Celebrating Milestones

Organizations can use important milestones to anchor marketing messages in their communities.  The fact that the agency has served the community for ten, twenty, or twenty-five years, adds credibility and provides a point of differentiation. 

Celebrating a milestone is important for marketing to the community, to the internal customers, and to your employees.  The agency staff will be proud to be part of this celebration, and even if they’ve only been on board for two years, they will be more likely to stay with the agency.  So two important benefits of celebrating milestones are greater retention of marketing messages, and increased staff retention.

Paint the picture of world class excellence.  Anytime you can add tangible proof to a message that reinforces stability and service to community, you should do so.  Pride will exude from your staff and referral sources.  Everyone wants to be associated with a winner.  Use these same tactics to celebrate awards and other achievements.

How to Promote Milestones

Have anniversary apparel and pins made for your staff to wear proudly.  Buttons, plaques, trophies, and other commemorative items are very effective to thank staff and referral sources.

Look at everything you plan through public relations lenses.  Be proactively seeking ways to turn business events into publicity.  As an example, Great Lakes Home Health and Hospice decided to purchase a fleet of company cars in response to the rising cost of mileage and hardship on the field staff.  From a business perspective it makes perfect sense, and is not necessarily a newsworthy event.  They selected the top mileage employees to qualify for a car. 

Here’s where it gets interesting. The cars were painted red with a white number 1 and “Nurse Car” on the sides and top.  The cars were painted much like NASCAR cars and act as rolling billboards.  Because they are so unique, Ford Motor Company had their PR department get involved, and national and local media covered the event.  The cars were delivered to the staff members at a special ceremony at the Michigan International Speedway.

Public relations, particularly press releases, should be utilized to get the word out to the community about the milestone, as well as those activities that are created to celebrate it.  Send press releases to local media, industry media, and online.  The reason to release online is to get the search engines to find your agency more frequently when someone “Googles” home care or hospice in your community.  There are services that will do this for you; some are even free.  Check out www.prweb.com to see how it works.