On-Campus Advertising Opportunities

I am a member of PSE, a sales and marketing business fraternity at UNI. As the VP of Marketing, it is my job to be the project manager for our 10th Annual Sprint into Spring 5K Run/Walk. My goal is to increase our past participation rate by 30%, reaching our highest ever number of runners at 200!!!! And the way I was going to achieve this goal was through finding new ways of advertising my event. And many of these ideas came from my Digital Advertising class.

The advertising methods I chose to use were:

-Facebook Event Page

-Email Marketing Campaign

-Twitter

-Linkwheels

-Organization Website

-Maucker TV/Marquee

-Maucker Bubble Posters

-Text Messaging Campaign

-MyUniverse Calendar, UNIonline, My Universe Weekend

-UNIBusiness Calendar, UNIBusiness News, Marketing News

-Press Releases

-Newspaper ad, the Northern Iowan

-PR Community Relations

-WOM

-Presenting in Class

-Table Tents

-Static Signs On/Off Campus

-Flash Mob

...that's a lot of advertising!

First I would like to say how lucky we are as students to have all these available outlets to advertise events, projects...basically anything we want to. And it's all FREE OF CHARGE! Agencies put billions of dollars towards their marketing/advertising, and we don't have to pay a thing. Yet, are we utilizing all of these available media outlets? I know that I have tried almost everything I can think of to spread the word for my event, but that's because I'm aware of a majority of these communication methods. It would be nice if we were taught or at least made aware of these outlets because I know that I have missed out on a lot of events simply because I didn't know it was occurring.

However, I have found that through all the advertising methods I have utilized, I have found that WOM is the most effective. This doesn't mean that the other methods don't work. I believe that the other methods are more appropriate to raise awareness for your events, and it may possibly lead to sales. BUT I feel that the most effective way of converting those leads into sales is through WOM (word of mouth). By actually talking to people, creating buzz, having that one-on-one contact with someone...that's how you're going to get the sales you want- for me, getting the number of runners I want to participate in my PSE 5K!!!

So I will advertise my 5K through my blog, not that anyone is reading it. So that makes me realize that this form of communication is simply...pointless. But if you are reading... you can visit

www.uni.edu/studentorgs/pse/projects for more information on the 5K! YOU SHOULD DO IT!!!!!!!!

Find that feeling that keeps you smiling.

KT