Kendal At Oberlin

Sustaining Occupancy and Brand Strength Through a Decade-Long Marketing Partnership

Kendal at Oberlin is a life plan community in northeast Ohio, one mile from Oberlin College. With a strong reputation, Kendal at Oberlin has long maintained healthy occupancy and a robust waitlist. Many communities would call that a finish line. Their leadership saw it differently.

As digital marketing continued to advance at a rapid pace, a single-person marketing team simply could not keep up — and staying ahead would take outside expertise.

That is why, more than a decade ago, Kendal at Oberlin turned to Marketing Essentials. We had established ourselves in the digital marketing space with a team of senior living marketing experts ready to extend their in-house capacity. The goal was clear: keep brand awareness growing, nurture waitlist members and future leads, and build a pipeline deep enough to support long-term occupancy across every level of care.

View the Results

The Results

ROI resident lifetime value vs actual marketing spend

0% ↑

increase in paid advertising leads

0% ↑

increase in AI referral sessions

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

Hear from Kendal At Oberlin

“If you are a senior living community looking for a strategic digital partner, it's a no-brainer to reach out to Marketing Essentials. At the end of the day, you can't do it all. It's nice knowing that they have a whole team of experts there to guide my digital strategy.”

– Kelly Corcoran, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications at Kendal at Oberlin

A Strategic Marketing Partnership

From Strategy to Results

A partnership this long runs on communication. Regular strategy sessions keep both teams aligned, and continuous data analysis means tactics are based on what the numbers show — not what worked last year.

As Kendal at Oberlin's goals shift, we shift alongside them. The focus may move toward building occupancy in specific care levels one quarter and protecting independent living lead flow the next. Our job is to stay ahead of what each goal requires, meet their team where they are and provide the strategic support that helps the organization hit its goals — so Kendal at Oberlin can keep doing what it does best: serving its residents.

9,029% ROI – Resident lifetime value of move-ins from digital marketing sources against what Kendal at Oberlin actually invested.
Continuous optimization – Campaigns, channels and messaging are refined constantly based on what's actually working.
Complete agility – When occupancy needs shift to other care levels, the strategy shifts with them.

SEO and AI Visibility Optimization

The emergence of AI in search has reshaped how prospects find senior living communities. Our SEO and AI Visibility Program focused on three priorities for Kendal at Oberlin: protect rank on the most valuable high-intent terms, grow visibility in local search and show up in AI search results.

The work included:

GEO and AEO optimizations that increased AI referral sessions to the site by 123% in a year
Ongoing keyword monitoring and optimization
Blog content recommendations built around search intent
Technical site health monitoring and upkeep

Kendal at Oberlin is now showing up in the AI chats where prospects are starting their research.

CRM Integration and Marketing Automation

Kendal at Oberlin's healthy waitlist called for a different approach to lead generation. Instead of chasing volume, we focused on highly targeted, in-market prospects. Fewer new contacts, but higher quality — ready to fill the pipeline in the years ahead.

On the technology side, our team integrated their Salesforce CRM with HubSpot's marketing automation platform. The integration gave the team greater efficiency and more accurate reporting. We also cleaned the prospect database — reducing the total by 31% — so sales could focus their efforts on the most engaged and ready-to-move prospects.