Cost per move-in is the only marketing number in senior living that maps directly to revenue. It is also the easiest to quietly flatter, because four choices inside the formula change the answer more than the underlying performance does.
Here is the formula, the four choices, and what an honest version looks like.
The formula
Cost per move-in = (media spend + agency fees + tooling) ÷ move-ins attributed within the care type’s sales cycle
Every term in that is a decision.
Choice 1: what goes in the numerator
| Included | Effect on the number | Honest? |
|---|---|---|
| Media spend only | Lowest | No. The work is not free |
| Media + agency fees | Realistic | Yes |
| Media + fees + tooling (CRM, call tracking) | Highest | Most complete |
| Media + fees + tooling + referral commissions | Fully loaded | The one a CFO wants |
Agencies quoting media-only cost per move-in are not lying, but they are answering a different question from the one the operator asked. Ask which line is being used before comparing two agencies. The gap between media-only and fully loaded is routinely 40% or more.
Our own reported figures use media plus fees. Referral commissions are excluded because they are not ours to control, and we say so rather than letting the number look better than it is.
Choice 2: what counts as attributed
The most common inflation of performance in this category.
A move-in is genuinely attributable if the campaign produced the first identifiable contact (a form, or a tracked phone call). It is not attributable because the resident’s daughter once clicked a retargeting ad after she had already toured.
Three defensible attribution models, in descending honesty:
- First touch. The campaign that created the enquiry gets it. Hardest to game, best for judging acquisition.
- Linear. Credit spread across touchpoints. Fairer to nurture, harder to explain.
- Last touch. The final click gets it. Systematically over-credits retargeting and branded search, which are the two cheapest things to buy and the two that would have happened anyway.
Most dashboards default to last touch, and last touch makes every agency look good. If your report shows branded search as the top-performing campaign, you are looking at an attribution artefact rather than a finding.
Choice 3: the window
This is where a genuinely good campaign gets cancelled.
Sales cycles differ by care type: days to weeks for memory care, six to eighteen months for independent living, up to thirty-six for CCRC.
Run a 90-day attribution window across all of them and:
- Memory care looks excellent, because the whole cycle fits inside the window.
- Independent living looks like a failure, because most move-ins land after the window closes and get recorded as organic or unattributed.
The community then moves budget from independent living to memory care, on the basis of an artefact.
The window has to match the cycle, per care type, and be stated on the face of every report so nobody rediscovers it during a budget review.
Choice 4: blending
A single blended cost per move-in across four care types describes nothing.
Shift the mix toward independent living and the blended figure improves while nothing about performance changes. Shift toward memory care and it worsens while revenue rises. A blended number can move 30% on mix alone.
Report by care type, because independent living and assisted living are marketed differently in the first place. If someone insists on one number, report the mix alongside it.
A worked example
One community, one quarter, assisted living only.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Media spend | $24,000 |
| Agency fees | $9,000 |
| Call tracking and CRM | $1,200 |
| Total | $34,200 |
| Move-ins, first touch, 6-month window | 11 |
| Cost per move-in | $3,109 |
That lands inside the published $2,600–4,500 range for assisted living. Now watch the same quarter reported three other ways:
- Media only, last touch, 90 days: $24,000 ÷ 14 = $1,714. Looks superb. Two of those fourteen were retargeting on people who had already toured, and the fee is missing.
- Fully loaded, first touch, 90 days: $34,200 ÷ 7 = $4,886. Looks poor. Four move-ins simply landed after the window.
- Fully loaded, first touch, 6 months, blended with independent living: $2,740. Looks better than reality, because IL is cheaper and dragged the average down.
Same quarter. Same work. Four numbers between $1,714 and $4,886.
What an honest report states on its face
- Which cost lines are included
- Which attribution model
- The window, per care type
- Whether it is blended, and the mix if so
Four lines of small print that make the number checkable. Their absence is the tell. Our own method and its weaknesses are published for the same reason, including the ones that make our figures look worse.
The number that survives all of this
If the arithmetic gets contested, fall back to one comparison that holds everything else constant: cost per move-in against the same community’s own prior baseline.
It controls for market, mix, care type, and season. It is the reason we lead with a 41% reduction against prior performance rather than a comparison to a national average: the national average is measuring a different building.