By Thomas A. Parmalee
It’s rare to find a successful home care pro who also works as a vendor — but when your goal is to help franchisees grow referrals, hands-on experience in day-to-day operations makes all the difference.
The 52 Weeks Marketing program is a B2B, turnkey marketing system designed to help home care professionals build relationships with key referrers in their community who interface with seniors and their families at their point of need.
One of its key differentiators is that it works.
The company knows this since its owners share the same resources and follow the same best practices in the field as they build referral networks for their own home care agency.
Known as the “marketing in a box method,” the 52 Weeks system is relied on by homecare agencies nationwide, said Dylan Shwartz, a sales and marketing specialist and the son-in-law of Debbie Miller, founder of both Senior Helpers in Middle Tennessee and 52 Weeks Marketing.
The 52 Weeks Marketing system is territory exclusive and focuses on helping home care professionals grow their agency at the local level.
The company is also committed to educating home care professionals, holding webinars on marketing strategy and other important topics that everyone can attend.
“You give what you get,” Shwartz said, referring to the need to help others succeed in home care.
All of this keeps Shwartz busy, but his team is also ramping up another business to provide even more support to home care professionals: Helper Heroes, a virtual assistant business closing in on 100 clients.
All 52 Weeks Marketing clients get access to coaching and consulting, which includes help as needed to address pain points, such as hiring a marketer, he said.
More Than Brochures
To truly succeed in home care, Shwartz is a big believer in marketing diversification, which means focusing on SEO and digital marketing in addition to putting feet on the street to connect with referral sources, which is what 52 Weeks Marketing helps with.
The company provides a steady dose of resources that can make a world of difference when visiting referral partners.
“We create educational resources based on pain points Shwartz said, adding that no one wants to get the same brochure with every visit.
Pain points can be varied and don’t always have to relate directly to home care – as long as they resonate with your audience, he said.
For instance, a marketing director may hand out a flier that teaches seniors how to avoid becoming a fraud victim. Another visit may focus on providing information to reduce the hospital readmission rate. During the pandemic, 52 Weeks Marketing often provided helpful resources related to COVID-19.
A Track Record of Success
At Senior Helpers of Middle Tennessee, almost all its marketers have been working with the company for over 10 years. They have become multimillion dollar producers using the 52 Weeks Marketing system.
Moreover, as a home care agency owner and user of the marketing methodology and system, Miller and Schwartz experience a steady flow of insights into what works and what doesn’t, which they share with clients.
Their team has learned through experience that taking shortcuts – such as having ChatGPT write materials for influence centers or farming out tasks to copywriters who work at rock-bottom prices, simply does not work. “That material is too generic,” Shwartz said. “You want it to be relevant.”
Shwartz gave lots of credit to his mother-in-law, the company’s founder, for developing the content that resonates with potential referrers and for openly sharing her wisdom and insights on educational webinars for the home care profession.
One of the ways 52 Weeks Marketing gives back is by offering a home care sales and marketing certification program that is vetted by the Accreditation Commission for Health Care, a nonprofit organization that provides accreditation and certification to healthcare organizations.
It is the first accredited home care sales course, offering modules such as Home Care Marketing 101, Home Care Marketing 201 and Payor Pathways.
“We’ve had more than 600 participants register for our course,” Shwartz said. “We cover critical topics like proven marketing strategies, optimizing conversion rates, effective recruiting, and how to strategically set up multiple payor sources. Cost is the biggest barrier preventing seniors from accessing care, so diversifying payor sources is essential.”
To learn more about this resource, you can schedule a meeting with Shwartz.
Tips on Building Referral Relationships
It’s easy to get sidetracked when focusing on referrals – you want to concentrate on the relationships that matter the most, Shwartz said.
When onboarding clients, he emphasizes that the marketing director should build rapport with two to eight contacts at each influence center.
Whether it’s home health agencies, hospice groups, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers, assisted living or a related influence center, building robust relationships with multiple people is critical, Shwartz said.
“If you don’t have two to eight relationships at a facility with regard to referrers, you are going to spin your wheels,” he warned. “These influence centers have some of the highest turnover rates. You must build rapport with multiple people – center directors, social workers, wellness directors, nurses – you name it.”
Building these relationships is hard work … and it requires regular visits.
That is where 52 Weeks Marketing steps in with its marketing-in-a-box method, easing a huge pain point for home care professionals, so they can visit referral centers with resources.
“Our approach is to go there with educational information – and ask to share it with them,” he said.
Showing up with candy and a bunch of brochures and asking for referrals just doesn’t cut it – and in fact, it often annoys the very people you want to get to know, he said. “You need to add value if you are going to go there on a regular basis,” he said.
The frequency of visits should vary depending on the influence center, with weekly visits not being uncommon.
“If patients are being discharged on a weekly basis, well, then you need to go there every week,” Shwartz said. “Otherwise, another agency will get the referral. They will go with the path of least resistance and whoever is right there.”
Built with an Entrepreneurial Spirit
Miller, the founder of Senior Helpers in Middle Tennessee, 52 Weeks Marketing and Helper Heroes, began her career in pharmaceutical marketing, where she developed a deep understanding of strategic messaging, brand positioning, and relationship-driven outreach.
She helped launch an arthritis drug, and she became a top salesperson, marching up the ranks to serve as product marketing director before the company was bought by Pfizer.
“It was working in pharmaceutical sales where her methodology and strategy originated,” Shwartz said.
After transitioning into the home care industry, she founded Senior Helpers Middle Tennessee and built it from the ground up—personally driving the agency’s growth by marketing door-to-door for the first two years
“She applied the feet-on-the-street marketing concepts she learned in the pharmaceutical industry to home care,” Shwartz said. “She grew the business from 0 to $1.8 million in the first year, and then she hired her first marketer.”
Through her hands-on experience, Miller refined what would become the 52 Weeks Marketing System—a structured, repeatable approach to relationship marketing tailored specifically to the challenges of home care. In 2015, she launched the system commercially, empowering other agency owners to grow their census with consistent, professional outreach.
In 2023, the company introduced a fully integrated CRM platform, combining strategic tools with purpose-built technology, so home care agencies can build referral relationships, track results and scale with confidence.
52 Weeks Marketing will only work with home care agency owners serious about growth – and they must be willing to work the system and afford the investment, which typically pays for itself many times over, Shwartz said.
“We are not for everyone by any means,” he said. “We are for people willing to put in the work.”
The system works best for agency owners who incentivize marketing directors with a solid commission and bonus structure. All clients get 24/7 support and numerous add-ons to the standard package of services, Shwartz said.
“Our expectation is you should get 20 to 30 referrals per month from partnerships, and you should have a 60% to 70% conversation rate, so that means you should be getting 10-20 new clients per month implementing our system,” Shwartz said.
In the future, Shwartz expects business at 52 Weeks to be brisk as it is providing the answer to a huge problem for home care agencies.
And that problem is embodied in one question: Where do I start?
“We help you do this effectively to stay top of mind, and we provide touchpoints, so you can earn trust and build partnerships – and ideally friendships,” he said. “That is the key in sales. If you can get a friendship, game over.”
