Whether you’re working with a marketing firm or managing your marketing in-house (Wait, why are you doing that yourself?), you should consider conducting focus groups with current residents, prospects and even teammates. The logistics of how to best structure your group, ask the “right” questions, and use the information you garner are  paramount to successful focus group execution and management.

We’re glad you’re here! At Angell Marketing, we’ve conducted dozens of focus groups across the country. From Life Plan Communities to rentals to assisted living and memory care, we’ve managed the preparation, facilitation and output of this important marketing effort. Please use this guide as a helpful tool to initiate your own focus groups. And, of course, feel free to get in touch with our Audience Insights & Content Strategy team if you’d like to talk about how we can help.

Identifying the Why Behind a Focus Group

Focus groups with residents and prospects give you access to the one thing a lot of senior living marketing lacks: unfiltered truth. Surveys and analytics can tell you what people do, but they rarely explain whyor how it feels. In a group setting, people build on each other’s comments, reveal shared concerns, and surface language that can challenge an assumption or support a claim.

A focus group empowers residents to articulate the emotional arc from hesitation to belonging, while prospects expose the real-time objections, comparisons and decision triggers shaping their journey. That combination helps you close the gap between what you think your community delivers and what seniors actually experience and value.

The practical outcome of focus groups is that they allow you to sharpen your messaging so it resonates faster, reducing wasted spend on generic campaigns and giving your sales teams more authentic ways to connect. They often uncover simple but high-impact fixes. Think confusing terminology, missed reassurance points or under-shared stories.

And maybe one of the most significant reasons to consider a focus group is this:  it signals that you’re listening. When residents and prospects feel heard, trust increases. In a category where decisions are emotional and often delayed, that trust is a measurable advantage.

Building Your Groups

To get the most out of the effort, we recommend doing one focus group with residents and one with non-residents. A non-resident group — ideally prospects — can include:

• Seniors in your active leads database.
• Those on your wait list, holding off for a particular floor plan or a residence in your expansion project.

We also like to include two full hours of 15-minute scheduled interviews with community staff from a variety of departments. This includes maintenance, dining, housekeeping, activities, concierge, healthcare, etc. Doing quick 15-minute interviews with individual teammates seems to work better than meeting with a single group. It requires less of a time investment for them, and they generally feel more free to share.

These groups can be facilitated in a single day, making the most of everyone’s time. Here is a sample schedule for the day:

10 – 11:30 a.m.               Resident Group

Noon – 1 p.m.                 Lunch – Invite the prospects in for lunch before their session.

1:30 – 3 p.m.                   Prospect Group

3:15 – 5:15 p.m.             15-minute interviews with 8 individual staff

Choosing Your Participants

Note: This was covered during the AZ Leading Age presentation, so if you were there, feel free to skip ahead.

When it comes to who you want to include in your focus groups, there are nuances of participation that make some choices better than others. And by “better,” we simply mean more suited for a fruitful conversation.

The sweet spot for group size is 10 to 12 residents. When working with communities to recruit resident participants, the first thing we consider is the diversity of the group. A few things to think about:

• Length of residency. Someone new to the community will have valuable insights, and those will vary greatly from residents who have lived in the community for a long time. We want both perspectives!

• Experiences with a transition to senior living. It may sound odd, but having someone in the group who really struggled to adjust to a move is as helpful as having someone who jumped in happily with both feet. We welcome residents with a variety of outlooks on assimilating to community life.

• Marital status. We tend to ask that resident couples not be included in the same group simply because we’d like to include as many varied experiences as possible, and oftentimes couples have the same input to share. Note that for the prospect group, it’s likely you will have couples — and that’s fine because they can share how each is feeling about the possibility of a move.

• Personality type. Don’t assume we only want super outgoing residents. This is a great opportunity to get some of your more shy, reserved residents involved in sharing their opinions and thoughts.

There are also residents we ask community teams to avoid inviting to participate in a focus group. Certain participants can impede meaningful discussions because they are so strongly entrenched in their opinions or roles within the community. Here are some examples of residents we prefer to avoid bringing into a focus group:

• Resident ambassadors. Sometimes a community will say, “Oh, let’s just pull together our ambassador group.” Their job is to cheerlead for the community and that’s so important! But a focus group is not about cheerleading. It’s about nurturing a substantive conversation about life in a senior living community.
• Committee or club leads. The resident lead for particular community committees will feel compelled to defend their group, should criticism come up. This makes sense but can impede honest conversation.
• Couples. Couples often want to participate together. But having them finishing one another’s sentences and sharing the same experience is not particularly helpful. One of their seats can be better used by another resident who may have a different experience.
• Family members of staff. Community staff will understandably find it easier to ask loved ones who live in the community to participate, but this isn’t particularly helpful.
• President of the resident council. This person is invaluable to the community, but their presence can get in the way of honest exchange.

