Philanthropy in Marketing Department: Marketing Hokies Helping Non-Profit through Google Ads Challenge
Within the Virginia Tech Marketing department, students are given the unique opportunity to collaborate with companies and non-profit organizations in order to help their businesses grow through the power of Google Ads. The Virginia Tech Marketing Google Ads team is composed of five, talented and altruistic Marketing students with a drive to create positive societal change: Patty Vistsupakorn, Meredith Wright, Haseb Alim, Puja Agnihotri, and Mckenzie Collins.
This Virginia Tech Google Ads Team decided to focus their efforts on Creating a Family, a non-profit organization that supports and educates families involved with adoption or foster care. Founded in 2001, Creating a Family’s goal is to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster, and kinship parents and the professionals who support them with expert-led and trauma informed information. The team’s goal for this challenge is to increase the online presence of Creating a Family using key search words on Google Ads in order to raise the relevance of the organization on Google searches.
We were lucky to interview the team members and hear about their experiences, learnings, and overall impression of Google Ads.
Patty Vitsupakorn
What has the Google Ads Challenge taught you about Marketing that you haven’t learned through a class at Virginia Tech?
Personally, I don't think the marketing classes at Virginia Tech taught students a lot about marketing in the digital age, whether that's ads, experiential marketing, or email marketing. I think I took one or two classes that gave me experience, and I definitely feel like the skills I've used during this challenge and during my internships have been from self-learning through online certifications and hands-on experiences. It taught me a lot about digital marketing, media buying, and budgets along with working with a real-world client.
“In real life, not everything works out the way you planned, so you have to adapt.”
How did your team go about choosing the non-profit, Creating a Family, for this challenge?
We didn't select the non-profit – they were assigned to us by Google. We were super excited to work with them though!
How would you recommend students at Virginia Tech get involved in opportunities such as this that provide hands-on, real-world experience to students?
I would recommend joining organizations that let you get hands-on experience. There are so many for every niche at Tech. If you can't get into any of these organizations for some reason, then there's always other ways to learn! You can take online certification courses on Google, Hubspot, etc, search for an internship, co-op, or field study, or even just watch videos and try it out yourself!
Meredith Wright
How has this experience positively impacted your career path / knowledge of the business industry?
This experience positively impacted my career path because it helped me learn that I really enjoy helping others out. It was such a great experience to be able to help a nonprofit organization with something that they wanted to work on. It made me really proud to be a Hokie and I felt like I was doing my part in following our motto of Ut Prosim.
How would you recommend students at Virginia Tech get involved in opportunities such as this that provide hands-on, real-world experience to students?
I would say pay attention to your emails! Especially from Pamplin. That is how I found out about this wonderful opportunity. There are so many opportunities that slip by students just because they don't check all of their emails.
“There are a lot of great resources that are always being sent to us.”
Haseb Alim
How has being on the Google Ads Challenge team inspired you?
Being on this team has inspired me to push myself to apply the skills that I gain in the classroom to real-world problems that clients are facing everyday. Also, by working with other talented students in the marketing major, each of us with our own specialty, we have all been motivated to help each other become more familiar with the different aspects of the marketing process.
What has the Google Ads Challenge taught you about Marketing that you haven’t learned through a class at Virginia Tech?
This challenge has taught me how to effectively communicate an organization's brand image, message, and story through just a single ad. Learning how to compress a vast amount of information required a lot of creativity and delicate use of language. Furthermore, this experience taught me to dive deeper into the marketing toolbox and work hand-in-hand with a client to make sure all of their needs are met. This is something that you can't learn in the classroom as it requires you to deal with campaigns that have important implications on an organization's performance. You will find yourself working under heavy pressure to deliver results that will exceed client expectations, something that vastly differs from what we experience when we work for a grade in a classroom setting.
How would you recommend students at Virginia Tech get involved in opportunities such as this that provide hands-on, real-world experience to students?
The most important thing students can do is to build connections with students and faculty in the marketing department to expand their network. The faculty is made up of really kind and enthusiastic individuals who want nothing more than to see their students succeed, making them really approachable for anyone interested in getting involved. The marketing department also does a wonderful job of communicating these opportunities and sharing them with students through emails and social media posts. Students should keep tabs on all of these and take initiative whenever an opportunity like this presents itself.
What would your advice be to students about gaining new experiences involving technology such as Google Ads?
I would say to really take advantage of the experience and focus on mastering new technologies that emerge in the industry. This discipline is continuously evolving and requires marketers to stay up to date with the latest tools and know how to apply them in real-life situations. By having hands-on experience with working to solve real-world problems using these technologies, you will present yourself as a better candidate to employers. Also, take that time to ask advisors and team members lots of questions in order to maximize your learning potential and understanding of the different ways that technology can be applied and interpreted.
Puja Agnihotri
What has the Google Ads Challenge taught you about Marketing that you haven’t learned through a class at Virginia Tech?
The Google Ad teams have given me the opportunity to leverage my skills as a BIT major in a completely new field. Unlike the rest of the team, I have never studied marketing formally and gained that same level of knowledge that they all have. Through this challenge, I've been able to learn more about marketing and strategy than I ever have just from my team members. As I began to place myself in the role of the targeting audience member to help create intricate campaigns.
What has working with Creating a Family meant to you?
Working with Creating A Family was an experience we never expected. As someone who has always wanted to adopt, I loved seeing our work with a non-profit that was focused on professionalism and education. A realm rarely addressed in terms of these topics. Personally, I've learned so much about the process and issues that come with adoption and I find myself leaving more educated about the issue than when I came in.
How has this experience positively impacted your career path / knowledge of the business industry?
As someone who is interested in consulting I've already been able to leverage the skills that I've learned already in the past few months in interviews. People are able to recognize a level of professionalism and diversity in my interests which gives me an extra edge upon my competitors.
This team is working hard to ensure that Creating a Family is receiving the recognition it deserves by using Google Ads. To find out more about this amazing organization, visit their website at: https://creatingafamily.org/ to learn more about their offered resources for parents and how they make every family prepared for the future!