August 18, 2026
A candid conversation with Katie Holt of Smart Girl Digital and Adrienne Mansfield of ADage Marketing Group
There are a few things in senior living marketing that make our eyes twitch.
Besides the caffeine. ☕️
Not because there is only one right way to do the work. And definitely not because either of us has all the answers.
Mostly because we’ve both been doing this long enough to recognize the difference between something that sounds great in a proposal and something that actually strengthens a marketing team.
Katie lives deep in the digital side of the work: traffic, automation, attribution, tech stacks and all the machinery that has to work after somebody clicks.
Adrienne spends most of her time in research, positioning, consumer behavior, brand strategy and figuring out what an organization should actually be saying before anyone starts buying media.
Different lanes.
A surprising number of the same pet peeves.
So we compared notes.
Pet Peeve #1: The proprietary marketing system you don’t actually own
Katie: Can we start with proprietary systems?
Because this one makes me crazy.
You hire an agency. They build the workflows. They create the landing pages. They set up the automation. They build a fancy dashboard with all the metrics. Maybe they even give the whole thing a fancy trademarked name.
Great.
Now ask one question:
Do I own it?
Can I export the data?
Can I access the accounts?
Can I take the work with me?
Does my team understand how any of it works?
Because if the answer is no, you didn’t really build marketing infrastructure.
You rented it.
There is absolutely a place for agencies. We should be an extension of your team.
But you still have to own your marketing.
Adrienne: Exactly. That’s something we care a lot about at ADage too.
Because otherwise every agency change becomes a reset button.
The new agency comes in, throws out whatever the old agency built and starts over.
Which always makes me think:
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater doesn’t fix the fact that you have a leaking drain.
Maybe the old strategy wasn’t the problem.
Maybe nobody owned it.
Maybe the technology wasn’t governed.
Maybe the content was fine, but nobody used it.
Maybe the follow-up broke.
Before we rebuild everything, can we please figure out what is actually broken?
Katie: Exactly.
Because this costs the operator more than another setup fee. You lose workflows, data, institutional knowledge and momentum every time the relationship changes.
If your agency leaves you more dependent than when you started, I have questions.
Pet Peeve #2: “We’ll have your entire strategy up and running in two weeks.”
Katie: Two weeks?
You don’t even know where all their passwords are yet.
Adrienne: And you definitely don’t know enough about their consumer.
This is where speed gets confused with expertise.
There are things an experienced agency should be able to do faster because we’ve seen the patterns before. We should recognize problems sooner. Know which questions to ask. Have processes that keep us from reinventing the wheel.
But there is a huge difference between using experience to accelerate the work and giving everybody the same strategy with a different logo.
Katie: Exactly.
I want process.
I love process.
Give me the checklist. Give me the workflow. Give me the implementation standards.
But strategy?
That should be tailored to your business and your goals.
Your market is different.
Your database is unique.
Your tech stack choices need to integrate.
Your competition varies.
And your goals are rooted in your community’s specific occupancy situation.
If all of that can somehow be understood, diagnosed and fully solved in ten business days…
I’d like to see the homework.
Adrienne: And to be clear, “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is not homework.
At ADage, we don’t think experience eliminates discovery. It should make the discovery smarter.
Otherwise, the operator isn’t buying speed.
They’re buying months of execution against a problem nobody actually diagnosed.
Pet Peeve #3: Agency promises that sound better than they operate
Katie: ZIP-code exclusivity always sounds great.
“Don’t worry. We only work with one community in your ZIP code.”
Okay.
What happens when you grow?
What happens when they grow?
What happens when the community across the street is technically in the next ZIP code?
What exactly are you promising me?
Same thing when someone says, “We’ll buy you out of your current agency contract.”
Maybe it’s a great offer.
But I want to understand the math.
Where does that money come back into the model?
Longer contract?
Higher fee?
Ownership restrictions?
Something bundled into the backend?
There is no such thing as free money.
And while we’re at it… why are we locking ourselves into long-term contracts that don’t have reasonable cancellation clauses?
Adrienne: Neither offer is automatically bad.
I just want to know how the promise operates when reality gets inconvenient.
That is usually where you find out whether it is a meaningful business policy or a sales device.
And for the operator, that matters.
A compelling offer on the front end can become a very expensive set of handcuffs on the back end.
Pet Peeve #4: “We specialize in senior living.”
Adrienne: Okay.
Since when?
Katie: And which part?
Adrienne: Exactly.
Active adult?
Independent living?
