Clay Bruinsma

Mr.Rudebusch

Senior Project

4/8/2024

I chose to explore the marketing field for my senior project. I chose marketing

because it was what I was thinking about going to college for. I shadowed at the Watertown

Area Community Foundation for 12 hours and at the Prairie Lakes Healthcare System for 8

hours. At the Watertown Area Community Foundation, my mentor was Kristen Henderson.

Kristen showed me how she helps with the marketing and advertising for the Watertown

Area Community Foundation and other companies. At the Prairie Lakes Healthcare System, I

shadowed the marketing team. The marketing team consisted of 3 people who all play

different roles that help each other out. One of them focuses on the graphic design side of

advertisements, one focuses on running the website, and one focuses on events. They all

work together to get to their end goal. Shadowing at the hospital showed me how broad

marketing could be.

My research question was “How to find the right target audience.” Kristen really

stressed this topic to me when I was shadowing her. She explained that if you are advertising

something to people who don’t care, then you are just wasting money and time. In my

research essay, I explained how important it is to have the right target audience. I also

explained other crucial parts of marketing and how important and useful marketing can be.

Originally for my product I was going to make a marketing brochure. I realized this

idea was going to be too easy and simple for a senior project, so I decided to make a website.
This website is about a fake company I made up called “Clay’s Computer Components.” I

made this website on Weebly, where I also made my senior project portfolio. Weebly makes

building a website simple and straightforward. My original copy of the website didn’t take

too long, but I made some mistakes and had to go through and change them. The website

consists of a home page that describes what the company does, a services page that consists

of all the services the company provides, a product page which consists of the products the

company sells, and a contact page which provides information about how to contact the

company and where it is located.

I had a hard time looking for people to shadow. Originally I was going to shadow a

sports marketer that worked in Brookings. I spoke on the phone with him a few times, and

eventually we couldn’t find a good date for me to shadow since he was traveling. I lucked

out because my grandpa knew who Kristen was. I got in contact with Kristen and set up

times to shadow. Kristen got me in contact with the hospital’s marketing team which

broadened my knowledge of marketing. All the pieces fell in place and I am thankful for that.

My time management fell apart because of my shadowing. I didn’t get my shadowing

done until December because of all the delays. Apart from the shadowing, I think I had good

time management with everything else.

I gained knowledge on marketing and how it works. Originally, I didn’t really know if

marketing was useful. Many articles said that marketing was useless. After doing this project,

I can say that marketing is definitely not useless and is crucial. I am going to NSU for

marketing in the fall. This shadowing experience helped me realize that I wanted to go into

marketing.