The Mays Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement is a new department at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. They provide excellent resources for the students by educating them, and helping them with their career goals. They work with students to prepare them for career success by doing mock interviews, providing resume services, career assessments, and more!
My business communications professor, Dr. Velma Gooding, tasked the class to make and present a business plan for the Mays Center as a semester long project.
At the end of the semester, we presented our team project to the director of the May's Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement, Dr. Edwin Blanton.
Dr. Blanton was very impressed with my part of the presentation and pulled me aside to see if I could personally help him develop the official website!
Here are my contributions to the business plan:
Section 1: Website
Section 2: Writing samples (Articles to supplement website)
Section 3: Sample of Marketing Strategy in the Business Plan
Section 1:
Here is a link to the mock website:
First impressions are key. An organization's website should be professional, interactive, and inviting. Users should be able to easily navigate the website and be engaged while doing so. Our team chose Wix.com to build the new Mays Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement Website, because it provides many features and can be used by anyone.
Features include:
Blog: Helping the mays center spread the word, and post about different resources
Calendar and Upcoming Events: Users can constantly see what is going on at the Mays Center
Live Chat: If users have any questions or concerns, they can talk to a Mays Center representative asap!
Interactive Buttons: By utilizing buttons, users can easily find the information they need.
To make this your official website, you can upgrade the account and buy your own domain to officially claim it.
Section 2:
Supplemental Articles and Marketing Materials
Here is a link to view the full business plan:
Section 3:
Strategy and Implementation
Strategy 1: Digital Marketing Strategies
There are many advantages to digital marketing and traditional marketing. Analysts say that combining the two can be very beneficial for organizations that choose to do so. (Todor, 2016). In order to increase awareness about organizations it is recommended that they follow the seven website design elements. These elements are context, content, community, customization, communication, connection, and commerce. Following these elements will create a customer experience through the website.
Tactic 1: Social Media
The Mays Center will be able to reach its target audience by promoting on social media and passing out pamphlets. The Mays Center currently has a Facebook page which is a great start but, unfortunately the account only has 907 followers. So to generate more traffic, our group would have to inform more people about the Facebook page. How? By having volunteer students pass out pamphlets with information about the Mays Center and how to access the Facebook link. The best places to distribute the pamphlets would be at Starbucks, Local Coffee, The Pearl, Café College, and at all the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio. Since the target market mainly consists of students/future students these would be great locations to network and spread the word about the Mays Center.
On the Facebook page, I noticed there was a home, events, photos, videos, posts, and community link on the Mays Center page. It would be a great idea to add a question link so if students have any comments or concerns they could address it through there.
Another way to increase followers, is to have current students share the page of the Mays Center on their Facebook, by doing so the students would be rewarded with a small incentive such as pencils, pens, and planners for helping promote the Mays Center.
Another great way to promote the Mays Center would be through Instagram, students could take pictures and tag the Mays Center and use catchy hashtags to attract students attention and help inform them of the great services the Mays Center has to provide. By utilizing the social media platform, it would greatly increase the level of awareness of the Mays Center.
Tactic 2: Interactive Webpage
The number of resources online is escalating at an exponential rate, increasing competition between companies who launch their website to the public. Thus, to guarantee user engagement, it’s vital that your website is as interactive as possible. Below are a couple of points to ponder upon so as to ensure the success of your own website.
Captivating content
Online content, like articles and material can enhance user experience. Having good content on the Mays Center website, will engage visitors when reading online content.
Users could look for articles or material which makes them reflect or question certain point of views. Your content must captivate their interest and urge them to look further into certain matters, or stir their curiosity to browse further into your website to get more information.
If you fail to achieve this effect, rest assured that they will resort to visiting the more alluring websites of your competitors.
Social Networking Platforms Promoting your business on social networking media such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Several companies have registered an increase in sales and positive user comments upon introducing their company to Facebook or Twitter. Social networking websites are an excellent way of keeping users engaged since they would be able to post comments and feedback while keeping up to date about your company’s latest news.
Multimedia Text-based sites which lack multimedia resources such as pictures or videos can cause lack of user engagement. The more visual your site is, the more it will captivate the user. Including just the right video, photos, and graphics to grab the user’s attention will guarantee a loyal user-engagement.
Polls, questions, feedback
Polls, questions and feedback forms have been growing in popularity. They increase user participation because many people are interested in knowing what others have voted on. Users will be able to leave their input, and give the center whatever it needs to improve.
