Finalizing

Initially I thought it would be more valuable for me to develop a marketing campaign to attract volunteers (expert consultants) to LEDC than to develop a fundraising social marketing plan. The reasoning behind this is that I believe that the stronger the product is (LEDC) the easier that it becomes to fundraise and additional top notch consultants definitely make the services offered by the organization better. Since I wasnt sure, I had two brief conversations wth people in the organization and I agreed to put together an outline of the first two parts of the project for each of the potential proposals. I will present both to them tomorrow so we can discuss and decide on what will be more valuable.

Topic Selected

After much thought the topic I selected was to do a marketing campaign called "Successful Entrepreneurs". The target organization is the Latino Economic Development Corporation in Washington, DC www.ledcdc.org. LEDC offers multiple services to assist small business owners including: Consulting on various areas, including strategy, operations, marketing etc. They also financing if access to premium lending is difficult to get for the owner.

This week I started my research and talked to Mark (the head of development at LEDC) to brianstorm my project as well as some ideas. The challenge I have right now is to decide the goal of the social marketing campaign. The options at a high level are:

1) Marketing Campaign for LEDC targeting potential donors (fundraising)

2) Marketing Campaign targeted at volunteers: Although LEDC has a great staff, they rely heavily on expert volunteers that can provide more in depth expert advice to clients. This may include tax experts, strategy consultants from a big firm, interior designers, merchandise planners or simply successful entrepreneurs who own "large" business and want to serve as mentors.

3) Finally a Marketing Campaign geared towards clients (attracting more small business owners to LEDC.

All three areas seem that would be helpful for the organization. My initial thought is that #2 is going to be the way to go. The stronger that you are as an organization and the more you have to offer the easier it is to attract funding. I need to think through this some more and reach out to a couple of people for ideas.

Getting the Blog set up

Here it is. Ready to get this social marketing plan under way