Increasing visibility for home instead
Building trust and talent in the care sector through community-first marketing for Home Instead.
About Home Instead
Home Instead operate as a collective of franchise offices providing in-home care services across the UK, helping older people live safely and independently in their own homes. They focus on personalised care plans and emotional well-being, supporting families during some of their most challenging times.
Working closely with the Director and small in-house marketing teams for the Farnborough, Ascot and Watford franchises, alongside wider stakeholders from each office, I was brought in to support initially for content marketing design and over the years this transitioned into wider work with their marketing strategy and execution.
Marketing Challenges in Home Care
The decision to get home care often happens in crisis moments. A fall, a diagnosis, a sudden realisation that Mum can’t manage alone anymore. Families need help immediately, but they also need to trust completely as they’re literally inviting strangers into their homes to care for their most vulnerable loved ones.
Home Instead faced a double challenge across their Farnborough, Farnham & Fleet, Ascot, Camberley & Wokingham, and Watford offices:
First, the client acquisition problem: Home care is an extremely competitive market, particularly in the local areas served by the 3 client offices and to this point there had been little strategy for the digital marketing efforts of the business. Despite the brand’s national size, other local competitors had a more established online presence and messaging was failing to connect with their ideal customers, which was subsequently leading to a lack of new enquiries and holding back the business from scaling.
Second, the recruitment crisis: The care sector is haemorrhaging talent, where care professionals have countless job options, often with better pay or easier conditions overseas. Home Instead needed to compete not just on salary, but on something deeper which encompassed job satisfaction and genuine appreciation.
These challenges do in fact go hand in hand. In care, staff happiness directly impacts client experience. Unhappy carers deliver poor service and poor service damages reputation, which in turn makes recruitment harder. It’s a vicious cycle that’s breaking many care providers. In this instance all 3 client offices had exceptional teams, but their story simply wasn’t being told and shouted about.
A Solution of Community Marketing & Emotive Connection
I have had the pleasure of working with the teams at Home Instead Farnborough, Farnham & Fleet office, Ascot, Camberley & Wokingham office, and Watford office at the time of writing, for nearly 5 years. I have honestly never worked with a business that has such a connection to its staff; the incredible care professionals at the heart.
The story of this team and the clients that they support was what truly differentiated them from any other care provider in the area and that emotional connection is what was taken forward to be built into the core of the new marketing strategy.
Rather than fighting for attention with flashy campaigns, we focused on building something more valuable: genuine community trust and resources and showcasing an internal culture that care professionals wanted to join.
The strategy worked on two connected levels:
1. Build the resources and platforms to support clients
The journey for any client or family to request care comes at a time of huge emotional turmoil and having clear, trusted guidance is key. Step one was to build foundations in the form of evergreen content, which displayed Home Instead’s expertise and experience with useful resources that connected on an emotional level. This content could then be adapted to suit different environments (ranging from digital to print and events) and would nurture prospects to the point that they are ready to talk to the Home Instead team.
2. Let the community see the culture
Instead of conventional recruitment website pages, we focused on telling the story of existing care professionals, their journey into care and what they loved about working for Home Instead. We showcased the positive environment through social media, testimonials, and local presence.
Happy employees become your best recruiters – their recommendations carry more weight than any job advert.
This part of the strategy also spoke to families in need or considering care. When they see how well staff are looked after, they trust you’ll treat their loved ones the same way.
Working alongside a fantastic freelance copywriter and paid media specialist we worked to this strategy to create a wealth of assets, where I took ownership of implementing all new website pages, brochure and lead magnet designs, email signatures, plus event and promotional marketing collateral and early stage social media posts.
Growth & Results
Since working together, we’ve achieved great results in organic search with a strong rise in rankings across all offices for highly relevant search terms, which has translated into more visibility and clicks from people searching for home care in the respective local areas of each office.
An example from the Ascot, Camberley & Wokingham office website, within 6 months we achieved:
Page One Dominance: We increased first page results by 600%, moving from 2 to 14 high-traffic keywords.
Wider Reach: Now ranking for nearly triple the number of search terms (from 12 to now 29), catering to how local families can find us.
The #1 Choice: We moved from having only 8% of our keywords in the #1 spot to 21%.
Time on the sites also increased significantly as the newly created content became of more value to readers and catered to their needs. A snapshot aside from the Ascot office site (data from GA4) shows the 36% increase in engagement rate and 18% increase in events per session on the site for November 2024-December 2024 vs the previous year.
As a key fractional support to the team, I was also tasked with recruitment of a social media marketing freelancer. This position had always been very difficult to find for the business, with multiple trials of individuals over the past few years to little success. My knowledge of the brand, partnered with experience of recruiting for internal marketing teams led me to find a perfect freelancer who has taken the social media channels of all 3 offices to new heights and continues to also work with the client to date.
All 3 offices now have strengthened foundations for recruitment:
- Greater visibility of internal team stories with clear, engaging resources for new prospects
- Higher quality candidates through employee referrals
- Improved staff retention as culture strengthened
Client growth continues to build:
- Existing clients became active promoters, referring friends and family
- Authentic testimonials and reviews increased organically
- Community reputation strengthened across service areas
Sustainable competitive advantage:
- A community and genuine culture was strengthened which competitors couldn’t easily replicate
- Created marketing assets (testimonials, case studies, community presence) that continue working across digital and print
Building for the Future
The transformation didn’t happen overnight, and it’s far from finished. Nearly five years into our work together, I continue collaborating with all three Home Instead offices as we build upon the strong marketing foundations now in place.
What started as content design assistance has evolved into an ongoing marketing partnership – constantly refining the approach, testing new channels, and finding better ways to tell the story of these exceptional teams and the families they serve.
What our clients say
Chris has been an invaluable partner for us over the years, helping with everything from blog content and SEO to marketing strategy and design work.
He’s extremely attentive and always ready to pivot when our needs change – often on very short notice. We him completely and truly enjoy working with him.
Stephanie Turner
Group Business Development Manager
Home Instead Watford
Professional and genuinely a pleasure to work with. Chris has taken the time to learn and understand our business, delivers consistently to support our marketing, and is always responsive, whether it is a quick turnaround on a piece of design work or a bigger strategic conversation. He has been a brilliant support to the Home Instead Farnborough team.
Lauren Fridge
Business Development Manager
Home Instead Farnborough
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