Hey there, Eric here again.
And we're gonna go through video two
of our week one module here
talking about the course intro and a review.
So, this video is gonna go deep into
the capstone project that is tied to this program.
And I want to go through a lot of details, not
just around why this capstone project has been selected
or set up the way it has been, but I also wanna dive
into the structure of what the campaign
or what this capstones project will include.
So let's dive in here for the capstone overview.
So the capstone project,
like we talked about in the first video,
is gonna be worth 60% of your final grade,
which means it's time to focus and, and do a great job.
And I wanna make sure that you do a great job.
I wanna set you up for success.
It's why in the, the course of this, of this program
there's a dedicated week, in week eight that is focused
on giving you the time to finish and work on and polish off
and cross the t's and dot the I's of your capstone project.
So capstone project at a high level.
What you're going to be doing is tackling
a marketing challenge for a business
and a brand that you select.
And what's interesting about the structure
of this program is your capstone project is
going to build week over week, over week.
As you learn more channels, you'll be able to leverage
that information into the final capstone project.
You might be thinking to yourself, Eric,
what about week six, seven?
I'm learning things, but my project is due in week eight.
Valid concern, but not a concern to worry about,
because we will be able to guide you
as you're learning each week.
But you'll have plenty of time
to put your capstone project together
and weave in all the details that you learn
all the way up through week seven.
So the capstone project is really rooted in, again,
giving you a real life marketing challenge that a brand
that you select will be facing.
And then it's creating a digital marketing plan
to solve that marketing challenge.
Again, sound familiar for those of you that
are in marketing positions?
In doing so, again, we're here to guide you,
we're here to help,
and I'll show you what we've implemented to
make sure that you're set up for success.
Now, the most important thing about this capstone project is
at the end of it, it's an asset you can be using
as a portfolio piece, no matter what your objective is
for this, this joining this course.
Getting a new job is something you use in the interview.
Getting promoted is something you can show
to your management team to say, "Here's what I learned
and here's an example."
Oh, by the way, I can implement this for our business too.
So it serves many purposes.
Maybe you're running your own business.
This capstone project will give you the, the framework
to really effectively create a marketing plan
for your business, a friend's business, a family's business,
whatever the case may be.
So this capstone project serves multiple purposes,
no matter what your objective is in joining this course.
So breaking it down a little bit more, again,
it's gonna be one integrated digital marketing plan.
You're gonna pick a brand.
You're gonna pick a marketing challenge.
You're gonna pick a marketing campaign type.
And with those three components,
you're gonna get strategic in building a marketing plan.
Now you get to present this marketing plan
using a tool called VoiceThread.
It's a free tool to sign up for
and it's gonna allow you to record yourself
slide by slide, by slide.
Don't worry, no video, it's just audio.
There's been, listen, in the years we've done this,
there's been students that have never touched the internet
before that have been able to figure out VoiceThread
and do a great job in their capstone.
So I trust everybody here will have no major issues
in getting through VoiceThread
and using that as an effective tool.
Oh, by the way, VoiceThread then becomes a tool you can
list on your resume as one that you have experience with.
So timing, when I think about the capstone project,
you're delivering something in less than 25 minutes
and less than 25 slides.
Now the question I get all the time is, well
what if I, I need 30 slides.
30 slides is fine.
I just give you some guidance here to say
you should be able to create your
effective capstone project within 25 slides,
and when you record it it should be less than 25 minutes.
So this is the structure for the capstone project.
Let's go a layer deeper into the brand, the challenge,
and the campaigns that'll be part of the components
of your capstone project.
So the good news is you get to select all of these
and I, and I, I did that for a reason
because some of you may have a brand you want to pick
that is the place that you work.
And that's usually about 85%
of our students will select a brand
or a business that is where they work
or have worked to really bring the tangible value
after the eight weeks.
Some of you may wanna select a competitor,
which is a great exercise to do to bring back to your
company to say, "Hey, I went through this framework
and now I've got some insights on what our
competition might be doing."
Or some of you may just wanna pick a brand that you're
really, really comfortable with.
You're, you're a loyal customer of.
We've had students select Nike, Under Armour,
and some of the popular brands, they escape me
for some reason, but you get the idea.
Any brand is a good brand.
Nonprofits can work.
Startups can work.
A business that you're planning to launch
that hasn't launched yet can work.
Any brand, but you get to select what that,
who that brand is.
Next is the challenge.
So there's a finite list of challenges
and a finite list of campaigns.
