You manage a small company or organization that offers an innovative and noteworthy, albeit specialty niche product or service.

You understand the importance of marketing it online with an effective web site, but you’re concerned that what you offer is so specialized prospective customers may not realize it’s available, or, for that matter, how to search for it. What do you do to attract customers?

Business management and communication students in Purdue University Calumet’s experiential learning, senior level Advertising Management course this fall have been learning how to develop and manage a marketing campaign by consulting with actual for-profit and not-for-profit niche clients.

A key component of the students’ efforts has involved reviewing a client’s web site and, subsequently, making improvements to generate greater online customer attention through increased interactivity and landing page relevance. The students strive for search engine optimization—identifying key search or adwords that connect web site-searching prospective customers with the students’ business clients.

“Search engine optimization is definitely the wave of the future,” Class instructor Kasia Firlej said. “Because businesses need to focus on engagement with the specific needs of their consumers and stay relevant to their consumers in the sea of competing websites, keyword search bidding through Google Adwords becomes a major competitive advantage in getting noticed and driving traffic to a business’ website.”

Through extensive research of their clients, competitors and industry, the Purdue Calumet students have attempted to determine those search or adwords that will connect their business clients with customers.

“Search engine optimization is incredibly valuable for advertisers as consumers increasingly search for more and more information online via Google, the most popular search engine in the world,” Firlej said. “Businesses can understand consumer wants and needs by consumers’ key word usage. As a result, businesses also can capture plenty of interesting consumer data, such as online behavior patterns, geographic and demographic information.”

The students have worked in teams, each team consulting with a different client. As their final course obligation, the student teams will present campaign reports, which will include client profile, market analysis, adwords strategy and keywords results.

Highland resident and senior marketing/accounting major Ryan Lorance has been part of a team that has consulted with Griffith-based American Antler Dog Chews, which produces a natural dog chew product from the shed antlers of deer, elk and moose. Lorance said his team “created a Google Adwords advertising campaign and managed the campaign for multiple weeks.

“We had to manage a fixed budget and utilize advertising best practices to generate the best return on investment for the campaign,” he said. “Additionally, we worked with the client to suggest and implement changes to its website that we thought would help increase sales.”

As Professor Firlej explains, typing various search words and phrases to exercise a typical web-based search on the Google search engine produces numerous listings—so numerous that they can comprise a multiplicity of screen pages. First or primary page search engine listings generate more customer looks and business hits.

That’s where the importance of identifying and utilizing proper search adwords in a web-based marketing campaign is important, according to Firlej. Yet, that must be weighed with the fee the business client is charged to gain ‘Main Street’ location status among the search engine listings. That fee can be expensive for firms that have tens of thousands of competitors, but keyword search bids can cost just pennies for firms with a niche appeal.

Extensively and meticulously, the Purdue Calumet student teams have researched their respective clients in an effort to develop the proper adword campaigns, according to Firlej.

“Essentially, businesses bid for rankings on the search engine,” she said.

Annually, Google sponsors a competition to attract the most popular search engine ad words. As part of the experiential learning component of their class, Firlej’s students participate in the Google competition.

“It’s a very comprehensive process to research a business client in such a way that customer needs are determined in order to develop just the right search adwords to rate the primary page of a Google search,” Firlej said.

Lorance called his Advertising Management course activity, “. . . one of my most beneficial experiences at Purdue Calumet. I learned teamwork skills, I learned about communicating and working with an outside client, and most importantly, I gained hands on experience with a tool that is widely utilized in the business world. . . I have already had a job interview in which the adwords campaign was discussed.”

Article reposted from Junior Achievement’s November 2011 newsletter

Exciting things are happening with Junior Achievement and Purdue University Calumet. As our partnership grows, PUC is getting involved with Junior Achievement in many different ways.

Purdue University Calumet is a recognized leader in experiential education. It is one of the few universities in the nation that gives all students the opportunity to build Experiential Learning (ExL) into their curriculum by requiring two courses for graduation. A Leadership class, one of the ExL courses offered at PUC, took on the first- and second-grade classes at Morton Elementary School in Hammond and presented the JA curriculum to a total of 12 classes on Oct. 21.

