Case Studies – My Blog

HC One

How we turned around occupancy for struggling care homes: a 65% increase in enquiries

65%

Increase in enquiries

50+

Care homes supported

Wales & South England

Geography

HC-One is one of the UK’s largest care home providers, operating over 300 homes across England, Scotland, and Wales, with a mission to deliver kind care to every resident. Several care homes across the portfolio were struggling to fill beds. Enquiry volumes were low, digital visibility was poor, and homes were leaning on expensive, scattergun advertising that wasn’t reaching the right people at the right moment — the families actively searching for care.

The objective was clear: reverse the decline in enquiries, improve local visibility, and build sustainable pipelines that didn’t depend on costly paid media alone.

The Challenge

Before proposing solutions, I diagnosed why these homes were underperforming. The picture was consistent:

Weak digital presence
Outdated listings, poor local SEO

No local community roots
Invisible to local community

Untargeted ad spend
Budget wasted on low-ROI channels

Weak messaging
No clear positioning or emotional hook

WHAT WE DID

Rather than throw more budget at the problem, I shifted the strategy to focus on high-relevance, locally rooted activity:

Identified realistic keyword opportunities and addressed indexing issues, then created SEO-led content; FAQs, blog posts, service pages — to improve organic discoverability
Optimised page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and Google Business Profiles to strengthen local search rankings for each home individually.
Rebuilt the homes’ digital presence by migrating them to updated landing pages with accurate photos, services, and descriptions that built trust with families researching care.
Introduced hyper-local partnerships: community magazines, GP and pharmacy engagement, local events — to raise awareness within the communities most likely to refer or enquire.
Redirected wasted ad spend from broad campaigns to targeted, trackable local activity. Introduced QR codes on print materials so we could measure real-world effectiveness for the first time.
Challenged and paused underperforming paid campaigns, reallocating budgets to channels demonstrating stronger ROI, backed by performance data.
Repositioned home messaging with clearer, more human language — rooted in the stories of the people who lived there, not just the services on offer.

Here is a question

The focus wasn’t about spending more, it was about spending smarter, showing up where families were already looking, and giving them a reason to trust what they found.”

What changed

65%

Increase in enquiries across supported homes

Organic traffic growth, reducing dependency on paid media

Reduced wasted ad spend, budgets redirected to higher-performing channels

Stronger local trust through community-led presence

Beyond the numbers, something more important shifted: homes moved from reactive panic-spending to proactive, data-informed marketing. Managers understood their local audiences better. Spend was justified by results. And the homes that had been invisible to nearby families began showing up in search, in the community, and in local conversation.

If you’d like to find out about how RIVIVAL can help your brand, get in touch now.