How to get more care enquiries on Care Sourcer

Your Care Sourcer profile is your shop window. Its job is to show care seekers that your home is right for them. You can do this by providing useful information about your home and what it’s like to live there. An accurate and complete profile will attract high intent, relevant enquiries to your home that can convert to admissions and new residents.

In this article, we’ll look at what you need on your profile to maximise the number of high intent care enquiries you receive!

Include up-to-date enquiry information

First things first, care seekers must be able to contact you easily. Make sure your enquiry details are up to date on Care Sourcer to receive enquiries. Log in to Care Sourcer, click on the home you’d like to edit and go to ‘Edit profile’ to update your enquiry phone number and email address.

Remember: your phone number will appear differently on your profile. This allows us to report how many enquiries you’ve received from Care Sourcer.

Add images to your profile

Photos are the first thing care seekers look at when they view your profile. Many people won’t view a profile if it has no images. We recommend uploading at least five high-quality images. Start with a picture of the front of your home and add some images of communal spaces, gardens and bedrooms.

Photos not only let care seekers see your home, they give you the opportunity to show what life is like in your home. Sharing images of carers and residents interacting, engaging in activities or enjoying communal spaces is a great way to help care seekers imagine their loved one in your home.

Remember: make sure you have permission from your residents and staff to share images of them online.

For more information about why pictures are important and what care seekers look for, you can read our 3 reasons photos are the most important promotional tool for your care home.

Ensure your availability is up to date

The simplest way to manage the number of enquiries you receive is to regularly update your availability. Care homes with available beds appear at the top of search results and therefore receive more enquiries.

Potential clients use availability to decide whether they should call your home or not. If your availability is not updated, users assume your home is full and won’t call.

Don’t miss out on enquiries – to update your availability, log in to Care Sourcer and go to ‘Room availability’.

Remember: after 14 days availability information is considered no longer useful to people searching for care. Update your availability fortnightly to ensure it remains live and you appear at the top of care searches in your area.

Let care seekers know your price range

You may not want to share your price with a potential client until they’ve visited your home, to evidence why you charge what you do. However, being upfront about your pricing means you won’t have to manage unsuitable enquiries and people in need won’t be let down by finding out they can’t afford your home.

Save time and attract calls from more relevant clients by adding a ‘weekly from’ price to your profile. To do this, log in to Care Sourcer, go to ‘Edit profile‘ and scroll down to ‘Pricing information‘.

Manage your Google Reviews

If a care seeker searches for your home on Google, before they see your website, or your Care Sourcer profile, they will see your Google reviews. Improving these reviews will not only increase your enquiries on Care Sourcer, it will increase trust in your home and the number of enquiries you receive on your own website.

Having a single five star review isn’t enough. Care seekers want to see opinions from multiple people, so you should continue to grow your Google Reviews over time. This also applies to negative reviews. One negative review is not a deal breaker, just make sure your positive reviews outweigh it.

Remember: it’s good practice to respond to negative reviews to resolve issues and to flag unsuitable reviews with Google.

Improve your regulator rating

Clients want the best care possible for their loved one. For some, your regulator rating is a good measure of the quality of care you provide. Care Sourcer receives your rating from the regulator and adds it to your profile automatically, so there’s nothing for you to do.

However, the majority of care enquiries go to care homes rated ‘Good’ or above. We always suggest taking onboard the feedback from your care inspection and working hard to improve your rating at your next inspection.

Update your COVID-19 response

In today’s climate, clients want to know their loved one will be safe in your care home. This includes sharing how you’re proactively keeping residents and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Care Sourcer’s COVID-19 response feature makes this easy.

To update your COVID-19 response on Care Sourcer, log in to your account and go to ‘Edit profile’. From there you can list your safety features and procedures to be featured on your profile.

Remember: to find out more about the COVID-19 response feature and how it works, you can watch our demo.