Strategic Pete · Senior living & long-term care

Senior Living Marketing Agency
for Operators, Ownership Groups & Associations

Most agencies pitching senior living can buy you move-in leads. We build the story that makes families, referral sources and caregivers choose you before they ever see an ad — and we have already run it at state scale.

Strategic Pete produced People Worth Caring About, a long-form documentary series about long-term care: 28+ episodes, 21 unscripted stories filmed across 7 Nebraska communities representing 7 different ownership groups, distributed nationally on Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV and Amazon Fire. For the Nebraska Health Care Association it drew 80,000+ views in six months and 32.1 million in social media reach.

That is the difference between an agency that markets senior living and an agency that has filmed inside it — seven Nebraska communities, seven ownership groups, and five more states since.

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Read this before you enquire

We are not a move-in lead vendor and we do not sell local search packages. If what you need this quarter is more paid tours from a three-mile radius, a local performance shop will serve you better and cost you less. We are worth talking to when the problem is bigger than the ad account: families who cannot tell your community apart from the one down the road, referral sources who do not know what you stand for, caregivers you cannot recruit, and a board that wants the story told properly rather than loudly.

What we actually run for senior living operators

Eight capabilities. They are bought together far more often than separately, because occupancy, recruitment and reputation are the same story told to three different audiences.

Positioning & message architectureDocumentary & brand story productionRecruitment marketingEarned media & digital PRFamily-facing content & SEOReferral-source marketingAdvocacy & association campaignsFractional CMO leadership

If you only want one of them, say so on the call. We will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing on its own.

Occupancy, recruitment and advocacy are one marketing problem

Every senior living operator we have worked with was running three separate marketing efforts that never spoke to each other: paid ads aimed at adult daughters, a careers page aimed at CNAs, and a government-relations effort aimed at legislators. Three budgets, three agencies, three versions of who you are.

The perception gap is the real problem

Families arrive already frightened, carrying an image of long-term care they got from the news. Prospective caregivers carry the same image, which is why recruitment is hard. Legislators carry it too, which is why funding is hard. Fix the image once and all three get easier. That is what we mean by mapping the perception gap, and it is the first thing we do.

Proof beats persuasion in this category

You cannot argue a family into trusting you. What moves them is watching an ordinary shift reveal extraordinary humanity — a real caregiver, unscripted, doing the job. In Nebraska, state senators began quoting scenes from the film during discussions about funding and workforce shortages, and a long-term care association used it as part of the advocacy work that helped secure Medicaid funding. No campaign asset we could have written would have done that.

Then, and only then, the performance layer

Once the story exists, the media plan gets cheap: earned press, owned social, targeted paid distribution to caregivers and adult children, and search pages that answer the questions families actually type. Running that layer first is what produces expensive impressions and no move-ins. If you want the full commercial engine behind it, that is our B2B marketing agency practice, and this page is the senior living version of it.

How the work actually gets made

Five moves, in this order. Skipping straight to the fifth is what most senior living marketing looks like, and it is why most of it underperforms.

01

Map the perception gap

We find the distance between what your community actually is and what families, referral sources and prospective staff believe it is. Interviews, review mining, referral-partner calls and a read of every page that ranks for your name.

02

Find the stories that already exist

Nobody has to invent anything. In seven Nebraska communities we found 21 stories in two weeks with a three-person crew. Your building has them too — they are just undocumented.

03

Film them without sanding down the truth

No actors. No scripts that sand down the truth. Psychological safety on set, and the subject remains the hero. Human, not Hollywood — which is exactly why families believe it.

04

Put it where the decision is made

Smart TV distribution, owned social, paid distribution to caregivers and adult children, earned press, screenings for referral partners and boards, and QR-coded handouts where policy is argued. Placement is a strategy decision, not a delivery step.

05

Convert attention into admissions, applicants and advocacy

Tour enquiries, applications and legislative support are three different conversion paths off one asset. We build all three and measure them separately, because a film nobody acts on is an expensive keepsake.

Who we work with

Five buyers, one category. The work differs in emphasis, not in method.

Skilled nursing & long-term care operators

Census pressure and a workforce shortage at the same time. This is the buyer the Nebraska work was built for, and the material transfers directly.