Students market Mercer Baseball

If you’ve been to a baseball game at Mercer University, odds are that at some point you encountered Mercer University’s Marketing Research class.
The Marketing Research class is a yearlong class designed to expose students to a variety of marketing techniques, as well as giving them the opportunity to gain firsthand experience working with a group, business, or team.
During the first semester, the class learned different aspects of marketing, and during the second semester the class actually works for and with their client to market them.
The objective of the class is to help their client attract more people to their business which they do through their marketing efforts.
Last year’s client was the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and the year before, the client was Shane’s Rib Shack.
This year the client chosen for the class was the Mercer University baseball team.
A spring sport worked the best because the class would have ample enough time to prepare and then be able to implement their ideas as well.
Mercer senior Cagney Valloch spoke about the goals the class has when it comes to improving attendance at the Mercer baseball games.
“We had similar goals that we had with other clients. Our objective is to increase the attendance at the Mercer Baseball games and really try to help create more of a culture at Mercer,” said Valloch.
“We want to get more people to come out to the games. Since there are two marketing classes one was assigned to target their marketing efforts towards families and the other students,” Valloch added.
In order to gain more insight from the students, the class conducted surveys to gather information which then was used to help in their marketing efforts.
From the information they gathered, they realized one of the issues was that not a lot of students knew about the games, so for this semester one of the things they are trying to do is to get more word out about when the games are.
They also want the games to be more fun for the students, so they have various events planned for the games throughout the semester.
They have also set up a Mercer Baseball Facebook page that students can like, and they are even on Twitter so students can follow as well.
In an attempt to get more students to come out to the game they have planned to have different events planned throughout their season.
Some of the events are geared towards specific groups of students, but all are welcome of course. Some of the events we have tentatively planned for the rest of the season include a white out, “Try Your Luck” with baseball bingo, trivia night, date night, carnival day, Taste of Macon, fireworks, water works day and we are also thinking about hosting another corn hole tournament for students.
There’s also going to be events planned in-between innings that the students can participate in which will be a lot of fun. This includes a Hotdog race where four students dress up in a hotdog, ketchup, mustard, and taco outfit then race towards home plate and dizzy bat races.
They are also putting forth efforts to attract the local community to come out to the games and plan to implement their ideas. One idea includes a game dedicated to our National Heroes on April 3.
Students are encouraged to come and support Mercer Baseball, “Middle Georgia’s Hometown Team.”