The challenge: increasing deposits and qualified leads for a senior living community
Wesley Enhanced Living (WEL), a senior living organization with multiple communities throughout the greater Philadelphia area, wanted to strengthen its digital presence and generate more opportunities for prospective residents. At the same time, WEL was preparing to launch a new website and needed a digital marketing strategy that could increase visibility, drive qualified traffic, and support occupancy goals across its communities.
Addressing a common issue among senior living communities
While WEL already had strong community recognition, the organization faced a common challenge many senior living providers encounter: generating consistent, high-intent leads across multiple locations while improving marketing efficiency.
Some communities also required additional support. WEL’s Doylestown location, for example, historically experienced lower lead volume and needed a more localized strategy to improve performance.
To address these challenges, Unlock Health focused on several key goals:
- Increase qualified senior living leads
- Improve digital visibility and brand awareness
- Drive higher-intent conversions from paid media campaigns
- Support occupancy growth and deposit volume
- Improve performance for lower-volume communities
The Unlock solution
Combining paid search and paid social for senior living lead generation
Unlock Health partnered closely with WEL to develop a performance-focused digital marketing strategy centered around paid search (SEM) and paid social campaigns. The strategy was designed to balance broad brand visibility with targeted lead generation. Each channel played a distinct role in helping prospective residents and family decision-makers move through the senior living research process.
- Paid search campaigns focused on capturing high-intent users actively searching for senior living options in the Philadelphia market. Campaigns were structured to align with location-specific demand and user search behavior.
- Paid social campaigns complemented these efforts by increasing visibility among prospective residents and adult children researching care and lifestyle options for loved ones.
This combined strategy allowed WEL to stay visible throughout multiple stages of the decision-making journey.
Using real-time optimization to improve campaign performance
Senior living marketing performance can vary significantly by market, audience, and community location. To improve efficiency and maintain transparency, Unlock Health implemented a data-driven optimization approach across all campaigns.
This included the use of:
- CallRail call tracking
- Unlock Secure Conversions, our HIPAA-compliant ad tracking solution for Google and Meta
- Real-time optimization through the Unlock Media Control Panel
- Campaign dashboards with live performance visibility
These tools allowed the team to monitor campaign performance continuously and make adjustments based on traffic, engagement, and conversion behavior. Instead of relying only on lead volume, the strategy focused on identifying and optimizing toward higher-quality, higher-intent prospects.
This became especially important for communities like Doylestown, where improving lead quality and conversion efficiency were critical growth priorities.
The results
124 leads
through form submissions
147 qualified calls
from prospective residents
514,630
impressions
8.27%
click-through rate (CTR)
$212
cost per acquisition for SEM campaigns
$6
cost per acquisition for Meta campaigns
Key takeaways
Over the course of the campaign, paid search and paid social efforts generated significant engagement and measurable growth for Wesley Enhanced Living.
Most importantly, campaign performance translated into stronger business outcomes. Compared to the previous year, Wesley Enhanced Living reported:
- A 23% increase in deposits
- A 90% increase in total deposits at the Doylestown location
Despite a slight decrease in total lead volume, campaign optimizations improved lead quality and increased the number of high-intent prospects entering the pipeline. This reflects a challenge many senior living organizations face today: generating more leads is not always the same as generating better leads.
By focusing on audience targeting, campaign optimization, and conversion quality, WEL was able to improve marketing efficiency while supporting occupancy growth.
Why digital marketing strategies matter in senior living
Senior living decision-making journeys are often long, emotional, and highly localized. Prospective residents and their families typically research multiple communities, compare options online, and engage with providers across several digital touchpoints before making a decision.
This case study highlights how integrated paid search and paid social strategies can support senior living growth by:
- Increasing visibility during high-intent search moments
- Reaching prospective residents and family decision-makers earlier in the research process
- Improving lead quality instead of focusing only on lead quantity
- Supporting localized growth opportunities at individual communities
- Using real-time campaign optimization to improve efficiency and outcomes
What this means for senior living organizations
If your senior living marketing strategy focuses only on traffic or lead volume, you may be missing opportunities to improve conversion quality and occupancy growth.
A more targeted digital strategy can help organizations:
- Improve marketing efficiency
- Increase qualified inquiries
- Support underperforming communities
- Generate stronger occupancy outcomes
- Reduce wasted media spend
The opportunity is not simply generating more clicks. It is creating a strategy that connects the right audiences with the right communities at the right time. That is what drives meaningful senior living growth.
Ready to increase deposits and drive leads at your senior living community?
See what a targeted digital marketing strategy using search engine marketing and paid social campaigns can do for your community.