WPromote Scholarship

If I was tasked with the job of running a digital marketing campaign for my school, my first and most important priority would be to define what goal the client, my college, has in mind. Maybe they are looking to increase recruitment, and bring in more potential students. Perhaps they want to bring awareness to certain school programs, clubs, or sports groups. Or maybe they just want to increase or change the culture of the school.

After that, I would hit the books. As someone who wanted to learn how to use Google AdWords and got certified over a weekend, my teacher of choice is a free weekend and some pizza with instruction from Mr.Google. While there are many different channels of marketing, and I would personally focus on targeting social media and online media influencers to get the message out.

With complete control over the campaign, I would choose to focus on bringing awareness to the diversity of events, clubs, and students that exists on campus. The point that I would work to get across would be “what’s your story?” I would choose this statement because of the personal experiences I have had in college. As a member of 8 clubs, and as someone who loves getting out and talking to people, I have learned an incredible amount from the events, clubs, professors, and students around me. As such, I would want to focus my message around how each of us has a story, and how we can have fun and learn from each other no matter if we are in, or out, of class. My perspective of an engineering class, for example, changed dramatically when my professor showed a video of a machine he personally installed in a factory over the summer that sorted fruit. Or, I both learned about ecommerce and gained a new friend when one of my class mates taught me about his online clothing business. My perspective on education suddenly changed when I realized an exchange student in the apartment below me was working to send money home while he was also trying to get a degree to support his family, and those are just some of the experiences and stories I have learned in my first year in college. Once I realized how much could be learned not just in class, but outside of class, I was motivated to get out as much as I could, and learn the stories of those around me. This helped me to get involved with many clubs, and I met an incredible group of people around me, all through trying to learn their stories.

The campaign itself would rely heavily on visual resources, social media posts, and different online channels. Things such as display ad’s targeted on campus sites, online videos that featured students and staff, and an active social media base would be essential. Our initial target consumer would be 16-30-year old’s who identify as millennials, who would be interested in furthering their education at our school. Official pages would be set up on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, which would all link and serve as a funnel to an official school website that would contain information about applying to the school, and information about local and club events.

One key piece I would implement like I mentioned previously, would be to reach out to media influencers to promote the campaign and the motto of “What’s your story?”. One of the star men’s volleyball players has 90,000+ followers on his photography page on Instagram, while another student is the CEO of successful startup currently pioneering a new process of making durable guitars, and a professor is currently doing research to develop a new way to test blood with just a drop of blood. All these people have considerable influence among various online groups of people, and having them share their stories through their degrees of influence could help spread the message across our target consumers and widen the spread of our message.

As mentioned prior, the goal for the online campaign would be to help spread the stories of those who work or attend the school, with the hope that this would increase awareness to the diversity of events, clubs, and students that exists on campus. Success could be measured by the amount of participation that school and club events receive, but I think the most valuable metric would be the social change experienced on campus. This would be the hope that people would become more involved, while branching out and learning more about one another.

I personally have been changed as I’ve learned the stories of my professors, peers, and taken part in the activities and clubs on campus. Whether it was visiting businesses headquarters in Seattle with the Marketing Association club, forming study groups with peers, or learning about the research my professors are involved in, I have learned that each of us has a story to share. I believe that as we share those stories on campus, we can make an impactful social change on campus.