Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
The daughter searches at 11pm; the for-profit chains answer first
The placement decision is made by the daughter or son, on a phone, at 11pm, after a difficult day visiting Mum in a hospital bed where the geriatrician has finally said 'she can't go home'. They type 'aged care home [suburb]' and 'dementia care [suburb]' and 'respite care [city]', and they click the first calm, complete result on the first page. The structural problem is that the first calm, complete result is almost always BUPA, Estia, Regis or Opal HealthCare. Those four for-profit operators run brand campaigns, spend on Google Ads, and have polished placement-enquiry funnels. A not-for-profit or faith-based operator with a 4-star Star Rating, the mandated 200-minute Care Minutes per resident actually being delivered, on-site pharmacy and a dementia-specific unit that runs at 95% occupancy across the rest of the region, sits at position five. The second problem is that the RAD-and-DAP conversation kills enquiries before they happen: most families do not understand the difference between a Refundable Accommodation Deposit and a Daily Accommodation Payment, they assume aged care costs $500,000 they don't have, and they bounce off the fees page. The chains have polished RAD-and-DAP calculators that hold the enquiry; most independents have a downloadable PDF labelled 'Fees Schedule 2024'. The third problem is the dementia-specific unit and the Memory Care branding: it is the highest-value placement type, the most undersupplied service nationally, and most providers either don't have a dedicated page for it at all or have it buried two clicks deep in a generic 'services' menu.
Good aged-care-provider marketing is three things, in this order: a service-line page library that splits permanent placement, respite care, dementia-specific unit, on-site pharmacy and palliative care into their own pages, each with current vacancies by room type, the daily Care Minutes the home delivers (vs the mandated 200), the Star Rating with each of the five sub-ratings shown, the ACAT assessment process spelled out, and the Resident Agreement and RAD-and-DAP calculator linked above the fold; a Google Business Profile that names the ACQSC-registered RACF status, the Star Rating, the operator type (not-for-profit, faith-based, multipurpose service, for-profit), and the languages spoken; and a content cadence that does the family-education work the chains avoid (because educated families ask harder questions): a 'how to read a Star Rating' explainer, a 'RAD-vs-DAP-vs-DAC worked example' calculator, a 'what 200 Care Minutes actually looks like in a day' photo essay, a 'questions to ask on a placement tour' downloadable. The operators that hold their occupancy at 95% against the chains do exactly this, then keep their last ACQSC accreditation outcome and their resident-and-family satisfaction survey results visible because transparency is the trust signal that wins the 11pm daughter.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the family-decision funnel, not the resident-attraction one: the daughter or son searching at 11pm after a hospital visit is the actual buyer, and they make the placement decision based on Star Rating, Care Minutes compliance, dementia-care competence, RAD-and-DAP transparency and tour-availability. Briefs the other agents so every page, ad and social post reinforces those five trust signals rather than competing with the chains on brochure aesthetics. Quietly turns paid acquisition down when occupancy is healthy and lifts it when a wing has rooms.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus the third-party placement-enquiry plugin, and ships service-line pages for permanent placement, respite care, dementia-specific Memory Care unit, on-site pharmacy and palliative care. Adds a proper RAD-and-DAP-and-DAC explainer page with a worked-example calculator (no specific dollar figures committed to without your sign-off), embeds the placement coordinator's direct line on every page, and surfaces the Star Rating with all five sub-ratings broken out.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move aged-care rankings against the chains: 'aged care [suburb]', 'dementia care [suburb]', 'respite care [city]' on the service-line pages, ACQSC-registered RACF and Star Rating schema, internal links between service lines (respite to permanent placement, dementia-unit to on-site-pharmacy), and a Google Business Profile that names the operator type (not-for-profit, faith-based) and the languages spoken. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes; never auto-edits Star Rating claims because they must match the publicly-published figure exactly.
Runs Google Ads on the placement-decision queries that actually convert ('aged care home [suburb]', 'dementia care [suburb]', 'respite care [city]', 'ACAT assessment placement [region]') with a built-in Aged Care Act 1997 advertising-standards check on every ad copy variant. No guaranteed-vacancy claims, no superlatives, no comparative claims against BUPA, Estia, Regis or Opal HealthCare. Compliant fees-from disclosure when fees appear. Switches Meta off by default (advertising aged care on Instagram is fraught); leaves Facebook on for organic family-tour posts only.
Posts on Facebook primarily and Instagram secondarily, in a calm family-facing voice for the daughter-and-son audience: a tour-day photo from the Memory Care courtyard, a quiet note about a lifestyle activity (the resident art exhibition, the men's-shed morning, the multicultural meal that comes out of the on-site kitchen on a Wednesday), a profile of a long-serving carer with the dementia-care qualifications listed. No promotional language, no urgency, resident consent enforced at draft. The daughter scrolling Facebook at 11pm sees the home you actually are, not a brochure.
Drafts the long-form pieces the daughter Googles weeks before the placement decision: 'how to read a Star Rating: the five sub-ratings and what they mean for your parent', 'RAD vs DAP vs DAC: a worked example for an $850,000 home and a part-pension', 'what 200 Care Minutes actually looks like in a day at a not-for-profit home', 'questions to ask on a placement tour (and what an honest answer should sound like)', 'when is dementia-specific care appropriate and how is it different from secure-unit'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, compliance-checked, that compound the trust signal for months before the placement decision.
Your first 30 days.
- Five service-line pages indexed and ranking for permanent placement, respite, dementia-specific unit, on-site pharmacy and palliative care searches in your service area
- Annual plan focused on family-decision-funnel signals (Star Rating, Care Minutes, dementia-care competence, RAD-and-DAP transparency, tour availability), delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Aged Care' with ACQSC-registered RACF status, Star Rating, operator type and a 16-strong services list
- RAD-and-DAP-and-DAC explainer with a worked-example calculator live, written for the daughter-and-son audience, no specific dollar figures published without your sign-off
- Google Ads placement campaign live with the Star Rating in the headline and the dementia-specific unit availability as a separate ad group
- Long-form family-education pieces drafted on Star Rating interpretation and Care Minutes reality, both compliance-checked
- Facebook tour-day cadence running in a calm family-facing voice with resident consent enforced at draft
- Aged Care Act 1997 advertising-standards pre-check on every ad copy variant and social post draft
The placement decision is made by the daughter or son, on a phone, at 11pm, after a difficult hospital visit. They will choose the home that has the Star Rating they trust, the dementia-care competence they need, the RAD-and-DAP conversation already done on the fees page, and a tour they can book without ringing. The work is making sure that home is yours, with the not-for-profit operator type visible, the Memory Care unit one click away, and the Care Minutes you actually deliver published transparently. Not BUPA, Estia, Regis or Opal HealthCare because they outbid everyone on Google.
Agencies are too dear to actually build the service-line library and the RAD-and-DAP calculator for $4k a month, and most don't know the Aged Care Act 1997 advertising standards well enough to publish without compliance issues. Tools are cheap but the dementia-specific unit page never gets shipped because the marketing committee can't agree on the wording. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, draft the calculator, run the compliant placement ads, post the tour-day photos, and surface the Star Rating everywhere a family looks. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, every word pre-checked against the advertising standards.