Smith Crossing and Smith Village

Two senior living communities in the Chicago area, managed always-on across Google, Microsoft, Meta and LinkedIn. We led paid media inside an agency team. The comparison is fiscal 2026 (July 2025 to June 2026) against fiscal 2025, as reported in Google Ads.

Senior living is a high-consideration decision, usually researched by adult children over months. Search budgets were buying traffic, and a lot of it was the wrong traffic: home care, home health and government-agency queries pulling budget away from families looking for a community.

It is also a regulated housing category. Age and demographic targeting are off the table, so the usual shortcuts to the right audience do not exist.

We moved search from buying clicks to buying outcomes. Bidding went to conversion-based Smart Bidding, with targets set and validated per campaign. Keywords went from broad to phrase, with tight core and near-me ad groups, and negatives for home care and agency traffic.

A YouTube and Display brand layer ran through fall and winter, when families decide. Microsoft launched in October 2025 and LinkedIn was tested in June 2026. Every change stayed fair-housing compliant.

Community one, Google Ads: spend from $52,882 to $37,426 (-29%), conversions from 840 to 1,915 (+128%), cost per conversion from $63 to $20 (-69%). Clicks fell from 31,087 to 9,887 (-68%).

Community two followed the same shape: spend from $56,424 to $36,242 (-36%), conversions from 883 to 1,275 (+44%), cost per conversion from $64 to $28 (-56%).

Microsoft became community one's second-best lead source, with 178 conversions at $22.72 each. On Meta, sharper creative lifted click-through rate from 2.52% to 4.20%, at $0.33 per click, on 3% more spend.

Clicks fell by two thirds and leads more than doubled. The account stopped paying for curiosity and started paying for families ready to book a tour.