When so much in marketing is changing at such a rapid pace, it can be very challenging to know which trends to adopt and when to stick to the fundamental truths about marketing to seniors.
Our team of analysts, writers, designers, content strategists and media professionals has been focused on learning and adapting to these new trends. As a result, I’m excited to share the top five new best practices that we recommend Life Plan Communities implement in 2026.
1) The Shifting Balance between SEO, “AEO” and Zero-click Search
The adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude has significantly impacted how users research their senior living choices. These interfaces offer answers to queries directly within the chat —with no need to click through to a brand’s website.
As a result, the way prospects find your community online is evolving just as quickly as the tools themselves. A core pillar of senior living marketing is changing before our eyes. For decades, search engines like Google defined how marketers reached their audiences. But now, the familiar search engine optimization (SEO) model—built on driving traffic to a community’s website—is no longer enough. With these new AI interfaces, we need new strategies to get your community in front of prospects who may never click through to your site at all. Instead, they receive answers directly from AI interfaces—including Google’s own search results page. This shift requires Life Plan Communities to structure and present their content more purposefully.
Many in the digital marketing field are using the phrase Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to describe this seismic shift from the traditional term SEO.
2) The Evolving Media Landscape
The media platforms we’ve relied on for lead generation over the past five to seven years are changing before our eyes. Here are three must-have media trends to watch, because they directly impact your digital strategy. Learn from the fable of the frog in the boiling water—slow steady change can blur the line between when the novel new concept grows into the new normal.
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Short-Form Video Continues to Dominate
It’s no fluke that short-form video remains ubiquitous across platforms like YouTube, Meta and TikTok. The bite-size messaging is irresistible to humans of any age, including seniors. Fortunately, this format is particularly powerful in senior living because it provides a rich way of telling your brand story—giving people a slice of life into your community that you don’t get from text, a document or a banner ad. Short-form video production and media placement should be at the top of any Life Plan Community’s list of beta tests.
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Voice Activation Is Growing
Voice-activated search tools are becoming increasingly important. Operationally, the community of the future will likely utilize them more in the resident experience, because of its increased adoption among our target demographics. This presents new opportunities for how we position our communities in voice search results. Any Life Plan Community that is making technology and IT advances a key strategic initiative should also test media opportunities that include voice activation. Doing so is a classic case of the medium being the message—you will be targeting the technologically progressive prospects.
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AI Platforms May Disrupt Traditional Search
Since AI interfaces went mainstream in 2025, the unthinkable is happening; Google is losing market share as people of all ages are turning from simple search terms to asking complex questions in interfaces like ChatGPT and Perplexity. These interfaces have been ad-free as they establish their presence but will eventually seize the opportunity to monetize their market share. As a result, ad placement on AI platforms is going to become a very real thing in 2026—and likely as fundamental to the senior living media strategy as Google search was in prior years. This represents a significant shift in how Life Plan Communities structure their digital marketing efforts. They will need to test strategies for dedicated ad placement on these emerging AI platforms if they want to stay in front of their senior prospects.
3) Community-Specific AI-Marketing Tool
If your marketing team has experimented with general-purpose AI interfaces like ChatGPT, they’ve likely experienced the significant difficulty—if not impossibility—of generating content (emails, blogs, social posts, etc.) that is both accurate and consistent with your community’s details and personality.
The solution is a Language Learning Model (LLM) customized to your community’s brand voice. A Life Plan Community can design and “train” its own model to use only its brand-specific tone and style and language choices. Love & Company started developing these for our clients as early as 2025 to help build scalability for everything from social posts to email subject lines—building trust with audiences in new ways. Life Plan Communities looking to produce certain types of content more efficiently—and in greater quantity—while staying true to their brand should explore developing a LLM or seeking a partner like Love & Company that leverages it on your behalf for scalability and quality assurance.
4) The Human Connection Remains Our Secret Weapon
Despite all the technological advancements over the past few years and continuing into the future, a Life Plan Community’s greatest asset continues to be human connection. What will ultimately excite prospective residents about joining your community isn’t your digital prowess—it’s your people, the vibrant community life and the meaningful experiences you create.
We strongly recommend that communities embrace the latest technologies, but human connection must remain the thread that runs through your messaging. Technology should complement, not replace, the personal relationships that drive move-ins. It remains. a digital-first marketing world.
This is still a relational sale. Life Plan Communities that pursue these new technologies and approaches must do so to facilitate and enhance the connection with your sales team, not replace them.
5) Experiential Marketing with a Nostalgic Touch
Another powerful trend inspired by new technology was forced upon senior living marketers during the COVID era. The growth of virtual events (as important and valuable as they are) reinforced how deeply people value authentic human interaction. This valuable insight led us to focus on senior living marketing’s big shift: creating experiences, not just events.
With this shift, Life Plan Communities have the opportunity to leverage the growing importance of nostalgia, especially for younger Boomer prospects, along with Gen X adult children. Events and campaigns based on nostalgic themes and classic cultural references can help move prospects along their customer journey by creating experiences that foster a sense of familiarity and belonging. In short, nostalgia-focused themes can create powerful emotional connections that traditional marketing simply can’t match. We see excellent results from campaigns that tap into these emotions, nostalgia and classic cultural references signaling to your audience that your community is the right place for them to find the connections they crave.
Bringing It All Together
The challenge with so many emerging trends is knowing how to tie them together into a coherent strategy. Your marketing efforts in 2026 will need to balance technological innovation with the timeless value of human connection.
That’s why we believe creating a team of truly integrated marketing professionals is crucial. Partnering with specialists who embrace a collaborative workflow and, even more importantly, a spirit of partnership and shared goals is key for succeeding amid constant change. This is why Love & Company brings all strategists, writers, designers, analysist and the like together on one team, so that all disciplines row in the same direction, guided by the same strategy and focused on the same goal: the success of your community.
