Marketing

Kyndra Haggard- I commented on Group 1 & 3's marketing paper. I was responsible for the Marketing activities, results and budget.
Desiree Soptelean - I commented on Groups 1 & 3 marketing papers. I was responsible for the Introduction and Marketing Strategies in our paper.
Debbie Shidler - I commented on Groups 1, 3, and 4 marketing papers. I was responsible for the Reflection and some tables in our paper.  

Marketing Paper

The Unity Center

EDAC 632

Ball State University

Group 2:

Kyndra Haggard

Debbie Shidler

Desiree Soptelean

Introduction

            The purpose of our marketing assignment is to reach out to more than 100 people within the Muncie community to invite them to take part in the Big Read workshop that we are hosting at the Unity Center.  Our initial goal is to market to as many people as possible, with a minimum of 100.  And our end goal is to have at least 20 attendees at our workshop on October 9, 2015.  We plan to use several forms of thoughtfully chosen marketing, with our target audience in mind.

Marketing Strategies

            When we began planning our marketing strategy, we decided that since we had a very short timeframe to market, we wanted to only use the most effective forms of marketing for our target audience- late middle-aged to senior citizen.  We were the first group to host our workshop, so we had less than four weeks to plan and execute our marketing strategies, and were therefore limited by what forms of marketing were available to us.  In his 2002 article, Marketing Your Continuing Ed Program, Sevier lists six elements for a marketing plan in continuing education, which is an area similar to our workshop.  These elements are: billboards and transit advertising, advertising in the local press, radio, direct mail, special events, and a dedicated website.  Of these six, the first four were out of the question due to time and budget constraints, but we did participate in a special event and advertised our workshop on a dedicated website (http://munciebigread.weebly.com) as well as Facebook and Instagram via the internet.

            Once we decided what marketing tools to use, we had to plan the budget for both marketing and producing our workshop.  Our initial budget of $50 seemed very limited to us, so it was a relief when we learned later that $100 actually could be used. In program budgeting, five questions are answered:

1.         What do we want to do?

2.         Why do we want to do it?

3.         How will we do it?

4.         What do we need in order to do it?

5.         How will we know whether we have succeeded?

We used these questions (Galbraith, Sisco, &Guglielmino, 1997) to guide our budgeting process.  We wanted to attract people to our event, so that we could promote the Muncie Big Read.  We wanted to do it through social media, word of mouth, special events, and through organizations.  We needed a little bit of money, but mostly connections. And we decided we would know if we have succeeded on the day of the workshop by the number of people who attended the event.

            Through social media, we were able to reach over 100 people, but the most effective method of marketing we did was through personal contact and through organizations.  Deggs and Miller (2011) say “Organizations should share responsibilities for promoting community-wide initiatives which perpetuate the value of learning through the various methods of social interaction.”  We found this to be true, as this is how we felt our best connections were made.  Social interaction and organization based marketing that we used included participation in a Family Night hosted by the Unity Center, networking with other organizations who participated in the Family Night, advertisement by the YWCA at their facility, and advertisement of the Unity Center and other organizations they communicate with.

            Finally, one area of importance that, following the workshop, we felt was an area we could have improved upon was evaluation.  Smith calls evaluation of a marketing campaign a continuous process.  Throughout the planning time, we did some forms of evaluation, such as changing methods based on effectiveness and availability, for example, when we learned of the Family Night at the last minute and decided to participate in that.  One way we could have improved was to have workshop attendees fill out a survey to indicate how they learned of the workshop, so that we could use that information in marketing future events or to help classmates who have not yet hosted their workshops.

Marketing Activities

Communication is key to success.  Our group has utilized multiple marketing activities and strategies to reach the most people possible.  Our marketing concepts stemmed from the “principle of supportive relationships” (Likert, p.284).  The theory explains how success comes from relationships.  Rensis Likert talks about how relationships are supportive “when the individual sees the experience as contributing to or maintaining his sense of personal worth and importance.”  His theory talks in-depth about employee-centered relationships in a workplace.  I believe this always applies to relationships with other workplaces and people.  The relationships our group members had with other non-profits was how we were able to market to so many adults in the Muncie area.  Marketing as a non-profit is a lot more difficult.  You must raise the money in order to make this happen.  There is a smaller budget to work with.  We did attempt to gain donations from Meijer, Panera and Concanon’s.  Unfortunately they were not able to help due to differing reasons.  Our main piece is the marketing flyer our group created.  We have shared the website, http://munciebigread.weebly.com/.  We also handed out the Big Read pamphlets and bookmarks supplied to us via the class promotional items provided.

Email is one of the marketing actions we utilized.  Our group has reached out to various organizations with a great flow of communication and responses.  We have emailed the YWCA of Muncie and they have hung the flyer in their meeting space as well as announced the event at their group meetings.  We have emailed the Boys & Girls Club of Muncie.  While we chose to focus our attention of this project on adults we did still share with them so the youth could potentially attend other Big Read events and also share our workshop with their guardians.  Here is a piece of the conversation I had with the Marketing Director, Kaitlyn Davis, of the YWCA on obtaining agreement to help promote Big Read.

 

Our group has also advertised by word of mouth. We have shared this event with friends and co-workers.  We have handed out flyers to them so they may share this event with their friends and family as well. Our flyer is pictured at the end of this paper.

On Monday, September 28th, our group attend the National Family Day celebration at the Unity Center located at 1600 S. Madison Street, Muncie, Indiana.  The event allowed families to eat a wonderful (and delicious) meal provided by the Unity Center.  There were also various local organizations present to share information.  Our group set up a booth to pass out materials and provide two prize options.  Here is a picture of our table and also a picture of all the attendees who were informed of our event.