Assisted living?
Memory support?
Life plan communities?
Home care?
Hospice?
“Senior living” is already shorthand for an enormous ecosystem.
Specializing should mean more than having senior living logos on your website.
Katie: Anyone who has served in senior living for any length of time knows we don’t simply have a lead-volume problem.
Anybody can set up an ad campaign and drive clicks, calls and form inquiries.
For me, specialization shows up in the details.
Do you understand why your Google Ads conversions aren’t going to match your qualified CRM leads?
Do you understand call routing?
Do you know why a resident family member pressing “1 for sales” can completely distort attribution?
Do you understand the feedback loop between call tracking, the CRM and the ad platforms?
And do you understand what the operator is actually managing?
Competing priorities. Multiple locations. Acquisitions. Transitions. Existing communities that still need marketing attention while all of that is happening.
All of this is senior living marketing.
Adrienne: That’s where ADage thinks about specialization a little differently too.
For us, a big part of it is pattern recognition.
Years of research. Audience behavior. Sales tools. Competitive patterns. And all the weird little things you learn after seeing the same industry problem show up fifty different ways.
You cannot shortcut that with a vertical page on your website.
Experience matters because it helps you know which questions to ask.
I saw a billboard recently that said:
“Experience isn’t expensive. It’s priceless.”
I thought, yep.
That.
You can buy another tool.
Another dashboard.
Another campaign.
You cannot buy ten years of pattern recognition on Tuesday.
And for the operator, that experience should translate into fewer expensive lessons being learned from scratch.
Pet Peeve #5: Meeting the senior strategist — and then never seeing them again
Adrienne: This one gets me.
You go through business development.
You meet the founder.
The senior strategist is in the room.
Everyone has twenty years of experience.
The proposal gets signed.
And then somehow the people you bought disappear.
I don’t have a problem with junior team members.
We all need them. People have to learn somewhere, and good agencies should be developing talent.
My problem is when the expertise sold is not the expertise delivered.
If I’m paying for senior-level judgment, senior-level judgment needs to remain involved.
And that is something we are very intentional about at ADage. Senior thinking should not disappear once the sale is made.
Katie: Yes.
And the team structure should be clear before the contract is signed.
Who is actually doing the work?
Who owns the strategy?
Who owns implementation?
Who do I call when something breaks?
Who has the authority to make a decision?
That’s not a minor detail.
That’s the relationship.
Adrienne: Exactly.
For the client, it’s pretty simple:
Are you paying senior-level fees for senior-level thinking?
Or did you only get access to that thinking during the sales process?
Pet Peeve #6: “We generated 5,000 leads!”
Adrienne: Congratulations?
Katie: How many did the team work?
Adrienne: Thank you.
Somewhere along the way lead generation became Pokémon.
Gotta catch ’em all.
No.
You probably do not need every possible lead.
You need the right leads.
And then you need to actually nurture them.
Katie: One hundred percent.
We have literally reduced paid budgets when a client wasn’t working the leads we were already generating.
Why would we keep pouring money into the top of the funnel when nobody is doing anything with what comes out the bottom?
That’s not a media problem.
That’s waste.
Adrienne: And volume creates its own problem.
Give a sales team hundreds of low-intent inquiries and now the genuinely qualified prospects have to compete for attention too.
This is where targeting matters.
Spray-and-pray marketing can make a beautiful report because the numbers look big.
But quantity makes the dashboard exciting.
Quality makes the strategy work.
Katie: And then everybody wants the campaign that pops.
Leads are up!
Great.
Now what?
Adrienne: Right.
You don’t have a 30-day buyer.
So why do you have a 30-day marketing strategy?
Katie: Exactly.
My brain naturally goes:
What’s the offer?
How are we nurturing them when they respond?
Then how are we promoting it?
The nurture cannot be the thing we figure out after launch.
And it definitely cannot be:
Email one.
Email two.
“You didn’t respond.”
Goodbye forever.
Adrienne: Because an inactive lead isn’t necessarily a dead lead.
Timing changes.
Family dynamics change.
Finances change.
The person who wasn’t ready six months ago may be the person who needs you today.
Katie: Stay in touch.
Preferably with something useful.
Not twelve emails asking whether they’re “still interested.”
Pet Peeve #7: Spending everything on property and forgetting the people
Adrienne: One of our favorite Clicks & Community takeaways was:
People buy people, not property.
And I keep coming back to that.
We will spend enormous amounts of money getting the perfect drone footage.
Golden-hour exterior.
