Home Care Marketing Plan: A Template for Agency Owners

A home care marketing plan is a one-page bet: how many new clients you will start in 90 days, from which payers, by talking to which people, every week, with a phone that gets answered. If it does not fit on one page, you will not run it.

What follows is the template I want an owner to copy into a document and fill in with their own numbers. The blanks are yours. I am not going to invent a "typical" census or a reply rate. Where a national figure exists, it is linked. A sample plan and a template are the same thing here: the headings stay, your figures change.

Home health and non-medical home care can share the page. They should not share the targets. Medicare skilled care and private pay hours come from different people.

The one-page plan

Copy this. Replace every bracket.

Agency and window. [Name]. Next 90 days, [start date] to [end date]. Service area we can staff this week: [counties or zip codes]. Not the brochure map. The map a scheduler can cover on a Tuesday.

Admissions goal. [Number] new starts in 90 days. Split: Medicare fee-for-service [n], Medicare Advantage [n], Medicaid or waiver [n], private pay [n], long-term care insurance [n]. If the hours behind that number are more than your caregivers can work, lower the number. A plan that assumes hires you do not have is a wish.

Payer mix, and why it changes the work. Medicare home health needs an order, a homebound patient, and a skilled need. Medicare's coverage page says the program does not pay for personal care when that is the only care needed. Private pay is the family buying hours. Write one sentence on which payer you are short on right now. That sentence picks the list below.

Referral partner list. Names, not categories. Aim for a count you can actually talk to.

Hospice teams belong on a private pay list as a source, when families still need hands in the house between visits. They are not the audience of this plan.

Use the claims, not a slogan, to decide weight. The 2025 Home Health Chartbook (Exhibit 3.5) puts 2024 Medicare home health stays at 37% hospital, 26% physician, 22% clinic, 11% skilled nursing, 4% other. Physicians and clinics together are 48%. MedPAC's July 2026 Data Book found 75% of fee-for-service home health periods that year were community admitted. A home health plan that only lists hospitals is aimed at a minority of stays. A private pay plan that only lists hospitals is aimed at the wrong buyer. There is no trustworthy national file for private pay sources. Use your own last 20 clients.

Weekly cadence. Put it on a calendar a human will open. This rhythm is a template, not a result we measured:

Twenty minutes of this, done, beats a branding workshop. If you will not do it yourself, name the person who will, and the flat fee you pay them. Our version of the Wednesday column is LinkedIn outreach from your profile. The public site price is $399 a month plus a $3,999 setup, month to month. Details are on how it works.

Intake readiness. Marketing that the phone does not answer is a donation to the next agency.

• Who answers, including lunch and after 5 p.m., by name.
• The promise you will publish: a callback the same day, or say you cannot.
• What a yes requires: towns, payer, hours, start date, and a caregiver who is free.
• What a no sounds like. A fast no is better than a slow maybe.
• For Medicare home health, the clinical clock is real. Under 42 CFR 484.55, the initial assessment visit has to happen within 48 hours of the referral or the patient's return home, or on the start date the physician orders. Do not advertise a same-day start you cannot chart.

Tracking by source. Every new start gets one source, written at intake, not reconstructed in March.

Use names: "Jane Alvarez, case management, Memorial" or "Google Business Profile" or "Caring.com, pay per lead." "Referral" is not a source. "Online" is not a source. Review it Monday. If more than a quarter of the month is "unknown," the plan is not running, whatever the ads dashboard says.

Budget. Dollars for 90 days, in lines you can cancel.

A calculator on our site turns your hourly rate, or a Medicare 30-day period, into what one new client is worth after care costs. The private pay default on that page is the 2025 national median of $35 an hour for a non-medical caregiver, from the CareScout Cost of Care Survey. Use your rate, not the median, before you decide a lead fee is "cheap."

What this plan will not do.

• No per-referral or per-admission fee for Medicare or Medicaid patients. Flat fee only. The statute and the safe harbor are on the compliance page.
• No gifts to referral sources.
• No patient information in a message, an ad, or a lead note.
• No promise that a planner will choose you. Hospitals have to offer a list and tell Medicare patients they can choose (42 CFR 482.43).

What a finished page looks like

Here is the shape, with a fictional agency and made-up figures, so you can see the length. This is not a client of ours:

[Northside Home Care]. April through June. Staffing: [two counties]. Goal: [12] starts. Private pay [8], Medicare Advantage [4]. List: [15] practice managers, [10] senior living directors, [8] discharge planners. Wednesday is new names. Thursday is old inquiries. Cap: $[1,500] on search ads, $[0] on lead portals until exclusive-or-not is in writing. Liaison: [owner], or [vendor] at a flat $[n] a month. Source on every start. No per-admission deal.

That paragraph is a plan. A 30-page deck with a logo is not.

Where ads and agencies fit

Advertising has a line on the budget, not the whole page. What Google, Facebook, print, and directories can and cannot do is in home care advertising ideas. Bought names versus people who refer you on purpose is in buying leads versus referral partners. If you would rather hire a firm, the comparison of agencies sticks to what each one publishes about itself. Hire the firm that does the row you are actually missing. A website vendor does not run Wednesday's visits. A lead portal does not know your caregivers' schedules.

If you want the partner list filled in for your towns before you write the dollar caps, book a free referral audit.