The oldest members of Gen X turn 61 this year, but senior living doesn’t have years to wait to understand them.

Many Gen Xers are already researching communities for their parents, comparing options, reading reviews and reaching out to sales teams. That means they’re forming opinions about senior living right now, including whether they could ever imagine choosing it for themselves.

We call this a “two-lens customer.”

Senior living keeps talking about Gen X as the next customer, but they’re already here.

Gen Xers may be looking for Mom or Dad today, but they’re also paying attention to whether what they see has any relevance to the life they want for themselves.

For senior living organizations, that means the time to rethink marketing is now, not five or 10 years from now. And it will likely take more than swapping out dated pictures and writing a catchy new tagline.

Here are five places to start:

1. Market to the person, not the age.

When a 60-year-old looks in the mirror, they often don’t see a 60-year-old looking back at them. In fact, Pew Research found that nearly half of Americans aged 50 and older said they felt at least 10 years younger than their chronological age. Among adults 65 and older, 60% said they felt younger than their actual age.

Instead of building marketing around an age and the assumptions associated with it, marketing needs to start with aspirations, behaviors and priorities.

People don’t wake up on a particular birthday and suddenly become a demographic. If marketing is going to resonate, it needs to understand the person first and their age second.

Gen X is likely to expect more choice, autonomy and the ability to maintain the lifestyle and identity they already have.

2. Build evidence, not adjectives.

In senior living marketing, we are very familiar with words like vibrant, exceptional and engaging.

Putting them on a website or brochure doesn’t make them true. And when everyone is saying the same thing, the words stop saying much of anything. Plus, the flood of AI-generated sameness is only exacerbating this.

Gen X came of age during the computer revolution and then adapted to email, the internet, smartphones and now AI. AARP research shows that adults over 50 own approximately as many technology devices as those under age 50.

That means Gen X has plenty of ways to check whether marketing claims made by a senior living community match reality. They can search websites and read reviews, scroll social media and hear directly from residents, employees, friends and family.

So, don’t tell them life is vibrant. Show them what Tuesday afternoon actually looks like. Proof builds trust in a way adjectives can’t.

3. Design for the two-lens customer.

Gen X is already interacting with senior living as they help their parents research and make decisions about communities. That makes every website visit, community tour and sales chat an opportunity to influence two audiences at once.

The person helping Mom or Dad make a decision today may be making their own decision years from now. So you’re not just marketing one move, but instead, shaping someone’s perception of senior living.

Communities must consider whether their marketing answers the immediate needs of an older consumer while also considering what it communicates to their family members.

4. Make transparency part of your brand.

Gen X remembers researching before the World Wide Web, but they also know how to use the resources now at their fingertips. Before scheduling a tour or filling out a form, they may have visited a website several times, read reviews online, watched videos and searched social media.

And what they find out about cost matters. In a national Mather Institute study, 46% of Gen X respondents said not having enough money was a concern about aging, compared with 36% of baby boomers.

Transparency shouldn’t be something that’s saved for the sales conversation. If prospective residents have to dig for information, that experience is already telling them something about you.

Communities need to make pricing, contracts, healthcare access, dining options and next steps as easy to understand as possible.

5. Sell a bigger life, not a smaller burden.

Not having to mow the lawn has value. But freedom from yardwork isn’t a compelling vision for the next chapter of someone’s life.

Marketing should instead show what senior living can add to someone’s life, and that can include more freedom, choice, relationships, experiences and opportunities to keep working, traveling and contributing.

Maintenance-free living is a benefit, not a vision.

Ultimately, it’s going to take more than changing how senior living is marketed. Communities will need to make sure the experience behind the marketing evolves, too.

Gen X is likely to expect more choice, flexibility, transparency and control over how they live. Meeting those expectations may require senior living communities to look beyond their marketing strategies and examine everything from dining and technology to programming, policies and connections to the surrounding community.

This is about more than finding the right words to sell Gen X on senior living, because what’s being offered needs to reflect how people actually want to live as they get older.

So, where do you start? Ask yourself the following questions:

What does your organization do because older consumers genuinely value it? And what do you do simply because senior living has always done it that way?

The answers might tell you a lot about what needs to change next.