Council on Aging (COA), one of Southwestern Ohio’s largest and most respected nonprofits, ensures older adults remain independent in their homes through a variety of support services. Due to a highly competitive U.S. and regional hiring landscape, COA faced an urgent need for licensed social workers to fill its open care manager positions.

Vehr started its engagement with strategic plan development, hosting background sessions with organization leadership, reviewing data on social work employment trends and the most popular industry job boards and researching key professional associations as well as local universities with accredited social work programs and strong student association chapters and clubs. Based on these insights, Vehr developed a comprehensive communications plan that included goals, target audiences, key messages and strategies and tactics across paid, earned, shared and owned channels.

As part of the plan, Vehr created and executed a six-month integrated marketing campaign designed to reinforce the critical role care managers play in caring for and connecting older adults to essential resources.

“Be the Reason” featured hero images of COA care managers and their clients, along with care managers’ testimonials on “their reasons” for serving older adults. The close-up photography captured their mutual respect and affection.

The campaign was deployed with a mix of display, search, LinkedIn and recruitment platform advertising, organic Facebook and Instagram posts, flyers and targeted direct mail. Each tactic included a “be the reason” URL which drove candidates to a landing page that provided more background on COA benefits and a call-to-action to apply. Candidate leads were sent to COA HR managers for future follow-up.

Vehr also partnered with the Voice of Black Cincinnati to distribute sponsored content and targeted email and text blasts.

Vehr reviewed performance analytics weekly, adjusting targeting based on data. Overall, the campaign performed well above benchmark.

The WIN
Direct mail, digital, search and social media generated 633 leads, while recruitment platform advertising generated 727 applications. By the end of the six-month campaign, COA not only met its care manager candidate goals but filled other open job positions across the organization.