You get to pick the ones that match the,
the challenge that your business is facing.
And these are meant to really capture some
of the most obvious marketing campaign,
marketing challenge issues that any brand would face.
What I'll say is, if you don't see a challenge
or a campaign that matches what you want for your brand
let me know and we can figure it out.
I've always, I've made some adjustments
for students that have said, "Hey Eric
I want to pick a different challenge that's not listed here.
Can I do that?"
Answer is yes, but let's have a conversation about it first.
So you pick the brand, you pick the challenge,
you pick the campaign,
and that's the structure for developing
your digital marketing plan.
Now, some may be saying,
well why is this format so important?
And for me, having used this, not just in this course,
but I've used this in other courses with undergraduates
and graduate students, it really provides an opportunity
for you to work on several skills as a marketer.
First you'll be doing a lot of market research.
And I'm not talking about scores
and scores and 50 slide research decks.
No, no, no.
I'm talking about doing cursory research,
but gives you the opportunity to look at
and look for certain pieces of information.
So that's a skill you'll pull away.
But it's also critical thinking,
because you have a brand, a challenge, and a campaign.
It's your brain that's gonna figure out how do I
stitch together the right digital marketing channels
so that I can address this marketing challenge
and this using this marketing campaign.
And the other thing it makes you do is listen.
Social media, very powerful channels.
Oftentimes many brands will make the mistake thinking
my only option is to run some TikTok videos,
Facebook ads, Instagram posts.
And while they may be important,
there's more than just social media
and you're gonna uncover that
and your eyes will open to the value
of an integrated marketing plan.
Plus like I said, 25 slides.
So you get experience putting a presentation together.
If you've never put a presentation together,
that's okay, it doesn't matter.
All that matters is the content you're putting together
to show your thinking.
I'm not looking for, you know,
five star graphic design work.
That's not expected.
If you have those skills, great, but it's not expected.
All that's expected is you put good content together,
covering and addressing the capstone expectations.
Now what we've done and implemented to keep you
on track to make sure you're set up for success is,
and this is just, you know, summarizing that
we have an eight week program here,
but at week four it's a mandatory assignment for you to
turn in an outline for your capstone project.
And trust me, a lot can get done between now and week four.
And don't worry because I'm gonna give you all the tools
you need, all the templates you need,
all the direction you need.
I have a lot of explainer videos to help you walk
through how to write that outline.
The outline is a template.
So you're really just filling in information.
That's due week four.
That will be graded.
That outline will set you up for success
for the subsequent weeks.
Now look at week six.
Week six is a optional.
Share your slides with myself and Chris.
Now optional meaning you may have them drafted,
and you may have placeholder images,
and placeholder text, and that's okay.
All we're looking to do is check in to make sure
that you've made progress since submitting
your outline in week four.
And then that gives you, you know, a thumbs up
or some feedback to say, "Hey, make this change.
Try this, remember this."
So that by week six, seven, and eight you should be in
good shape to finish your capstone project.
Since implementing this a couple of years ago
I don't know that we've ever had somebody not
be able to finish the capstone on time.
That's a lot of students that have been through the program
and a lot of that is just due to staying on top
of your progress week after week, after week, after week.
Now, if you have any questions
as it relates to the capstone project
what kind of brand should I select, Eric?
Is this a good brand to pick?
Just shoot me an email.
We can easily resolve those questions. (clears throat)
So you, you know, the capstone project and the structure.
Let's talk about what you'll be putting together
in the slides of your capstone project.
Like I said, the focus here is an
integrated digital marketing plan.
And the structure, the framework for that is
is known as the Golden Circle borrowed from Simon Sinek.
If you don't know who he is, look him up.
Has a lot of great TED Talks.
But the structure here is to give you direction
on making sure that you've covered each of these components
when building your marketing plan.
Very, well, the why, who,
the why, who, how, what.
Again, this is a framework you'll cut, you,
you'll take with you throughout the entirety
of your career when building a marketing plan.
The why, it's about identifying the purpose,
the objective, the goals.
The who is about identifying your target audience
or persona.
The how is about your strategies or your methods
of successfully achieving your why.
The what becomes your specific tactics
and proof of execution.
KPIs, which you'll learn about in our analytics module.
Key performance indicators.
What are the metrics that will de define success
for your campaign?
And then targets, which are specific numbers
that you need to hit.
Now, again, for a lot of you, you may not know
and the question I get is, you know, I don't know the target
or what's realistic.
A guesstimate is fine, right?