Alpha Psi Lambda, the nation’s first and largest co-ed Latino fraternity, taught JA classes at Morton last year, and is scheduled to go to Irving Elementary in November.

One of the eight purposes of the fraternity is to serve the university campus and community. Junior Achievement has provided Alpha Psi Lambda’s Epsilon Chapter at Purdue University Calumet a great opportunity to do just that. The program provides members with an opportunity to give back to the community that supports them.

“The smiles on the children’s faces as we teach them valuable lessons about how their community and government works is reward enough for this community service endeavor,” said secretary of the fraternity Jessica Ruiz.

Alpha Psi Lambda looks forward to a long, fulfilling relationship with the Junior Achievement program.

Additionally, several Purdue Calumet faculty members volunteer their time to speak at “Ask the Expert” events that JA hosts throughout the school year. Charles R. Winer, Department Head of the Computer Information Technology & Graphics Department at Purdue University Calumet, is one of those professors who often speak at these career days.

“Through the Junior Achievement program, I have been invited and been able to participate in meeting with students in our local area schools to let them know how and what we in the information technology (IT) field do,” Winer said.

Winer is working on developing a summer camp to allow local students to visit the campus and learn more about the IT field. We look forward to a long and productive partnership with Purdue Calumet!

Above: Purdue Calumet Experiential Learning students getting ready to volunteer in the second grade classes at Morton Elementary in Hammond

To learn more about Junior Achievement, visit them on the web at www.jachicago.org.

Recipients were recognized for partnering in dedicated, collaborative and exceptional ways with Purdue Calumet students and faculty within the university’s experiential learning initiative. Driving the initiative are relationships involving community organizations, which provide experiential learning opportunities; faculty, who develop and teach courses that integrate the opportunities; and students, who benefit, grow and turn the opportunities into valuable learning experiences.

Award recipients, selected by the Deans of each of Purdue Calumet’s six academic schools, are…

Purdue University Calumet recently presented six area businesses and organizations 2010 Experiential Learning Exemplary Community Partner Awards.

Recipients were recognized for partnering in dedicated, collaborative and exceptional ways with Purdue Calumet students and faculty within the university’s experiential learning initiative. Driving the initiative are relationships involving community organizations, which provide experiential learning opportunities; faculty, who develop and teach courses that integrate the opportunities; and students, who benefit, grow and turn the opportunities into valuable learning experiences.

Award recipients, selected by the Deans of each of Purdue Calumet’s six academic schools, are:

Purdue University Calumet recently presented six area businesses and organizations 2010 Experiential Learning Exemplary Community Partner Awards.

Recipients were recognized for partnering in dedicated, collaborative and exceptional ways with Purdue Calumet students and faculty within the university’s experiential learning initiative. Driving the initiative are relationships involving community organizations, which provide experiential learning opportunities; faculty, who develop and teach courses that integrate the opportunities; and students, who benefit, grow and turn the opportunities into valuable learning experiences.

Award recipients, selected by the Deans of each of Purdue Calumet’s six academic schools, are:
http://webs.purduecal.edu/news/2010/11/22/exemplary-community-partners/

By Jan Anderson

Not so long ago, a college diploma helped guarantee employment. But times have changed, and higher education must ensure that its students get necessary experience to be successful in the marketplace.

Purdue University Calumet has responded to this need by incorporating experiential education into its curricula. At its core, experiential learning combines classroom learning and practical experience, building on what students learn traditionally and enabling them to apply that learning in a hands-on, real-world setting.  more…

Wednesday, October 27, 2010
6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Dr. Gardner will speak about how a new economy has changed the workplace and the critical role of experiential learning in better preparing students to be successful and building a strong resume.

The general public is invited to attend, as are educators, students and area business leaders. Seating is limited and reservations are required. To register, contact Experiential Learning at 219-989-8350 or exl@calumet.purdue.edu.

Click here to register online.

South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority
7770 Corinne Drive | Hammond, Indiana

I-80-94 to Kennedy Avenue south. Visitors’ Center is first right.