Referrals are the number. Caregiver retention is the multiplier.
SEOD builds Bay Area home care marketing for both sides of the business: the families who hire you, and the caregivers who let you say yes when they call.
- 16 years operating
- $54M+ P&L operated
- 128 verified 5-star reviews
15 min. No sales pitch. Direct founder access.
Three things deciding Bay Area home care in 2026.
Turnover eats the growth before it reaches the P&L.
Home care turnover ran about 75% in 2024, down from 79.2% the prior year, and nearly 80% of caregivers leave within their first 100 days, at roughly $2,600 to replace each one. Winning a client you cannot staff is not a win.
Discharge planners refer on a clock, not on a relationship.
Hospitals are penalized for readmissions inside 30 days, so discharge planners route to agencies that answer fast and communicate cleanly. Referral networks of planners, social workers, and case managers remain the most reliable growth driver in home care. Being pleasant is not the qualifier. Being reachable is.
AI answers are absorbing the discovery click.
A randomized field study found Google’s AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8% and raised zero-click searches by 34.5%. Adult children searching at 11pm for help with a parent increasingly get an answer instead of a list. If you are not in the source set, you are not on the shortlist.
The Sprint is built for this environment. Not the 2019 home care playbook.
Built by an operator who has staffed the shift.
Eric ran $54M+ in F&B P&L across BCD Tofu House, Gen Korean Barbecue, Sake2Me Sushi, and Obaba Fresh. Sixteen years in businesses that live or die on whether the right people show up for the shift.
Home care runs the same equation. Caregiver hours are the labor line. Your private-pay versus insurance mix behaves like menu margin mix, where the volume item and the profitable item are rarely the same thing. A referral partner network is regular-table strategy: a handful of relationships producing predictable weekly demand. And retention is the LTV multiplier on both sides, client and caregiver, which is why demand-only marketing quietly fails here.
You get an operator who asks whether you can staff the work before helping you sell more of it. Not an agency that floods your intake line and calls it growth.
The Operator Sprint, tuned for home care agencies.
$750 setup + $250/mo × 6 months · $2,250 total · Cancel anytime after month 6
- Onsite kickoff at your office. 90 minutes with Eric, including a look at how an inbound family inquiry and a caregiver application currently get handled.
- Google Business Profile deep optimization built for the adult-child searcher, who is usually researching under stress and on a phone.
- 48 GBP posts across the 6-month Sprint, split between family-facing trust content and caregiver recruitment, because both audiences search.
- Referral partner landing pages written for discharge planners and case managers, stating response time and intake process plainly so you are the easy call.
- Caregiver recruitment landing page and ad set, run as its own funnel rather than buried on a careers tab nobody visits.
- Review response for families, handled with the care this category requires, since reviews here are written during hard moments.
- AI-answer optimization so your agency surfaces when someone asks an AI engine about in-home care options in your county.
- Monthly dashboard showing GBP impressions, calls, family inquiries, and caregiver applications tracked separately, because they are separate businesses.
- Monthly 15-minute operator call with Eric. He reads your numbers and tells you which side of the business is the current constraint.
- Text Eric directly at 707-718-3579. 4-hour response window, 9am to 9pm PT.
15 min. No sales pitch. Direct founder access.
What we don’t do for home care agencies.
No caregiver scheduling software.
ClearCare, AlayaCare, and WellSky own scheduling and EVV. We read the reporting for your dashboard and stay out of the system your coordinators live in.
No insurance billing or authorization work.
Long-term care policies and Medi-Cal authorization are their own discipline. We will not touch claims, and we will say so rather than improvise.
No clinical claims.
We do not write copy implying medical outcomes or skilled nursing capability you are not licensed to deliver. The line between companion care and skilled care has to stay visible in the marketing.
No staffing agency recruiting.
We build the recruitment funnel and the page. We do not screen, interview, or place caregivers. That judgment is yours and it should stay yours.
The tools we actually run for home care agencies.
Not a logo wall. These are the systems we log into on your behalf during the Sprint.
