Our Hotel Photography company is excited to have been chosen by two teams from the University of Illinois for a small business marketing project.  The teams were given several small businesses to choose from and will work on a group project this semester analyzing our business and coming up with suggestions for our business.  We shared our marketing challenges and goals and they will spend the next few months creating a project with suggestions on how we can improve our marketing.

We will be working with each group of students to give them suggestions and help them learn more about our virtual tour business and then they will create a 17-25 page project that we will receive in April.  We have been invited to attend the student presentation the end of April and definitely hope that we can be there.  As an added bonus after the end of the semester, we will receive an information and recommendation sheet for social media from the instructor, Dr. Mark Wolters.

I have a degree in Public Relations and have been in marketing for a very long time but I am so excited to hear the recommendations of these groups.  I just don’t have the time to spend doing this sort of project on my own between all of our other responsibilities.  There is no way we could afford to pay for a marketing analysis of this magnitude.  We cannot wait to see what the groups find!

If you own a small business, your local university can offer some great opportunities for you.  My niece is currently the Director of Marketing for the Memorial Hospital of Adel in Adel, GA and she got this job after serving her internship for the hospital while getting her Master’s in Public Administration at Valdosta State University (my alma mater!!).  Her internships gave her a chance to try out several different fields and gave the hospital a chance to see the quality of her work and work ethics prior to hiring her.