Learn how marketing your company anniversary celebration and other organizational milestones can help grow your audience and bring in revenue.
Whether your organization is turning five or 50, milestone celebrations give you the chance to showcase all the great work your organization is doing. Notable milestones may include anything from the successful launch of a major initiative to the anniversary of your founding. Whatever the occasion, these are powerful opportunities to create buzz around your organization, demonstrate your impact and drive new supporters to your business or cause.
Everyone loves a good celebration, so don’t pass up this chance to bring visibility to your organization.
Why Should You Celebrate Key Milestones for Your Organization?
Company anniversaries and other big wins offer an opportunity for storytelling, which can build trust within your audience and create a personal connection that drives them to act. When you celebrate your milestones with creative marketing strategies, your story can attract new supporters or customers and draw in new revenue, while demonstrating your organization’s significance in a particular service area or community. Celebrating your milestones is also a chance to share news about your growth as an organization and your goals for the future.
Digital marketing initiatives can help you connect with existing supporters and grow your follower base, while in-person events are a great way to honor your biggest fans and recognize staff and alumni. If a milestone event is on the horizon for your organization, identifying the best marketing strategies for your needs now can help you seamlessly work a milestone marketing initiative into your 12-month marketing plan.
Creative Ways to Market Your Organization’s Major Milestones
How you choose to market your milestone celebration will depend on the type of work your organization does, the nature of your event and your goals for promoting your achievement. For example, are you hoping to use your anniversary to meet your annual fundraising goals? Do you want to reach new customers with your story or demonstrate gratitude to long-time customers and supporters?
Make the most of these opportunities with the following creative milestone marketing strategies.
Produce a High-Production Impact Video
Video is one of the most engaging forms of content on social media, making it an effective medium for sharing your story during a milestone year. In a 2023 video marketing report, 90 percent of marketers said using video helped them generate leads, while 95 said it helped them increase brand awareness. Take advantage of this powerful marketing tool by producing a high-production impact video for your next milestone anniversary or achievement. These videos combine great storytelling and compelling footage of your organization in action to evoke emotion and drive viewers toward a specific call to action, such as making a donation.
Design a Dedicated Web Page or Microsite
When you create a dedicated web page or microsite—a standalone website focused on one purpose—it provides a central location to house any content you create for your milestone celebration, such as a special logo, an event calendar or an impact video. This can drive more web traffic, promote registrations and attendance for your event, and increase donations in cases where fundraising is part of your milestone celebration. Plus, a dedicated page or website can be a great opportunity to draw supporters to the story of your organization and remind them of your purpose.
Create an Anniversary Logo
Designing an updated logo and other branded elements for a big anniversary is an easy way to draw attention to your milestone. (And you don’t have to be Disney to have a milestone logo!) By working with a designer to create an adaptation of your company logo, you can highlight your anniversary in every single item where it appears—from your email signatures to your t-shirts and your website. You may also consider a new color scheme, typography style and slogan for all your anniversary content. Together with the logo, these elements can help you keep your anniversary branding consistent across all media you use.
Publish Your Historical Narrative
A historical narrative tells the story of how your organization came to be, with a focus on key milestones that demonstrate your impact and evolution over the years. This may take the form of an update to your website About Us page, with a few anecdotes about the people and events that make up your story. Or, if your organization is celebrating a bigger anniversary (like a 50th, 75th or 100th), go bigger and turn your story into a printed book with rich storytelling and pictures from your company archives. In addition to bringing awareness to your impact, sharing your historical narrative can help your audience feel more connected to your organization and inspire them to become loyal supporters. (Plus, it can force a much-needed spring cleaning of your company files!)
Devise An Email and Social Media Campaign
Milestones give you the opportunity to get creative with an email and social media campaign. Once you come up with a boilerplate and key messaging for your milestone, you can use this language to tell a compelling, cohesive story in all of your email and social media communications. Your campaign can be used to support your overarching goals, whether it’s driving revenue or telling the story of your organization. For example, you could share memories from staff and volunteers once per week throughout your anniversary year. Or, you could share significant historical dates from your organization as you demonstrate impact and raise funds or promote your products.
Organize and Promote an Anniversary Event
When you have something huge to celebrate, why not throw a party? In addition to drawing awareness to your historical impact, organizing a high-profile gala or celebratory staff event for a significant milestone is a great way to create impact—through revenue, staff satisfaction or support for the future. It’s also the perfect time to launch something new, like an initiative, service or product.
Pro Tip: Take advantage of a 360 marketing approach to maximize the reach of your event promotions within your target audience. This means leveraging multiple media channels to market your event. For example, use email marketing, social media and press releases to create hype around your big day and maximize attendance.
Case Study: Storytelling to Market a Centennial Celebration
The Cradle is one of the four oldest nonprofit adoption agencies in the country providing infant adoption services, counseling and educational support for birth parents, adoptive families and adoptees. In 2023, the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary with a roster of events and initiatives to commemorate their storied history and build support for the future. In addition to launching the Faces of The Cradle microsite, The Cradle launched a Centennial logo, commissioned a sculpture to honor birth parents, hosted a free Birthday Bash event for families and supporters and organized a fundraising gala.
When The Cradle asked Yakkety Yak to help them market this incredible milestone, our team stepped up to the challenge. We supported the organization through the creation of a 44-page book that tells the story of their history, an impact video for their fundraising gala, a year-long social and email communications plan, press releases and a powerful, storytelling microsite.
At the beginning of the project, The Cradle came to the Yak Pak with this idea to create a multimedia microsite for telling the stories of people whose lives have been touched by adoption at The Cradle. We helped strategize the site, write boilerplate copy, craft a mood board so we’d be in agreement on the design and create a form and language for requesting stories from The Cradle community.
Then, we filmed multiple interviews at their Birthday Bash, with subsequent Zoom recordings, to capture multiple video and audio stories of birth parents, adoptees, adoptive parents, former staff and other stakeholders. We even captured the story of the eighth baby adopted at The Cradle in 1923. From there, we helped them edit written stories, quotes and images to round out the multimedia experience. Our web team then built an interactive website to house it all. View the Faces of The Cradle website here.
Yakkety Yak creates strategic, impactful storytelling for organizations that do good. Our marketing strategists, video producers, content writers and web development experts can help you generate awareness and drive engagement around any occasion. If you’re approaching a major milestone or want to celebrate your organization, contact the Yak Pak today.