Dining room.
Pool.
Apartment.
Walking path.
Fantastic.
Then somebody calls.
And the first human interaction feels completely disconnected from everything the marketing promised.
Katie: This is where, as a marketer, I have to let go of control and trust the community team to maintain the promise made in the marketing.
I can make the traffic cleaner.
I can fix the tracking.
I can automate the follow-up.
I can tell you which campaign drove the phone call.
I cannot make the first human interaction good from inside Google Ads.
And there are a ton of wonderful people serving at the community who are committed to delivering a stellar experience.
That handoff from marketing to sales — and ultimately operations — is critical to improving the public perception of the industry.
Adrienne: Exactly.
At ADage, we think about marketing as part of the whole consumer journey for this reason.
Marketing doesn’t end when the lead hits the CRM.
If the story we tell in the campaign does not match what happens when somebody reaches the organization, the consumer catches it.
Ultimately, they’re the judge.
Not us.
Not the dashboard.
Not the agency.
What they say about you after the interaction is the result.
And that is the business consequence: one poor human handoff can erase the confidence your campaign spent thousands of dollars creating.
Pet Peeve #8: “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
Katie: There it is.
Adrienne: My favorite.
I understand why it happens.
When you’re busy, familiar feels efficient.
There is comfort in repeating what worked before.
But marketing is not a finite game.
The question is not simply:
Did we win this campaign?
Did we beat that community?
Did we get the contract?
Did the post get more clicks?
The longer game is:
Did we get smarter?
Did we learn something about the consumer?
Did we build credibility?
Did we create something the team can use again?
Are we better positioned for the next decision?
Katie: And does the client still own the thing when we’re gone?
Adrienne: Exactly.
And that gets pretty close to what we believe at ADage:
Good marketing should build capability, not dependency.
Which is probably where all of these pet peeves eventually meet.
Fireworks or Flames?
Adrienne: We talk about this a lot at ADage:
We’re not here to be the firework. We’re here to share the flame.
A firework is impressive.
Big launch.
Huge spike.
Everybody looks.
Then it’s gone.
We’d rather share the flame.
The strategy gets understood.
The knowledge gets transferred.
The team gets stronger.
The work compounds.
Katie: That’s exactly the ownership conversation.
I don’t want a client saying:
“Only Smart Girl knows how this works.”
That is not a compliment.
I want them to understand their marketing.
I want the system documented.
I want them to own their assets.
I want them to know what the numbers mean.
Then let us be the experts who help them make it better.
Adrienne: That’s a big part of how we think at ADage too.
We don’t want clients dependent on us because we’re the only ones who understand the strategy.
The goal is to bring senior-level thinking, share what we know and leave the client better equipped to make the next decision.
That’s what we mean when we say:
We don’t sell what we do. We share how we think.
Most of these pet peeves ultimately come down to one question:
Is your agency trying to be the firework — or helping your organization carry the flame?
What do we actually want from an agency relationship?
Apparently, after airing all of this out, the things that bother us aren’t really trademarks.
Or ZIP codes.
Or lead reports.
Or two-week onboarding promises.
They’re symptoms.
The real problems are:
Dependency instead of ownership.
Activity instead of strategy.
Volume instead of fit.
Quick wins instead of sustained performance.
Promises without proof.
Expertise sold but not delivered.
Marketing disconnected from the actual consumer experience.
Neither of us believes a good agency relationship should come with a golden handcuff.
And a good agency should not become indispensable by making the client helpless.
A good agency should make the client stronger and smarter.
Bring expertise.
See patterns faster.
Challenge assumptions.
Build what needs to be built.
Teach what you know.
Make it usable.
Keep showing up.
Then earn the right to be invited into the next conversation.
Katie: So basically… own your marketing.
Adrienne: And stop buying Pokémon leads.
Katie: I knew you were going to bring that back.
Adrienne: Obviously.
Some pet peeves are worth keeping.
Your Turn
What is your biggest pet peeve in senior living marketing?
The thing that makes you stop and think:
We should know better by now.
Tell us.
And if a few of these sound a little too familiar, it may be worth asking what your organization actually owns, how your strategy is being built and whether your agency relationship is making the team stronger — or more dependent.
Katie Holt + Smart Girl Digital
Traffic, automation, tech-stack integration and analytics
Adrienne Mansfield + ADage Marketing Group
Research, positioning, brand strategy and the consumer journey
Different lanes.
Same goal:
Build marketing that works, makes sense and leaves the client stronger than we found them.