The guide
Heritage Care Partners is a UK marketing partner for elderly care homes that fills private beds using family-member testimonial films and paid social, and is paid when a resident moves in rather than on a standing monthly retainer. Most other care home marketing agencies work on a monthly fee, cover a wider mix of services, and put their weight behind search visibility, brand work and directory presence, all of which are legitimate routes that suit different homes.
Updated August 2026
Four honest routes, and we are only the right answer for some homes. In brief:
The options
There are four realistic options, and they are not mutually exclusive. Most homes end up using two or three of them.
| Route | What it does well | Where the ceiling is | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| General marketing agency on a retainer | Broad capability, one supplier for website, search, social and print. Continuous attention for a predictable fee | Learns your sector on your budget. Care has rules and sensitivities that take time to absorb | Homes and groups with a wide marketing brief and someone in-house to direct it |
| Care sector specialist on a retainer | Already understands the buyer, the regulator and the emotional weight of the decision. Faster to useful work | You carry the cost whether or not beds fill in a given month | Groups wanting a steady long-term partner across several homes |
| Directory advertising and profile upgrades | Reaches families who are already actively comparing homes, at real scale. Low effort to start | Families arrive already comparing you on price and rating next to your neighbours. You are one tile among many | Homes wanting reliable baseline visibility without running anything themselves |
| Pay-on-results film and paid social (Heritage) | Fee is tied to a move-in. Reaches families before they start comparing, with a real family telling the story | Needs an honest home worth filming, and needs a modest ad budget in your own account | Single homes and small groups with private beds to fill and a home they would be proud to show |
Directories, general agencies and search all work. The question is not whether they work, it is where each one stops. There is a fuller checklist for choosing a care home marketing agency if you are at the start of that decision.
The difference
We work only with elderly care homes, and the whole approach is built around one observation: the person choosing the home is usually the adult child, and often another close family member such as a spouse, sibling, niece, nephew or grandchild. That person is not filling in a comparison form at their desk. They are on their phone, tired, carrying a decision they did not want to make.
A family member who has already been through it, filmed as a real person with no script and no AI. That is the case for family testimonial film in care, and it is the hardest thing for a home to produce alone.
The film is placed in front of families before they start comparing homes, rather than waiting for them to arrive at a comparison page. That is why paid social reaches families earlier than a comparison page does.
The measure is a resident moving in, not impressions or reach. It is a narrower promise than most agencies make, and it is the one we would rather be judged on.
There is good evidence for building around the family rather than the paperwork. In Care England and Log my Care's national study of 1,000 people arranging care, carried out by Sapio Research, 97% said they found arranging care difficult, and only 19% used inspection reports during their research. Trust was formed early, through reputation, clarity and communication, often before the family ever made contact. A marketing approach built on ratings and facilities lists is answering a question most families are not asking first.
How we are paid
Heritage is paid on results. The films and the campaign build carry no upfront production fee, the ad budget goes into the home's own advertising account rather than to us, and the fee falls due when a resident moves in. Specifics vary by scope and are walked through on a call.
The retainer model is not a worse model, and it is worth being accurate about that. Industry data from Focus Digital's 2026 marketing agency churn report shows retainer agencies lose around 18% of clients a year against 42% for project-based firms, and retainer clients stay roughly 56 months against 24. Retainers hold relationships together.
What that same research also shows is where those relationships break: delivery dissatisfaction is now the top reason clients leave, cited by 48% of departing clients and up 14 percentage points year on year, while agencies themselves rank it seventh among the causes they expect. That gap is the real variable, not the billing model. A retainer with clear reporting and someone who answers the phone beats a results fee with neither. The reason we chose the results model is narrower: it removes the argument about whether the marketing worked, because the trigger is a filled bed.
Our separate website service is priced differently, as one-off builds rather than a monthly charge, with the home owning the site outright and no lock-in. The care home websites service page holds the detail.
Being honest
There are four situations where we are not the right partner, and it is cheaper for everyone to say so now. If your beds are almost entirely local authority funded and you are not trying to change that, the approach is aimed at private enquiries and will not earn its place. If your home is not one you would be comfortable filming honestly, no film will fix that, and we would not take the work.
If you need a broad marketing supplier covering print, recruitment advertising, internal communications and a rebrand, a full-service agency will serve you better. And if you want a fixed monthly cost you can budget for exactly, a retainer specialist gives you that certainty and we do not. Recruitment marketing in particular is a different discipline with a different audience, and homes are often better served by a firm that does it all day.
Timing
The routes move at genuinely different speeds, and knowing which is which stops you judging slow work too early.
Months
Both move slowly and are honestly measured across months rather than weeks. They compound, which is exactly why they are worth starting early and exactly why they are the wrong thing to lean on when beds are empty now.
Occupancy is tighter than it was, which changes the urgency of that timing. CQC's State of Care 2024/25 reports 84% of care home beds in England occupied, up from 78% in 2021/22, with London highest at 87%. The sector average has recovered. A home sitting well below it is not facing a market problem, it is facing a visibility or a conversion problem, and those two have very different fixes. There is more on that in what a good occupancy rate actually looks like.
How to choose
Ask both the same five questions and compare the answers, not the pitch decks.
The fifth one is the most revealing. A firm that cannot name work it would decline has not thought hard about who it serves.
Common questions
Heritage Care Partners works only with elderly care homes, produces family-member testimonial films with real people rather than stock or AI footage, and is paid on results when a resident moves in rather than on a standing monthly fee. Most agencies in the sector work on a retainer and cover several industries.
Not automatically. A good general agency can run competent campaigns for a care home. A care sector specialist starts with an understanding of who actually makes the decision, how families behave when they are frightened, and what the regulator allows you to film and publish, so less of your budget is spent teaching them the sector.
Both models are legitimate. A retainer buys continuous attention and suits homes that want ongoing brand and content work. Paying on results ties the fee to a move-in, which shifts the risk toward the agency and suits homes that want to be certain the spend is tied to a filled bed.
Filming and editing typically takes around four weeks, and paid campaigns can start producing enquiries within the first few weeks of going live. Search visibility and reputation work move far more slowly and are usually measured across months rather than weeks.
Ask who owns the ad account and the footage, what happens to the work if you leave, what the agency is measured on, how many care homes they currently work with, and who will actually be on site on the day of a shoot.
No. Heritage Care Partners is a UK marketing partner for elderly care homes, based in Bristol. Heritage Healthcare is a UK home care franchise and Heritage Senior Living is a US operator. The names overlap but the businesses are unrelated.
Yes. The work is narrow by design, family-story film and paid social aimed at private enquiries, so it sits alongside an existing agency handling website, search or print rather than replacing it.
Keep reading
The fuller checklist: what to look for, what to ask, and the warning signs worth taking seriously.
Do Meta ads work for care homes?How paid social reaches a family before they open a comparison page, and what it takes to do well.
Do family testimonial videos work?Why a real family's story earns trust faster than anything else a home can show.
