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Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Maximizing Home Care Success: Home Care Marketing Strategies for 2026
The ground rules for home care growth have changed, and the winners are already adapting. Families are asking AI for specific, local answers about costs, eligibility, and services—while discharge planners scramble to move patients home safely during winter surges. We brought our sales and digital teams together to map a single system that marries AI-ready websites with disciplined field execution, so you capture the January spike and build steady private pay growth all year.
We start with discoverability: why AI overviews and long-form queries beat old-school blue links, and how structured data, service clusters, and fresh FAQs help you become the answer, not just a link. You’ll hear practical tactics to make your Google Business Profile a true front door—real photos, weekly posts, seeded Q&A, and review responses that quietly reinforce local authority. Then we move into the referral engine: what SNF social workers actually need (speed, reliability, and clean communication), and how the overflow pitch gets you in the door when the “preferred” provider can’t staff a Friday at five.
From there, we focus on speed to care. A four-touch follow-up sequence—call within five minutes, text, email, next-day call—turns overwhelmed families into scheduled assessments. We share intake scripts that build trust in 10 seconds on the phone and 90 seconds in person, plus operational handoffs that turn starts into five-star reviews. Tie it all together with three 10-day sprints: upgrade service pages and schema, activate your GBP with consistent updates, and reset your follow-up so no lead leaks during the Q1 surge.
Ready to align digital and field into one growth system? Listen, take the playbook, and put it to work. If this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a home care owner who needs a 2026 plan.
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
All right, so I'll just do a little homework while everybody's getting on board. We're going to mute all the lines or they should be muted. But we do want to take your questions. And most of the time I do questions at the end. So my recommendation is to go ahead. Are we can you guys see a QA or is it just chat today? I see both. You see both? Okay. Yeah. So you can really use either one. There's a QA area. You can enter your question there anytime. And then I'll go through them at the end. Or if you prefer to use a little chat feature, you can do that. I will send a little note to hi everyone. This is chat. So hopefully you can find that. It should be blinking. And we have people still rolling in, but that's basically all of our homework. So let's start with the 2026 home care growth system. Thanks for attending our year-end webinar. We do this every year and we try to look forward to what's going to be happening in 2026. We also do oftentimes a beginning of the year webinar to get you started and to plan your quarters for the year. And in the summertime, we do a middle-of-the-year webinar. So we try to do these at different times of the year so that everybody can keep up with what's going on and what our whatever it is that we've learned that's new and interesting out there. Of course, a lot of our discussion today is going to be about AI because I know that all of you have heard a lot about AI. Let's see. Oh yeah, I'm not gonna do that. So we're gonna talk about that and discipline sales execution. The ladies that are on the screen here with me are all about the discipline sales execution. So I hope I say the right things. All right, here we go. Meet your marketing guides. Your leadership team is Don Fiala, Annette Ziegler, Lisa Marcelet, and myself, Valerie. Do you ladies have a moment to introduce yourselves?
SPEAKER_02:Starting with Dawn? Yeah, I'll start. I'm Don Fiala. I've been with Approved Senior Networks now three and a half years, and I have a strong background in home care. I like to stay in the trenches of home care. I've done just about everything in home care. So you it's hard to stay in your lane. So I started in sales and then was promoted to operations manager. I was at home instead senior care for about 10 years, and then more recently at an independent home care agency, and I love to grow the private pay side of the business. And we got into the millions of dollars very quickly. And so that's me. Annette, you're next on the list.
SPEAKER_00:Go ahead. Okay. Hi, everybody. My name is Annette Ziggler, and I've been with ASN for a year and a half. I have over 20 years sales experience in home care and senior living. I worked for 13 years at a CCRC as a marketing manager, then for seven and a half years for a large franchise here in upstate New York as the community marketing liaison manager. I helped them grow from 1 million to 4 million. I was boots on the ground, out in the trenches, getting those private pay referrals. I at ASN, I am the sales training expert. I teach the sales training classes. And I love what I do because I did it. So it's really rewarding for me to teach everybody what they need to do to get those referrals to be different from all the other home care agencies. And it really makes me happy to see all the people that we have that succeed and that take our classes and they're getting referrals and being successful. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:My turn. Hi everyone, I'm Lisa Marcelet. I was in home care forever. I'll just say that. And I wore all different hats. It is very hard to stay in your own lane in home care. And I tend to do that here as well. So I do all the things and I love doing all the things and love being a part of your guys' journey. So I'm here for masteries and many other things, but I'll just I'll let you go, Valerie. Nice to meet you all.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Nice to see you all.
