We Were the Family Calling Home Care. Now We Help Home Care Get Found.

Somewhere right now, a worried adult daughter is trying to find home care. She’s at work, or sitting in a parking lot, or awake at 11 p.m. two states away. Her dad fell, or her mom has stopped eating much, and she’s still trying to work out what “home care” even means.

We know that search because we’ve made it ourselves.

Who we are

We’re Jon Coward of 7 Sided Cube, a marketing agency in Decatur, Georgia, and Wendy Fenner of Wendy Anne LLC. We’ve teamed up to work with home care agencies and the companies that build for them. Starting this month, we’re writing about what’s working in home care marketing, what isn’t, and what you can try on your own without hiring anyone, including us.

In 2022 we cared for Wendy’s parents together, long distance, from Atlanta. What began as one emergency surgery turned into a long stretch of hospital stays, rehab, specialists, hospice and home health. We kept working full-time. We burned a hole in the road to Wendy’s parents’ home to decipher and translate medical findings, sleep in their hospital rooms, meet with estate planners, do laundry, cook, clean and change adult diapers.

We filled the gaps between providers’ reports and results, and found ways to stay human as we redefined what a fulfilling life meant for them and for us. Both of Wendy’s parents needed help, whether they were the one who was sick or not. The people who acknowledged the chaos with us, the ones who called back and offered options, are the reason we still remember some of those weeks as bearable.

So we come at home care knowing both sides: the family trying to find care, and the businesses trying to be found.

Wendy spent 34 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), leading national campaigns on topics like diabetes and flu prevention and training health departments around the world in health communication. Jon directed marketing for MTV, produced stories for CNN, and has run 7 Sided Cube for more than 20 years. We’ve also both thrown ourselves into local marketing for a Scout troop, musical theater, our church, and a small business incubator, mostly because we love it.

Two numbers shaping home care right now

The buyer is a working caregiver. There are now 63 million family caregivers in the U.S., nearly 1 in 4 adults, and seven in 10 are employed (AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025). The person choosing an agency often isn’t the person who needs care. It’s an adult child fitting research into an already full day.

Caregivers are in demand everywhere. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 18% growth in home health and personal care aide jobs from 2025 to 2035, with about 760,500 openings a year (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook). Every one of those openings is someone an agency has to find, hire and keep.

Put together, agencies are marketing to two audiences at once, families and caregivers, and both are sizing them up online before they ever call. If you sell to agencies, these two numbers are why your customers’ growth plans look the way they do.

Three needs we keep hearing

As we attend home care events and talk with agencies, the same three needs keep coming up.

Recruiting and keeping caregivers. Careers pages, job posts and referral programs are marketing. The first two weeks on the job matter as much as the ad that brought someone in.

Reaching the person who’s actually buying care. Websites, Google profiles, social posts and emails need to be written for the adult child doing the research, not only for the parent who’ll receive care.

Knowing who the best clients really are. Many agencies can describe their clients in general but aren’t sure who their ideal client is: which payer, which care needs, which neighborhoods, who made the call. When that picture is fuzzy, messages and channels drift, and leads go up without getting any better.

The next two sections are for two different readers. Skip to the one that’s you.

If you run a home care agency: try this

Three small actions. Pick whichever fits your week.

Who’s actually buying? Pull your last 10 inquiries. For each one, note who called: the person needing care, an adult child, a spouse, or a referral source. If you can’t tell, that’s worth knowing too. Add “Who is calling, and how are they related?” to your intake form this week. Over a few months, that one line will tell you a lot about who to market to.

Read your homepage on your phone as that person. In 30 seconds, can they find what matters to them? What you do, which areas you serve, roughly what care costs, and how to reach a real person today? Jot down anything that took longer.

Ask two of your longest-serving caregivers one question: “What makes you stay?” Write down their exact words. Those words belong on your careers page and in your job posts more than anything a marketer could write.

And since November is National Family Caregivers Month, here’s an easy way to give something useful to the families who call you, because they’re caregivers too. The National Institute on Aging publishes free caregiver worksheets covering care plans, medications and contacts. Consider sending the link to every family who calls this month.

If you build for home care agencies: what this means for you

If you sell software or services to agencies, the three needs above are a field report on your customers. They’re where agency owners are spending their attention and their budgets right now. Three ways to put that to work this month.

Read your homepage as a busy agency owner. In 30 seconds, can they tell what problem you solve, in their words? Owners talk about occupancy, referrals, caregiver hiring and conversion. If your page leads with features and integrations, they have to do the translating, and most won’t.

Ask two of your best agency customers one question: “What almost stopped you from buying?” Write down their exact words. Those hesitations are what your next prospect is thinking but won’t say on a demo call, and they belong in your sales pages and onboarding.

Check whether you help agencies win the adult child. If your product touches families in any way, through a family portal, care updates, or scheduling, does your marketing give agencies language they can use with the adult child doing the research? An agency that can explain your tool to a worried daughter is an agency that keeps using it.

What’s next

Over the next few months we’ll go deeper, starting with what families notice when they gather for the holidays, and what they find when they search for home care afterward.

We’d like to hear from you. If you run an agency, what’s the one thing on your plate this winter: caregivers, the calls coming in, or knowing which calls you want most? If you build for agencies, what do you wish you understood better about your customers? Tell us. We read every reply.

And if you ever want a second set of eyes on any of this, that’s what we do.

If you write about home care, we’re glad to talk.