NCSU Survival CampNorth Carolina State University College of Natural Resources

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Michelle Cassermanmlcasser@ncsu.edu

Jared Scottjbscott5@ncsu.edu

Andrew Jomantasaejomant@ncsu.edu

Dontae Johnsondtjohns3@ncsu.edu

Table of ContentsIntroduction 1

Market Research 3

SWOT Analysis 4

Social Media Marketing Strategies…………………………………………..…………………6

Photo 1: Camp Activity Example……………………………………...……………………….7

Photo 2: Facebook Banner……..……………………………………………………………….8

Photo 3: Facebook Profile Picture………………………..…………………………………….8

Social Media Links (Blogger, and YouTube)…………………..……………………………..12

Facebook…………………………………………………………………………………..…….9

Facebook Checklist……………………………………………………………………………10

Facebook Posts Examples……………………………………………………………………..11

Photo 4: Facebook Promotional Flyer………….……………………………………..………11

Promotional Opportunities………...…………………………………………………………..12

Photo 5: Sammy’s Flyer……………..………………………………………………………..12

References…………………………………………………………………………………..…..13

IntroductionOur event will be a survival camp offered through NCSU Natural Resource Department.

The event will host students to a local state park or forest (Umstead, Durant Nature Park, and Schenk Forrest). The camp will last one weekend during mid-November. We would like to have a professional staff to lead the students in the camp event. The ideal professors would include an outdoor Recreation professor, Forestry professor, Horticulture professor. The camp would teach students how to survive if lost or abandoned in the woods. Some of the small activities will include:

-Hunting (Without firearms) -Camp setup (Starting a fire, building a sleeping area) -Edible plants (Plant Identification)-Proper Hiking techniques -Fishing (Building a rod and bait)

We chose this event because we feel that a survival camp would not only be educational to a student, but also entertaining and unique. There are many popular shows on the discovery channel that involve survival situations (Man vs. Wild, Survivor, Dual Survival). We could recreate these situations and give students the opportunity to participate and learn something extraordinary. We feel that our event could become popular and market to many of the NCSU students.

Our target market would be students in the Natural Resource and Horticulture departments. If the event were to go well, then we could market to the whole NCSU student body. For our first event we feel the students in NR would be drawn to our event. Many of the activities will tie into the students’ education. The horticulture students could help with plant identification and edible fruit, while forestry students can help with navigation, the PRT students can help with camping and hiking. The event will be a major success with the help of many people, so a variety will always be our target.

The purpose of the event is to educate the students, while also being adventurous. This event can be fun and life changing at the same time. Educating the students may save their lives one day. We also wanted the purpose of our event to keep students outdoors and become one with nature. Knowing how to do some of the activities listed above will be beneficial to every person involved with the event. We not only want the students to use the techniques in certain situations, but also be able to teach other students if dangerous situations would occur.

There are many places to offer this event. For our first event we would love to work in Umstead Park. The park offers and many wildlife features of animals, ponds, and challenging trails. The park is also pretty huge, so getting a sense of the wilderness will be easy. If the event were to grow we would then look at moving it to a state park in the Appalachian Mountains.  

This service could cause uncertainty in a potential customer because they have no idea what to expect.  Some people may or may not have had exposure to such things as “survival skills” or even been out in the woods.  The fact that they have not had this experience leaves them searching for potential risks and for service quality.  In order to eliminate this we could

make sure we advertise our service properly, in a way that makes people want to take the chance to participate, such as have people give feedback as far as their experience with camps such as these, or in particular our camp.  Also, we could have instructors give feedback as far as to where we will be, what will be doing, how we will do it, when we will do it, and everything else someone signing up should expect.  As far as variability, there is a standard of care that needs to be met as far as outdoor education goes.  There are certain requirements and responsibilities that an individual would be held accountable for as far as being in an outdoor setting to meet standards.   We would only trust our participants with qualified and trained professionals.  Our employees need to have and develop skills necessary to perform their tasks at hand.  Variability is based on when, where, and how a service is provided and by who.  We would be able to monitor customer satisfaction by checking in with them during their experience to see what they are satisfied and dissatisfied with.  Variability is hard to control, but this would ensure that we are consistent with our service, and we were performing to best of our abilities in order to satisfy customers.  The outdoor recreational instructor’s provide a service to their participants in the form of education, and the participants are the customers directly taking part in this experience, therefore presenting inseparability in our service.  Without the instructors we would not have a significant program, and vice versa, without the customers we would not have a program either. This distinguishes our service from a tangible good.  We could create an overall “blueprint” for our service to ensure that there is top quality instruction provided at all times.  As far as perishability, we would have to determine a proper ratio (participants: instructors) to reduce risks while outdoors.  This will allow us to determine how many people we can serve at once, when, how much, and how often.  There will be set dates, times, and prices for our service, which in turn will make it perishable if someone does not sign up on time, can’t afford it, or just simply cannot make it on the dates we propose.  Once the opportunity has passed, it will not come back until another specified date.