SPEAKER_03:And yeah, we have lots of new faces, lots of familiar faces on the webinar today. That's awesome. I'm Valerie Van Buvin. I'm a registered nurse. Started this business in 2008. So what are we going on? 17 years-ish. And my business partner is George Novison. He's also here somewhere listening intently, I'm sure. And so when I started this business, it was really easy to get somebody on the first page of Google in 10 minutes. I could make a video and bing, they were on the first page of Google. And of course, things have evolved over time and nothing is that easy anymore. Um, so I am the digital nerd of the group. Though these ladies are, of course, they do well in all aspects of home care marketing, but I'm the online marketing nerd and they're the sales nerds. So that's how we all work together. Woohoo! And this presentation brings both of those things together. So that's what we're going to talk about today. The thesis for 2026. Boy, I haven't heard the word thesis in a long time. I hope I never hear that word again. 2026 will strictly reward agencies who integrate AI-first marketing with disciplined in-person sales execution, says everyone at ASN. And we really do believe that it's not just AI-first marketing, it's online marketing with in-person sales execution. Those two things together, when they marry up and they match, the messages match and the branding matches and the vision and the mission and everything your in-person persons out there doing matches with what your website says and what your website is promoting. When that happens, things really work well. So we are strong believers in putting these two things together to blow the competition away. And that's going to continue. AI is going to become a big part of that, and we'll talk about that. So our promise. There are three takeaways today. We're going to talk about what changed, understanding the tectonic shifts in search, referral partners, and consumer behavior, what works, the proven 2026 growth system models that align digital and physical efforts, and the sprint, what you need to implement immediately before January 15th to capture quarter one. And actually, you probably need to implement some of these things before the year ends, but we'll give you till January 15th to get some of this done. And also don't forget, if you have questions, you can put them in the chat or the QA, and we'll keep an eye on that. And if you have any questions, but put them in there and I'll answer everything at the end. The 2025 reality check. What strategies, why strategies based on 2022 rules are failing? Oh boy. We find ourselves in 2022 still a lot. And it doesn't seem like it seems like that was yesterday, but technology and when technology changes as fast as it does, so do the needs of your referral partners and so do the needs of your online marketing. So traditional SEO, donut drops, and passive Google business profile activity. That's old rules. Now wait a minute. I'm gonna say this a couple of times throughout here. Everybody still wants donuts. Donut drops might be old school, but they're still very much needed, especially at my house. Anyone wants a donut drop here? I'm good. Fractures, AI overtook intent. We're gonna talk about that. Referral sources want data, not donuts. Yes, they still want donuts. That's a lie, but they also want to see data. And it doesn't have to be complicated data. They just want to know that you're able to take over the care of someone and not have them readmit and not have them hear back from the family that this just isn't working. They just want to know that. And result agencies are struggling right now with old playbooks. So we want to get you out of the old way and into today's methodology of both in-person and online marketing. So let's talk about AI. AI overtook SEO. If your agency that you work with, for your website and your online marketing, if they're doing things right with SEO, they're probably doing things pretty well with AI too. SEO and AI search are a lot of common sense. It's not, there is some special sauce that we like to say we have, but if you're doing things well and you always do things well, then you're not going to suffer when it comes to SEO and AI. AI search engines like ChatGPT and Google Overviews have become the new gatekeepers. And that's very true. It home care, because of the population we deal with, a little bit older audience, even for the adult children, a little bit older and our seniors, a little bit older, we're a little slow to catch up. For instance, when everybody in 2018, Google said, We're going mobile first. Everything matters on mobile more than it does on desktop. We still have a lot of people in 2018 that were still on desktop searching for home care answers. Today, pretty much more than desktop, we have people searching on their phones. So mobile took a little bit longer to catch up in the home care market just because of the age range of the clientele. However, it has caught up and AI search engines like ChatGPT and Google, because everybody's on Google pretty much, and that's what you get when you type in a search for something right now. We're all going to see some changes there. So that traditional blue link SEO intent is declining as families ask AI for summarized answers. People aren't typing in home care in St. Louis, Missouri. They're typing in, my mom has home, my mom has Alzheimer's disease, or my mom is forgetting things. How much is home care in St. Louis, Missouri? So it's a really long ask. And based on that long piece of information that somebody types in, AI gives them all kinds of answers. So the trick is how do you get in that answer group? Fracture number two, the new home page. Now, I'm not going to go as far as to say that people don't go to your website. I really believe your website is one of the most important pieces of marketing material you could ever have in your business life. It is mandatory. However, we do have a lot of people who will go straight to your Google Business profile, at least they'll start there. And right now, zero-click searches are the norm. That means that when you have an adult child that goes to your Google Business profile, they don't necessarily always go to your website. They look at those reviews first and they look at pictures and they look at updates. If you're not posting updates to your Google Business profile, it's just blank. And if you look at your competitor, you can see that they post almost every day. And that's great. You don't have to post every day. But having updates on your Google Business profile not only tells Google that you're very active on your profile, but it tells everybody else in the world we're here, we're in business, we're paying attention, we want you to know things. Your Google Business profile is one of the most important things, aside from your website, that you could be posting to, be paying attention to. And that's the truth. Fracture number three is referral needs. What they don't want. So referral sources, and of course, I'm doing this webinar and I'm not the guru, but I'm just gonna say this and hope that I'm right. I believe I've learned all I can learn from these ladies. I think they do want donuts, but they don't want brochures and generic check-ins. Just, hey, how are you? Here's another one of my brochures. Here's another one of my brochures, here's another one of my brochures. That is not what you should be leaving behind. That is not what people are looking for. They want to know that you're available. They want clear documentation, they want speed to care and specific outcome data. These folks in the skilled nursing facilities in particular really want to know that they can trust that you're gonna follow through. You don't have to bring them numbers about the 20% you kept 500 people home for 30 days. You can provide that information and tell them about your readmission rates. But what they really want to know is, are you gonna be there for this client when I discharge them to home? Are they gonna readmit because nobody showed up? They really want to trust you. They really want to know that you'll follow through. So that is your referrals needs. All right, so let's talk about the Q1 surge. This is quarter one. We're going into the end of 2025. October is normal. In November, the holidays start. Okay, families start getting together, people start making plans, they start making travel plans. If they haven't already, they should by November. And in December, we're full-on family visits, family holiday gatherings, and people that haven't seen each other in years. It might be at a restaurant, it might be at mom and dad's house. And if that's the case, we walk in the door, and what do we see? Maybe things aren't as clean as they used to be. Maybe bills aren't being paid, maybe mom's not taking our medicine, or there's a lot of dishes in the sink, and we start noticing things. And then in January comes the surge. Also in December, though, and November, depending on where you are in this world, flu season, ice and snow, slipping and falling, breaking our hips, all these things start happening in our very cold climate areas. So we have a lot of challenges in December and January. Skilled nursing facilities are going to be at their limits for the month of December and January. Hospitals are also at their limits, but skilled nursing facilities, they're going to offload onto a skilled facility as fast as they can possibly, or a rehab, hospital, rehab hospital, offloading, offloading. Get these people discharged to another facility where they can take care of them because we have 50 people in the emergency room that need a bed. So everybody, the overflow trickles down, and skilled nursing facilities also need to discharge people who are meeting their goals, who need to, their PTOT goals, whatever it is, they need to get those moved out. So they're going to be discharging them. And if, ladies, if I'm saying something dumb, you are welcome to chime in.
