McNamee, Trevar (MKTG489 Final Project)
- 1. STUDENTS SOCIAL and SPOKANE TALENT A Facebook Campaign For Gonzaga Universitys Career Center
- 2. Trevar McNamee Professor Ed Reese MKTG 489 - Digital Marketing December 22, 2014 Students, Social and Spokane Talent: A Facebook Campaign For Gonzaga Universitys Career Center
- 3. Brand TABLE of CONTENTS Campaign Overview 3-4 5-6 Audience 7-8 Measurement 9-10 Improvement 11 Summary 12
- 4. CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW This campaign will utilize the Gonzaga University Career Center Facebook Page. Content will be rolled out in a series of posts--two per week from mid-January through mid-April--highlighting firsthand testimonial success with internships, jobs and long-term service involvements. Students will be featured with their photo, along with a direct quote from a 15-minute interview with that student. This campaign is necessary for inspiring perspective in employer perceptions of academic majors, marketing individual student success and building better relationships with students and employers through Page followership and engagement. 1. D I V ER S I T Y Provide perspective for employers to embrace the variety of academic backgrounds that Gonzaga students and alumni have to offer organizations. Gonzaga embodies liberal arts education in its core curriculum, and Spokane employers need fresh minds that can bring something different than what Spokane is used to. Displaying success dynamically across academic majors provides value to this mindset. I was a marketing intern with a nonprofit last summer. What kind of marketing did you do? A little bit of everything. But what I liked most was seeing how much you can learn about peoples behav- ior in working the back end of an AdWords campaign or even a Facebook page. It was really empowering to learn so much about everyday people, and Im so much more conscious of my own online behavior now. * Sam Small | Junior | Major: Public Relations Morning Star Boys Ranch 3
- 5. CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW 2. B R A G G I N G The Career Center is positioned to use Facebook in a way that area schools have yet to do: marketing individual students who have worked hard. That is, celebrating individual success stories to exemplify the knowledge, skills and humanistic value students derive from internships. This is designed to exemplify to Spokane employers, and Gonzaga students, our communitys commitment to excellence, and intentional development of the whole person. 3. R E L A T I O N S The campaign will expand the Caree Centers relations, both with students and Spokane employers. Student followership is decent, but not where it could be. Were always looking for ways to integrate ourselves with the student body. Spokanes top employers form a very connected web, and the Career Center should be looked to as its developer of hiring material. Growth in followership and engagement with this audience can be achieved with the buy-in from just one or two people. 4
- 6. BRAND Logo for Gonzaga University Career Center & GAMP Logo for Gonzaga University WHAT DOES THE BRAND MEAN? As a Senior at Gonzaga University, and as a Career Center Representative, I fully understand this partnered voice. All of the values that stand behind the voice of this partnered brand are undoubtedly important, but for the purposes of this campaign, I am focusing most closely on the following themes that our brand encompasses: Facilitating Holistic Student Development Empowering Student:Alumni Relationships Celebrating All Areas of Study Towards the Common Good 5
- 7. BRAND SAME VOICE, DIFFERENT METHODS Thewhyhas been defined for the brand. But how is this communicated on Facebook? How should it be communicated? Despite the value this brand embodies, the Career Center has yet to merge social media, engagement and testimonial marketing to demonstrate excellence in thereal world. The Career Center succeeds in using Facebook in advertising jobs, internships and professional development opportunities for students, but fails to use social to communicate studentsfirsthand internship perspectives. Since the Career Center is not leveraging this opportunity to market students directly, Spokane-area employers struggle to find academically diverse, good-fit interns and long-term employees. Thus, the campaign uses the samewhy,but uses different communication tactics that fostershow, dont tell.Gonzagas known for its people ; lets give people the chance to hear from them. Build Student Brand Equity Innovatively. Guarentee Engagement with Rich Content Diversify Newsfeeds. Cut the Clutter. 6
- 8. GONZAGA STUDENT COMMUNITY AUDIENCE Reaching and building this audience is extremely feasible. Approximately 35-40 percent of current fans are current Gonzaga University students (filtered in the 18-24 demographic; filtered by city for Spokane) according to Facebook Insights. Since a featured student will be tagged in each photo, building our student audience will be simple. The current Page administrator has experimented with doing this before, yielding 65-75 percent higher reach and 20x higher engagement compared to average Post Reach and average Post Engagement, respectively. Get over here! Its Sara and Lauren in my Newsfeed! 7
