The guide
The realistic alternatives to a directory listing are paid social advertising, local search and your Google Business Profile, reputation and reviews, professional referral relationships, and family story film. None of these replaces a directory outright. Each one reaches families at a different moment, and the homes that stay full tend to run two or three of them alongside the listing rather than swapping one for another.
Updated August 2026
Directories work, and the strongest results come from adding to them. In brief:
The starting point
Yes. Directories work, and they work well for a specific job: catching a family who has already decided to look. carehome.co.uk alone carries around 16,500 listings and takes roughly 15 million visits a year, and for many operators it is the biggest single source of referrals through to their own website.
The ceiling is what it is. A directory shows your home beside every comparable home in the area, on a page you do not control, to a family who is comparing rather than choosing. You are visible at the moment of shortlisting and invisible in the weeks before it, which is where the decision is really formed. That is the gap the alternatives below fill. We compare the two directly in how a listing compares with running your own adverts.
How families look
Families use several routes at once, and formal quality frameworks matter less than most operators expect.
start with NHS or local authority directories
use online searches
rely on word of mouth
Research published by Care England with Log my Care, based on a survey of 1,000 UK families who had recently arranged care, found 55 per cent start with NHS or local authority directories, 40 per cent use online searches and 38 per cent rely on word of mouth. Only 19 per cent said they used inspection reports when researching providers.
The same research found reputation was the single most important factor in choosing a provider, named by 30 per cent, ahead of cost at 25 per cent, staff experience at 24 per cent and location at 24 per cent. The decision is usually being made by a close family member, most often an adult child but frequently a spouse, sibling, niece or grandchild, under real time pressure. They are looking for reasons to trust you, not data to compare you.
Side by side
None of these replaces a directory outright. Each one reaches families at a different moment.
| Route | What it is good at | Its ceiling | Speed to first enquiry | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid social (Meta) | Reaching local families before they search, showing daily life | Needs good creative and someone to answer fast | Days to weeks | Recurring spend, stops when you stop |
| Local search and Google Business Profile | Catching "care home near me" searches, map pack visibility | Limited by how competitive your town is | Weeks to months | Mostly time, compounds |
| Reputation and reviews | Turning a shortlist place into a visit | Slow to build, needs asking | Months | Mostly time, compounds |
| Professional referrals | Warm, high intent introductions | Depends on relationships and capacity elsewhere | Weeks to months | Time and consistency |
| Family story film | Answering "would my mum be happy here" honestly | Only works if it is real people, not staged | Weeks, once filmed | One off to make, reusable |
Fastest to start
Paid social is the fastest of the alternatives, because it reaches families before they start searching. Reach is not the constraint. Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 report found Facebook and Messenger were used by 93 per cent of online UK adults in May 2025. The families deciding on care for a parent are already there every day.
What it asks of you is honest creative and a fast response. An advert that looks like an advert gets scrolled past. Something that shows a real morning in your home, filmed with real residents and families who have consented, does not. Our guide on whether Meta advertising genuinely fills care home beds covers what separates the two.
The other four
Slower to start, and several of them keep returning value once the work is done.
Local search catches the family who is searching right now, and it is the cheapest visibility a home can own. Google Search was used by 82 per cent of online UK adults in the month, and a large share of those searches for care are local and on a phone. A complete, current profile with real photographs, correct opening details and answered reviews is the single highest-return hour a manager can spend. It is slower than paid social and it compounds, and it feeds everything else, because a family who sees your advert will search your name before they call. See whether a Google Business Profile matters.
Reputation is the factor families named as most important, so it is the one worth building deliberately. That means asking families who have had a good experience to say so publicly, on Google and on the directory profile you already pay for, and replying to every review including the difficult ones. carehome.co.uk carries more than 400,000 reviews across UK homes, which tells you how much weight families put on them.
Referrals from hospital discharge teams, GPs, community nurses and local authority brokerage bring the warmest enquiries you will get. They also take the longest to establish and depend on being reliably good at answering the phone and taking admissions at short notice. Occupancy across England has tightened, rising from 78 per cent in 2021/22 to 84 per cent in 2024/25 according to CQC's State of Care report, which means referral partners have fewer easy options and value a home that answers.
Film answers the question a family cannot ask on a listing: would my mother be happy here. A short, honest film of real families and real staff, with proper consent, does work no brochure can. It is a one off to make and it then works everywhere, on your website, in adverts, on your directory profile and on social.
Cost and pace
They fall into two shapes. Directory listings and paid advertising are recurring, and they stop the day you stop paying. Local search, reputation and referral relationships are mostly time, and they keep returning value after the work is done. Film sits between the two: one production, used for years.
If you bring in outside help, the pricing model matters more than the number. Some agencies charge a monthly retainer regardless of outcome, others tie part of their fee to results. We walk through the trade off in our guide on choosing a care home marketing partner, and we are happy to walk through specifics on a call.
How long it takes
Paid social can produce enquiries within days.
Referrals and local search take weeks to months.
Reputation builds over a longer horizon.
A sensible sequence for a home with empty beds now is to start one paid channel properly, tidy the Google Business Profile in the same week, and begin the slower reputation and referral work in parallel so that in six months you are not dependent on spend.
What usually goes wrong
The most common failure is not the channel, it is the answer.
The second
Two channels done properly beat five done occasionally.
Who it is for
A single home usually gets the most from reputation, local search and one paid channel done well. A group can run several at once and compare across sites, and should. In both cases the honest test is the same.
Can you name where your last five move-ins came from?
If not, that is the first thing to fix, before any new channel.
Common questions
Usually not. A directory listing puts a home in front of families who are already looking, and for many homes it is the single biggest source of referrals to their own website. The better move is to keep the listing and add channels that reach families earlier, so the home is not competing only on the directory's terms.
Paid social, usually Meta, moves fastest because it reaches local families in days rather than waiting for them to search. Local search work and reputation building are slower but compound, and referral relationships sit in between.
Research by Care England and Log my Care with 1,000 UK families found 55 per cent start with NHS or local authority directories, 40 per cent use online searches and 38 per cent rely on word of mouth. Most families use several routes at once, which is why a single channel rarely fills a home.
Directories and paid advertising are recurring costs that stop working when you stop paying. Local search work, reputation building and referral relationships are largely time rather than spend, and they keep returning value after the work is done. Agency support is priced either as a monthly retainer or against results, and the two are worth comparing directly.
A single home usually gets the most from reputation, local search and one paid channel done properly. Groups can afford to run several channels at once and measure across sites. In both cases the limiting factor is who answers the enquiry, not how many channels are running.
Keep reading