SPEAKER_02:No, this is huge. This is exactly how this happens. The hospitals are full. They need to send people somewhere and they're not well enough to go home yet. Even with home care. Yes, even with home health, they're just not well enough to go home. So the skill nursing facilities get very crowded and very just lots and lots of people, and there's just not enough room for them. So they have to send them home. And of course, they're making sure they're healthy enough to go home. But yeah, if they pass PTOT and it's time to go, they may give somebody home health that maybe they wouldn't have given them home health if they could stay longer. They're probably gonna leave with home health and non-medical. But yes, and this is the problem. If you are a marketer, so many say I'm not gonna be able to see anybody in skilled nursing. Everyone's on vacation, it's a holiday, they'll just take it easy. No, and most people, that's their mindset. I'm not gonna see anybody anyway. No, this is when discharges are happening. You're spot on, Dallary. Spot on. I don't know if leads to you and I have anything to add, but I see this year over year.
SPEAKER_03:I I worked as a discharge planner from the hospital end in a previous life before starting this business. And I remember the pressure. Everybody on the hospital end is who's a discharge planner or social worker, they are pressured to get people out the door. Doctors don't like it. Nobody likes it, but that's the pressure. How fast can we get this person? It's always a pressure, but when the winter months hit and people are sicker than usual, then boom, this pressure is tenfold. And the skilled nursing facilities are getting admin after admit after admit all day long. And they're also pressure to get people out the door. So you might notice if you have been around the block a while, that people are being discharged a little bit more frail than they normally are.
SPEAKER_02:They are, they absolutely are, and many of them want to be home for the holidays. Oh, yeah. Send me home. I don't care. I have to have a caregiver phone. I'm going home. Because they don't want to be in a sniff during the Christmas and Christmas Eve and all the holidays. So that's the other piece of it. But I would say they are a little more frail and more going home with some home health. But that's wonderful. We work great with home health. Non-medical home care does a great job with working side by side with home health. And if you own a home health agency, you probably will have more admits, admits during this time because they do send them a little more frail because they have the pressure of people coming in.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I would also say that where it says family burnout creates predictive, it's not just family burnout, but also family burnout. And now this is old school and it's not supposed to happen this way. But sometimes when a famil when a senior is heavy care, heavy care, admissions to the hospital spike, and the hospital keeps them for their required three days and blink over to sniff. So, yes, family does get burned out because they're heavily taken care of and heavily into the holidays. The whole it's a whole vicious cycle around the holidays. What to do with mom, especially if she's really not well. But it may not just not be physically, but maybe mentally, she's a little bit more checked out and the family caregiver is getting burned out trying to do all these things. So here we go. And this is what the skilled nursing facility referral source needs from you. So let's talk about fracture number five, which is missed revenue. 80% of agencies have no system. I don't know if it's really 80%, but I can tell you that a lot of agencies we talk to have no structured follow-up system for inquiries from referral sources or from consumers out there. And what I mean by that is yes, people call on the phone and somebody can do the intake on the phone, but you get forms that are filled out, you get emails from people. If people are coming to your website, then they are hopefully getting into a follow-up system that is a little bit automated, but also is cueing all of your staff that are important in this intake process to make that phone call right now. And most people don't have a structured follow up system, they're just winging it. And as those phone calls come in, it's almost even harder. Now it's great if it's between nine. a.m and 5 p.m. and you have someone there to answer the phone. But the problem is when someone calls at 5 35 p.m. or 7 35 p.m. and no one's answering the phone. Or if from 9 to 5 you have a system that is prompt after prompt or it's going to an answering service, you have to get your phone calls and your form straightened out. 80% of agencies, I would say it's close, have no system. They're winging it and hoping that it works.
SPEAKER_02:And I think too Valerie, it's when it's slow, having no system is still not okay. You need to have one, but it's slow. You don't see it as much. When you start to get busier when this peak happens on the holidays, then you notice that your system is not good. It's very flawed. So yeah if you're not super busy yet now's the time to get that system in place.
SPEAKER_03:Take the time to get the phone call stuff straightened out and the forms on your website straightened out and the calls to action on your website. So we'll talk about that. You don't need more marketing you need better alignment. I totally believe that if we have a lot of people that a lot of people do need more marketing, but if you don't have your systems in place now more marketing is going to create more chaos. So your digital presence and your physical sales need to work as one unit. Everything that happens as a result of your website and your blog posts and your social media all those intakes that come from that activity all those phone calls and clicks and forms that are getting filled out that stuff needs to land with someone who you can say reliably is going to fill follow up with those people. So physical sales and digital presence need to really work together on those. Especially if you have referral sources calling your office. Oh my gosh, I would love that or referral sources that are filling out forms on your website because someone needs care. What a lovely thing to have you need to be on top of that. So what's changed for 2026 decoding the new landscape of home care. AI search that's going to be the gatekeeper online chat GPT and AI overviews don't just list websites they cite authorities. So interesting agencies are now competing to be the answer not just a link. If AI can't structure your data it won't recommend you. This is very interesting. And we're going to talk about the solutions to this this means that if your website doesn't have the right code behind the scenes the right answers to the questions that people normally ask from your homepage all the way through your website AI is not going to pick up on it. And AI also likes fresh content. So if you let your content get old you haven't touched it in a long time it's not going to worry about you. Why agencies get ignored this is more about why your website gets ignored and of course there's a delivery and my dogs are going to go crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Yes it's lovely hold on one it wouldn't happen any other way.
