Senior Living Operators Embrace Authenticity In Digital Marketing Amid ‘new Frontier’ Of Ai Searches 

Senior living marketing teams are pivoting from search engine optimization to AI searches, and in the process embracing authenticity in their messaging.

Recent survey data from Pew shows that AI-powered tools like Google’s “answers overviews” are pushing viewers to click on fewer actual search engine results. For senior living operators that spent years gearing their digital sales and marketing practices for SEO, AI searches could represent a new and significant stumbling block.

Indeed, Omaha, Nebraska-based Heritage Communities is in 2026 seeing a dip in inquiries stemming from Google searches, according to Chief Marketing Officer Lacy Jungman.

But while digital searches are changing, senior living operators still have tools to market their services and communities to new residents with strategies geared toward showing up in the new AI search results. Authenticity, information and resources for residents are at the center of that effort.

“Traditional marketing is great, and there’s a place for it here and there when it comes to billboards and print advertisements. I think there’s a place for it,” Jungman said. “But the top of the funnel today exists in these AI overviews. And so it’s a different strategy, which requires a different set of skills.”

New age of content marketing

Senior living operators have shifted their marketing strategies as AI changes the way their prospective residents search for senior living. At the heart of those efforts is content marketing such as blog posts, Q&As, quizzes and other online resources.

With the help of a third-party agency, Heritage shifted its blog efforts to be more full of information with formalized attribution to rank higher for AI.

“We realized that this is something that we don’t want to have to combat alone and do you really overcome it, or do you learn to work with it?” Jungman told Senior Housing News. “It’s an ever-moving target, and yet in our industry, I feel like we just are not able to keep up with that.”

While Heritage Communities has “blogs for days” on its website, the operator is teaming up with a marketing agency to create even more information that prospects can find and use. The company also is now attributing blog posts to specific authors to boost credibility among prospects and earn a place in AI search overviews.

Heritage also hired an additional marketing specialist along with an AI consultant last year.

Roswell, Georgia-based Phoenix Senior Living also is working with third-party agencies, including marketing agency Wingspan, to create more written blogs or guides, to help bring older adults looking for aging services to their website, according to Justin Harden, vice president of sales and marketing. But senior living marketers can not rely on generic content marketing or “buy their way to the top” with the changes to SEO and new emphasis of AI answers, Harden said.

Phoenix changed its digital strategy with blog posts on topics such as financial assistance, planning for senior living and the various types of senior living options that prospects can easily access.

Bonita Springs, Florida-based Discovery Senior Living’s prospects are doing their research, and that is why the operator has made efforts to restructure websites to be easier to navigate and highlighting the differences between its signature brands while promoting offerings like its podcast, according to Laura Lepore, corporate and investor communications for Discovery.

The company is highlighting “program-level expertise such as brain health, culinary excellence and hospitality-forward care,” that AI searches can latch onto in summaries, Lepore said.

“As we build and roll out these offerings and expertise, we’re structuring it in ways AI systems can confidently surface, so families receive a clear, trustworthy understanding of our offerings, programs and experience from the very start of their selection process,” Lepore said.

AI strategies bear fruit

While AIO is still an emerging field for online marketers, senior living operators believe they are already seeing early benefits of making the pivot to it.

Phoenix’s web traffic has remained around the same as before it shifted to AI, but it has grown the number of qualified leads flowing into its sales funnel, Harden said. He attributed that to the operator’s content marketing, which helps prospects do their research and come into the sales process with more knowledge.

Phoenix Senior Living’s marketing strategy has had unintended effects, like the company showing up in an AI-generated ad in Phoenix, Arizona, where it doesn’t have any communities.

Discovery is shifting its key performance indicators away from web traffic as a whole to tracking qualified engagement and conversions, and is working to use new tracking platforms to provide insight into how the operator is appearing in AI environments like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, Lepore said.

“If families are finding our phone number, requesting information or initiating contact through generative AI while learning about our brands or programs, that’s still a successful outcome, regardless of where that discovery happens,” Lepore said.

However, actual conversion rates and link clicks to operator sites within AI overviews still have a lot to be desired. Heritage is noticing a roughly 1% conversion rate for getting prospects to click out of an overview to a sourced link from the company website.

Heritage’s content strategy looking ahead is centering on videos, infographics and PDF downloads, which it distributes through a variety of channels.

“The more places you can get your unique information and unique content, the more likely you are to get picked up because it sees that same content attached to Heritage and all these different places … there must be authority and credibility behind that,” Jungman said.

Phoenix has generally increased its advertising budget across its communities to invest in additional content that plays into AI overviews, and Harden noted he is excited about the possibilities.

“It’s a new frontier for everybody. We’re all trying to figure it out together,” he said. “And I think the person that figures it out the quickest is going to be the one that benefits the most from it.”

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