Assisted Living Case Study

When we first sat down with the team at Sunny Hills Assisted Living Facility in Florida, the Sebring location was in serious trouble. Occupancy had dropped to around 60%. Rooms were sitting empty. Revenue was falling but the bills weren't. The mortgage, the insurance, the staffing, the food, the utilities. None of that gets cheaper just because beds are empty. The math was heading in one direction, and if something didn't change soon, the Sebring facility was going to have to close its doors.
The Homestead location was holding up better, but it wasn't thriving either. Both facilities are family-run. Daniel Lowry is the President of Sebring and Vice President of Homestead, and he'd been doing everything he could to keep things moving. They'd tried outside help before. They'd worked with third-party referral services like A Place for Mom to bring in leads, and the experience had been miserable.

"We worked with other third parties, like A Place for Mom, and always found it difficult to communicate with them. The leads they gave us weren't really concrete. They would only stay with us a short period of time."
Daniel Lowry, President, Sunny Hills ALF of Sebring

The leads from those services were low quality. People either never showed up for tours or moved in and left within a few months. And here's the part that really stung. The referral model was actually set up to benefit from short stays. The quicker a resident left, the quicker they could place them somewhere else and collect another fee. Sunny Hills wasn't getting a partner. They were subsidizing someone else's business model while their own was falling apart.
That's when they came to us.

We didn't walk in and flip a switch. There was no single magic tactic that fixed everything overnight. What we did was pull the whole thing apart, look at every piece, and rebuild the foundation that the business needed to actually attract families and convert them into residents.

The first thing we tackled was the website. It wasn't doing its job. The site wasn't built to convert visitors into inquiries. Families would land on it, look around, and leave without picking up the phone or filling out a form. We revamped the entire thing. New structure, better flow, clear calls to action, and content that actually spoke to the families making these decisions. Not generic marketing copy. Real information that answered the questions adult sons and daughters are asking when they're looking for a place for their parents. We built it so that when someone landed on the site, the next logical step was obvious: call, fill out a form, book a tour.

Then we went after the SEO. Sunny Hills wasn't showing up where it needed to. When families in Homestead or Sebring typed "assisted living" into Google, Sunny Hills was nowhere to be found in the results that matter. We rebuilt the local SEO from the ground up. Every page was optimized for the search terms families actually use. We cleaned up and optimized the Google Business Profiles for both locations so they'd appear in the map pack, which is where the vast majority of clicks happen. We went after local keyword rankings aggressively, and over time, both locations started dominating their markets. Today, if you search "assisted living Sebring," Sunny Hills is number one. That didn't happen by accident. That was years of consistent work.

The other piece that made a massive difference was the online reputation. This is something most facility owners don't think about until it's already hurting them. When we started working with Sunny Hills, their online presence didn't reflect the quality of care they were actually providing inside the facility. Families check Google reviews before they ever pick up the phone. If what they see doesn't give them confidence, they move on to the next option in the search results. We implemented a full reputation management system. We built a process for consistently generating reviews from satisfied residents and their families. Over time, the online reputation was completely squared away. It went from being a weakness that was quietly costing them tours to a genuine strength that gave families the confidence to reach out. That single change alone had a bigger impact than most people would expect.

We also set up a lead management system so that nothing fell through the cracks. Every inquiry that came in, whether it was a phone call, a form submission, or an email, was tracked and followed up with immediately. Not the next day. Not when someone remembered. Within minutes. In this industry, the facility that responds first is almost always the one that books the tour. We made sure Sunny Hills was always first.

And beyond the marketing, we sat down with the team and worked on the operational side. Tour-to-move-in conversion. How the front desk handled inquiries. How tours were structured. What follow-up looked like after a family visited. These aren't "marketing" in the traditional sense, but they're the difference between a lead and a resident. We gave them checklists, frameworks, and guidance on how to tighten every step of the process from first contact to move-in.

The results didn't show up in a week. That's not how this works. But they were steady, they compounded, and over time they completely changed the direction of the business.

Sebring went from around 60 occupied beds to 91. Homestead stabilized and started growing. Both facilities are now operating above 92% occupancy. They're consistently generating between 20 and 40 qualified inquiries every single month per location. Not junk leads from a referral service that profit from churn. Real families who are actively searching for care, ready to visit, and ready to make a decision.

The quality of those leads changed everything. Residents that came through our system stayed. They weren't cycling out after a few months. They were moving in and staying for years, which is exactly how this industry is supposed to work when the right families are being connected with the right facility.

"We definitely got a big upgrade. More solid leads. Instead of ones that would not even come for tours, or only be with us for a few months. Definitely more concrete leads."
Daniel Lowry, President, Sunny Hills ALF of Sebring

And here's where the story gets really good. The business that was staring down the possibility of closing its Sebring location is now in active negotiations to purchase a third facility. A 65-bed property in West Palm Beach. In four years, Sunny Hills went from survival mode to expansion mode. That's not a marketing win. That's a completely different business.

"I highly, highly recommend. It's been a pleasure working with Ron and we've seen the results. It speaks for itself."

Daniel Lowry, President, Sunny Hills ALF of Sebring