SPEAKER_03:That's always my fear of course so we're going to talk about your website and the service pages and some of the generic content. So if you have a service page and I think anybody who's in the SEO business has also done this you might have service pages that are just a lot of text there's a lot of reading to do. And that's okay to have that but the structured data comes behind the scenes that you can't see. That's called schema code. And that code which you'll never see helps ChatGPT and Google and all the other AI services out there understand more about what your website's trying to convey and the answers to questions that people might have. We have always put structured data or schema code on the backs of our websites and our clients probably don't know it and that's okay but it's been a part of our SEO plan for a million gazillion years. Do we need to update some of that? Absolutely we can add to it anytime we want but we've already been doing that for our clients over the years. So that is a good thing. And we're not talking about just using a plug-in to do that. We actually hand or manually add additional schema code to help our clients' websites perform better behind the scenes because Google and ChatGPT do not see the pretty part of your website they see all that yucky code behind the scenes that none of us really want to look at. And then generic content. So if you're failing to answer specific location questions then you're going to end up not being sourced at all. Generic content is it says failing to answer specific local questions like Alzheimer's care. Like my mom is having memory problems and I think she needs Alzheimer's home care in St. Louis or what are the best Alzheimer's home care agencies in the St. Louis area those are the questions people are asking. So not only do you need to answer the question about Alzheimer's care but you need to answer about Alzheimer's care in the service area that you in your service area. So the local stuff what AI search looks for it looks for structured service pages, clear detailed pages for each service you offer not generic our services content. So when we develop a website and we've been in this habit for many years we don't just list in one page all your services we make sure each page has its own each service has its own page so Alzheimer's in dementia home care hospital to home transition services companion care personal care they all have their own page and that schema code is behind that and then frequently asked questions one thing that AI really looks for it has SEO has always done this too are you answering the questions that people really have and the number one question is not really who's the best the number one question I've seen this all across the country is how much does home care cost? Will Medicare pay for home care those are the questions that people are asking. And if you're not willing to answer that then you might be left behind. And I'm not saying that you have to necessarily put your hourly rate there because I know it's dependent on how much care someone needs and it's but you should be willing to cite some sources put a range do something to answer that question. Nested service clusters that sounds like a lot of fluff right there related services group logically with an internal linking that shows topical authority. So what that means is you have one page that talks about all your services and all of your pages that talk about specifically dementia care, personal care, companion care, hospital home transition services, they all link back to that main page. So you have the right internal linking on your website and local context signals, location specific content that demonstrates genuine community presence and expertise this is where your social media comes in and some of the content on your service pages. If you look at any one of our websites you will notice that we don't just talk about the home care agency at that location we also talk about hospitals and care services and senior friendly activities that are available in that local area. We've done that for SEO for years. We do that continuously for AI search content content as well. So you're demonstrating that yes, we're here as a home care agency but we also know this area because we live here and work here and our families are here and you're demonstrating that on your website in a very professional way. So hope that helps that's what AI is definitely looking for the rise of AI extraction to win your site must feed AI with data sets structured pricing or serviceless. So in your case for everybody out there listing your services is going to be really important. If you're willing to do some ranges and you couldn't do this in the fine print if you want a little bit of service pricing is fine. If you don't want to do that we can cite sources your frequently asked schema code that explicitly tells Google QA pairs. So if you look if you do a search right now on Chrome or on Google that and you just type in home care in St. Louis just a basic search as you scroll down and you pass the AI you're going to see something called People also ask and people also ask gives you the questions that people also ask besides home care in St. Louis they ask how much is home care in St. Louis they ask does Medicare pay for home care in St. Louis they ask all those frequently asked those are the frequently asked questions you should include on your website. And then you want to group related services so if you have companion care you want to make sure if you're talking about meal preparation in a blog post it's linking back to the companion care page those related services should be linked together. Lots of blah blah blah but it all works really well. Okay local authority beats global SEO I think all of you probably know this by now you are not you're not SEOing or trying to reach out to the entire world you're trying to reach out to the people in St. Louis Missouri or whatever town you're from you just need those 5000 people to see your website so the algorithm shift favors agencies demonstrating deep local expertise internal linking we just talked about that your Google business profile posting consistently updating your Google business profile is so important. You can automate that we automate that but we also go in and update that you can't let your Google business profile get too stale you want to go in and add something change a little thing here and there. You don't want to anger the Google monster but you definitely want to update your Google business profile and keyword rich reviews testimonials mentioning specific services and outcomes not just great care this is key it's hard to get people to leave reviews so let them leave a great review and don't tell them what to say just let them leave the great review. But when you answer them and you should answer every single review whether it's good or bad when you answer them when you answer great review you should be saying thank you so much for your kind words we're we are so honored to be able to provide excellent home care in St. Louis for seniors and families so you can find a way to work in that keyword phrase in your answer if the person who wrote the review did not do that, which often they don't so make sure you're adding those keyword phrases in and not sounding weird about it. And you know what you can use to help you with that chat GPT can help you write a great response. All right referral partners have evolved so we're focusing on skilled nursing facilities because or rehab hospitals because that is where the bulk of your referrals are going to come from if you play your cards right. SNF social workers have needs and they have wants. So their needs are they need documentation real-time availability updates. Texting is excellent if you can text them and say hey we're ready for any discharges you have this Friday at five o'clock we can take it improving reliability we talked about that earlier they want to know they can trust you when they go home on Friday at five o'clock they want to make sure their people are taken care of