So far, attending the UT's sales conference has been my favorite thing we've done. Learning about the various marketing strategies was really interesting. I liked seeing the real world application of the concepts learned in class. One point that one of the speakers (Karin) made was how we should expand the four Ps of marketing to five: Product, Place, Price, Promotion, and Participation. The idea of participation ties into both social media marketing, for example getting consumers to like your facebook page or complete a survey and print ads such as getting a consumer to clip out a coupon from the Sunday savings section of the UT. Coming up with ideas on how to engage the consumer is something we'll really need to focus on both within our individual group projects and for the big UT event in May.

Another part of the conference I really enjoyed was working in a group with members of the actual sales force team. My group got to develop an advertising campaign for Alonzo's Carpet Cleaners. We came up with solutions to identify the channels, develop creative content, determine and meet objectives, and design the landing pages for our company. It was really fun interacting with professionals and we both seemed to be feeding off of each others ideas. This made me really excited to continue working with the UT Marketing team next week.