As one of the fastest growing industries in the United States with the highest demand for employees, how you market your long-term and post-acute care business will determine if your business rises to the challenge or cracks under pressure. 

What’s the most crucial yet underrated aspect of your long-term and post-acute care business? Marketing. 

Why? 

Home-based care marketing isn’t just for people to learn about your services and employment opportunities. As the long-term and care industry is one of the top industries with the highest demand in the nation right now, marketing your agency effectively is crucial to attract clients in the aging population and caregivers in the rising generation. 

According to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), about 64% of women and 49% of men who reach age 65 will need significant long-term care. Long-TermCare.gov estimates that 70% of people turning 65 will use some form of long-term care. 

It is not only good business to market your long-term and post-acute care company; it is necessary to take care of the nation’s older generation. 

10 Marketing Ideas to Hit the Ground Running in 2025 

According to over 1,000 providers surveyed for the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report, the top five priorities for business owners in the industry can all be directly linked to the impact of effective marketing. 

Attract and retain long-term staff and customers this year using these ten data-driven marketing ideas:

Marketing Strategy #1: Talk about your business straight from your customers’ and employees’ perspective.

The highest points of satisfaction from both customers and employees are surprising this year, because it’s the exact topic that’s been a top complaint for years. 

According to the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report, customers ranked the ability of care staff as their highest satisfaction score while employees are most satisfied with their care plan matching!  

If your customers and staff are highly satisfied with a certain aspect of your company, such as the experience with each other, use their feedback as testimonials to showcase real-world examples that you can use on your website, company collateral, and talking points for networking with referral sources. 

Surveying your staff and customers’ satisfaction through a third party takes the guesswork out of pinpointing and marketing your company’s strengths.  

Gather feedback from your customer and staff to illuminate their favorite aspects of your company straight from their perspective to help you know what will attract more satisfied people like them in. 

Marketing Strategy #2: Take the time to become an educational resource or thought leader within your community.

Due to the nature of long-term and post-acute care, those in need of care don’t investigate it until they actively need it—revealing that customers searching for long-term and post-acute care will be both stressed and pressed for time. 

As 75% of customers in the industry come from someone they know recommending them, when a loved one is researching the best care near them on Google, you want your business to show up first. A way to do that, is to nurture these referrals with thought leadership content so that when they search, “Most commons signs of Alzheimer’s” or “Is my dad ready for home care?”, they will see an educational blog article pop up from your company. 

Creating educational content like this instills trust with your audience. They will read your blog article as proof that your company knows what they’re talking about and investigate you further. Writing blog articles are also great conversation starters to get the discussion going about long-term and post-acute care education within your community so hopefully not all your customers have to be last minute but have been nurtured through your education in preparation for their turn. 

If you’re thinking, I’m already running a business and now you want me to find the time to write a blog? Understandable. Let’s break it down. Ask yourself: 

When your muse hits, write down a few notes on your phone, or keep a Google doc open to jot down ideas as the workdays go on. Soon, you’ll have created a helpful article or FAQ page for people seeking your services that you can just pop onto your website. 

Be sure to backlink your sources by adding hyperlinks to the content you’re quoting from, even if it’s our blog articles, as that helps the search features in Google prioritize your content. 

Marketing Strategy #3: Repurpose content to strengthen your company’s social media presence.

Once you have your blog article written and published, you can take excerpts from the article and add it to a Facebook or LinkedIn post. You don’t have to give your whole blog article away in one post. Just share different aspects of your blog article throughout the weeks until you get around to writing another. It might not be a bad idea to have your staff guest write some blog articles for you or share ideas on trending topics they’re seeing in the field, so not all the creativity responsibility is put on you. 

If you’d like to see examples of this, take a look at what your competitors are doing on social media and replicate their types of posts to fit your own company’s story.  

Marketing Strategy #4: Show don’t just tell, your company’s culture in action with pictures.

This marketing idea can be repurposed on both your company’s social media and website. While written feedback is crucial to maintaining a credible reputation, are you more likely to believe a witness’ statement or picture proof of the event? 

Stand out from your competitors by showcasing pictures of your company’s culture in action. If you’re hosting a training session, having a holiday party for your staff, or you get permission to take a picture of your staff in action, utilize these photos as proof that your company has real people who care. This takes the words off the screen and makes your business more human, a necessary element in caring for other humans. 

The holidays are a great time to take pictures at your next staff gathering or party. Try taking some pictures to add to your website and social media to promote your company’s culture topped with a link to your latest job posting. 

Marketing Strategy #5: Invest in staff retention and satisfaction by implementing an employee recognition program.

According to the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report, care professionals are most dissatisfied with the recognition they are receiving from their providers for doing a job well done. Since your customers are most satisfied with the ability of your care staff in contrast, that’s a huge, missed opportunity to communicate the appreciation that both you and your customers have for your staff.

