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17 Marketing Manual 2
17 Marketing Manual 2
Spring 2017
The State News Marketing team is a group of Michigan State students who
work to increase brand awareness among the local community and campus.
These individuals are typically pursuing a marketing career, and begin their
professional timeline at the State News.
Marketing interns join the State News team with the intent to learn
wholesome insight into the planning of marketing campaigns, as well as an
understanding of the media world they are soon to pursue post grad. From
management, interns can expect to receive overall business and
communication training, as well as receive guidance in executing weekly
tasks.
Weekly Responsibilities
Training
Market Research
During the initial research phase, interns work on profiling the audience, the
message, the medium, and finally work toward a plan for implementation.
Branding
Event Planning
Event planning, within the marketing world, is used for a number of reasons
whether it be brand recognition or a mobilization campaign. Regardless,
every event must have clearly defined goals to achieve a level of success
with predetermined measurements. Before every event, a white paper must
be submitted to management for approval that includes the event proposal
and details, goals, measurements for success, and potential sponsors.
The newsroom uses these platforms to market individual stories that the
journalists write, and include links to the digital article. The marketing team
uses the mediums as both a tool to spread awareness about upcoming
events, as well as including fun fluff to avoid overloading our followers with
too much news content.
Fluff can be defined as content that is fun, and does not require too much
thought. It can include Twitter polls, local photography, student life and other
content to engage the community.
When scheduling social media fluff, it is important to remember that both the
newsroom and advertising department share the accounts. Running new
ideas by both departments ensure effective use of the platforms.
Sponsor Relations
Every marketing event being planned comes with a budget, and as a non-
profit that budget is next to none. Securing sponsors are key to ensuring the
success of an event, and therefore it is important to maintain a positive
relationship.
Sponsors may include local food vendors, banks, gas stations, etc. who pay
to be included on all marketing materials and donate food or other prizes for
the event. In doing so, these sponsors receive marketing to all the attendees
of the event and have a chance to showcase their business as well.
Newspaper Marketing
Newspapers rely heavily on pick-up rates, or the number of papers that get
picked up from the racks on every distribution day. Integrated marketing
campaigns are an excellent tactic to increase pick-up rates, and therefore
improve readership (the percentage of the local population that reads the
State News).
Client Work
Social Media
a) Instagram
a. Draft a bi-weekly post to break up the continuous news content.
This should be a Michigan State, State News related post that is
modeled after the following categories:
i. Customer-centric photos: creating user generated content,
or engaging followers by posting photos that benefit them
ii. Employee-centric photos: enhancing the State News brand
by showing off staff personality and putting a face to the
corporation
iii. Contest photos: engage followers with contests to use hash
tags where they have the chance to win something
iv. Product-centric photos: Showing off the State News
products using the enhancing filters, clarity, and color
options Instagram offers
v. Click here to see examples of the above categories
b) Facebook
a. Draft three or four bi-weekly posts to break up news content.
Please read this article to get a better understanding of what
successful Facebook posts consist of and begin drafting.
c) Twitter
a. The State News Twitter account is used primarily to promote
individual articles, interspersed with paid for client tweets. Five
to six tweets a week to break up the pattern would be ideal, and
submitted the prior week for approval. These tweets can include
the following:
i. Upcoming event promotion
ii. Modern trends
iii. Funny jokes
iv. Twitter polls to engage followers
v. Please read this article that explains the statistics of
creating successful tweets
d) Snapchat
a. The Snapchat account has room to grow, however for now it will
continue to be used primarily for broadcasting live events
Events
Each intern must select five events throughout the semester that the State
News may choose to pursue. These should include four smaller events, and
one large event with clear goals laid out. The proposed five events will be
presented to Advertising and Marketing manager as well as the Director of
Sales to begin forming a marketing calendar. All events must be at least one
month away, and the presentation should include:
a) Audience
b) State News goals
c) Measure of success
d) List of potential sponsors
When receiving approval for events, the following steps should be taken to
see the event to the end:
a) Submit the event white paper that outlines the full details including
time, location, activities, and sponsors. This also includes the clear
goals and measures of success
b) Plan the event and organize all resources needed
c) Execute the event and be sure to live stream the activity on Snapchat,
and take several pictures to post on social media
d) Send out handwritten thank you notes to participating sponsors
e) Submit the event case study that audits the event, whether the goals
were met or not, and notes for improving the event