Tactic 3: Promotional Video
“Consumer internet usage growth rates have slowed down -- a 21% increase in 2014 versus a 31% increase in 2012. This decline in growth is also reflected in mobile internet usage. But global video usage rates continue to accelerate -- both for internet video and mobile video. Video accounts for 64% of internet traffic, and mobile video accounts for 55% of all mobile traffic, which is an increase from 50% in 2012.” (Staugler, 2015).
By using promotional videos as one of the strategies to reach our target market, the Mays Center will be able to grab the target markets attention easier with a short and sweet promotional video.Considering people gather information differently, using video tends to be more helpful for consumers to understand. There are different types of promotional videos that businesses can incorporate into their marketing strategies, such as, animation video, human-acted video, or product showing video. These videos can also bring traffic back to other digital marketing strategies. These videos could be available on different sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms.
Currently, many businesses are applying video promotion on social media. By implementing video marketing, the target market becomes more attracted and the video promotions reach the markets more effectively, compared to using textual content (Oza, 2017).
Strategy 2: Traditional Marketing Strategies
Traditional marketing strategies are a variety of ways for companies to advertise their company. Different marketing techniques include distributing pamphlets, newsletters, and flyers. Creating billboards and newspaper ads are examples of print advertisements. Other examples of traditional marketing strategies include commercials, as well as sport advertising. A new form of marketing strategies have become more digital. For example, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the creation of web pages are other examples of marketing strategies.
Tactic 1: Mays Center Ambassadors & Merchandise
Ambassadors
Campus ambassadors are college students who spread the word about the service that the Mays Center provides. Their goal is to assist the Mays center with marketing programs on campus to target the college demographic. How we can attract students to become ambassadors is by informing students that being an ambassador is an internship. The requirements to become an ambassador is that they must be punctual, responsible, and have the desire to serve and represent Texas A&M University-San Antonio. The ambassadors must currently be enrolled at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and be in good academic standing, GPA of 2.75 or above. They must also be available to work 16 hours a week during the academic year. Ambassadors will help prepare events, help host workshops, help maintain social media accounts, and help provide knowledge about the center to the target market (LeJeune).
Merchandise
Merchandise is important because it encourages our target audience to want to learn more and engage with the Mays Center. Products we will produce are shirts, caps, journals, and pens that will have the Mays Center for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement logo on it. The Mays Center will pass out merchandise at campus and off campus events, as giveaways.
Tactic 2: Special Events
Special events are a way of allowing your community to obtain information regarding your marketing goal. Many major events across the world are named after companies or sponsored by large companies. For example, Pepsi sponsors the NFL Halftime show every year during the super bowl. This allows Pepsi to gain exposure therefore resulting in an increase in sales. According to Lauren Hirsch from CNBC The value of that exposure is worth about $32 million, according to Apex Marketing Group. If the winning coach is dunked in Pepsi-owned Gatorade, that's an extra $2.2 million of branding, according to Apex. Allowing the Mays Center to sponsor a campus wide event would result in an increase of student participation within the Mays Center. The Mays Center grand opening is a beneficial way to deliver a special event and allow students, faculty and staff to identify all the services the Mays Center has to offer. The grand opening will include knowledgeable staff ready to answer questions. Food and entertainment would be a great way to obtain interest among students passing by. Once students attend the event it’s imperative to provide a clear understanding of what exactly the Mays Center has to offer.
Tactic 3: Sponsorships and Partnerships
The main objective of the May’s Center is to give the student the best opportunity to obtain real world credibility. When looking at our competitor UTSA and their CSPD, we see an interconnected web of sponsors and partners who work hand in hand in the process of the program. The May’s Center needs financial support from local leading business corps so they can get funding from these partners. In return, the May’s centers will provide these companies with bright alumni students for internship programs to provide a cheap efficient workforce for a set duration of time. All three parties will be benefiting from this exchange. When looking for potential sponsors or partners, a certain few will be amazing and beneficial to have in our corner. Texas A&M already has a culture based around the military, so a great addition to the A&M system would be USAA. If we could make this partnership happen I feel the May’s Center would flourish rapidly. After catching this mega fish we can move onto sponsors such as H.E.B, Valero, Chase, Wells Fargo, and AT&T. Students should be able to go to the center and apply for internships as needed from these sponsors and partners with ease. The implementation of this system would expand the effectiveness of the May’s Center which in result will conform Texas A&M San Antonio into a leader of success rates in South Texas
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