As I’m part of the marketing piece of my FRC team, I was wondering what people would say is actually done? What should we be doing? What could we do to improve as a marketing team?
If a FRC team was a cake, Marketing would be the icing and decorations on top. Your job is to make your team look appealing to outside supporters, while properly communicating the team’s mission and goals.
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Bronc Botz has an ABM (Awards, Business, & Marketing) team, with leads who focus on making sure that awards materials are done, social media is active, we are following our business plan, and fundraising.
The marketing part of the ABM team populates and posts according to our Content Calendar, and does a lot of graphic design, as well as working with the technical sub teams to make sure that branding guidelines are followed for judging materials and blog posts.
If y’all would like to setup a meeting, I’d be happy to have a call with y’all to help y’all set some of that up. (I head coach these days, but I’m a Management/Marketing major and was the ABM lead mentor for a couple years).
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Depends on the team! When we were smaller (like 20ish kids, 2 Marketing), Marketing was called “Art” but really just meant everything nontechnical. In a larger team like we are now (~60 kids, 5 Marketing) Marketing may be separate from, say, Outreach or Finance. Your team will probably define it a little differently from everyone else!
In terms of general advice though: while your robot is the core of the team, marketing is the public face. Almost every interaction someone else has with your team, be it parents, sponsors, other teams, or judges, will be affected by your marketing and branding. What I consider the “must haves” are t-shirts, website, and buttons. Those are the foundation to establish a brand for your team. A step up would be social media, other merch like hoodies, and integration with the robot or pit. Although anything you think of goes—marketing really shines when people think of creative ways to put your team out there.
What I’ve found makes a good marketing team is first having a coherent image of the team. This is normally colors, symbols/motifs, and the tone of your presentation or art. (This is also what the Imagery Award is for!!)
Second is just… be excited? Marketing sometimes recieves less resources than mechanical since FRC is, well, a robotics competition. If your marketing team genuinely loves what they do, it’ll make it much easier to have fun and do good work. Some of our team’s best stuff comes from a spontaneous idea. When you’re having fun, it shows!
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Shangwen post!!!
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Exactly this.
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Depending on the number of students available this can mean alot of things. In general our business team is 3 areas of interest. Media (Film+Photos), Marketing (Social Media + Website Management), Business Stuff (Fundraising, Project Planning, Team Management, Awards)
The groups generally work together hence they are lumped as the business team when we have not enough people for distinct subteams anymore. Marketing people may have to do their own filming and so on. They all rely on each other to get their job done.
This is an important area for any team and can mean income for the team. While money isn’t everything, in the era of COTS subsystems and $4,000 swerve bundles (fully loaded) you need as much of it as you can get.
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Marketing team can vary for every team.
Our Marketing team consists of the PR head, the Media lead(in charge of filming/photos), our social media and website lead, and a merchandise coordinator. (New addition this year.)
Together this group along with others in marketing work together with our Business side of the team, working with the community service department as was as fundraising to try and help create the assets for them. Flyers for events, posts, and videos for social media, and helping bring the image of our team to the masses.
As someone who works in social media and marketing, I try and help teach the students what they may work on in college or the real world If they want to continue down this path. This can include not just posting to social media, but understanding best practices, and how to view analytics and marketing data. When it comes to graphics, video, and photography, working on understanding more about contrast, printing/digital practices, and helping remake some of our outdated marketing materials.
What to improve depends on what your priorities are. Do you want more focus on social media? Do you want to make or improve the documents/assets that help make the lasting image. Work on more documents and handouts for judges and teams?
There are a few key metrics which measure the success of an FRC team. These include:
- number of new students who join the team in a given year
- income dollars from all sources
- number of judged awards won
Effective marketing makes these metrics go up (or stay steady). Poor marketing allows these metrics to go down or vary randomly. Many of the things mentioned earlier in the thread (such as building a website) are tactics or tools which you use to affect these metrics. Don’t confuse the tools for the goals. In a company, the job of the marketing department isn’t to make commercials. Their job is to increase revenue. Commercials are one possible means to that end. Same thing for a robotics team. Your most valuable resource is your time. Spend your time wisely on tactics that most effectively move your metrics in the direction you want them to go.
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