We had a sign-up sheet (photo not included for privacy) for people to enter to win a $25 gift card if they come to the workshop we are hosting.  We also planned to have a drawing that evening for someone to win a copy of the book.  Unfortunately, we did not get to stay for the entire event since we had class.  We did give the book to a lady that was very interested in reading. As we were leaving, the director made an announcement to promote our workshop that will be held October 5^th at 10 am at the Unity Center.  We left our promotional materials on the table to allow people to take.

            Facebook has also worked well for us.  The Unity Center has posted our flyer on their Facebook page.  We also posted this on our own personal Facebook pages. Just from Facebook we reached 73 people.  In addition, 25 people were reached via Instagram.

Marketing Results

     We feel our marketing practices were very successful. We were able to contact over 100 people. We reached 73 through Facebook, 25 through Instagram, and over 40 at the National Family Day Celebration we attended to promote our workshop. Our focus was on adults in the Muncie community, and that resulted in a positive turnout to our event. We had 15 in attendance at our actual event. We feel we did a wonderful job advertising and know we made a big difference and desire to read in the few we were able to connect with at our workshop.

Marketing Budget

     Each group is allotted $100 to use for marketing and promotional items. Here is a chart to show what we spent and what was donated:

Item	Amount	Allotted Amount $100
Marketing Flyers (printed in color, 100 copies)	Free printing courtesy of the Ball State Career Center	-
Ball State T-Shirt for giveaway	Donated by the Ball State Career Center	-
Starbucks Gift Card ($10 value)	Group donation	-
Facebook, Email	Free	-
Wal-Mart Gift Card for giveaway	$25	$25
Fruit Tray	12.98	$12.98
Candy for giveaway	4.99	$4.99
Drinks (coffee & juice)	$21.15	$21.15
Candy (prize boxes & candy corn for BINGO)	$5.83	$5.83
Donuts- Concannon’s	$20.95	$20.95
Utensils (plates, cups, forks)	$6.79	$6.79
Poster Board	$2.54	$2.54
TOTAL		$100.23

Reflection

Highlights:

     Group two’s highlights and strengths were our creativity. We thought outside because many of our mentors and colleagues had told us marketing the Big Read as a reading event would not draw a crowd. People do not think of reading a book as fun or exciting. Dr. Chang had allowed and pushed each group to really think about how to create excitement about reading.  

     Our end result was giving a general overview, picking out interesting parts of the book and reading it to our audience. This way they could think about the leading questions and know a little bit about the book without having to read the all of Fahrenheit 451. This way everyone would be included, and no one would feel left out. Everyone could participate. The group was really energized and got into the discussion questions.

     After the discussion questions we decided to mix in Bingo. We had previously met with the director of the Unity Center, Miss Yolanda Taylor. She had told us the adults that come to the center really enjoy Bingo. Kendra put together a board with vocabulary and different phases that we could talk about and promote discussion even during play. People liked the game, prizes and surprisingly were still intrigued with talking about the book. Bingo was a success.  

Process:                                                          

     The process of the assignment was a great learning experience. It had some frustrations as we had all tried to get donations from several places with no luck. We still persisted and figured out ways to use our budget to offer exciting prizes to bring in a crowd. Especially with the idea of Bingo we knew that would need to be prizes.

    We learned about several processes when setting up an event. We had to figure out how to bring in a crowd of people without really knowing a lot of people from the area. Another learning experience was learning the art of asking for a donation then discovering the differences between a local business and a national organization. For example: applying and writing a letter to a corporate office instead of just going in and asking the manager or owner of a local business.

Purpose	Results
Marketing Strategies	·             Social Media (Facebook, Instagram) ·             Special events/Personal connections ·             Organizations
Marketing Activities	·             Email contacts at Boys & Girls Club and YWCA ·             Post on Facebook ·             Attendance and announcement at the National Family Day Celebration at the Unity Center, September 28th. o   Having giveaway items to get people to attend our workshop ·             Word of mouth ·             Flyers provided by class and the flyer we created for our personal workshops
Marketing Results	·             Successful! ·             Over 100 people reached o   73 on Facebook o   25 on Instagram o   Over 40 at Unity Center Family Event ·             15 in attendance at event
Budget	Item Amount Allotted Amount $100 Marketing Flyers (printed in color, 100 copies) Free printing courtesy of the Ball State Career Center - Ball State T-Shirt for giveaway Donated by the Ball State Career Center - Starbucks Gift Card ($10 value) Group donation - Facebook, Email Free - Wal-Mart Gift Card for giveaway $25 $25 Fruit Tray 12.98 $12.98 Candy for giveaway 4.99 $4.99 Drinks (coffee & juice) $21.15 Candy (prize boxes & candy corn for BINGO) $5.83 $5.83 Donuts- Concannon’s $20.95 $20.95 Utensils (plates, cups, forks) $6.79 $6.79 Poster Board $2.54 $2.54 TOTAL $100.23

References

Deggs, D., & Miller, M. (2011). Developing community expectations: The critical role of adult educators. Adult Learning, 22(3), 25-30.

Galbraith, M., Sisco, B. and L. Guglielmino. "Administering successful programs for adults: promoting excellence in adult, community, and continuing education." 1997. Krieger Publishing Company: Malabar, FL. 59-73: 187

Likert, R. (1958). Participative management theory. In J. Tompkins (2004), Organization theory and public management (p.270-294). Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth Publishing

Sevier, R. A. (2002). Marketing your continuing ed program. University Business, 5(9), 25.

Smith, B. E. (1996). Marketing your adult literacy program: A “how to” manual. Hudson River Center for Program Development, Glenmont, NY.