ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The Dementia Certificate Program is an education program offered by Alzheimer Society Toronto to frontline health-care professionals and students. The purpose of the Program is to give graduates a better understanding of dementia, how it affects people, and how to best care for someone with dementia.
In late 2015, the Society received a grant in support of the Program with $20k allocated to marketing.
DATE
2015
BACKGROUND
Led by Jovan Zimzovski while working at Alzheimer Society Toronto
THE CHALLENGE
An initial discovery session with the project stakeholders revealed the following challenges:
- Niche target audience
- Limited budget of $20k for both promotional materials and advertising.
- A knowledge gap among stakeholders regarding how much advertising costs and how quickly $20k can be spent.
THE SOLUTION
During the discovery sessions it was learned that, historically, the team had the most success attracting frontline health-care students to the course over working professionals. This had been due, in large, to the relationships fostered between Alzheimer Society staff and educators in college programs throughout the city. Not only would these educators promote Society training to their students, but they would also invite Society staff to speak to their class about the importance and value of dementia training.
It was also learned that the Programs and Education team had only been using a simple, three-column excel sheet to track and manage their relationships with the various health-care institutions and instructors in the city.
With these insights and the above challenges in mind, Jovan created a proposal that:
- Focused on students and educators as the target audience.
- Involved low-cost marketing materials in order to maximize advertising spend.
- Compared various advertising opportunities to give the rest of the team a better understanding of the cost of advertising and the cost.
- Recommended running a targeted campaign on college and university campuses in addition to implementing a better relationship management system and stewardship strategy for the colleges and educators across the city.
A targeted campaign on campuses would not only maximize the campaign impact by targeting the audience where they learn (and work) but would also — in the case of institutions where the Society was trying to foster a relationship — develop valuable brand recognition among faculty and provide a potential starting point in forming a relationship with specific educators or departments.
In terms of implementing a better relationship management system, Jovan suggested Smartsheet — a cloud-based tool built for tracking and team collaboration. He also created a template for the Education department that they could use as a starting point for this new management and stewardship strategy.