When putting on a service event, it is always important for the managers to have an ideal way of looking at all of the moving pieces that go into it as a whole. The Service Theater Framework is a good measuring tool for looking at the process of setting up and putting on this event. The actors in our service event would be the professional staff that we plan on hiring to put on the event, this would include professors from the Horticulture, Natural Resources, and Parks, Recreation and Tourism Colleges, along with other experts and trained staff in the field. The audience would be the consumers who chose to come to the event and take part in the event. The backstage for the event would be where the planning and setup is done before the event takes place. The backstage would be numerous places, including the forest we end up choosing before and during the event. The front stage would be the forest where the event is actually taking place; this is the “outdoor classroom” where our actors will be teaching the consumers about the wildlife and how to survive in it. Finally the performance will be our staff putting on the event. This will include the staff teaching, demonstrating and showing the customers how to survive while in the wild. The performance will not be solely the staff though, instead an interaction between the customers and staff, making this experience a truly unique one.

Our survival camp will have multiple media outlets in effort to market this tremendous opportunity to further enhance this experience. We will keep an active and up to date Facebook Fan page that will allow those who like the page to look back on previous experience as well as keep up with new occurring information. The Facebook Fan page will contain elaborate photos from past experiences, previously captured videos of these experience, and brief testimonies to give viewers another vantage point of our survival camp. It will also include the general basic

information about the camp including: registration links, staff, location, time, equipment, history, experience, and notable members that attended. Along with our Facebook Fan page we will also have an active Twitter Fan page that will promote our experience. This twitter page will be run by a current staff member of the camp that will update our followers with recent and current news on a daily bases. These updates will consist of registration information links, history, and testimonies for an insight of the experience. We will also be able to post promotional opportunities using both media outlets to entice our recent consumers to return as well as help create more exposure for our experience in attempt to gain new consumers. These media outlets will play a huge role in our appropriate marketing strategy for our business/experience because of the different multimedia opportunities we can use such as video, and photos to help promote our outdoor experience. By having these media outlets that support these multimedia sources allows us to bring our experience to the consumer and give them an insightful overview without giving them the total experience. By having an updated Facebook Fan page, it will allow consumers to get an overview of the experience and for those who have experienced our service to staying in contact with those relationships they built during the experience. Our Twitter Fan page will be helpful to get more consumers with a high amount of frequent post that talk about the experience that is linked to a registration forum. Hopefully our plan to have Facebook and Twitter fan page will increase our traffics frequencies and improve our consumers and benefit our marketing plan.

Marketing ResearchFor our survival camp event, we interviewed five students at the University Recreation

Office located at the Carmichael complex. We felt that interviewing students at gym would give us a focus group mixed with a variety of ages, majors, hobbies.  Our interview was conducted October 3, 2013 at 11:00 am and lasted until 11:45a.m. During this time, the gym is crowded and would give us the best opportunity to conduct our interviews. Listed below are the five individuals who participated in our interview:

Name                                         Age                                        Major 1) Justin Rock     22 Communications 2) Saddi Basnet     21 Civil Engineering3) Scott Low     23   Parks and Rec Management4) Conner Celentano                     19 Forestry5) Amanda Bolin     20 Biology                                                     

We chose theses participants while standing in front of the very crowded Port City Java. The Gym is a great place to conduct an interview because there is thousands of visitors’ every day.  Each interview lasted around 6-7 minutes.  Each of individuals interviews were very intrigued by our pitch and gave us great feedback on our event. Luckily, we had a great variety of ages and majors. This was helpful for our group to gain answers on marketing analysis. We decided to interview three boys, and two girls. This would also help us determine a gender target market.