speed and responsiveness trumps relationships. I don't know if it trumps it but it sure is helpful. So your relationship with them is very important but if you can be speedy and responsive I think in our sales training we have some interviews with social workers that are just for the folks going through our training and didn't those social workers talk about the fact that they just don't hear back from anybody they have a referral and nobody answers them. That's crazy. If if social worker calls you or texts you or goes through whatever they do, the follow-up needs to be instant and it needs to be yes I'll be there in a minute drop what you're doing and go their wants are they want backup support for weekend coverage and overflow situations being their safety net opens doors. So if you can't get in the door because they say we already work with another home care agency, what about okay when they can't handle it, we will and if you can be that person guaranteed that primary home care agency isn't going to be able to handle every single thing. It might take a few months but there's going to be a crack in the armor and you can slip right in and say we'll take that you have to be willing to do that. The overflow pitch position your agency as a reliable partner when their primary providers can't respond. This is your competitive edge be the person they can default to when their person they think is their ultimate referral their ultimate home care agency when they have a fail moment you just step right on in there and then it grows from there and you step right on in there again. And eventually they're gonna just continue to send you their Fridays their Saturdays whatever it is and you need all of them you need all of their referrals if I'm saying anything out of turn ladies let me know. All right it's all good stuff. Okay. Referral partner shifted skill nursing facility discharge planners are overwhelmed and understaffed. I think we all know that they value that reliability in those relationships and they need partners who answer the phone 247. They should have your cell phone and you should be willing to answer it. They should not I know they're going to get voicemail once in a while if you're driving or something maybe but they should not have to wait to get a response from you if they have someone to send you and that happens all the time. The overflow pitch we just talked about why it wins they dread weekend gaps. Now they dread all week gaps they dread gaps anytime they want to go home on the weekend and know that their people have been taken care of. Position yourself as that backup support for difficult discharges and weekend coverage be the solution to their discharge pain. Be the solution to their discharge pain you're walking in and asking them how you can help them when they have a difficult client when they have or patient and it can turn into your client or they just can't get another home care agency to help consumers change too we're seeing faster decision cycles families want answers right now they want to know everything's going to be okay they want to be able to trust somebody and they're very frustrated with the speed at which their loved one is being discharged. Even if they've been warned from day one they still think it's too fast. So they're really looking for help at home AI research using AI summaries to shortlist agencies before calling I guarantee you this has happened and it's probably happened thousands and thousands of times since AI became the top at the top of Google private pay preferring guided choice websites that educate them. When we build a website should be easy to understand easy to flip through and easy to navigate but it should also be like chapters in a book. So if you're going to talk about private pay or companion care or personal care you want to be sure you're answering those frequently asked questions that are specific to that chapter that they're reading or that page that they're reading they need to know that the answers are there. They want to be able to educate themselves but they don't want to be overwhelmed or frustrated and it's hard not to be overwhelmed when your parent needs care is really hard especially if you're not in healthcare already all right the 2026 home care growth system I see four comments in here do we need to answer anything before I go on they've all been answered. Okay great awesome all right here we go the five pillars of success the core model look at that picture wow AI created that not me that's pretty cool though pillar number one is online discoverability you have to be AI ready your website needs to have some little tweaks to it or maybe some big tweaks to it or maybe a complete redo depending that helps it be more AI ready. And we've already started doing that for our current clients because their websites were pretty good to begin with but now we can do some content tweaks in our SEO program that really helps them so show up in AI search. Pillar number two Google business profile dominance really look at your Google business profile. Do you have real pictures on there? Do you have updates? Have you put an update do you have anything you need what about frequently asked questions when we optimize a Google business profile we put at least 12 frequently asked questions there. We not only ask the question but we answer the question and we do it in a specific way that's secret sauce referral relationship architecture pillar number three you got to have a really good setup not only a relationship but also being speedy and willing to take challenging cases. Pillar number four your follow-up system again speedy and consistent and trusted and then pillar number five is private pay conversion. So you want to make sure that anybody that comes into your fray they understand what Medicare does pay for, what it doesn't pay for and how you can get in the door. Now we have a lot of really good programs right now out there. If you've heard of the guide program G-U-I-D-E where Medicare will pay for some dementia related in-home care. It's very interesting as a pilot project right now but it's really worth knowing about and if you can be in that program or the VA has the community care network those are some great things to get people in the door get your foot in the door and then convert them to private pay. All right online discover discoverability that AI ready structure your service pages are built with extraction patterns for AI. Rich frequently asked question schema is non-negotiable. Not just your service pages but your home page should have some frequently asked questions at the bottom that's my rec recommendation not about a specific service but about your organization. So every page should have frequently asked questions that are specific to that page not just general and they shouldn't be the same on every page. It gets complicated monthly SEO Maintenance aligned with AI search. So technical health checks, updating schema for new services, and refreshing content to maintain freshness signals. So we blog post for our clients. We update their content. So not only is SEO team in there working and adding some content here and there, but also our if they're in our marketing program, our folks are blog posting and updating that, those freshness signals. We've always done that. There's never been a time when Google didn't appreciate fresh content. It has always appreciated fresh content. So six weekly actions for your Google business profile, upload new photos, real photos of your staff. And it says clients there. I get it. You have to have permission for that. But it could be staff, clients, the front of your building, a wrapped car that you have, a logo, something you dropped off to a referral source, like donuts with your logo on the box or like a sticker. Whatever. Upload new photos, post updates and events, seed, question, and answer. So you can not only, as an admin of your Google Business profile, you can ask questions, but you can just turn right around and answer the question. Google doesn't care. Yes, you can answer those questions and do