Increasing attendance to collegiate athletics programs is the priority of the Illini Pride Passes campaign. The campaign focuses on reducing the overall ticket costs for collegiate athletics programs among the University of Illinois student body by offering a package under which registered students would pay less than the required ticket costs for attendance to athletics programs. The key goal of the campaign for the upcoming season is to sell at least 3,500 Illini Pride Passes to students of the University of Illinois by the start of the season.
To be able to achieve the stated goal, the target market for the campaign is largely the University of Illinois student body. This target market requires a robust and multichannel communication mode to be able to convince to purchase the Illini Pride Passes. To communicate to the target market more effectively, social media marketing has been selected as the primary media channel and will be supported by posters. The choice of communication channel is based on the fact that the students, who are youths, are more likely to use social media channels such as Facebook to connect and collect information as compared to other media channels. According to Voorveld et al., media channels such as television adverts do not suit communication to contemporary youths as they seldom engage in television viewership and instead spend nearly 2 hours every day on social media (39). The creative strategy will entail using a combination of several communication strategies including textual posts, video uploads, online posters, and memes. Posters, on the other hand, will be suitable for onsite communication with those who are within school grounds and can easily access posters in public areas of the campus.
The use of social media comes with various strengths. These include the ability to reach large audiences; direct connection with the target audience through school communities; the possibility of creating organic content; the possibility of receiving feedback and interacting with the target audience; and the ease of creating free viral content (Voorveld et al. 46-49). These strengths are essential for the campaign because the connection with the students is the most important requirement in order to influence them towards purchasing the Illini Pride Passes. On the other hand, the channels come with limitations such as the need to wait for results. For the campaign, however, there will be no notable threat to communication via social media.
Deliverable 2: Evaluation strategy
The planned action involves posting as much marketing information for the Illini Pride Passes as possible with the objective of gaining sales. The effort invested in the campaign will be measured by the reach of campaign content such as shared posts and videos, as well as the level of audience engagement attained over the period of the campaign. The return on investment on the other hand will be measured directly based on the realized sales linked to social media campaigns. Additionally, outcomes such as shares of posts by community members on social media pages, the increase in visits, likes, and page interactions over the period of the campaign can also be considered as an indication of the return on time invested in the campaign. The ability of the campaign to reach and attract the target market will be evaluated based on the increase in participation of the members of the target market on the social media pages for the campaign. The ability to resonate with the target market will be evaluated based on the feedback obtained from the target market on the social media posts. Other measures that could be used in measuring the effectiveness of the campaign include increased willingness to participate in collegiate athletics events and the percentage change in positive feedback compared to trends in negative feedback from participants.
Works Cited
Voorveld, Hilde A. M., Guda van Noort, Daniel G. Muntinga, and Fred Bronner. ‘Engagement with Social Media and Social Media Advertising: The Differentiating Role of Platform Type.’ Journal of Advertising, vol. 47, no. 1, 2018, pp. 38-54. www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00913367.2017.1405754?needAccess=true. Accessed 6 September 2020.