Marketing
I came into the world of journalism knowing next to nothing about marketing, but over the years, I’ve had various opportunities to learn and build various skills in this domain. While it’s not something I would consider a strength, I do my best to apply wherever I can.
Learning about marketing
From in-class assignments to learning from experts in the field, I’ve had various opportunities to learn about marketing, both in the context of journalism and for myself personally. These often yield a lot of valuable information that I can apply in future marketing endeavors.
Alex Sams presentation
These are notes I took from a talk local realtor Alex Sams came and gave to ODYSSEY at the beginning of our marketing unit my freshman year. Through this, I learned a lot about the importance of connections and making each sale personal to the customer. He also talked a lot about appealing to a diversity of audiences, which I found helpful when marketing to people not directly involved with my high school. Overall, these notes have been a valuable resource throughout my various marketing endeavours.
Dr. Grantham presentation
These notes are from a presentation University of Georgia Principal Lecturer of Marketing Dr. Kimberly Grantham gave to our class at the beginning of this year’s Marketing Project. A lot of her talk focused on branding, not just for us as an organization but also personally. I took a lot away from her about consistency and being intentional with everything you do as it all feeds into your brand as a person and as part of your organization.
Videos and reflection
This assignment focused on everything branding and marketing-related, asking us to watch three videos on the topics, two assigned and one chosen. At the end, we had to write a response to the things we had learned and reflect on how we could apply them in the future. Through this assignment, I was able to learn more about the importance of personal branding while also gaining applicable lessons for engaging in marketing for ODYSSEY.
The Marketing Project
At the beginning of each year, the ODYSSEY staff engages in the Marketing Project. This is our chance to go out into the community and apply the various principles and practices of marketing that we’ve been learning about in class. Doing this project also allows us to work together to bring in subscriptions for the magazine, which we set a target number of each year and do our best to collaboratively reach it. In the three years I’ve done this project, it’s given me opportunities to try out various methods of marketing and expand my comfort zone with it and communication as a whole.
Spheres of Influence
The first part of the project we engage in is a Spheres of Influence spreadsheet, where we identify the people we can market to and categorize them by how we’re affiliated, which can help with identifying the best way to market with them down the road. Doing this has pushed my thinking on who I market to significantly and is where I’ve seen the most growth over the years as I become comfortable with reaching out to people I’m less confident in getting a response from.​​
Script writing
After identifying the people we want to market to, we create a script, or outline of what we plan to say when marketing to people. This isn’t meant to be the exact wording we use for every email and phone call, but an edited roadmap to follow. With mine, I always do my best to highlight the benefits subscribing to the magazine has for them.
Marketing requests
While I have the script to fall back on when emailing, texting or calling the people I’ve identified to market to, I always try to personalize it in some way even if it’s as small as asking how their recent trip went, especially if I know them particularly well. I also try to make the process as easy as possible on them by including all of the necessary information and forms right in the email and do my best to follow up with everyone since emails like these, especially at the beginning of the school year, easily get lost in the pile.
Other forms of marketing
Magazine distribution
When new issues of our newsmagazine arrive, a team goes around and distributes them to classrooms around the school, which I’ve been a part of on various occasions. This is a good way to market our brand as everyone on Street Team is required to wear ODYSSEY gear. We always try to not only hand magazines directly to students and teachers, but also leave extras in classrooms in case someone who didn’t get a copy wants one.
UGA football games
Each fall, we work in day-long shifts in concession stands at University of Georgia football games. These are both a great way to bring in funds and represent ODYSSEY but also work with each other in a different environment and bond throughout the day. Cumulatively, working at these games has brought in up to $20,000 a year to help pay for staff necessities such as printing of the newsmagazine and buying new equipment.
Working with UGA Marketing students
Over the summer, myself and other members of the ODYSSEY Leadership Team worked with University of Georgia Principal Lecturer of Marketing Dr. Kimberly Grantham’s Integrated Marketing and Communications Maymester class. Students were tasked with evaluating our publications and identifying potential areas for growth in our marketing and audience engagement strategies. Myself, Managing Editor Peter Atchley and Print Editor-in-Chief Liza Larson worked together to create a project brief for the teams and meet with each of them to give information on our program’s current strategies and our goals. We were then responsible for viewing and giving feedback on each of the presentations based on what we felt was applicable and doable for us. The project brief is shown on the left and the feedback we responded to the students with is on the right.