Marketing a service many people rarely consider can be a challenge and few sectors are as sensitive or as overlooked until the moment of need as social care.

Live-in care provider The Good Care Group is on a mission to tackle perceptions about home care while challenging traditional, transactional ways the sector has historically been marketed.

“Most people don’t really think about, or consider social care until they need it,” explains The Good Care Group CMO Belinda Hanton.

“The sector is very traditional and very much based on a commodity sell. For me, that felt very counterintuitive to what people actually wanted to know and think about. You are talking in quite a transactional way for what is a deeply personal service.”

[We are] selling the benefits of quality of life and independence at home, and actually making families not feel ashamed to seek care for their loved ones.

Belinda Hanton, The Good Care Group

The Good Care Group provides live-in carers who support clients with personal care, companionship, mobility assistance and more. Services range from ongoing live-in care to short respite or hourly support.

The firm is operating in a growing market. According to the Homecare Association’s 2024 market overview, there are more than 12,800 registered home care providers in England, an 8% year-on-year increase. Live-in care represents roughly 10% of the overall market.

Despite this growth, Hanton describes the category’s communication as “static”.

“People come to businesses that provide care, knowing they can provide care. That’s not the question they’re asking. They’re asking: ‘Can you deliver safety? Are you vetted? Are you professional? Are you carers trained?'” she explains.

“They take it as a given that you can provide care. They want to dig under the skin of care and that’s something the social care sector doesn’t do very well.”

When Hanton joined in September 2024, she felt the category lacked a sense of “elevation” or differentiation, relying heavily on functional, price-led messaging.

Her aim has been to reposition The Good Care Group as a “forward-thinking” brand which can articulate its value more clearly – particularly against unregulated competitors – while treating the subject matter with appropriate sensitivity.

“[We are] selling the benefits of quality of life and independence at home, and actually making families not feel ashamed to seek care for their loved ones as well,” she explains.

To achieve this, The Good Care Group has undergone a rebrand, including a refreshed website and new visual identity. The business is moving away from “NHS blue” towards what Hanton describes as a more contemporary, empathetic look and feel.

“We looked at what felt forward thinking and progressive in a sector that’s quite static,” she says.

UK marketers ahead of the curve when it comes to AI confidence, research says

One of Hanton’s first actions when she joined was leading what she calls an “old-fashioned brand journey”. This included workshops with the marketing team, wider business and key stakeholders to clarify what the brand stands for.

As part of this, the team redefined the tone of voice, colours, language and put in a “five pillar” proposition underpinning the refreshed brand strategy.

“It was to take a stock of where we were and actually drill down into what we thought were the real key facets we wanted to showcase, talk about and build,” she explains.

Research among existing and prospective clients also helped to shape the direction. Although clients are typically older adults receiving care, a large proportion of decision-makers are adult children or grandchildren navigating care options on behalf of loved ones.

Hanton says the work required “a lot of self-reflection” within the team, coupled with deep research into client needs.

“For us, it was to help really understand what our current clients want more of and what our future clients might need, and marry that into a really important message and framework,” she adds.

Challenging stereotypes

A key perception the brand wants to challenge is how carers themselves are viewed. Stereotypes of institutionalised care or sterile, task-based support don’t reflect the reality of live-in care, Hanton argues.

“The amazing care stories aren’t always celebrated. It’s always the tragic, awful stories or the whistleblowing stories that form people’s perception of care, and that came out quite strongly in our research,” she explains.

“People were cautious around care because of all those reasons. That’s a sector challenge, therefore our challenge as a business is to get our voice heard.”

Raising awareness is one of the brand’s biggest challenges. Another, Hanton adds, is competing with the volume of unregulated businesses, many of which undercut prices.

“We’re not usually competing with regulated brands like Helping Hands or Bluebird, which is what I would consider our competitors,” she says. “We are usually competing very much on price with competitors who are in that unregulated space.”

She estimates that for every regulated business there are six or seven unregulated providers.

The Good Care Group positions itself at the “quality end” of the market, targeting families who want and can accommodate a live-in arrangement. Communicating that difference, she says, requires moving away from transactional messaging, emphasising emotional reassurance and safety.

Why It Works: How McDonald’s applies behavioural science to sell fries

The brand’s customer base is relatively small, given the nature of live-in care, but decision-making involves a wider group of family members. As a result, the business is evolving its channel strategy.

Historically, The Good Care Group has relied heavily on word of mouth and organic search. SEO remains key, but Hanton explains the business is expanding into new channels, especially to reach younger people involved in family decision-making.

“Not only do we look at families, but we also want to specifically target a smaller, but secondary audience, which is the grandchildren. They have so much influence. We need to actually speak to them, because while they might not be a decision maker, they certainly have a voice in that discussion around care,” she explains.

As a result, the brand plans to increase its investment in paid social and explore channels that reach a younger audience.

A different type of challenge

Marketing social care is fundamentally different from marketing most consumer categories, Hanton argues. The journey is longer, more emotional and often triggered by crisis rather than desire.

“Success for us means growing the live-in care community, increasing website traffic, improving education and driving higher intent,” she says. “From a marketing point of view, it’s a very different type of challenge to big consumer brands.”

Therefore, as a marketing leader, it’s important to work alongside a team that “really dials into what we are trying to do”.

Hanton believes the rebrand will help the business meet these expectations and differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded market. It is designed to elevate The Good Care Group beyond transactional messaging and reposition live-in care as a quality option.

“I want to make sure that our brand talks to relieving those pressure points really quickly, so we’re on that consideration list,” she adds.