Care Home Enquiries: Tracking the Care-seeker Decision-making Journey with Call Tracking

Choosing a care home is one of the most emotionally complex decisions families face. The journey from initial research to enquiry often spans weeks or months, involving multiple family members, numerous touchpoints, and careful consideration of sensitive factors.

For care home marketers, understanding this complicated decision-making process is essential to providing the right information at the right time. If you want to find out more about call tracking and how it reveals the complete care-seeker journey, including the crucial phone conversations that often determine whether families visit your home, you’re in the right place.

Call tracking is the first step towards more effective marketing that genuinely supports families during difficult decisions.

The unique nature of care home decision-making

Unlike many purchasing decisions, choosing a care home involves multiple stakeholders—the person requiring care, their adult children, other family members, and sometimes social workers or healthcare professionals. Each person researches different aspects, including the quality of care, costs, location, specialist services, and the home itself.

This complexity means that prospects rarely convert on their first interaction with your marketing efforts. They might discover your care home through organic search, revisit your website multiple times, read reviews, engage with social media content, and discuss options with family before anyone picks up the phone.

Without call tracking, you can’t see this complete journey. You might attribute enquiries to the last digital touchpoint without understanding the earlier activities that built trust and prompted serious consideration.

Capturing the complete decision journey

Call tracking reveals which marketing activities initiate awareness, which channels prospects return to during the consideration phase, and which ultimately prompt them to make a call. By assigning unique phone numbers to different campaigns and channels, you gain visibility into the entire path to enquiry.

You may find that families initially discover your care home through local searches, then engage with blog content that addresses specific care needs, such as dementia or palliative care. They may revisit your website multiple times to review facilities and pricing before a retargeting ad prompts them to call for a tour.

This intelligence shows which content addresses concerns at different stages. Early-stage prospects might need educational resources about care options, for example. Those closer to a decision want specifics, such as details about funding, availability, staff qualifications, daily activities, and visiting policies.

Understanding what prompts enquiries

Speech Analytics automatically transcribes and analyses conversations, revealing common questions, concerns, and the factors that influence whether families visit your home. You can identify the information prospects need before calling, the objections that require addressing, and what motivates families to book tours.

Perhaps callers frequently ask about funding arrangements, indicating this information needs more prominence on your website. You may discover that families are interested in knowing about staff-to-resident ratios or specialist dementia care training, allowing you to create content that addresses these questions proactively.

Understanding caller intent also helps you route enquiries appropriately. Interactive voice response can direct families to the right person based on their needs—whether they’re seeking immediate placement, planning for future needs, or asking about specific care services.

Optimising for genuine enquiries

Complete journey tracking allows you to focus resources on channels that drive qualified enquiries from families genuinely considering your home. You can reduce spend on activities that generate awareness but rarely lead to tours, while investing more in campaigns that reach families at decision-making stages.

You’ll also identify opportunities to support families throughout their journey with relevant content, timely retargeting, and messaging that addresses their evolving needs as they move closer to making this significant decision.

Call tracking will help you understand the care-seeker journey, so you can optimise your marketing to support families better, whilst driving more qualified enquiries for your care home.