Budweiser. Hellman’s mayo. Doritos. Polaris Rehabilitation and Care Center.

Someone watching the 2025 Super Bowl in the state of Wyoming may have seen commercials for all of the above during the game.

The Polaris ads are instructive when considering larger marketing trends at play for nursing homes, including the push for “edutainment” and the need to appeal to multiple audiences.

Skilled nursing marketing is extremely challenging because the product is not exactly something people want – it’s what’s required in a time of need. Marketing for the industry needs a creative touch and an understanding of the lifestyle of the people you’re targeting, experts told Skilled Nursing News.

Of course, patients and residents themselves aren’t the only ones involved in driving business to nursing homes, so marketing also must be targeted at referral partners. For Chrissy Fleming, senior vice president of communications and branding for New Jersey-based Complete Care Management, campaigns for referral partners and campaigns for residents and their families make up the two main types of ads; if a campaign can hit both, that’s even better. Complete Care Management’s portfolio consists of about 90 facilities across seven states.

When Fleming was looking for a place for her grandmother to live, she considered the resident experience first, but that’s not what every generation may put at the top of their list. It’s a balancing act between presenting the nursing home in an exciting way while educating the public on the level of care offered.

“We call it edutainment here. We want to give them something that’s exciting, but we also want to educate; it’s a big part of what we try to do with our campaigns,” said Fleming. “How are they spending their time? This applies to the seniors that are potentially going to need your care, and then their adult children and even their grandchildren.”

The commercial played during the 2024 Super Bowl, featuring Wyoming-based Polaris Rehabilitation and Care Center, highlighting rehab equipment and daily activities in a 30-second spot. Peaks Healthcare Consulting and its chief marketing officer Steven Davis produced the commercials for Polaris, with Checked In Media filming and editing, which featured Miss Wyoming Bailey Drewry along with bingo celebrations and confetti canons.

James Johnson, chief product officer for AI sales and marketing platform Further, said another consideration lies in untangling overlapping terminology among different post-acute care settings. Shifting acuity has had a big hand in changing considerations for marketing key words that define care settings after a hospital discharge, he said.

And digital campaigns for such a highly regulated industry can get tricky, for example when considering parameters around photo consents, Fleming noted.

Balance between ‘edutainment’ and validating services

It takes a team effort to stay within the realm of the regulations, but at the same time tap into the capabilities that social media has for very affordable, creative marketing platforms, Fleming told SNN.

Complete Care has a full time social media team with a social media manager for each region to ensure compliance with privacy requirements. Aside from “edutainment” ads focused on lifestyle and personal value for the resident, a lot of the operator’s campaigns focus on ways to validate their service programs to hospital partners, Fleming said.

“It’s important for us to not only say we’re going to do something, but then show them what we did, and use outcomes to be able to say we put these programs in place, and look at how it reduced those readmissions,” said Fleming. “It’s a very viable marketing strategy, and I think it shows the dedication to the service we’re providing.”

The operator’s Complete Success campaign is centered around when residents graduate from their rehabilitation plan, which highlights the clinical capabilities at a given facility and rehab metrics marketable to both the public and referral partners.

Fleming said the marketing team married the Complete Success campaign with a TikTok trend, with video thatcuts from someone struggling or simply at home to being in a beautiful place, usually a vacation spot.

“We did that whole campaign actually having staff wheel the resident from rehab over and then get them walking or dancing out the door,” said Fleming. “We find ways to hit the clinical targets we need, but also hit that warm, fuzzy, compassionate feeling. It’s all about validating what you say you’re going to do.”

Nursing home marketing in a sea of confusing keywords

Consumers need education on the range of products offered, added Johnson. When they search the web for services, they’re typing in what they think they’re looking for, but really they might need a totally different care setting.

Meaning, families might think they need a nursing home, but their idea of what is offered in a nursing home is more in line with what’s offered in assisted living nowadays, thanks to rising acuity across post-acute care. There’s a lot of going back to the drawing board before families find the right fit for their loved one.

“A lot of the senior living communities are bidding on skilled nursing keywords,” added Johnson. “Oftentimes there’s someone who thinks they need skilled nursing, but really the product they’re looking for is memory care or assisted living.”

It’s an interesting dynamic, he said, since everyone has heard of nursing homes but not everyone has heard of assisted living or memory care. The number one keyword for memory care is “nursing home.”

“There’s so many people who start their search at that higher acuity because that’s all they know about,” said Johnson. “There’s a lot of people in that group, so they’re trying to find the needle in the haystack, from an ad bidding perspective, because there are a lot of individuals in that group. They have to talk to a whole bunch of people who are looking for something really different.”

Ad bidding involves advertisers competing to display their ads to users, with the highest bid winning the best placement online.

Marketing budgets and inadvertent competition

Overall, a lot of marketing dollars are going toward short-term Medicare stays, Johnson said, despite there being a huge demand for long-term care Medicaid stays.

“[Providers] really are focused on reimbursements for Medicare and trying to get someone for that pre-planned hip replacement, or a skilled stay after shoulder surgery … that seems to be where we’re seeing more of the marketing dollars spent,” said Johnson.

But the consumer confusion around terminology means that short-term rehab providers have to compete against types of providers that often have a lot more money at their disposal for marketing.

Behavioral health operators, for instance, have “very, very large budgets,” Johnson said; they’re spending a lot of money on marketing and are hyper competitive right now.

Behavioral health stays of 30 days may end up costing $50,000 – that’s a lot of revenue to put against customer acquisition, he said.

“That’s additional pressure on the nursing home side, they end up inadvertently competing with senior living and behavioral health, even though they’re different products,” said Johnson. “They’re trying to get in front of the consumer at the right time on these related terms. So that’s like a little bit of a headwind for skilled nursing.”