition is only one line inside that figure, which is the point: at $23 to $28, sourcing is a rounding error against the total.
SHRM Benchmarking Report (opens in a new tab)
$60,090

cost of losing a single bedside RN

With national RN turnover at 17.6%. Every filled vacancy avoids a replacement cost roughly two thousand times the price of the applicant that filled it.
NSI National Health Care Retention Report, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
6.6%

median landing page conversion rate, all industries

Measured across 41,000 landing pages and 57 million conversions. Top performers reach 10 to 15%. A 50% rate is not an incremental improvement on that; it is what happens when licensure and location are qualified inside the ad, so only serious applicants arrive.
Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report (opens in a new tab)

Where it is weakest

Cost per applicant, not cost per hire. Applicant-to-hire conversion depends on the operator's own interview and offer process, which sits outside what marketing controls.

Operator FAQ

The questions we actually get asked.

Are these results typical?

No, and they are not presented as averages. The figures on this page are best cases across engagements, drawn from work presented at SMASH 2025: peak 28× return on ad spend, cost per lead up to 65% below the national benchmark, and cost per move-in up to 60% below. The 41% reduction in cost per lead is measured against each community's own prior baseline, which is the more useful comparison.

Which care types do these results come from?

The census case is a luxury assisted and independent living community in a competitive metro, and the recruitment case is licensed nursing, RN and LPN, for a senior living operator. Memory care and CCRC run on different sales cycles and different economics, so their numbers are not interchangeable with these; the care-type pages state the benchmarks for each.

How do you calculate cost per move-in?

Total media spend plus fees for the period, divided by move-ins attributed to the campaign within the care type's sales cycle. The attribution window matters: crediting a memory care move-in over a twelve-month window would flatter the number considerably. The full method is on the methodology page.

A straight answer

Why there are no logos on this page.

Senior living operators compete for the same residents and the same staff in the same markets. Publishing a client list tells a competitor exactly who to approach, and it tells our clients we would do the same with their name.

So the trade is this: no names, but no vagueness either. Every figure on this page states what was measured, what it is compared against, and where it would not hold. On a reference call we will put you in touch with the operators directly.

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