Reverse company-wide feelings of unappreciation by implementing a staff recognition program—third party-endorsement disguised as a marketing strategy. Satisfied employees who feel valued will be more inclined to tell their friends about you and share their most recently recognized career accomplishments on their social media.

Marketing Strategy #6: Utilize negative reviews as an opportunity to prove your company’s problem-solving skills.

While important as positive reviews and testimonials are about your company online, your negative reviews are just as important. 

Do you have a negative review about your company online right now and have you responded to it? If you haven’t responded to it, no matter how outlandish the claims in it are, it’s damaging your company’s image as we speak. 

As a result, take time right now to craft a message that: 

According to Review Trackers, 94% of consumers admit that a bad review has made them avoid a business, 45% of them said they are more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews, and 56% of customers said that a company’s response to a review changed their overall perspective. 

However, over 75% of businesses don’t respond to negative reviews because they don’t know how or don’t want to acknowledge that it’s there, according to Keeping. 

In an industry where reputation and referral sources matter, it is absolutely necessary to respond to your negative reviews utilizing the method I’ve shared with you. 

Marketing Strategy #7: Take your business out into the community.

Remember how those looking for long-term and post-acute care don’t think about it until they need it? 

Imagine how much of the population not in need of care aren’t thinking about the long-term and post-acute care industry at all. 

This realization emphasizes the importance of getting your name heard throughout the community so that the loved ones of future customers recognize you and know what the industry is all about. 

Involve your long-term and post-acute care company in the community: 

Community events provide opportunities for company visibility, establishes your brand as a service-oriented, people-first, human-to-human business, and gives community members a chance to connect face-to-face with your care professionals. 

While this is a good chance to build awareness and trust in your company, take care to ensure that you deliver valuable insights, like what you’ve been writing for blog articles, rather than simply selling your services. Then post about your attendance with a picture of you speaking on social media! 

Marketing Strategy #8: Position your employment opportunities as a career.

According to the latest Public Health Information, over half of direct care workers don’t have higher education beyond high school. While this isn’t the case for all sectors of care, the same principle applies: Your staff want to know that their investment in you will provide them with a worthwhile return on their investment. 

Communicate your investment and belief in your staff’s potential by building and promoting a career ladder to clearly communicate your company’s career advancement opportunities. 

83% of providers in the home-based care industry currently offer their staff specialty training; here’s why that’s a good business move. Allowing your staff to specialize in their own interests: 

Yet, only 39% of providers have an established career ladder. See an increase of $1,103,291 in revenue by offering at least eight orientation hours and 12 hours of ongoing training, according to the latest Benchmarking Report.

Marketing Strategy #9: Optimize your job postings to attract as many high-quality, long-term candidates as possible.

Recruiting new staff worth hiring in this industry is a cutthroat competition. Our Recruit data shows that your best candidates are taken off the market within 48 hours of job-searching. The key to attracting high-quality candidates is to make the application process as speedy, convenient, and easy as possible. 

Your employee job posting needs to immediately tell prospective candidates what they will get out of working for you such as your culture, the training you offer, and the role’s fulfilling purpose. 

How you tell your company’s brand story to prospective employees will make or break the quality of candidates you get, the overall experience both your employees and customers receive, and therefore your reputation as a company in the industry. 

Thus, your job posting and application process are crucial to get right when it comes to marketing. 

Marketing Strategy #10: Let third party endorsement seal the deal on all your marketing efforts.

Amongst all these ideas to stand out from your competition, having a third party acknowledge your expertise in the industry and high-quality employment opportunities in the workplace will speak volumes. That’s because in the long-term and post-acute care industry, reputation is everything.

Stand out in the industry by qualifying for industry awards that differentiate you from other long-term and post-acute care companies in your area such as Best of Home Care Awards if you’re in home-based care or U.S. News Best Senior Living if you’re in senior living. These awards act as proof of your commitment to excellence by utilizing the results of your third-party survey feedback, thus proving your quality of care to customers and prospective customers.

This type of third-party endorsement helps you stand out to those in the market for your services.

There’s also a way to stand out to prospective employees. Earning Great Place To Work® Certification™ helps those looking for a job within and out of the industry, find you. Gain a recruiting advantage when you get access to exclusive media partnerships, community resources, promotional toolkit, and much more.

Effective marketing in the long-term and post-acute care industry comes down to communicating your value.

It’s your job to make sure your story is heard.

Elevate Your Marketing Game with Data from Activated Insights

Marketing your value to potential customers and caregivers requires more than just an effective strategy. To communicate the right message and ensure it sticks, you need real-time, accurate data about your business. 

Activated Insights can help you gather data about both client and caregiver satisfaction through our Experience Management program, providing up-to-date insights into how your company is performing. With this data, you can effectively show your worth to new clients and care staff, ensuring you stay ahead of the competition in the growing home-based care industry. 

To learn more about how we can support your growing business, contact our experts today.