As part of the college’s mission to be a world-leader in hands-on learning, the business school’s Experiential Learning Center (ELC) challenges students to learn about the business world by tackling firm-specific problems. The students work as members of a team and receive guidance from a faculty coach and business representatives. This semester, one of 6 ELC teams is addressing a business problem faced by The Literacy Council (TLC), a nonprofit organization based in Rockford, IL. TLC provides literacy instruction to individuals and families, with the ultimate goal of strengthening communities. The organization offers a variety of programs, such as GED registration, adult tutoring courses, and English as a Second Language (ESL) courses.
For their part, the ELC team – comprised of six business students from a variety of majors — has been charged with developing a refreshed marketing plan. Their metrics for success include improving TLC’s brand awareness and the visibility of its programs/services.
“COVID-19 has had a big impact on enrollment. The pandemic made it difficult for TLC to meet its goals for volunteer recruitment and class enrollments,” says Miriam Rodriguez-Aguilera, a marketing major who is also the ELC team marketing specialist. “Our work is aimed at helping TLC continue to increase the number of students and volunteers the organization receives per term.”
When the project began, the organization had an existing marketing strategy in place, but not one that could hold up in the face of a pandemic. “They had a great jump start to email campaigns, social media content, and aired public service announcements on local radio stations. Initially, we struggled a bit to find other marketing strategies that would boost word-of-mouth and increase community interest,” says Rodriguez-Aguilera.
To tackle this challenge, the ELC team specialized their tasks. “We split into smaller teams of two or one, with each group engaged in intensive marketing research to find the best strategies for promoting a non-profit. Our efforts to discover the right target demographics and most effective online platforms for the organization helped us create a very detailed plan,” Rodriguez-Aguilera explains. The team also suggested ways TLC could partner with the greater NIU community, such as accepting Business Passport students as volunteer tutors, or putting TLC in contact with NIU student volunteering organizations for assistance in running programs.
Working in the context of a pandemic revealed another layer of challenge all of its own. “Discipline has been key,” Rodriguez-Aguilera says. “As an online team, we always meet on time and get things done before our deadlines. I’m an independent worker, so working in a group setting has helped strengthen my communication and brainstorming skills. Truthfully, everyone on the team has been challenged to strengthen these skills and to utilize them in-the-moment and in times of reflection with the goal of developing creative solutions for our client.”
In addition, coming from different majors afforded the team members different perspectives from which to view the business problem, Rodriguez-Aguilera adds.
“The team members all bring in a different perspective, and they all learn from each other,” says NIU College of Business Passport Director Jacie Collum, who also serves as the ELC team’s coach. Business Passport is the college’s co-curricular program that engages students in several skills-enhancing activities from leadership to global to communications, among others. “A critical part of the team’s success has been the diversity of its members. “We have students from Madagascar, India, and Honduras,” Collum explains. “Every student on the team is multilingual, and their work allows them to bring distinct backgrounds to the table to help market TLC’s programs.”
Different perspectives also meant diving deep to understand TLC’s customer base.
“The intensity of our research really surprised me,” Rodriguez-Aguilera says. “It covered a lot of data including demographics on age, race, and literacy reading levels around the Rockford, IL area.”
The team then put that research to work by using it as the basis for their recommended marketing plan. From this they also customized marketing materials – from flyers, social media posts to fundraising campaigns – and all with the active support of TLC’s executive director who gave the team a great deal of creative freedom.
“I was very satisfied with the team’s overall presentation and recommendations. They really worked to come up with ideas and solutions tailored for The Literacy Council,” says Bill Grennell, executive director of The Literacy Council. “They did a great job! We will definitely incorporate some of their recommendations into our plans. I highly recommend working with the ELC program. They helped provide new insights and they looked at things from an unbiased point of view. That alone helped us step out of doing things ‘the way we always do things.”
By Sam Serpe, journalism ‘20, 2L NIU Law, digital marketing Graduate Assistant for the College of Business Impact Lab; editorial oversight by M. De Jean, director of marketing, NIU College of Business and by M. Mackey, editor in chief, NIU Clearinghouse.
