Video Transcript
Two Channels that Drive Home Care Leads (Almost) Immediately
If you are looking for non-medical home care leads now, you basically have two channels available to you: directories and Google Ads. With over 15 million Americans receiving in-home care services in 2024, the demand for non-medical home care continues to grow rapidly. That means more opportunity–but also more competition–for local agencies.
I would add SEO to be a third channel if you have a very authoritative website; if you are a franchise owner of a Home Instead or Visiting Angels, it should be pretty fast to get you rank.
But if you’re an independent home care agency, odds are you have two channels available to you right now. So let’s talk the numbers for each one.
My name is Frank, I’m the founder of Sagapixel. We are a home care marketing agency that works with home care businesses throughout the US and Canada. I’ve shot a lot of videos on different aspects of digital marketing for home care. I encourage you to check it out.
So let’s get into it.
1. Directories Do Deliver Home Care Leads
Channel number one, you have the directories.
Care.com and whatnot will drive leads your way. The challenging part though is that those leads are also going to be going to multiple other home care agencies, many of whom have amazing sales organizations set up.
If you don’t have your sales really, really dialed in, they’re going to eat you alive.
Most of the home care agencies that I’ve met with have reported closing at about 1 in 10 of these leads, which has always led me to believe that in most markets you have one home care agency that’s closing 50 to 70% of them and everybody else is fighting over the scraps.
So let’s talk these two scenarios.
What Is a Typical Cost Per Lead for Home Care through Directories?
In scenario one, you are advertising on care.com or a similar directory, you’re closing 1 in 10 of those leads. Each one of the leads has an average cost per lead of anywhere from $75 to 100. In that case, you have a $750 to 1,000 cost per acquisition for a case.
If you have an average customer lifetime value of $15,000, which is the industry average across the United States, you’re operating at some really tight margins, but it is doable.
So let’s say in scenario number two, you are the monster that’s closing half of those leads.
If they’re coming in at $75 to 100 each, you have an acquisition cost of anywhere from $375 to 500, and assuming an average customer lifetime value of $15,000, you’re in pretty good shape. Again, there are cheaper channels to generate leads, namely referrals and organic search.
But you can build a home care agency with a client acquisition cost of $375 to 500.
2. Google Ads Can Drive Home Care Leads as Well
So now let’s talk about channel number two, Google Ads.
A typical home care Google Ads campaign usually runs with a cost per lead anywhere from $75 to $150 per conversion.
We’ve noticed that the campaigns that we run for Comfort Keepers and Visiting Angels and so forth often have a much lower cost per lead.
Right now we have one for $68/Conversion for Visiting Angels FranchiseVisiting Angels that has a cost per conversion of $28.
Our independent, our agencies that don’t necessarily have the reputation of larger, more established players usually have a cost per lead of anywhere from $75 to $150.
Now, if you were able to close one in five of those leads, you’re going to have a cost per case acquisition of anywhere from $375 to $750. Again, assuming an average customer lifetime value of $15,000, you have a business model here.
Use Paid Channels to Drive Home Care Leads that Can Finance Your Organic Channels
Now, the goal using either of these channels is to get the ball rolling, to make sure that you have a sustainable pipeline for your business as you develop your organic channels.
You should be working on referral partners, getting physical therapists, doctors, other healthcare providers, frankly, the primary care providers of the patients that come in through paid and you want to turn those into referral partners.
3. Using SEO to Drive Home Care Leads
You also want to work on your organic strategies. SEO takes longer, but over the lifetime of your home care agency, assuming that you work with a good home care SEO partner, your cost per lead is going to be a fraction of the cost per lead through any sort of paid channel.
A well ranking home care agency will, over the lifetime of their SEO campaign, see cost per lead of $15 to 25. Thing is it takes some time, it takes some money to get there. Unless again, you’re one of those franchises. Give me a Home Helpers, Home Instead, Comfort Keepers’ new account and we’ll get it ranking in one to three months.
So what have you seen? What channels have you used to drive home care leads that have actually worked for you? I’m really interested in hearing.
