Financial Horizons Marketing Campaign: Ideas and improvements for next year

A list things that would make next year's marketing campaign much better.

Increase Extra Credit Pitches

Extra credit has shown to be the best driver of attendance.  An email should be sent to every economics professor teaching that quarter asking them to offer extra credit for attending the conference.  This assumption is not supported by data, but I believe classes that offered extra credit had over 50% of their students attend the conference.

Flyers With Slogans

No Slogan!

The reason we did not have the slogans on it this year was because we had to rush printing.  The flyer designer and director of marketing should be working closely together on the flyer.  The flyer design, which also becomes the face of the conference should be fully integrated into the marketing campaign.  

Study Party/Promotional Event 

Students in the same classes tend to only gather together right before an exam.  In order to take advantage of that, UIS should work with economics TA's to organize a study party the day before a midterm.  UIS should treat these study parties as promotional events and use its marketing budget to provide free food, caffeine and T-shirts.  The combined force of TA's and free stuff should draw a significant group of economic students to these study parties. A conference pitch directed at this captive audience should play to the fact that many students do not know how what they are studying will help them in the future.  Essentially, the conference pitch should say something like "Don't know how this stuff will help you in your life? Come to the conference and find out."

Display Case 

There are many display cases that student organizations can reserve all over the Price Center, but there is only one that matters.  The display case that is in the hallway that connects Price Center East with Price Center West is possibly the most highly trafficked path in the whole school.  Putting an eye catching display, or even plastering the case of with flyers would greatly increase awareness of the conference.

Financial Horizons Marketing Campaign: Results and Conclusions

Here are the results of the marketing campaign from analyzing the registration data.

Background on Attendees

As expected, the large majority of attendees were from UC San Diego.  Economics and business majors made up 71% of attendees, which raises the question should UIS continue to target economics students or expand out into other majors?  I believe that with over 6000 students that enroll in economics courses every quarter at UCSD, there is still a lot of low hanging fruit to be picked.  The next marketing campaign should focus almost entirely on economic students, as fewer than 10% students taking economics classes are registering for the conference.  

What worked?

Flyering and chalk boarding which were the two most most labor intensive methods produced the worst results, reaching a combined 8% of attendees.  On the other hand, the least labor intensive marketing methods econ blog, in class pitches and social media were three to six times more effective.

Word of mouth through friends was the surprise leader in how attendees heard about the conference.  This makes me think the next campaign should focus on soundbites and something that encourages attendees to bring friends, such as "bring a friend get X free" type promotion.

Though this graph is informative, I believe that it underestimates the value of flyering and chalkboarding.  I have a nagging suspicion that there would have been fewer people who heard about it from friends had the campus not been covered in flyers.  There is a chance that flyering and chalkboarding serve as reinforcement to the more popular methods, for example a student hears about the conference from a friend and then is reminded to register upon seeing a flyer.  That kind of value that chalkboarding and flyering brings would not be reflected in this graph.

Facebook Ads

Overall, Facebook ads were dismal.  With over 6000 people seeing the ads, only 6 of them clicked.  Out of the 7 ads that I ran, the one titled "Hedge Funds @ UCSD" did the best, and by best I mean it got all the clicks.  The success of  the "Hedge Funds" ad suggests that more mainstream finance terms are the key to targeting students.

Currently, there is a debate raging about the effectiveness of Facebook ads. My dismal results has pushed me towards the "not effective" side of the debate.   There is a very real possibility that my generation, which grew up with banner ads, have learned to completely tune them out.  WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is definitely onto something when he said that the display advertising model is broken and in-stream advertising is the future.

Financial Horizons Marketing Campaign: Execution

The $1500 dollars that I had for the marketing budget ended up being much more than I could spend.  Due to a time shortage, we ended up doing a very traditional marketing campaign.

Flyers

Many groups on campus hand out flyer on Library walk, the main quad area at UCSD.  Due to a shortage of manpower and a disregard for its effectiveness, I decided against actively handing out flyers.  Instead, I focused on putting up flyers in high traffic locations, targeting buildings and lecture halls that were most popular with economic students.  In addition, I tried my best to flyer the captive audience in the dorms and on-campus apartments.

Banners

Two banners were hung at the Price Center, probably the most trafficked building in the whole school.  I advised to hang them in areas that were immediately visible to

Ad/Email copy

The ad copy was tailored for the economic times.  This year's class is graduating at a time of high unemployment and they feel the pressure as their graduation date approaches.  Adding to the sense of hopelessness is the fact that many college students simply do not know what they want to do.

I wanted the ad copy to convey a sense of direction to the lost students and an internship/job opportunity for the graduating ones.  In order to do that, I put in easily recognizable corporate names and a slogan that hinted at the opportunity of getting hired. In addition, corporate brands and hot financial segments were bolded to pop at the viewer.

Sample copy:

UCSB is invited to the 7th Annual Financial Horizons Conference! 

On Saturday, March 3rd 9am - 3pm, come visit sunny UC San Diego to get educated on the best paid industry in the US by leaders in the field. 

This year's speakers include current and former executives from Goldman Sachs, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, Moody's, the Federal Reserve and many more top name companies.

Expert speakers such as:

• Lou Kerner - Former VP of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
• Wyatt Wachtel - Senior VP at York Capital Management
• Emmy Sobieski - Former VP at OppenheimerFunds

will be covering a wide variety of topics including hedge funds, private equity, investment strategies and accounting. 

Attend, Learn, Network and get Hired. 

The conference is FREE, but registration closes on February 29th and spots are limited!
Register today at http://bit.ly/UIS_Conference

Conference itinerary with additional details is attached.

Slogan selection

"Attend, network, get hired"

Initially, there it was "maybe get hired" but in the end I ended up dropping the "maybe" making it more short and succinct.  

Facebook ads

Facebook ads played up the hiring angle of the conference.  The ad copy featured big names in finance and were paired up with iconic images of Wall Street as well as Asian traders.

Targets:

Sample ads: