Scholarship Awards Ceremony Honors Interactive Marketing Students

At our Scholarship Awards Ceremony last Saturday, April 13, 2013 at Barsema Hall at Northern Illinois University, we honored a number of graduates in our Interactive Marketing program.  Recipients of the Interactive Marketing Board Awards were +Sarah Harant and +Nicole Gault (shown above with +Dave Henkel and +Debra Zahay-Blatz.   The Zahay-Blatz Family Award went to +Sekou Noriega.  Joe Glaser from Glaser Direct presented his award, targeted for those interested in B2B, to +Nick Kochetta.  The Johnson & Quin Award was presented by President +Dave Henkel to +Amanda Forneck, who will be beginning a full-time position at Johnson & Quin in the Fall.   Thanks to the generosity of our Corporate Advisory Board members for these Awards.

These awards were given for scholarship and dedication to the Interactive Marketing Field.  Look for these talented graduates to make substantive contributions to careers in Search (SEO and SEM), Social Media, Email, Website Usability and Testing and other areas that are a focus for our Interactive Marketing Program.

Interactive Marketing students also receiving scholarships were +Jason Conklin and Allison Greco, recipients of the Michael T. McSweeney Endowed Direct Marketing Scholarship. Interactive Marketing Student Board President +Mike Glassberg received both the Marketing Achievement Award sponsored by the Department of Marketing Faculty and the Top Marketing Achiever Award. Student board member +Antonio Garay received the Always be Contributing Award.

A highlight for me was the fact we honored +Dave Henkel as an honorary Alumnus of the Department of Marketing at Northern Illinois University   Dave's company, Johnson & Quin, has recruited on campus most years out of the last 20 and has hired closed to 30 people out of the IM program and it's predecessor program in Direct Marketing.  Dave said the association with NIU is a good fit because our students are hard-working and come in well prepared.  Program graduates don't have to be taught the basic vocabulary of the direct and interactive business because they have already learned in in their Marketing classes and Interactive Marketing classes in particular.  Dave has been a corporate board member for almost ten years and this award was well-deserved.  Thanks to Dave for his service to NIU and the IM program and congratulations to all on their awards.
By Debra Zahay-Blatz.
You can find Debra on Google+ and Twitter as well as LinkedIn.

Tips & Best Practices for Paid Search

+Thorne Washington, a recent grad from Northern's IM program, and Brad Hawk, both from board member company Leapfrog Online, have been coming to my classes to share their experiences and tips on Paid Search.  The duo helped students prepared for the Google Online Marketing Challenge last year and for their Paid Search consulting project this year using Google AdWords and Analytics . The two consultants have a great framework, listed above, for analyzing, implementing and measuring a paid search campaign.

We really appreciated  Brad and Thorne's clear approach to the problem at hand. They suggested a framework for the project that they use for their own work. As shown above, they suggested that the best way to approach paid search is to Research, Build, Launch and then Analyze/Report.

I agree that planning is key to effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM). If you don't understand the customer and the keywords they are searching for it is not even useful to start a campaign. Google provides many useful analysis tools to research initially and then modify the campaign once it has been launched. We use Google Trends and the AdWords keyword tool for our initial and ongoing research.  Sometimes we found that the terms the company thought defined its business were not highly searched for by potential customers and had to make adjustments.

Building and Launching a paid search campaign, the students found, was an ongoing, iterative exercise. +Brittany Sarkisian, who is in the class right now, said that the class is interactive and allowed her to apply the concepts we have been learning in the real world. The students monitored their campaigns over a three week time frame, often not finding an effective ad/keyword/call to action combination until late in the campaign.

Some other helpful tips from Thorne and Brad included bidding 1.5 or 2 times more than the suggested initial bid in AdWords to get a high ranking and improve your click-through rate, setting the geographic area of the search, limiting the campaign to the hours of operation of the business and using Exact match when you have a small budget.  Since mobile ads are more expensive than desktop ads, the students also limited the devices on which their ads were displayed (although we may not have this choice in the future).  Thanks to both Brad and Thorne for coming out and sharing their expertise.

By Debra Zahay-Blatz.
You can find Debra on Google+ and Twitter as well as LinkedIn.

Learn How to Hire our NIU Huskie Interactive Marketing Graduates

I received this information from our Career Services folks.  We work closely with career services to place our Interactive graduates.  If you sign in to career services and create an account, you can then look at the Interactive Marketing Resume book and post jobs.


"We thank you for including Northern Illinois University (NIU) as part of your employment strategy by posting your positions in Huskies Get Hired and/or participating in the NIU Career Fairs. Please review the following information for the upcoming recruiting season.

1. Registration for the Fall All-Majors Internship and Job Fairs opens July 1 
http://www.niu.edu/careerservices

2. NIU Career Services Value Package Career Fair Sponsorships include

• Career fair registration fees
• Premium location near the candidates' entrance at our career fairs
• Your company logo and link on NIU Career Services' web site
• An advertisement promoting your company's participation in the career fairs in The Northern Star, NIU's student newspaper, both fall and spring semesters
• Dedicated shelf space in the Career Resource Center for your recruitment materials
• http://www.niu.edu/CareerServices/jobfairs/packages.shtml for more information

3. Fall 2012 NIU Football Sponsorship Career Fair package deal

• See your company name on the jumbo videotron scoreboard at 4 NIU home football games (home of the 2011 MAC Champions)
• Includes 2 tickets to one of the home games
• Over 20,000 NIU students, parents and alumni will see that your company recruits at the NIU Career Fair(s)
• NIU is the proud winner of the 2011 Mid America Conference Football Championship, 2012 GoDaddy.com Bowl, and currently holds the NCAA longest winning streak of 9 wins. http://www.niuhuskies.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/niu-fb-year-in-review.html
• This package is an add-on to the regular Internship and Job Fair registrations for $200.00.

To register for the fall 2012 fairs, become an NIU Career Services Value Package Sponsor, reserve interview space, review additional branding opportunities, or discuss your campus recruiting goals, visit our home page:http://www.niu.edu/careerservices or call             815-753-8346      . The NIU Career Services Employer Relations team is looking forward to another great year in partnership with you and your company."