Every interview went by smoothly. At the end of each interview, we asked for their thoughts and criticisms. Out of the five people we interviewed, four people said they attend a survival camp event. Surprisingly both girls said they thought that the event would be fun and

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entertaining. Justin Rock was the only interviewee to say that he would not attend this event. Justin did mention that, “I’m not much of an outdoors person”.  The two girls said they liked the idea of gaining resourceful information. As a group, we thought the girls would dislike being outdoors and choose not to attend the event. The two boys that liked our event said they have seen survivor man, and loved the concept.  Conner thought that our event would work better in a setting outside of Raleigh, and suggested the event be held somewhere in western NC.  Each interviewee mentioned that they would enjoy learning about edible plants, but was not fond on the hiking part.               

Target markets will be very important for marketing our event. The people we interviewed all said that we should promote with University Recreation’s Outdoor Adventures and within the college of Natural Resources. Saddi and Amanda thought that many girls would not want to attend the event because of hiking, hunting, being outdoors. Conner was forestry major, so he thought that hiking and hunting would be very well attractive to Natural Resource students.  

Throughout the conversations we had with the focus group we came to the conclusion that our business has multiple appeals to potential customers’ wants and needs. One of the needs we believe of service will fulfill is the need for knowledge of how to survive in the outdoors. The focus of our target marketing is students who are in forestry and the college of natural resources. Many of those students like to be outdoors but are also required throughout their studies to be in the wilderness. We believe our business will offer them their need for knowledge that will be beneficial to their well-being. An example of a consumer want that our business will offer is a fun and exciting challenge similar to what they have seen on television and in the media. We found out that male participants who were interested had also seen survivor man, and that the similarity alone made the service compelling. We believe that our understanding of what wants and needs our business fulfill is a great strategy we will employ for marketing our event.

NCSU Survival Camp’s biggest competitor I think will be the City of Raleigh and the outdoor programs they offer at various locations within the city such as Umstead Park and Durant Nature Park.  They constantly offer activities including kayaking, canoeing, mountain biking, climbing, backpacking, whitewater rafting, wilderness skills courses, adventure trips and many others.  Their programs are not just offered to adults but to children of all ages, whereas we will target the surrounding population of NCSU campus and affiliates.  There are other adventure programs located in the state of North Carolina such as Moondance and Catawba County Outdoor Adventures.  More nationally known adventure program providers that pose competition at a more national, rather than local level is the Sierra Club and the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).  The one thing all these competitors have in common is they offer more than just survival skills programs.

SWOT Analysis of NCSU Survival Camp:

Strengths:-Certified and teachable survival skills provided.-Prompt and thorough staff training and preparation.-Partnered with a widely known campus organization, University Recreation Outdoor Adventures serving 40,000+ students and faculty members.-Providing program quality.

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-Management.-Customer Relationships.-Strong ethical values and morals.-Discounted services and equipment available to NCSU students.-Diversity in staff/participants.-Convenient office location.

Weakness:-Clientele is solely based on association with NCSU (student, faculty, etc.).-Limited capacity for participants per trip (for safety reasons).-Trips only offered on specific dates.

Opportunities:-Promote program through or with outdoor apparel companies.-Customers’ needs/wants for outdoor adventures can change, allowing for new program opportunities.-Possibility of expanding to general public.-Increased need for leisure and recreational services.

Threats:-Other outdoor programs in the surrounding area i.e. City of Raleigh Umstead and Durant Nature Park programs.-Changing consumers’ needs/wants.-Natural occurrences in nature and outdoor risks i.e. weather.-Cost of travel for students.

The organization will capitalize on adventure trips and activities that are growing in popularity this day in age.  Our business wants to be known for providing access to the outdoors and experiences that customers can value.  People will learn how to coexist with their surroundings as well as get the opportunity to explore and enjoy the outdoors.  We want to communicate to people to not just take away the experience of being in the outdoors, but what can we do to protect and conserve the remaining wilderness we still have today.

