Engine one · earned
Care home PR
National, regional and trade press, campaigns and awards, run by our team. For Berkley Care Group that meant 400 pieces of coverage across 64 outlets.
See the Berkley resultsNew, our care marketing software, is liveWatch the film, 1:42
Care home marketing and PR agency
Care home marketing and PR, measured in move-ins.
We are a specialist care home marketing and PR agency. We put care operators in front of the families choosing a home, from BBC News to the top of a local search. Now there is bamboo too: our own software for the ads, enquiries and local ranking that fill beds week to week.
- pieces of coverage for one care group
- 400
- and the Daily Mirror in a single week
- BBC · ITV
- to start on bamboo. No card.
- £0
Beta
Helping care providers grow. Everything bamboo does, in 1:42.
The short answer
What is care home marketing?
Last updated
Care home marketing is the work of getting a home chosen: found when a family searches, trusted when they read about you, and answered fast when they enquire. It is measured in enquiries, viewings and move-ins, not impressions.
Families choose under strain. In a 2018 survey of 1,000 people for the Care Quality Commission, 52% named choosing a care home among their three most stressful life decisions (CQC, February 2018).
At Bridgehead it runs on two engines. Our PR team earns the coverage that makes a care group the name families already know. bamboo, the software we built from that work, runs the ads, landing pages, enquiry log and local ranking that turn a good name into booked viewings. For the step-by-step version, see our care home marketing plan.
Engine two · owned
Care home marketing software: Google and Meta campaigns from your CQC profile, hosted landing pages, every enquiry logged, and a weekly rank against every comparable home nearby.
See the fifteen toolsIntroducing bamboo
Care home marketing software, built by Bridgehead
Fifteen tools in one place, from the first ad to the review that follows the visit. Start free, see your local rank in under ten minutes, and upgrade when it is working.
01
Win enquiries
Campaigns
Google and Meta ads from your CQC profile. Nothing spent until you approve.
Landing pages
Hosted, fast and matched to the search that found you.
Enquiry tracking
Every enquiry logged against the campaign that won it, with cost per enquiry.
02
Beat local rivals
Presence Score
Your local rank against every comparable home, recomputed every week.
Competitors
CQC-registered homes near you, confirmed as rivals.
Media coverage
A weekly sweep of what is written about you, and about them.
03
Protect your name
Reviews
Every platform in one place, with replies drafted for you.
Reputation audit
What could hurt you, ranked weekly, with what to do about it.
Coverage books
Your press, compiled into a book with a public link.
04
Get talked about
Press releases
Brief it on the news, approve the draft, send.
Media database
The journalists, editors and producers your news goes to.
Newsletter
A monthly note to families, drafted from a few lines.
05
Be found
SEO audit
Fixes ranked by what stops families finding you.
Answer engines
Whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name you when families ask.
Care calendar
Awareness days and anniversaries, each with a post idea.
Example data
Example data
Example data
Example dataRunning a group?
One hub for every location.
Every home ranked side by side, with its own reviews, coverage, competitors and website audit, rolled up at group level.
Start free. Upgrade when it is working.
Ad spend is paid directly to Google and Meta. bamboo never marks it up.
Starter
Free
No card. One campaign and one hosted landing page a month, plus your local rank.
GrowMost popular
£129 a month + VAT
Unlimited campaigns and pages, enquiry tracking with cost per enquiry, every tool. The first 25 providers pay £79 for 12 months.
Managed
£950 a month + VAT + ad spend
Our team builds and runs the campaigns, optimises weekly and writes a press release a month. Ad spend of £1,500 a month or more, three-month first term.
Case study · Berkley Care Group
Care home PR that turned everyday life into a national story
Twelve award-winning homes across the West Midlands and the South of England. The brief was occupancy, recruitment and retention. We built a pipeline of resident-led stories, and in March 2024 one penguin visit landed BBC News, ITV and the Daily Mirror in the same week.
- pieces of coverage
- 400
- outlets
- 64
- national pieces: BBC, ITV, Mirror, Express
- 6
- combined outlet audience*
- 980M
- of 20 mid-size groups for coverage, Media Power List 2025
- 3rd
DA 95
Monkey business at Leamington Spa care home birthday party
DA 90
Penguins break the ice and bring joy to care home residents
DA 94
Penguins visit care home to give OAPs a dose of pet therapy
DA 74
Care home raises a glass to new gin inspired by residents
Westminster · Sep 2025
A dementia bus in Parliament
22 MPs and parliamentarians took the Virtual Dementia Tour and the Speaker visited. We also drafted Berkley's dementia strategy.
Oct 2025 to Mar 2026
Golden Hour gin
A gin made with residents and Sky Wave Distillery: 11 pieces across 9 outlets and 21 social assets.
Portcullis House · Jun 2025
Neurodiversity roundtable
Co-chaired by Sojan Joseph MP with twelve sector leaders. We wrote the 14-page report that followed.
“Bridgehead have transformed our online presence by securing extensive coverage across the local, national, and trade media. I enjoy working with Will and his team and couldn't recommend them highly enough.”
Read the full Berkley case study
*Sum of each outlet's published audience, counted once per outlet (Bridgehead Coverage Builder, September 2026). Coverage dated May 2022 to March 2026.
Measured in move-ins
How we measure care home marketing
Four numbers, read every month. A campaign that lifts traffic but not occupancy has not worked, and we will say so. bamboo logs every enquiry and its source for you; we help you close the gap from there.
01
Enquiries
By channel: search, ads, press, referrers, walk-ins.
