Honduras Compassion Partners Digital Media Project By: Angelique Choate & Bridget Johnston

The Marketing Intelligence M.S. program gives students the opportunity to enhance their learning outside the classroom. Students in the program are required to complete the MKTG 710 Digital Media Project Course. A course in which student's are supervised in a field setting which facilitates the application of digital marketing theory and tools.

Check out Angelique Choate & Bridget Johnston project below:

Pictured Left to Right Angelique Choate, Bridget Johnston

Honduras Compassion Partners, also known as HCP, was formally established in 2014 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of helping the poor and underprivileged of Honduras become self-sufficient. The mission of HCP is “To Transform the City of La Paz, while meeting their vision of “Engaging People through Transformational Relationships, and building values of “Self-sufficiency, Healthy Living, & Dignity.” They accomplish this by building relationships and meeting the practical needs of people within La Paz, Honduras. HCP organizes and sends short term mission teams into Honduras, where they complete projects for the community. These projects include installing clean water filter systems, toilets, wells, & houses, equipping medical and dental clinics with needs and people, working with and training local firefighters & EMS personnel, and serve in there International Training Center which teaches people how to be self-sufficient. This is done all with the want to build relationships with families and help them how they need.  

Throughout the term of this project, we are worked to grow the organic reach of HCP to gain more volunteers, with a focus on those who can travel to Honduras. This is one of the biggest areas that HCP can always grow in as without the volunteers they could not complete their goals. The organization also wants to see growth in younger audiences (Millennial and Generation Z); to achieve this goal, we will focus on social media, specifically Instagram 

Through the course of this project, we were able to increase growth on all of their social platforms and their website. We were able to increase website impressions by +176% of our original 5% goal along with a +95% increase for number of clicks on Instagram posts. The Facebook HCP page has grown by 44 new followers, a 144% increase. In that same duration, HCP saw a 162% increase in reach or 13,767 people were distributed HCP content. On LinkedIn, we saw an increase in engagement across the board by 967% as compared to previous month along with page visits also increasing by 382%. And we saw an average click through rate on LinkedIn on our posts of 12%. 

We were able to build out specific organic search keywords around HCP and what they do to drive back to their website. We were also able to link in and streamline HCP’s website and social media platforms so both link back to each other highlighting Instagram posts on the website to help bring awareness to the Instagram account. Through strategic planning and analysis of HCP’s digital media needs, we surpassed 4 of our SMART goals.  

One big lesson that we learned while working on this project was how important it is when working with a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that receives federal grant funding. There are a lot of policies around what content can be posted, it is imperative that all federal guidelines be followed as these organizations can lose large funding very quickly if something were posted incorrectly. This also taught us a lot about collaborating with business partners in other departments of a company who may not fully understand the digital marketing goals. Thus, we needed to be able to explain in laymen's terms why we are doing the strategy we are doing and showing how we know it will succeed. 

Watch this video for detailed information