Today I had the chance to speak with Jay Goldstein, one of the founding members of the recently launched, senior housing lead generation site AllSeniorHomes. Goldstein and his partners hail from another Seattle-based online lead generation firm, AllStarDirectories. The founding team knows a thing or two about the space, so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that their just public site shows great potential.

Those visiting the home page, will find a clean layout with content around the major types of Senior Housing (think degree types if you are familiar with online education), including assisted living centers, nursing home centers, and retirement communities among others.  Below is a screenshot of the homepage. (Direct marketers will notice the well integrated search field that prompts users to enter the conversion funnel.)

Senior care is an interesting are for lead generation and in many ways fits the desired economics companies look for in the space, namely price, market size, and potential buyers. First,  senior housing is an expensive product, costing tens of thousands per year on the low-end with a lifetime value for a customer often reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Second, the market size is substantial and only growing. In many ways, those exploring this space are early as the early baby boomers are still 10 years away on average from needing the service. Finally, senior housing centers are often run by  large holding companies, which means that from a lead sales perspective, a few key relationships can provide good coverage.

On the topic of coverage, I like what AllSeniorHomes has done. Generally, companies creating online lead generation businesses with only display companies that pay them money, providing a biased user experience. It’s not inherently bad, but especially in decisions as major as this, following the search market methodology (combining free and paid) makes for not just a better user experience but a better story for the industry of online lead generation. Showing both the equivalent of “organic” and “paid” listings doesn’t mean each gets treated the same. For example, here are listings from non-paid providers:

Compare that to a similar search conducted in a region where they have greater paid coverage.

In fairness to the staff at AllSeniorHomes, aggregating this much data is a daunting task, and the time required to gather the appropriate level of data is significant. It makes sense that their paid listings (in this case relationships for which they have a per lead agreement) will receive better treatment. I expect that as the business matures so too will the display of the organic listings, as that will only lift the entire site in its utility.

As we learned from speaking to the team, senior housing has its own challenges as both a lead generation business and a consumer site. Unlike other verticals, such as insurance or education, senior housing is hyper-local. If we think about insurance, you do want a representative in your area, but you really care about price not so much where the office of the agent is. With education, many schools offer an online product, so geography doesn’t matter. A growing chunk of for profit education lead generation focuses on ground-based schools. There, geography does matter, but people might be willing to drive 30 miles to attend class. People probably won’t want to drive 30 miles to see a loved one. As a result, AllSeniorHomes focuses on showing results closer to the person’s geography. If the user is willing to drive a little further, they can find a list of “Additional Properties” below the main listing, a nice touch. Again, it’s nice to see the team balance monetization with value-add service to the user.

Another interesting aspect is in thinking about the lead buyers. While there are conglomerates that manage multiple centers both regionally and nationally, they don’t have the centralized call centers that the more established verticals have, e.g. financial services and lead generation. One might be tempted to jump into this space until they realize that obtaining lead buyers is still very much a buyer by buyer sales process. That often scares certain investors initially, but I have always liked areas that require relationships as a differentiating factor. It creates a huge wall that others will hesitate before attempting to scale themselves. Sales contacts, though, aren’t the only unique challenges. A new vertical means a new lingo and being able to speak in a manner the buyers would understand. Fortunately, for AllSeniorHomes they managed to learn the lingo without too many embarrassments. Additionally, while they are early into the game of senior housing lead generation, they aren’t the first. Several other companies have done the heavy lifting of making the concept of lead generation at least more familiar, the biggest being APlaceForMom, who has a slightly more labor intensive model of representatives to help with lead follow-up.

The ongoing growth of senior housing lead generation seems very reminiscent of the auto industry where it took years before lead generation became common practice in dealers. It is likely to both take time but happen here too. As the team said, there is nothing magical about rolling up one’s sleeves and making the pitch. You get plenty of doors slammed, but at least enough understand the value proposition and are willing to embrace it. Give them some time and I suspect the number of doors “slammed” will decrease with many turning into inbound calls wanting to buy leads.