Assigning Roles To Plan and Execute

Focus groups, like any community activity, requires thoughtful planning. Here are important roles you’ll want to identify on your team and with your marketing partners:

• Resident recruiter. When we work with communities, it’s often the activities coordinators and sales counselors who know the residents best. So they are typically who we start when discussing who could/should/would be invited to participate in the group. This person does the outreach and confirms participation.

• Prospect recruiter. Sales teams can use prospect focus group recruitment as another touchpoint for a handful of “active” leads in the database. Reaching out personally with an invitation to come to the community for a focus group is often well received. Inviting them for lunch  before the group starts is also a nice touch.

• Event logistics coordinator. Having someone on staff  to handle the details of the focus group facilitation  is key. Details include: reserving a room large enough for the group, ensuring the room is set up comfortably and looks nice, arranging with dining to have fresh coffee, iced tea, water and light snacks available for each group.

• Day-of event coordinator. It’s helpful to have someone available for assistance the day of the focus groups in case a door needs to be unlocked or dining needs to be contacted. This can simply mean having the cell phone number of someone on staff who can assist if needed.

• Focus group facilitator. The facilitator, or moderator, of your group should not be someone on staff at the community. This person  needs to be a neutral outsider who can adeptly manage a group, redirect conversation and tease out topics that will ultimately help with delivering substantive insights.

If you work with a marketing firm or PR agency, explore their ability to structure and facilitate a focus group. If you want to do it on your own, consider hiring a consultant who specializes in focus group moderation.

• Focus group note-taker. Don’t rely on memory. Someone should be taking copious and detailed notes during each focus group session. You can also record the session (with permission) so  you can pull out exact quotes.

Setting a Comfortable Tone

A focus group shouldn’t feel like a formal interview. Residents open up when the environment feels relaxed and human. A few ways to create a relaxed tone:

• Hold the focus group in a familiar, comfortable space on campus.
• Offer coffee, snacks or even wine, depending on the community culture.
• Keep the group size manageable. Between 10 to 12 residents is ideal. Prospects can be harder to pin down, but try to get at least six in that group.
• Position it as a conversation, not an evaluation.
• Make it clear there are no “right” answers.
• Invite participants to help themselves to drinks and snacks at any point during the conversation. Give them the OK to leave the room to use the restroom or take a phone call. They should not feel like captives.

Asking Good Questions (And Then Getting Out of the Way)

The quality of your insights depends entirely on the quality of your questions and the facilitator’s ability to manage and guide the conversation.

Try to avoid:

• Yes or No questions.
• Leading language (“What do you love about … ?”).
• Generic prompts (“Tell me about your experience here.”).

Instead, ask:

• “When did you first start considering senior living?”
• “What did you know about senior living before you started researching?”
• “What surprised you most after moving in?”
• “What nearly stopped you from choosing this community?”
• “How do you describe this place to your friends?”
• “What does a really good day here look like?”

Then do the hardest thing: Stop talking. Let silence do its job. Give residents space to think, reflect and respond fully. The best insights often come after a pause.

When you hear something interesting, dig deeper:

• “You said it felt like home … what makes it feel that way?”
• “You mentioned you were hesitant … what specifically worried you?”
• “What did you mean when you said … ?”
• “Can you give me an example of that?”

The first answer is often the headline. The second and third answers are where the meaning is. For instance, when a resident says, “The staff is great,” that’s nice but not distinctive. When they say, “They notice when I don’t come down for breakfast,” that’s a story.

Pay attention to:

• Specific moments and anecdotes.
• Repeated phrases or language.
• Emotional cues (pride, relief, hesitation, joy).

After the session, thank participants personally and share how their input will be used. When possible, show them the result (a campaign, website update or blog).

Turn Insights Into Action

The biggest mistake is treating a focus group as a one-off exercise.

Instead, use what you learn to:

• Refine messaging and positioning.
• Train sales teams on real resident language.
• Identify operational strengths and gaps.
• Build a library of authentic stories.

Residents are your most credible storytellers. A well-run focus group doesn’t just give you better marketing; it helps you see your own community more clearly.

And often, it reminds everyone involved why this work matters in the first place.

If you want to talk more about focus groups, don’t hesitate to reach out.