We are taking multiple approaches in order to best communicate our message to the public. The most simple yet possibly the most beneficial way to communicate our message are just simply through word of mouth. As we begin to gain faculty and staff participation with the production of the service we think that having them sharing their knowledge and experiences with their co-workers and students will be a great way to lay the foundation for our business. We also plan to invest a good deal of time in communicating our message through a Facebook page. Oftentimes the best resource for a business is a good review from a by a trusted person. We believe are best marketing strategy is to just get the conversation started, beginning with those involved with the organization. To have faculty and staff on board with the event and to get them to speak highly of it in their classrooms would be a great marketing tool. Once that has taken place we will then begin to post things on different social media sites and also put up signage on the campus and more specifically at target market hotspots like the College of Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation.

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     We plan on using a Facebook page in order display this wonderful experience. We decided to go with a Facebook page because of the multitude of ways to provide information. With the numerous ways to present information on Facebook allows us to be creative and reflect on our experience in a positive and professional way. We plan on uploading videos of all kinds to tell consumers/Facebook friends about promotional activities, previous experience, and testimonies. Facebook also allows us to upload elaborate photos of the experience and promotional/flyer updates. Another feature Facebook has that we plan to use is the post section where people can like or comment on a topic of interest. We feel this will allow us to get feedback from consumers on how to improve certain aspects of the experience or get positive feedback that we can use as promotion ammunition. Lastly, we plan on using the Facebook calendar to provide important dates to the consumer. We feel this will be very beneficial by reiterating important deadlines that the consumer doesn't want to miss. The Facebook page in our opinion will be a very successful and important source of information about our experience. With the advertisement on the side we can take part in and how Facebook tends to group people of the same interest to certain pages which will allow us to maximize our exposure. It also is a popular social media that can be accessed via smartphone, computer, or tablet. With numerous researches showing that Facebook is the number one social networking site that has over 1.6 billion users, we feel this outlet will give us the best opportunity to share and promote our experience at the same time.

Social Media Marketing StrategiesFacebook

In order to create an active fan page on Facebook to promote the survival experience, we logged on to the Facebook site and went to create a fan page. Once we started this process, we had to then identify what type of fan page we were looking to create. We then clicked on the link for a non-profit business that is looking to expand and promote itself by using this Facebook fan page. Our organization felt like Facebook gave us the best opportunity to do so because of the multitude of various media outlet sources. The information that will be provided on the fan page will be the following; camp information, registration information, location, requirements, activities, promotional opportunities, flyers, photos, videos, survival camp calendar, and more. The thought process in including these topics on the Facebook fan page is very simple, Branding. We felt by including this information we will help promote, share, and identify/create a positive brand in the NCSU Survival Camp.

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Photo 1

This is a photo that is on our Facebook Fan Page to show some of the activities you will participate in while here at our Survival Camp. This is your common fire that we will teach you how to start and manage while here.

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Photo 2

This is our current Banner on our Facebook Fan Page. This Banner is simple enough to describe what the NCSU Survival Camp is about. This banner contains a simple NCSU wolf logo and a camp fire. This is just one of the activities you will experience during our camp.

Photo 3

This is currently our profile picture on our Facebook Fan Page. The reason we went this picture because it’s worth a thousand words. First thing you notice is the NC State bell tower which represents the location of the event at NCSU. The next thing you notice is the tree branch that is

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to the left of the bell tower. The reason the tree branch is in the photo is to represent the survival camp aspect of the NCSU camp. Other thing you recognize in the photo is the two tone background color. This is to represent the fire in the night sky, which is why the bell tower is a fire red and how you can see stars in the background. This photo is a great representation of the NCSU Survival Camp.

Link to our Facebook Fan page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/NCSU-Survival-Camp/163683607164273?ref=br_tf

FacebookFacebook has revolutionized the way Americans are using social media networks.

Facebook is not only for friends, but also for business and marketing. Facebook is the number one social networking site that has over 1.6 billion users (101 Vital).  There are numerous ways to present information on Facebook which allows organization to be creative and allows users to reflect on experiences in a positive and professional way. In 2013 93% of marketers use social media for business (101 Vital). By creating pages, organizations can reach out to many demographics around the world. With easy access, Facebook pages allow users gain immediate information at the click of a button. Marketing can be very expensive, so creating a Facebook page would be cost effective in many ways. Over the next couple of years, Facebook will grow and change the way every organization will promote and market to individuals.

