Marketing/Outreach Project – Survey Data
My special project is centered around helping my organization, MIT D-Lab, improve its marketing/outreach. D-Lab feels like they produce content on international development that isn’t getting to the audience they want. They want to rethink how can they leverage their content to get more research, funding, professional education, and training partnerships. My project will compose of several parts and so far, I have completed my survey and I am currently working on the desk research.
The survey research includes understanding what ate current practices in the marketing/outreach of D-Lab. Examples of my survey are here:
The results of the survey showed that organization members have been thinking of how they can be supported when it comes to marketing/outreach. D-Lab members want to understand how can they have support from other team members and more funding, and training on marketing/outreach.
For my desk research, I am researching organizations that are considered the “influencers” in international development work. I will research the basic background of the organization, the channels, the audience, the services offered, and their thought leadership approach. From this research, I will choose 3-5 organizations to interview to better understand their marketing/outreach strategies.
March 27, 2021 @ 4:31 pm
I developed the survey based on questions that will help understand how D-Lab approached outreach and marketing. This meant asking what marketing/outreach tools are used, and channels used for content deployment. I interpreted the results to these questions to understand what tools for marketing/outreach aren’t being used to suggest better ones. In addition, I also asked what challenges team members are faced and what questions they had. This allowed me to really assess what are the gaps in knowledge and what the team is looking to get answers on.
Being able to plan out my project and execute it has let me know that I like to have the flexibility to lead my own project. This means that in the future, I would like to work on small to medium size companies where I will have free will and the ability to experiment compared to a large companies. Additionally, working on this marketing/outreach project has sparked my interest in marketing that can intersect with my interest in government and international studies. I have started to apply to public relations/marketing internships especially looking for internships where I can work with NGOs that take on international work.