it. And then also give it a thumbs up and respond to reviews. Every review should have a response, unless it's a disgruntled employee or someone who didn't get hired or someone who got fired. And then we don't want to answer it right away. We want to report it, get it removed before we answer it. Something to know. All right. So seasonal strategy, prepare for the January spike. Ensure your Google Business Profile highlights immediate availability during post-holiday crisis period. Now, how do you do that? First of all, you can add a cover photo. You can change your cover photo to our fat quick home care start, or I don't know, however you want to say that immediate availability. The other thing I see people doing is they are putting that they their office is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. or 9 to 5. No, you're a home care agency. You're open 24 hours a day. No, people aren't going to drive up to your office at two in the morning, but they can call you if they're a client at two o'clock in the morning and say, hey, nobody showed up for their shift. So technically you're open 24 hours a day. If you don't say that on your Google Business profile, there'll be a giant red closed on your Google Business profile. And you don't want that because your competitor says open. You want to be open 24-7, 24-7. People aren't going to call you at two in the morning unless it's an emergency. 24-7. Okay, relationship architecture, entry strategy, the backup pitch. The backup pitch. I'll be your backup. When ABC Home Care can't do it, we will. Creates a low-risk way for facilities to try you out. Don't just visit, document the visit to prove return on investment to agency owners. So documentation, don't just visit, document the visit to prove ROI to agency owners. So this is the salesperson. Don't just visit, keep track of how many places you're visiting, how many times you're visiting, who you're talking to. And there are lots of ways to keep track of that, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet or it's an app that you keep track of that in. And I think we recommend that you do keep track of that in an app of some kind so that an agency owner can pull that information up and say, you made 40 visits this week. Wow, that's great. And how many of them were face-to-face? And how many of them were just drop-offs? And how many of them were resulted in a referral? You want to make sure you're doing that. Helping is better than selling. So shift your mindset from just give me a referral to helping staff, not selling to staff. It wins every time. Solve their problems, difficult families, weekend discharges, and you become indispensable. If you can handle that for a while, being the weekend fill-in, the Friday afternoon at five o'clock, the difficult family, the difficult client, if you can handle that for a while, you become indispensable and you become the person they're going to call every time, not just for the challenging pieces of the referral game. Okay, follow-up system for inquiries. There's a four-touch sequence. So if an inquiry comes in, let's say it comes in from a form or a phone call, you immediately need to call that person back. Within five minutes, call that person back. You want to make sure you get you text them a confirmation. You want to email them and you want to call them back the next day. This is not just about referral sources. This is about consumers who call your office or consumers who fill out a form on your website or consumers who fill out that little chat thing that's on your website. Immediately call them, confirm, make sure that they're getting a text and an email and call them back. Callback timing is critical. And we do have a CRM that our clients can use and it will do all of that. If it's a form that's filled out or a chat that's happening on their site, not only is that staff member notified by text and email immediately that someone is trying to get a hold of them, but it also immediately texts the person back, immediately emails the person back and lets them know we're on the way. We're on the way to call you. We know you're there, and we're going to call you right back. You need to have that kind of point set up. Private pay conversion system, reduce friction, simplify intake forms, offer online scheduling, provide transparent pricing guidelines. Now, I don't know that online scheduling is necessarily going to work in home care. We have had a lot of clients try that. Set up your own in-home assessment. And it's a little bit more complicated than that. So not very many people will do that, but you can offer online scheduling. Simplifying intake forms, that is for the referral source or for the client. If you look at any of our websites, you'll see there's a get started form. And it asks just some key information. It doesn't go on and on. It's a very simple form, but it lets the home care agency staff know what they should expect when they make that phone call. Who it is that's filling out the form, what's going on with their parent or their aging loved one, and what kind of services they think they might need. And transparent pricing guidance would be an on the phone kind of thing. Intake scripting. I know we talk about this in sales training, but anybody who's answering the phone is part of your marketing team. They need to know what to say and they need to have a script that builds trust and handles objections gracefully. That's hard to do. I think role play and practice is really what it takes to get that done, to help people that are taking those phone calls really understand. Ethical urgency, framing timing around patient or client well-being, not sales pressure. The sooner we start, the better the outcomes. That's very true. The sooner home care starts, the better off everyone in the family will be. The senior, the family caregiver, everybody will have a better outcome if we get that helper in there. And 90-second trust. So this is about 90-second trust is when you're in person. You are there sitting with them. You're in the skilled nursing facility and you're talking to them, or you're in the home talking to them. Your first impression on them will determine conversion. Empathy, competence, and clarity will win the decision. So in about the first 90 seconds that you're with a physical family, that's your first impression. And what you say and what you talk about, and how you even look and how you're dressed, and how you present yourself and your compassionate attitude is what's going to really win them over. Whoop, wrong way. Okay. You must build trust in the first 90 seconds. Now, this says of the call. Now, I know that on a call, Don reminded me of this. It's the first 10 seconds, right? Yeah. 10 seconds on the call. 10 seconds on the call, 90 seconds in person. You have a minute and a half in person. You have 10 seconds on the call. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. In 90 seconds, if they try to kick you out after 90 seconds, it didn't go well.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:So on the phone, you have 10 seconds to build trust and get that assessment scheduled. So what are you going to say in 10 seconds? You're going to listen, do a lot of listening.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You're going to listen and you're going to place yourself as the expert and get them to trust you in 10 seconds. And it can happen in one sentence.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Yep. Tell me more about what's going on. Oh, that compassion and that empathy for whoever's on the other end of that phone call because they are stressed out. And I can tell you in the past, I think we've done secret shopper stuff over the years. I've called home care agencies just to talk to the owner about business or whatever. And the person that answers the phone, they say, if they answer the phone like a teenager or someone who's not well versed in phone etiquette, you're going to lose them. And as an old person now, myself, or whatever, as an adult child of an aging parent, if I call somebody in the old bell, no.
