For internet marketing course, we presented the “Internet Marketing Recommendation for Sauder School of Business” project to Sauder Marketing staff members consisting of Ms. Niamh Redmond and Mr. Andrew Riley on Nov 26th, Friday. This project lasted for 4weeks, and it is my first time to learn how to analyze and provide recommendations for a real website and to real clients. It is very different to just present in front of class and to the students same as us, because it is real, we must treat it very seriously, and work out some real issues which our clients would concern.
In the first week, our team, JJ, Kapil, Nesli and me had a very efficient meeting, in the meeting JJ and Kapil took the lead and decided the topic that give recommendation to Sauder School of Business. In the following week, we discussed and determined the structure and content, and allocated for each person. Because after graduate I will work as an operation manager of interactive products in an online media company in China, so I chose the social media, and Kapil selected 7 Cs, JJ chose analytics, Nesli selected web comparison. Following I will show what I have learnt about the social media and the presentation itself.
Social media and social networking become more and more important in recent years, especially, as the leaders in this area, Facebook, Twitter have achieved quite a bit of traction among young people. Today’s generation relies on these tools heavily for information search and exchange of ideas via internet, thus social networking is very important for Sauder’s internet strategy. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Sauder students, the feedback for Sauder website’s Interactive Tools is not good, only 54% of respondents rated it as excellent or good, compared with other attributes such as Visually Pleasing – 85% (excellent/good), Easy to Read/Understand – 85%, there must be something wrong in this area and we can make improvement for it.
First I chose Wharton as our benchmark because it has very good reputation in social networking, and I compared the two schools for
1. Interactive links on homepage
– Sauder should show the interactive icons not only in homepages but also in subpages to increase the chance that visitor would see and click
– Sauder should create connection list of all the official Facebook pages/groups, Twitter groups, LinkedIn groups, YouTube channels, and so on.
2. Difference in Facebook page
– Sauder should create connection list in info page.
3. Difference in LinkedIn
– Sauder should have its own official alumni group, which would benefit Sauder’s reputation and brand
4. Difference in YouTube
– Should update more frequently.
– Should increase academic oriented video.
In the comparison for Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube between Sauder and Wharton, I found Sauder’s update speed for the topics in pages and groups is quite good (except for YouTube), the major problem I found is that because the icons of these interactive tools are only shown in few homepages, new visitors may find difficult to find them when they are viewing detail information in the subpages, they may not know why the icons disappear and where they can find them back, so the basic idea of the improvement Sauder could make is to increase the icons in the subpages, and create overall connection list for visitors, make new comers easy to find and use them.
Besides, maintaining and updating social media by staff is not cost efficient, so Sauder should not only rely on their staff to maintain the interactive tools and social networking, but also encourage students to join in. They can offer instruction for students about how to create and maintain groups in Facebook and LinkedIn, and they can also promote well operated groups created by students.
Our clients agreed with my logic and suggestions, especially they fully agree to add icons in subpages and create connection list for visitors. They said they have already started to work on most of my suggestions, however for the video on YouTube, they have problem. Creating video cost a lot of money and effort, so it is difficult to create tens of videos just as Wharton did, but anyway they will try to update more videos.
It’s a very impressive experience of presenting project to real clients in business school. We have presented a lot in the class, so it is very good to practice it in the real business world. It not only gives me more motivation to work on the project, but also forces me to think from the clients’ point of view. Although it was tough to work on it in such a short period, it is very helpful and valuable experience for me.