As long as you have these components identified
this is gonna be key for you to have
a strong capstone project.
Now, I go deeper into the who here
and there's more information I'm gonna share with you.
And by the way, these slides, PDFs of these slides
are available in the learning management system.
So grab those, download them, so you can click out
to some of these other resources.
But I'll, and again, if you can't access it,
you have trouble, let me know.
I'll make sure you get access to it.
But when it comes to identifying your target audience,
a persona development, defining a persona is a skill
and you'll get the opportunity to develop a persona
for your brand.
And this link takes you out to a resource
that lets you understand what's important
to include in the details of a persona.
Because most of you're familiar with a demographic.
If someone were to say, what's the target audience
of your marketing campaign, you may say, "Adults 18 - 35."
To which I say that's, that's a good range,
but how can your marketing message to an 18 year old
be the same as the marketing message to a 35 year old?
A little bit different, right?
Different pain points, different interests,
different influences.
That's the importance of creating a persona.
And in the persona you'll be thinking deeper
about identifying a representative persona that again
will represent a larger audience
of who you're trying to reach.
For example, asking about what are
the goals of your specific persona.
Now again, this isn't about a range of ages,
it's about a specific age.
What are their goals?
What are their pain points, what are their behaviors?
And these are just some examples of what that could be.
For example, if somebody's looking,
if you're REI looking to target somebody.
So more on this in the resources shared,
but like here's an example, right?
So let's say someone decides to pick REI as a brand.
They pick increase online revenues.
They pick sweepstakes contest as the campaign type.
Well guess what?
If you apply the golden circle, here's the why.
Increase online revenues.
Here's the who.
Internet savvy adults with interest in outdoors.
Notice how I didn't say adults 18 - 35.
Big difference.
I said internet savvy adults with interest in outdoors.
What's the strategy?
What's the method to increase online revenues?
It's going to be a coupon giveaway.
'Cause remember, per the capstone project,
it was sweepstakes for contest.
Well, a coupon giveaway is a sweepstakes type or a contest.
And then the tactics will be, let's run a contest
every Tuesday on Facebook.
Let's give winners coupon for online redemption only.
'Cause that's gonna increase online revenues,
not in-store revenues.
And then these are just some other tactics that would be
part of in your, your campaign
or sorry in your capstone project.
Now again, all these tactics are covered week,
in each weekly module.
So the ideas that you need to satisfy your tactics
are gonna be coming in what you learn week to week to week.
Oh by the way we have KPIs, we have targets.
This is an example of a KPI, a coupon redemption rate.
That's a metric of success.
A target would be, "Hey, let's make sure we, we convert
at least at a 5% redemption rate."
Again, if this is all Greek to you,
doesn't make any sense, that's okay.
You'll be able to ask questions,
we'll be able to walk you through it.
There hasn't been a student going through
this program that hasn't been able to connect the dots
to apply this as part of their capstone project.
Again, you'll get access to these slides, you can click off.
Here are some examples of other student suggestions,
other student capstone projects.
So you can take a look at those.
So capstone summary review,
you know, I always like to to encourage students
to just start by just writing down the outline.
In terms of, you know, the brand, the challenge,
the campaign, like what does it mean to you?
And I'll talk more about this
as we get through the live sessions.
Definitely watch examples from other students
and I'm gonna share a link with you
in a minute that's gonna give you access to a ton.
So that you have really a good foundation
of understanding what's the the output look like.
And that's extremely helpful for you.
Definitely sign up for VoiceThread.
Look to find that time of your calendar.
Be prepared to submit your outline
on week four, that's mandatory.
Consider submitting your slides on week six.
So you can look at the calendar right now
and map out week four and week six
and block your calendar now.
And I always say when it comes to the capstone
60% of your grade, we're here to help.
We're here to help.
So ask any question that you have along the way.
If you wanna get started,
if you wanna get a head start this URL.
Once you type this into a browser
it will open up a spreadsheet that you can edit.
And all you need to do is put in your name,
put in the brand that you're thinking about selecting,
and then there's a dropdown menu where
you can select your challenge and your campaign.
It's not set in stone, it's a starting point.
But if you want to get going, get started,
I encourage you to go to this link
and enter your information
and look at the bottom of that spreadsheet.
You'll see other tabs.
In there, there's a tab that has a whole list
of other capstone examples.
So there's links in there you can link out to
and watch the VoiceThread videos of these other students.
As always, if you have questions, this is my email address.
So that's a deep dive on the capstone project.
Let's move on to the final video.