Aged care, by the numbers
Reduction in cost per sale for Lifestyle Communities
44.6%
Branded search growth for a top-3 home care provider
180%
Legacy leads re-engaged for Catholic Healthcare
750
SMS-verified leads a month for Springtree Living
120
Why aged care is different
Marketing to the person who isn't the customer.
The Garden is an integrated marketing agency with teams in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland, working with high-consideration brands, and no category carries more consideration than care. The decision-maker is usually a son or daughter choosing on a parent’s behalf, balancing guilt, cost, urgency and a parent’s own wishes. Trust is the whole game.
Run that journey through disconnected suppliers and you pay the Complexity Tax: the cost of a complex journey crossing separate systems and teams. In aged care it looks like a family who enquired on Saturday getting a call on Wednesday, or a tour booked with no record of what the family already said they needed.
One system, one accountable partner, and a response speed that respects the moment.
Built for the adult-child decision maker
Enquiry-to-tour journeys designed end to end
Compliance-aware creative and claims
Trusted by Australia's care and community brands
Home Care Packages / Support at Home
Home care marketing for the Support at Home era.
The move from Home Care Packages to Support at Home has reset how older Australians and their families find, compare and choose providers. The providers who win under the new model are the ones who own their brand search, convert non-branded research traffic and answer the phone fast.
For a top-3 Home Care Package provider we grew branded search 180%, lifted non-branded form submissions 160%, improved non-branded impression share 96% and drove 60% more calls from non-branded search. That is what category leadership looks like in a market where most providers still compete on directory listings.
Own your branded search
Convert research-stage families
Calls, not just form fills
Residential aged care
Residential aged care marketing that respects the moment.
A residential enquiry is often days from a decision. Speed and empathy carry it: fast follow-up, a tour booked while the need is live, and a database of past enquiries that no one has written off.
For Catholic Healthcare’s St Hedwig community, our Lead Convert team re-engaged 750 legacy leads in one month, producing 11 appointments, 15 call-back requests, 26 qualified client actions and 2 confirmed sales, from a database that was sitting idle. Occupancy came from leads the provider already owned.
Same-day enquiry follow-up- Phone-based re-engagement
Occupancy from your existing database
Retirement living & land lease
Retirement village marketing that fills communities.
Retirement living sits between property and care: a lifestyle purchase with a property price tag and a family in the room. The playbook is community-level campaigns, hard profiling and patient nurture, because downsizers research for years.
Lifestyle Communities’ 17 community-differentiated campaigns produced 5,891 leads, 100+ sales and a 44.6% reduction in cost per sale. Springtree Living launched a greenfield over-55s community in regional Victoria with no brand, no database and no existing demand, and built to 120 SMS-verified leads a month with an 80% profiling rate. Oak Tree’s Coffs Harbour village pre-launch delivered 116 leads in three months at a 68.1% profiling rate. When ONEtoANOTHER moved to HubSpot, email engagement lifted 31% in twelve weeks.
Community-by-community campaigns
68–80% profiling rates
Nurture built for a years-long decision
Key services
The system behind every care engagement.
Aged care engagements lean hardest on these services, run together as one Marketing Operating System.
Lead Generation
Campaigns that find families in-market and profile urgency and fit.
Phone Sales
Our Melbourne call centre re-engages databases and books tours while need is live.
CX Strategy
The enquiry-to-tour-to-move-in journey, mapped and designed around the family.
Media Buying
Search-led media for a category where intent starts with a Google search.
CRM
Every enquiry, every conversation, every family preference in one system.
Marketing Automation
Patient nurture for the researchers who are two years from deciding.
How we work
One loop, run to occupancy.
The Loop, The Garden's growth loop, runs weekly against the numbers care operators actually manage: enquiries, tours, occupancy and package uptake.
Sense
Family, search and sales signals in one view of where enquiries stall.
Decide
This week's highest-value fix: response time, tour conversion, a corridor underperforming.
Create & activate
Creative, landing pages and nurtures shipped while the insight is fresh.
Learn & improve
Every campaign feeds the next, so acquisition cost falls as the system learns.
The proof
Care results we can put a number on.
How The Garden rebuilt Australian Unity Home Health's search program: branded search up 180%, calls up 60% and form leads up 160% year on year.
Launching a premium over-55s village from a standing start: 29.24% Google Search conversion and 175k+ first-month brand impressions.
HubSpot-Salesforce integration and automated nurtures influenced a $12M+ pipeline for Lincoln Place, with email near-doubling benchmarks.
HubSpot re-engagement nurtures for three retirement communities: 53% click rate, 50+ qualified leads influenced, three prospects now residents.
Custom landing pages and rebuilt campaign structures tripled Serenitas' Google conversion rates and cut CPL 55%, with half of all leads profiled.
Data-driven lead generation delivered 5,891 leads for Lifestyle Communities and cut cost per sale 44.6% across a COVID-disrupted 2020.
Answers to the questions we hear most.
How do aged care providers generate more enquiries?
By being visible at the moment of need and credible before it. That means owning branded search, ranking for non-branded research queries, converting that traffic with fast, empathetic follow-up, and nurturing the majority who are researching ahead of need. For one top-3 home care provider that approach grew branded search 180% and calls from non-branded search 60%.
What does Support at Home mean for aged care marketing?
Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages as the way in-home care is funded and chosen, which changes how families compare providers. More of the decision now happens in open research before a provider is ever contacted, so search visibility, clear service explanations and fast response have become the front door of the funnel.
Who actually makes the aged care decision?
Usually an adult child acting for a parent, and often under time pressure after a fall, a diagnosis or a hospital stay. Effective aged care marketing speaks to both audiences at once: reassurance and dignity for the older person, clarity and logistics for the family member doing the comparing.
How do you market a retirement village before it opens?
Start with the corridor, not the brochure. Springtree Living launched a greenfield over-55s community with no brand recognition, no database and no existing demand, and built to 120 SMS-verified leads a month over eight months with an 80% profiling rate, so the sales team opened with a qualified pipeline.
We have years of old enquiries. Are they worth anything?
Almost always. Catholic Healthcare’s St Hedwig community had 750 legacy leads sitting idle; one month of structured phone re-engagement produced 11 appointments, 26 qualified client actions and 2 confirmed sales. A cold database is usually the cheapest occupancy you’ll ever buy.
What our clients say
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