SPEAKER_02:Also, the press one for this, the press two for that, they don't see you as carrying. If you were carrying you'd have a light person, you wouldn't make me press one for this and press two for that. And I know you're busy. And that's why we're putting that, we're implementing that because we're busy. But you're also could be losing losing people because of that. So kind of keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. Absolutely. The more buttons I have to push, the less excited I am to talk to the first person who answers. Absolutely. The referral flywheel. I love this.
SPEAKER_02:I do too. I have to tell you, I love this. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that's okay. So marketing feeds sales. So I do some marketing. People call and don't talk, they talk to Don. They talk to Don. Sales feeds operations. So your salesperson makes a sale. Boom! Scheduling needs to be in gear right then and there. Operation feeds reviews. So the better your scheduling and operations people are and your caregivers are, the better your reviews are going to be. And those reviews are all 100% marketing for your business. So marketing is going to feed those additional sales, feeds operations. So it all works together. It has to work together. Everything you have online and everything you have in person needs to work together. It's not siloed over here's our website that's just a brochure. We don't care. It's a definite picture of your vision, your mission, your values. And it's a professional representation of you. If I Google you and I find your website and it looks like crap, I am not going to call you. I'm going to call the next person. Because I, if you don't care about what your perception is online, that's part of your marketing. Then I don't think you care about my mom or what your oper what your operations people are doing. So anyway, yes, this is one of take a picture of this. This is one of my favorites, too. Three immediate execution sprints. Here we go. The 10-day plan. First of all, review your service pages. Look at your homepage of your website, but look at the page that talks about all the services you provide. And if it's only one page, it's not enough pages. It needs to be a page for every single service. And I don't mean a bulleted list, a robust page that answers questions and helps people understand more. Don't put just meal preparation errands and a company to doctors. Yes, you can have that bulleted list, but I want to know more about why that's important. Okay, as a person who's never been involved with home care. So review your service pages. Add frequently asked schema, frequently asked question schema. So every page should have some frequently asked questions at the bottom, at the middle, at the top, somewhere. And behind the scenes, your SEO person, your web developer should know how to add additional schema for those frequently asked questions. And if they don't, you might be with the wrong web developer. Update your Google business profile five times in the next 10 days. If you don't have automated posting already, then you need to go and add an update, pictures, just like you would on social media, just like you would on LinkedIn, just like you would on Facebook. Go there, add some pictures, talk about what you did, what kind of community involvement and outreach you're having this week. Do that. Add 10 new photos in the next 10 days. You have photos of a staff party. Holidays are really an easy time to get lots of pictures of all your staff, people enjoying themselves, maybe an event that you attended. Put 10 new photos, 10 that you took, not that you picked out of stock photos that you actually took on your phone.
SPEAKER_02:Ballerine, we have a quick question. Sure. What's the best way to implement service information pages for multi-location agency? Who asked that question? That's Samantha Hoffman. We talked with her several times. So multi-office location. She's with family resources.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. And then you have a page for St. Louis, and you have a page for Baldwin, Missouri. I'm just using my towns as an example. So underneath, so for that office location of St. Louis, it has its own page. And then so it says abchomecare.com forward slash St. Louis. And then forward slash companion care, forward slash personal care. So you you're building St. Louis up, and St. Louis has its own set of pages that are specific to your services. Any not every franchise does this. So whether you're franchise or independent doesn't matter, but a lot of franchises will do it this way. The office that they have in Phoenix, Arizona, if they've done it, that Phoenix, Arizona subsite or whatever you want to call it, mini site, will also have its own set of services pages, own contact page, own about us page. It'll have its own, like almost whole website. And if it's implemented correctly, they will have their own local blog. So the corporate side can have all kinds, that's the overlay, has all kinds of great stuff. But if you play your cards, every single location should have its own set of service pages and its own blog and all of those things.
SPEAKER_02:I hope that answered the question. We have another question. How do you get a disgruntled comment removed? This must be off a Google business profile.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Okay. So if you have a it's boy, this is okay. If you have a disgruntled employee or someone you didn't hire, I've seen a lot of these. They didn't get hired, so they're mad. So they leave some kind of jerky comment or review, or they got fired, right? And they leave a bad review. And then five of their friends go on there and leave something horrible as well. I've seen some really weird stuff. We've all seen some really weird stuff. Don't answer it at first. You've got time. Go to the review and you report it. There's three little dots next to each review. And if you click on those three little dots, you will, it'll come up, report this review. So you hit report this and it'll give you a list of options: bullying and harassment, not on topic. I don't know. So you either choose conflict of interest, if that's available. First, I would choose conflict of interest, and then I would choose off topic or something like that. I've noticed lately that sometimes I can choose conflict of interest, and sometimes it's not there. I have to choose something else. So I would say off topic or not relevant to this business, because they are not a user of your services. They may not like you, but they didn't give home care from you. So they should not be leaving you a review. Only people who actually used you for home care should be leaving a review. On the other hand, on the flip side of that, if a caregiver leaves you a good review and says this is a great place to work, we're not gonna say no to that. We like that. So I see a lot of that going on. Be careful about it, but certainly caregivers leaving reviews is nice. All right. So when you report it, then you should have other people around you that work in the office or whatever also reporting that same review the same way you did. You don't have to put any comments there, you just need a few people to report it. Uh, if it's our client and it happens, I'll report it. Lisa will report it for the client. Any we'll all go on there and report it, and then they'll report it. So usually after a few people report it, it gets taken down. Not always. And if it is a client who, an adult child who left a terrible review, assuming that it's real, it is hard to get those taken down. You can try, but you're not gonna, if it's real, you're probably not gonna be able to get it taken down. Therefore, you want to go in and get as many positive reviews. And the answer you give, the answer you give to that person who left that review is very important. If it really is a client and they left a bad review, the answer you give is important. You're not giving that answer for the person who left the review because