As prof.Shari mentioned in class, WPI Venture Forum is composed of three important target customers, entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors. I trust the key to market the WPI Venture Forum online is getting exposed to these target customers, which means to increase WPI VF's awareness.
How to access entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors? I have four suggestions.
Firstly, advertise on related platforms. Imagine you were an entrepreneur or an investor, if you wanted to attend an entrepreneur event, such as WPI VF, what will you most likely to do at first? Search online! Searching engine is the most powerful tool to get aware of everything! On one hand, design the WPI VF webpage reasonably to increase the nature ranking result. Such as link the key word right as professor mentioned during last class. On another hand, advertise on effective platforms, such as entrepreneurship network, ePowehouse, and event collector, Eventbrite, to increase WPI VF's awareness.
Secondly, make differentiation. There are considerable different entrepreneur-related events. How can WPI VF different from them? On one hand, WPI VF must give more detailed information on website of each VF event. More information given, more impressive people will have. In addition, WPI VF can advertise its technology academic resource as a key competitive advantage to attract both entrepreneurs and investors who are interested in technology startups. On another hand, provide promotion code to lure customers. When there's so many similar events out there , promotion code is the direct incentive to force purchase.
Thirdly, utilize the power of media. For example, once there was entrepreneur recognized potential investor in WPI VF and made final deal, we can give these material to the media to make news. "Entrepreneur got Investor in WPI VF" is an excellent title. By meantime, WPI VF will be known as awesome place for entrepreneurs to meet investors. The brand awareness will be increased definitely. In addition, we expect the influence of word-of-mouth. Increasing the event quality, WPI VF will hear from customers talking about it.
Lastly, build long-time relationship with attended entrepreneurs, investors and sponsors. Ask every customer to leave their e-mail address during registration and make a mail list. Send them updated event invitation and ask them to forward the invitation to people they know who might interested in. In this way, we widen the circle. In addition, open Facebook, twitter and linked in account to communicate with loyal customers and to provide coming events and updated news of past events to loyal customers.
Another important component of WPI VF prof.Shari mentioned in class is volunteers, which faculty is also a good candidate to cooperate with.
Academy brings in innovation, which is favorable by most entrepreneurs and investors. Add the faculties in WPI VF's mail list so that they can forward to their students for teaching purpose. In this way, students are brought in. Another point to attract students is to send them updated emails of up coming events. As a WPI student, I never received an event informing email form WPI VF. I think it is the worst situation.
Moreover, for most colleges, there is high possibility that students operate the entrepreneur community or something similar. Have them in the connection. It is a good opportunity to cooperate with other colleges.
Iris, I am inpressed with your second about differentiate WPI Venture Forum from others. The question here is how can we achieve that? You mentioned about promotion code, can you specify it? I am wondering if there is any events that we can apply promotion code for? In terms of the mail list and social media, I believe WPI Venture Forum has already implement those actions. However, how to optimize those marketing methods is a huge issue. I like your ideas about market the forum in related platform, and bring students in through teachers. Great brainstorming!
ReplyDeleteEmail list is a good idea! People who attended WPI venture forum must be interested in it. And they should be the target person WPI VF focus on. Email list can help WPI VF market accurate and send useful information to whom need. Cooperate with other university is also a good idea. I think first of all we can set a competition among Worcester colleges and universities, for example Clark. By doing that, all of these universities venture forum can generate notice among Worcester entrepreneurs. Then universities in big Boston area can build a alliance to share entrepreneurship news and resources.
ReplyDeleteIris,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea about direct marketing. Email is definitely a great choice for WPI VF to promote the brand and expand the audience base. The problem I am thinking is how to effectively enlarge our email liest. As we talked in class, a great way to get high quality email address is to share high quality report on the website. For WPI VF, it can post report of new business trends for entrepreneur, or report of web industry, etc.