- 9. AUDIENCE SPOKANE EMPLOYERS Reaching this audience will prove less ease, but its manageable, and free. 44-percent of our fans are in the 25-44 age demographic, and an estimated 15-20 percent of those people are in Spokane. Facebook Insights, while powerful, provides limited demographic drill-down functionality. Certain Insights attributes (e.g. city) are not reliable, since reports rely on what city the user selects as current, rather than IP address. I have (as of yesterday) gained administrative privileges to the Page. After getting a couple pilot posts together for the campaign, I will be able to more closely track the changes in followership and engagement from Spokane employers. Whether there is a lack of interaction from this audience or not, I have been building a working relationship with our Alumni Relations Director, who fully supports the project. We are currently discussing ways to drive followership (e.g. targeted posts, mention of the campaigns goals in alumni newsletter, etc.). 18-24 25-34 35-44 48% 36% 8% Other 8% Age Distribution of Followers 8
- 10. MEASUREMENT CURRENT METRICS GOALS 20% growth in student followership by April 15% growth in Spokane employer followership by April 15% growth in each engagement category Total Page Likes: 2,542 Average Post Reach: 144 Average Engagement: 4.7 Users (Metrics exported from Facebook Insights: 09/01/2014 - 12/17/2014) Not to downplay the Career Center or Gonzaga, but these numbers are just sad. Based on my audit of the Pages Facebook Insights, these numbers demonstrate that we need to be integrating greater relevancy in our content (e.g. tags in photos, video), which this campaign provides a prime solution for. 9
- 11. Activity from Critics Collectors Conversationalists MEASURING THE FUTURE I am launching pilot posts in the last week of December, which will give me information for how I will need to time future posts to best accommodate both audiences I am targeting. Findings will also guide the tactics I use to interview students, their photos I use, and the presentation of a post itself. After pre-testing with pilot posts, Facebook Insights reports will be gathered each week, sent to the Career Centers data specialist, and analyzed within two weeks following the export. Although I will be conducting my own analyses, we will meet every two weeks to collaboratively discuss respective findings. Since students will have the highest level of involvement, I am expecting them to be most likely to share and comment. Employers are more likely to be Spectators. MEASUREMENT FollowershipE n g a g e m e n t Post Clicks Post Likes Online + Offline WOM Shares Comments Activity from Spectators Page Likes 10
- 12. IMPROVEMENT Continuous improvement in the short-term is achievable through: 1. Getting feedback from the Career Centers data specialist, who will provide additional perspective in the analyses of Facebook Insights reports. 2. Measurement. Measurement. Measurement. Closely monitoring both engagement and followership is absolutely necessary in ensuring continuous improvement in building relationships with Spokane employers. 3. Community Management. Listening and responding to our audience is also crucial throughout execution. If people are talking to us, it is important we are responding within 24 hours, especially to our Spokane employers. Their followership is more valuable in the short term. SHORT-TERM LONG-TERM Continuous improvement in the long-term is achievable through: 1. Communicating perceived strengths and weaknesses of the campaign to Career Center leadership for strategic insight. 2. Leaving the Career Center upon graduation in May 2015 with suggestions for new campaigns that can be used to maintain--and possibly diversify--digital brand equity. 11
- 13. SUMMARY 12 HOW WILL I USE EXPERIENCE FROM THIS PROJECT ONE YEAR IN THE FUTURE? Thats a great question, Ed. Wow. One year in the future feels so far away. I think this question will be easier to answer once I have a job. * Laughs* I suppose the work environment Im in shouldnt define how I use the experience. Regardless of the what agency I wind up at, I will remember from this experience that I am capable of taking an idea from my brain and translating it into a solution aimed to impact the lives of others. Whether or not this campaign is a successful solution, what I hope to use one year in the future is the ability to represent a brands voice in a way that pushes me outside my comfort zone. I am not an entrepreneur--I can work on a lot of projects at once, but am most successful when these projects are unified with a brand that is external from my own brand. With this project, I was able to represent the partnered brand of the Career Center and Gonzaga University, which was the only thing that kept me from scrapping the idea altogether. What has been uncomfortable for me in this project is the solution, which is probably why I havent actually posted anything yet. Needless to say, I have interviews scheduled with students for the first week of January--and with each story as an individual representation of this brand, I know Ill have the means to keep me moving. In summation, I will use this experience one year from now to push myself-- regardless of the environment--to consistently seek challenges where I can see a strong brand in everything I do.