02
Enquiry to viewing
How many families you answer fast enough to meet.
03
Viewing to move-in
Whether the visit matches what the marketing promised.
04
Cost per move-in
The number your board cares about, and the one we report on.
What we do
What care home marketing covers
Each line below is something our team does for you, something bamboo does for you, or both. Most groups use a mix.
Our team
Press coverage and media relations
National, regional and trade coverage, built from resident stories, campaigns and awards. The work that made Berkley a name families recognise.
Our teambamboo
Local search and SEO
Google Business Profile, local SEO and answer-engine visibility, tuned to your catchment. bamboo audits the site and ranks the fixes.
bamboo
Paid search and social
Google and Meta campaigns written from your CQC profile, approved by you, with cost per enquiry. Our team runs them on the Managed plan.
Our teambamboo
Websites and landing pages
Pages that answer a worried family's real questions: fees, care types, what a day looks like. bamboo hosts campaign pages in seconds.
Our teambamboo
Reputation and reviews
Every review answered and every risk seen first, alongside your quality team so nothing goes out that CQC would question.
Our team
Carer recruitment
Local search, paid social and employer brand for the rota. Empty beds and empty shifts are the same problem from two directions.
Marketing for care homes, nursing homes and home care
Residential care homes
Catchment-led demand and a warm, reassuring brand for families choosing a permanent home for a relative.
Nursing homes
Marketing that speaks to higher-acuity needs and the clinical reassurance families and discharge teams are looking for.
Home care
Home care marketing works street by street. Clients and carers come from the same few postcodes, so local search, referrer relationships and employer brand carry more weight than a national campaign. bamboo ranks a home care agency against its local rivals the same way it ranks a care home.
Part of our wider care sector practice, which spans PR, policy and crisis as well as marketing.
Go deeper
Care home marketing guides
For care homes
Clinical frameworks for care homes
Founded by our team
Headland Care Consulting: condition-specific care frameworks
Premium homes win on clinical capability as much as lifestyle. Headland, founded by Dr Sheel Mehta and William Walter, designs consultant-led frameworks for cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and published Beyond Lifestyle with Bridgehead.
FAQs
Care home marketing FAQs
How do you market a care home?
You start from how families actually decide. Most enquiries begin with a local search at a moment of crisis, so the work is local visibility, a website that answers a worried family's real questions, and a fast, human enquiry response. We build all three around your catchment and measure it in move-ins, not clicks.
How do you advertise your care home?
Locally, and where families already look: Google search and Maps ads on care terms near your homes, Meta ads to adult children within driving distance, and a landing page that matches the search. bamboo writes those campaigns from your CQC profile, and nothing is spent until you approve them.
What does a care home marketing agency do?
It wins attention, then turns it into viewings. At Bridgehead that means PR that gets your homes into the press, plus the local search, ads, pages and enquiry handling that convert it. bamboo puts the day-to-day part in your own hands.
Do you do care home PR as well as marketing?
Yes, and we started there. For Berkley Care Group our PR team secured 400 pieces of coverage, including BBC News, ITV and the Daily Mirror, in support of occupancy, recruitment and retention across twelve homes.
How is care home marketing measured?
By occupancy. We track enquiries, the enquiry-to-viewing rate, viewings-to-move-ins and cost per move-in, not impressions or vanity reach. A campaign that lifts traffic but not your occupancy has not worked, and we will say so.
How much does care home marketing cost?
bamboo starts free. Grow is £129 a month plus VAT, and the first 25 providers pay £79 for their first 12 months. Managed is £950 a month plus VAT and ad spend, with ad spend of £1,500 a month or more paid directly to Google and Meta with no mark-up. Groups of five or more homes pay £95 a home. Agency PR and marketing retainers are scoped to the number of homes and the goal; we quote after a strategy call.
How is home care marketing different from care home marketing?
Home care is won street by street and sold to the client and their family at home, often after a hospital discharge. Referrers and local search matter more, and carer recruitment runs alongside client acquisition from day one.
What is bamboo?
bamboo is care home marketing software built by Bridgehead. It writes your Google and Meta campaigns from your CQC profile, hosts the landing pages, logs every enquiry and ranks you weekly against every comparable home nearby. It is free to start.
Do you do carer recruitment marketing too?
Yes. Workforce is the binding constraint on this sector, so we run dedicated carer-recruitment campaigns, local search, paid social and employer brand, alongside the occupancy work. Empty beds and empty rotas are the same problem from two directions.
Will the marketing respect CQC and the families involved?
Always. We work in lockstep with your quality team so messaging is accurate and CQC-sensitive, and we write for families making a hard decision about someone they love, with the dignity that deserves.
Selected work
Client work in this area
Care homes
Berkley Care Group
Everyday care home life as a two-year national story: 238 articles and BBC and ITV broadcasts across all 12 homes.
ReadSocial care
GoodOaks Homecare
A national campaign for unpaid carers in The Independent and 40+ regional titles, put in front of the MPs behind the Carer's Leave Act.
ReadSocial care
Hilton Nursing Partners
Three Better Care Fund roundtables with MPs and ICB leaders, and a named place in North London's BCF report.
ReadKeep exploring
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A working plan template, step by step.
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The Better Care Fund
How the fund works and who it reaches.
ReadSector hub
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PR, policy and reputation for healthcare organisations.
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Care Home Power Lists
The Top 20 care home groups, ranked and charted.
ReadSpeak with us
One conversation tells you
if we're the right fit.
Thirty minutes with a partner. We'll tell you whether we can help, what the work would look like, and what it's likely to cost, before either of us commits to anything.
