IMC Plan: UF’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Posted on August 6, 2014

The University of Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, part of the Warrington College of Business Administration, is designed to help students at both the undergrad and graduate levels study and develop aspects of entrepreneurship. Even for students who are not seeking a degree, there are various opportunities offered by the center to help develop entrepreneurial skills such as workshops, forums, competitions, clinics, and mentorships. Some program offerings from the college include:

• Veterans Entrepreneurship Program (VEP): Program for disabled veterans who are seeking entrepreneurial opportunities; three stage program designed to expose students to all facets of entrepreneurship; free of cost to disabled veterans
• The Thomas S. Johnson Master of Science in Entrepreneurship Program: One-year Masters degree program where students gain the knowledge needed in order to launch their own businesses; ranked as the #1 Graduate Entrepreneurship Program by United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• CEI Ambassadors: University of Florida community involvement program that promotes entrepreneurship and aims to bring students with similar entrepreneurial mindsets together through campus activities; also acts as a campus outreach group to promote CEI and related programs within the university

This Integrated Marketing Plan will be focusing specifically on the Veterans Entrepreneurship Program. Using a variety of marketing communications mediums, the plan is to increase program awareness and increase the number of applicants for the program by 10% over the next 6 months.

Target Audience Characteristics and Demographics:

• Service disabled veterans
• Veterans who are seeking to grow their business
• Veterans who are looking to start new ventures
• Veterans interested in entrepreneurship
• Veterans seeking financial independence

Strenghts of the Veterans Entrepreneurship Program:

• Offers free tuition for disabled veterans
• Part of a nationally recognized, award-winning program
• Ability to complete the program in one year

Opportunities for the Veterans Entrepreneurship Program:

• Large potential target audience, estimated at over 2.9 million in the United States (Associated Press)
• Ability to leverage social media  (low-cost and far-reaching)
• Utilize digital marketing mediums, such as QR codes, blogs, and YouTube to connect with audience

The University of Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation should take an integrated marketing approach to promoting the Veteran Entrepreneurship Program. Doing so will provide a more holistic approach and allow the target audience to feel more engaged with the program when seeing messaging from various marketing communication methods. According to the Small Business Chronicle, you are able to save money and have a larger impact on your audience when you use an integrated marketing strategy as opposed to using more traditional methods separately; “Integrated campaigns use the same communication tools to reinforce each other and improve marketing effectiveness” (Linton, 2014).

In order to analyze how well each portion of the integrated marketing strategy is performing, the VEP will need to invest in analytics software. Google Analytics is free to use and can give insightful information into how well the VEP webpages are performing. Through Google Analytics, you will also be able to track entry and exit pages (how people got to the website and where they went after the left the website) in order to determine if the users are interacting with other VEP sites or marketing mediums, such as QR codes, blogs, or social media. Facebook, YouTube, and QR Code software provides built-in analytics that help track the activity and engagement of that specific channel. Because the social media manager will only be monitoring one Twitter page and one Facebook account, I wouldn’t recommend spending the extra money to invest in a social media management tool such as Hootsuite at this time. Although it is a fantastic program, the VEP program will be paying more for the product then it could expect to receive in return.

In order for the VEP to get the most marketing exposure, several marketing communications mediums need to be utilized together to create the optimal integrated marketing strategy. With the editions of the VEP blog, YouTube playlist, Facebook, and Twitter pages, VEP’s marketing communications mix will be more effective at communicating and interacting with the target audience. By utilizing these marketing mediums in conjunction with the VEP website, QR codes, print collateral, and tradeshow marketing, potential students will be able to gain a more holistic view of the program and better understand how VEP is connected with the University of Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

 

Sources:

Associated Press- Washington. (2008, 11 May). VA: Number of Disabled Veterans Rising. Retrieved from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/05/11/va-number-disabled-veterans-rising/

Linton, I. (2014, August 01). The Importance of Integrated Marketing Communications. Retrieved from Small Business Chronicle: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-integrated-marketing-communications-73248.html