there might not be anything you can do about that, but you're giving a good answer for the person who is next in line to potentially use your services. You're giving the answer for the next reader. So we help our clients with those all the time. It really is a challenge sometimes. But you want as many reviews as you can possibly get. And we do have a review program that helps with that. All right. Facility re-entry strategy, three routes to get in, the backup pitch will help you when you're at capacity or short staffed. Now, if you're a staffing agency, you may, but really what you're trying to say there is will help you when you need to get this person out over the weekend or you need to get this person out on Friday. The weekend specialist, we provide reliable weekend and holiday coverage. So if you're discharging someone and you need home care out in the home right away, we can help. And the difficult case partner, we take complex patients that others decline. Now, if you Can't take a complex patient, don't do it. But if you can, and it might not be complex in their medical stuff, but it might be complex in that they're steeped in dementia. They really are a little bit challenging in the home. So if you can take those kinds of patients, great. Don't take them if you can't. But you can position yourself as a reliable backup strategy until you become their primary home care agency to refer to. Identify 40 high-value facilities. How do you know how to do that? Come to sales training. Visit 40 per week. Yes, I said 40. Don will tell you 50. Document every interaction and build a systemic systematic presence. Document everything you do every time you visit. Make sure you follow up. Do all those things. Your marketer is positioned and prepared for the January discharge surge with established relationships. So start now with whoever your in-person marketer is, whether that's you or someone you have hired, make sure they are uh ready, that they have some backup pitches when the per when the person says, Oh, we have a home care agency we already referred to. Ah, when they can't help you, we will make sure that they know that. When they can't help on the weekend, call me. Gallery, we have another question.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. We have a new client who's in our SEO. So she's getting two town pages a month. So she's asking when we do that, do we do that for personal care, home care, companion care, like we like you just mentioned.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So first we want to get those town pages established. So we want to make our way through the town pages and get those established. And then what we do is we go back and start adding in those service pages for each of those towns. The most important and easiest town is going to be the one that you're actually located in. But we do go back after we've got your 10 town pages created and start adding those service pages that match with that town. In the meantime, though, we're blog posting for you every other week. And those blog posts are linking back to the town, the to a town on your list and usually a service page on your list. So we're doing that with blog posting, but we go back and do those pages, those static pages that aren't just blog posts. We do those after we get through your first 10 towns. Sprint number three, follow-up reset. Don't have any leakage. Rewrite your phone scripts. Make sure the people answering the phone in your office know exactly what to say and who to get on the phone if they don't know the answer. Implement that four-touch cadence. Remember, I talked about calling them back immediately, the texting, the email, calling back in two days and making sure that they've got the help they need, or can you be the help they need? Or when are we starting services? And add documentation templates. So make sure that whoever is answering the phone, who's ever out in the field, all those people are documenting what is happening. There should be sheets next to the phone that they can just check off all the boxes. How did you hear about us? How can I help? What's happening with you? Whatever those check boxes are, make sure it's by the phone. You need to know what every piece of your operations is doing and what questions they're asking so that it can all work together. If you can do these things and make sure your in-person salesperson, along with everyone in the office and your website, is working together, you'll have zero lead leakage in quarter one. Woo, wouldn't that be nice? It's all about being fast and compassionate. Fast and compassionate. Win in 2026, AI ready websites with GoCare Pro Sales Training. That's how you win. Schedule your strategy call and let's build your 2026 roadmap together. And there's your team again for 2026. And I will take any questions. And there's Dawn's contact information and our websites and our phone number. Is there any other questions that I can answer? It looks like a lot of chats. I'm not certain all. No. Okay. Does anybody have a question about SEO versus AI? AI search, any kind of skilled nursing facility strategies, your structure of your website, your Google Business Profile strategy, fresh, fresh, freshen it up. That's my recommendation. Anyone have any other questions?
SPEAKER_02:If not, see anything else.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so what's going to happen now is we are going to send out the replay to everybody who registered. So the replay will come to you. We did record this. And if you have any questions then, or if you want to reach out to one of us, there's Dawn's email address and the phone number. She's the one that takes those calls. If you have more individual questions, you're welcome to reach out to us. Or if you're our client, you can go through support and we will help you. We are all available for you. And that's it. That's your preparation for Q1. Let's go. And we'll talk about, and we can also help you with sales training. If your folks out in the field are not, or you feel like you don't have the you're either need a refresh, you need new ideas and strategies, our sales training is amazing. We I think we have over 50, well, we have 50 testimony, 40, 50 testimonial videos, more than that, 50 to 60 testimonial videos on YouTube, and also 40 plus testimonials on our Google Business Profile, all five stars. So if you want to see how other people feel about our sales training or services in general, all you have to do is Google us and go to YouTube and you'll find all of those things.
SPEAKER_02:Valerie, speaking of YouTube, Danny wanted to give a shout out to me and Annette on the gatekeeper videos. Remember the gatekeeper videos? Those were so good. You need more of those. She actually pretended to be the gatekeeper of the adult child. Lisa was in a couple of them too. Lisa was not a very nice gatekeeper. It was hard to get past her, but I did it. But anyway, there are sample videos as if we're right there trying to get past the gatekeeper. Thank you, Danny, for bringing that up because I didn't know people were watching, but they are. I think the gate, it's called the gatekeeper tapes.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Yeah. And there's two or three of them. Yes. If you go to our if you type that in, you might find us. But if you type in approved senior network or sales training for home care, or usually approved senior network will bring up all of our stuff, but we have a channel that's a hundred percent home care marketing stuff. And if you go to that channel, you will definitely, I think there are the their long form videos, they're not under shorts, but there's so much there. And so I hope that you go there and learn all you can. All right, folks. If that's it, then happy holidays, happy new year, and let's work together in 2026. Give us a call, visit our websites, and we can help you get through whatever's going on. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
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