Digital Marketing Practicum Students Make an Impact with Uganda Nonprofit

This past semester the students of the BUS 469 Digital Marketing Practicum course took a deep dive into their digital marketing campaigns  with the nonprofit organization All We Are. All We Are strives to improve the conditions and education in Uganda by providing sustainable energy solutions across communities. 

“Collaborating with client companies to create and implement digital marketing campaigns is always a positive experience. Working with  All We Are proved to be a particularly meaningful experience,” said Patrice Fontaine Nealon, senior lecturer in marketing. “Students had a major impact in creating awareness for the noble mission of All We Are on a global scale. By implementing SEO, paid search, and social media skills, both the social and paid search teams were able to see significant improvements.”

“The social team utilized three platforms; Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The most notable metric for the social team was an impressive 428% increase in Instagram engagement. The paid search team, with the help of a sizable Google grant, was also successful in gaining an equally impressive 7,270 impressions to the client’s website with a respectable click through rate of 6.2%.”  

The social media team took the responsibility of creating content for social media channels, increasing awareness of the All We Are non-profit, increasing  engagement of current followers, and creating donation conversions across three weeks. 

“We designed graphics and found pictures for Instagram and Facebook posts over the course of three weeks,” said Lauren Herrin, a new Poole College alumna. “We also wrote a blog post for LinkedIn and posted on there as well and posted roughly three times a week for three weeks.”

Benjamin Parker, a member of the Poole graduating class of 2021, was a part of the paid search team where the students took control of All We Are’s Google Ads account, where they used a given Google grant to bid on keywords and create ads to help bring traffic to their website.

The practicum group worked directly with Rachel Goldberg, chief marketing officer, and Nathan Thomas, founder and CEO, who are among the All We Are team members located in Raleigh. The students enjoyed the creative freedom All We Are granted them during their campaign and the strong communication between them and the nonprofit. 

“It felt very applicable to a real-world social media marketing job, and I felt like I learned a lot about social media marketing, working with clients and working with a team,” said Anna Beth Adcock, a senior majoring in business management.

All projects come with their challenges and the practicum group faced their fair share as they debated content that would match their goals, conflicting schedules and working remotely.

“Professor Nealon was always available to help answer our questions and assist us whenever we needed help, such as giving advice on social media content and explaining the importance of engagement, hashtags and call-to-actions,” said Ngaocee Wang, a senior in business management.

The digital marketing practicum course is an experiential learning approach to the digital marketplace where student groups conduct a client audit, prepare a three week pre-campaign strategy, and present campaign results and future digital recommendations to their client in a post-campaign presentation. 

Meet the Team

Social Media Marketing

• Anna Beth Adcock, senior, business management
• Lauren Herrin, alumna ‘21, business management
• Ngaocee Wang, senior, business management
• Cole Welch, senior, business management
• Tennyson Mobley, senior, business management

Paid Search

• Zoe Brittain, senior, business management
• Kayla Brown, senior, business management
• Benjamin Parker, alumnus ‘21, business management
• Ricky Herrera, senior, business management and arts entrepreneurship
• Pauline Robert, senior, business management

This post was originally published in Poole College of Management News.