Google Business Profile Manager
Where the adult-child searcher starts. Services, service area, photos, posts.
Google Ads
Capture on “home care” and “in-home caregiver” intent by city when paid is in scope.
Meta Business Manager
Two audiences, run separately: families in the service area and caregiver recruitment.
ClearCare or AlayaCare exports
Read-only. Client and hours reporting feeds the dashboard.
Indeed and job board tracking
Recruitment funnel measured alongside client acquisition, not after it.
Review platforms
Google and Caring-style profiles, with response handled carefully.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude
Tracked monthly for how often your agency gets cited in AI answers.
What this looks like in practice.
A typical home care client sees weekly GBP impressions rise 2 to 3x within 30 days of Sprint kickoff, with family inquiries and caregiver applications finally reported as separate lines. The insight owners tend to get first is which of the two is actually the constraint, which usually changes where the next dollar goes.
These are the patterns we build toward, not a promise. Actual outcomes vary by county, your referral relationships, and your current caregiver bench. We publish named client results only with the client's permission and real numbers attached.
Sprint vs the two alternatives you're weighing.
Most Bay Area agency owners weigh a part-time marketing coordinator, paying a senior-care referral marketplace, or running the Sprint. Here is the honest comparison.
| SEOD Operator Sprint | In-house marketing coordinator | Senior-care referral marketplace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost over 6 months | $2,250 total | $24,000 to $36,000 (part-time salary plus burden) | Commission per placement, often 50 to 100% of first month |
| Client exclusivity | Yours, they came to you | Yours | Shared, family is shopping several agencies |
| Bay Area onsite | Yes, 90 min with Eric | Yes, they work at your office | No |
| Caregiver recruitment included | Yes, as its own funnel | If they get to it | No, demand side only |
| Referral partner outreach assets | Built for planners and case managers | Depends on the hire | Not included |
| AI-answer optimization | Baked in | Rare | No |
| Who you actually talk to | Eric, by text, 4-hour window | Your employee | Account support |
| Commitment | 6-month bundle, cancel anytime after | Ongoing employment | Per placement, indefinitely |
Coordinator cost assumes a $40K to $60K Bay Area part-time salary plus roughly 25% burden, prorated to 6 months. Marketplace commissions vary and are worth reading closely. Marketplaces can fill a gap this month. They do not build a pipeline you own.
Questions Bay Area home care agencies owners ask.
Do you market to families or recruit caregivers?
Both, tracked separately. Most agencies run one budget across two completely different audiences and then cannot tell which one is working. Family acquisition and caregiver recruitment get their own pages, their own ad sets, and their own line on the dashboard.
How do you help with discharge planner referrals?
We build the pages and one-pagers that make you easy to refer to: intake process, response time, service area, and what you will and will not take. The relationship itself is yours to run. We can make you the obvious call, we cannot make the call for you.
Private pay versus insurance, how should we position?
Usually lead with private pay in the marketing and treat authorization-based work as a separate path, because the searcher and the timeline are different. We will look at your actual mix before recommending anything, since the right answer depends on your margin, not on a general rule.
Is any of this HIPAA-covered?
No. We work with marketing surfaces and read-only reporting exports. We do not handle protected health information and we do not touch your care records. If a task would require a business associate agreement, we stop and tell you.
How do you respond to a review from a grieving family?
Carefully, slowly, and never defensively. We never confirm someone was a client, never discuss care details in public, and always move the conversation to a phone call. Some reviews should be answered in a day, not an hour, and we will say so.
Do you guarantee a number of inquiries?
No. Anyone guaranteeing inquiry volume is buying it with your ad spend or inventing it. We commit to the deliverables on this page, on the timeline on this page, logged so you can verify.
Do you work with agencies under $500K in revenue?
Yes, if you have caregivers to staff the work. If the bench is thin, we would rather run recruitment first and hold client acquisition, and Eric will tell you that on the call even though it is the smaller engagement.
Three ways to start.
Not ready yet? Start with the free 3-Point Visibility Audit. 48 hours. No sales call. Get the audit →