To access our organizations page, users can simply log into any active Facebook account using a login email and password. After logging into Facebook the user can then search our page by typing in “NCSU Survival Camp”. Our organizations page should pop up and be available to view. Our organization is public, so everyone should have access to our page. Many NCSU students will be also be invited to like our page, so they can be updated regularly on our events.

Managing a Facebook is fairly easy, but can be tricky at times. Many features of the page need to be updated and checked regularly. These features include pictures, information, and settings. Photos are a big part of Facebook and marketing. It is important to manage this by allowing certain ones to be posted on your wall. It is also important to pick intriguing profile and cover photos for the organizations page. These photos will show customers the fun and excitement of the events which are hosted. Information should always be managed regularly on the Facebook page. Information should include time, date, and descriptions of the events. These features are important because the user will check on the descriptions regularly. Settings are also a good thing to manage on a Facebook page. Privacy settings are a good way to manage who and what can be posted on your page. These managing tips are important because they increase your views and allow for better marketing and exposure. Here are a few helpful links that will help manage a Facebook page.

-https://www.facebook.com/help/418065968237061 This URL will answer FAQ questions on settings about Admins and Monitoring the Facebook page.

-http://blog.lynda.com/2011/03/11/creating-a-facebook-page-for-your-organization/  This blog is very useful and gives many tips on advertising and keeping your profile up to date with new setting changes.

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-http://socialmediatoday.com/genevieve-lachance/1454711/successful-facebook-business-page-top-10-must-read-tips This website has 10 awesome tips to help manage a page. Acts as a guide, and gives examples of good and bad Facebook pages.    Checklist for FacebookDaily:

Posting information about upcoming events. Replying to comments and post of fans. Post photos and other media related files. Tag photos of fans

Weekly: Post videos weekly about the survival experience. Have weekly promotional opportunities. Advertising opportunities.

Monthly: Updating information about the survival camp. Continue to work on updating banners, backgrounds, logos, etc. Looking into advertisements opportunities through Facebook, and other branding

material for the camp.

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Facebook Posts ExamplesHere is a Flyer wall post you can expect to see on our Fan page: Photo 4

This is one flyer you can expect to see on Facebook and around campus to help increase our exposure of our Survival camp. We hope the creative in the flyer will be very eye catching to those and draw people to like our fan page to help increase our Brand Awareness.

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Here is a promotion opportunity you will find on our Fan Page: Photo 5

This will be a future contest we will host to get people to join us at our Survival Camp. We fill this will give people the incentive to come out and try our camp knowing they will be rewarded with a Sammy’s gift card and hopefully a WONDERFUL experience here at our camp. In doing

so, we hope to increase awareness by word of mouth and with our promotional opportunities.

Additional Social Networks:Find us on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhAqOmBNF4ttamYyEFd3nA and check out our blog on Blogger at https://plus.google.com/u/0/105291298250812515768/about.

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References

Durant Nature Park. (n.d.). - The Official City of Raleigh Portal. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://www.raleighnc.gov/arts/content/PRecRecreation/Articles/DurantNaturePark.html

Group Admin Basics. (n.d.). Welcome to Facebook. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from https://www.facebook.com/help/418065968237061

lynda.com Blog – Tutorials – Online Training. (n.d.). lyndablog RSS. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://blog.lynda.com/2011/03/11/creating-a-facebook-page-for-your-organization/

Moondance AdventuresStudent Travel & Adventure Summer Camp Programs For Teenagers. (n.d.). Moondance AdventuresStudent Travel & Adventure Summer Camp Programs For Teenagers. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://www.moondanceadventures.com/

North Carolina Outward Bound. (n.d.). North Carolina Outward Bound. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://www.ncobs.org/

Welcome to University Recreation. (n.d.). Welcome to University Recreation. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://recreation.ncsu.edu/

101 Vital Social Media and Digital Marketing Statistics. (n.d.). RSS. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://socialmediatoday.com/tompick/1647801/101-vital-social-media-and-digital-marketing-statistics-rest-2013