Jeff Nichols
Founder
Founded adPharos in 2007. Background in digital marketing operations. Built LeadCentre and the ALINE and WelcomeHome connectors after watching too many senior living teams operate without the attribution they needed.
LinkedInAbout adPharos.
A growth partner for senior living communities.
How we got here
We built the agency we wished existed.
adPharos started small, with a simple premise. Marketing teams at growing organizations needed a partner who could think strategically and also do the work. Not a strategy deck handed off to a junior implementer, and not an implementer who couldn't tell you why. Jeff Nichols founded the agency on that premise. Nicole Heaps joined in 2013 to run client work, and for years we served clients across a handful of B2B and consumer verticals.
The senior living turn was not a market study. It was a recurring pattern. The communities we worked with had the same problem, and most of their agencies had the same blind spot. Spend was going up, leads were being counted, and no one could draw a clean line from a paid click to a move-in. Tour shows disappeared into a CRM. Move-ins came back as a spreadsheet at the end of the quarter. The marketing dollar was being judged on form fills, which is roughly like judging a restaurant on how many people walked past the door.
So we built the connectors we wished existed. LeadCentre stitches paid media, phone calls, web sessions, and form fills into one timeline per prospect. Our ALINE and WelcomeHome connectors push that timeline into the CRM and pull move-in outcomes back out. None of this was pitched. It was the operating reality of trying to do the job honestly, and once the plumbing was there, we could finally answer the only question that matters. Which dollar produced the move-in.
That is where we are headed. A senior living community is a long-cycle, high-trust purchase, and the marketing partner has to be a beacon for growth, not a vendor counting clicks. We measure what matters, we tell clients when a channel is not working, and we keep the lights on for the ones who are building something that will outlast the quarter.
How we work.
Principle 01
We pitch a year, not a tactic.
The senior living buying cycle runs in quarters, not weeks. We plan in annual arcs, with quarterly checkpoints and monthly tuning. That keeps us honest about what is working and stops us from chasing whatever was loudest last Tuesday.
Principle 02
We measure what matters.
Form fills are an input, not an outcome. We instrument every engagement to the move-in, then report against cost-per-move-in and pipeline velocity. When a channel cannot be measured to outcome, we say so out loud rather than hide it in a dashboard.
Principle 03
We say no to bad fits.
We do not take on every community that calls. If the offer is broken, the CRM is unmanned, or the budget cannot reach a real result, we will tell you before the engagement starts. Short-term revenue is not worth a client we cannot make successful.
The people you'll work with.
adPharos is small on purpose. When you partner with us, you work directly with the senior team, with no account layer in between.
Nicole Heaps
Account Director
Client lead on Lenbrook, Ignite Living, and several other senior living engagements, along with True Natural Gas. Builds the systems that keep multi-channel campaigns coherent, so reporting matches reality and nothing slips between the platforms.
LinkedInAtlanta, Georgia.
We are based in Atlanta, with our office in the Cumberland and Galleria area on the northwest side of the city. It is a short hop from Hartsfield, which is useful when client work calls for time on the ground.
Our work runs across the Southeast and nationally. Senior living is a national vertical, and good attribution does not have a zip code. We pick clients based on fit, not geography.
