Small Business Marketing Technique: Celebrate Your Anniversary

10 year anniversary ideaBusiness anniversaries – think 10, 15, 25 years on up – are the perfect excuse to celebrate and give your business a little extra promotion. Here are four ideas for celebrating and getting the word out.

Tell the public about your anniversary. And not just once or in one place. Announce your company’s longevity (which subconsciously suggests a certain level of success and credibility in people’s minds).

  1. Website – banner. Make sure you include some sort of visual that appears on each page of your website (the header graphic area is usually an ideal place).
  2. Website – About page. Expand your About section on your website and make sure it includes your company’s history. Consider including a cool visual like a timeline. Check out what Green Giant does on its site.
  3. Website – Media/News page. Make sure you include a press release that you post online in your media section that talks about the milestone.
  4. Email signatures. Encourage everyone in your company to have a consistent email signature. Consider including a line, such as “Proudly celebrating 50 years in business in 2012.” (And have the line link to your history or About page on your website.)
  5. Invoices. Again, use some sort of visual about the anniversary on your billing; add a tagline or artwork to your digital or printed invoices.
  6. Social media. Add a line to your profiles/info areas. For social media like Facebook and Google+, consider creating photo albums that chronicle your company through the years (be sure to add descriptions to each photo).
  7. Email newsletters. Include a visual, such as a seal, in the header graphic, but also consider highlighting your company’s anniversary in each issue (for 12 months) through some feature, such as “Did you know” or “Time Capsule” and talk about some events that happened in the last however many years.
  8. Voice mail. Your company’s anniversary will make perfect fodder for on-hold messaging.
  9. Storefront banners/receipts. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, make sure you have some sort of visual outside the store and in the store that announces your business’s birthday. Another great place to announce your milestone is at the bottom of receipts.
  10. Verbally. During networking, sales presentations, etc., be sure to mention how long your company has been in business.

mug for business anniversary

Celebrate with business anniversary gifts. You’ll want new business giveaways with a “look” that highlights how many years you’ve been in business. Consider making the giveaway and the message fun increasing your chance of being remembered! Then as you host events, have plenty on hand for everyone to take home. What a great way to be remembered!

Throw a party. What better way to mark your company’s anniversary than with a party? It’s a great way to celebrate with clients/customers. A perfect time to do it is in the summer. If you’re in a building with its own large parking lot, cordon off part of the lot and set up grills, a bounce house, and other fun stuff. Invite customers/clients to stop by. Or be on the lookout for areas with wide open spaces that cater to corporate parties. Recently popular are rural settings like farmsteads with a re-purposed barn for meeting gathering space and retreats.

company anniversary ideas

Give away prizes. Yes, it might be your company’s anniversary, but share the love and excitement by giving away presents to your customers because THEY are the reason you’ve stayed in business. There are a few of ways to approach this:

  1. Give away prizes each month for a year. Collect entries through your website.
  2. Hold a sweepstakes on Facebook as a way to celebrate (just remember to follow Facebook’s stringent promotional guidelines carefully).
  3. Build excitement over a big-ticket item that you give away at your summer party. For example, if your company installs lighting and sound systems for organizations, consider giving away a flat screen TV. If you’re a landscaper, give away a $500 gift certificate to a local nursery for one lucky winner to use…and your company does all the planting for free.

You get the idea. Have some fun.

10 year anniversary celebration ideas

Has your business celebrated a milestone anniversary? What did you do to celebrate…or what do you plan on doing the next time a “big one” comes around? Share in the comments.

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12 thoughts on “Small Business Marketing Technique: Celebrate Your Anniversary

  1. “There are a couple of ways to approach this: perhaps give away prizes each month for a year.”

    This upcoming year (2013) will be our 20th anniversary in business and we plan on using your idea above by having a drawing on the 20th of each month. That way our customers will be reminded of our 20th anniversary 12 times during the year!

  2. We are celebrating 10 years this year. We are working on the gift and celebration ideas. We’re small and have evolved from a packaging brokerage/ design agency to strictly a design agency. We definitely want to send a thank-you gift to our past clients with a creative card. Perhaps listing all of the clients and how their particular project contributed to our business. We are also creating new offerings to launch this year.

  3. People remember and celebrate their wedding anniversaries (especially after they’ve forgotten once!). We understand that these milestones are an important way to reflect on where we’ve been and reaffirm our commitment for the future – and we all agree that those things are worth sharing and celebrating.

  4. I have a blog on Blogspot that I’ve been trying to customize with my own banner, but I can’t seem to figure out where to do this :P A site where I could make a banner would be helpdul, too. If anyone has any directions they could give me to help me out with this, that would be awesome. Thank you!.

  5. need ideas for our 6th year anniversary… we started the business by selling barbecues on streets and now we managed to build a restobar which started with 2 tables and became a full restobar with a live singers on weekends.

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