PRT 4828
R&R Sports - Aloha Ski & Snowboard
Marketing Internship
- Introduction-
During my large internship I had the pleasure of working directly with Becca Gerber. Becca Is the head Marketing manager for R&R Sports and has held this position for the past 4 years. Our main focus for the summer months was to plan and perfect our social media calendar and Email blast schedule for the upcoming winter months. We also coordinated our website redesign, simplifying, making it more user friendly and giving a "natural" flow. Before I started my internship, I sat down and came up with some goals and objectives. Although these were prospective goals, Becca and I made them attainable at the same time. The goals were as follows:
1. Pursue and connect with 2 new tour companies (tour, travel clubs, travel agents) that Aloha ski and Snowboard does not currently utilize, doing so by the end of June.
2. Assist in managing and creating R&R sports marketing plan, by the start of the upcoming ski season.
3. Create and plan the entire 15/16 ski season social media content by the end of August.
- Pursue our new Wyndham hotel locations marketing team, establishing at least 2 relations by the end of July. Eventually working towards getting our information onto their park city property page.
- Establish and ensure all Google plus info is correct for all 8 Aloha locations by the end of June.
2. Assist in managing and creating R&R sports marketing plan, by the start of the upcoming ski season.
- Update and ensure all the information on our company website is accurate and is in line with the companies marketing tactics by the end of July.
- Shadow our head marketing manager, identifying the 5 key points of focus during the off season, doing so over the entire duration of my internship.
3. Create and plan the entire 15/16 ski season social media content by the end of August.
- Create a calendar that corresponds with content created, reminding user of upcoming events and posts by the end of August.
- For every email blast create a corresponding social media post, with supplemental posts in between, by the end of August.
Goals are a very important aspect of the internship experience, they help to guide, shape, and layout what you will take way, and what you will learn from your internship.
- Brief History -
R&R Sports is a greater corporation that represents smaller "Mom and Pop" shops all across the country. The purpose of this business structure is to give greater buying and marketing power to small locally invested companies. This strategy also helps to increase investment opportunities and growth for these smaller local business's
The shops that R&R Sports represents include:
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- Google+ -
The main focus of this task was to ensure all the map markers were correct and corresponded with the correct shop. Because Aloha has so many locations (7) within an area as small as Park City, people are often very confused as to which is which. With this winters connection of Park City and Canyons Resort, combined with the rebranding and renaming of the entire resort its important that we stay on top of the information that our Google information is portraying to the general public.
In this day and age something as simple as a google place can have a tremendous impact on your business and profits. The world has become so tech savvy and heavily reliant upon google search results, your business could easily be overlooked, and lost somewhere on the world wide web. |
(Below is a screenshot of one of our brand new google+ pages) We already have 1,100 views!
- Content Calendar -
The social media content calendar was one of my main tasks assigned for the internship. First things first I created an excel file that clearly organized promotions, special dates, and deadlines for email blasts. Corresponding with the calendar is an organized folder that holds all the content and files for each post. Becca was clear that she wanted quality over quantity. I was extra careful to make the content and ideas fit within our "theme" and overall message we want to portray via social outlets. In todays world social media has such a huge influence on consumers, and is a great way to easily and effectively communicate on a large scale. Its important to keep up to date on social media and to take advantage of the opportunities it provides. Seeing that Aloha is a seasonal business, it strives to achieve a full years profit in only 5 short months, without prior layout of social media content it can easily be forgotten and looked over. The whole purpose of this task was to prevent our social media from slipping out from from under us like it has in the past.
(Example of what our content calendar looks like)
- Email Blast -
This task consisted of scheduling and creating drafts of each email, our ski shops rely heavily on reservations. Reservation statistics assist in scheduling, purchasing equipment, and allotting equipment between various locations. We ended up with about 20 emails scheduled from November until March. This task was interesting because it wasn't only for Aloha but for R&R company wide. These emails are directed towards pushing reservations, with an early reservation it allows guests to save 20% and it allows us as a company to be prepared to accommodate these guests. The hardest aspect of this task was carrying a theme across the board. Its tricky when representing many different shops and keeping their style of marketing in mind, not only for them, but for their customers as well.
Below are three images I created for Email Blasts (wording will be added later to correspond with email text)
- Tour Agencies -
This section is ongoing, the last two weeks of my internship 8/5 - 8/20 consist of working with tour agencies. Updates will be made accordingly after completion.
- Overview -
Overall my internship was successful and rewarding. I was able to complete my goals and learn valuable on the job experiences. This opportunity has really opened up my eyes and given me insight to marketing, concepts that a classroom would struggle to portray. A lot of my work was preparatory work for the upcoming season, although the reward was not instantaneous it will be nice to see things come together full circle this winter season.
Main take aways:
Main take aways:
- Marketing is extremely dynamic and constantly changing, you must be able to focus on a variety of situations with different of variables.
- Marketing is often times heavily themed, I noticed that R&R and Aloha were pretty strict on their "Theme" and how they wanted to portray themselves. This made me realize that companies can often times get stuck in their ways, disabling themselves from branching out.
- Its very easy to find yourself behind when it comes to marketing, staying on top of it is a full time job, Its tough to catch back up once you're behind.
I would recommend this internship to anyone that wants to get to real world marketing experience. I learned a lot about social media and working with outside parties. Especially within a small community such as park city, you get to know the inner workings of who helps who, together benefiting the entire community.
The Aloha family has been a pleasure to work with on every account. Everyone is considerate and willing to work together to get things done, it seems that everyone has similar interests, mindsets and goals. Aloha does an amazing job sustaining a friendly and comfortable workplace, this is essential to boost creativity and allow personal growth as well as company growth.
Im extremely pleased with my opportunity here at Aloha and I cant wait to see what doors open and the opportunities that lay ahead of me!
The Aloha family has been a pleasure to work with on every account. Everyone is considerate and willing to work together to get things done, it seems that everyone has similar interests, mindsets and goals. Aloha does an amazing job sustaining a friendly and comfortable workplace, this is essential to boost creativity and allow personal growth as well as company growth.
Im extremely pleased with my opportunity here at Aloha and I cant wait to see what doors open and the opportunities that lay ahead of me!
Below is a collection of photos from my experiences, although it was lots of work there was still fun to be had!
- PRT 4828 Files -
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