communication

The effectiveness of your communications strategy often goes a long way in determining the success level of your BPC. You want to attract the right organizers, the right participants, build a strong community, and get the news out to the public as clearly and effectively as possible.

Recruiting organizers
Running a business plan competition is events planning. While developing the strategy and vision of a BPC might be fun, running the competition in a professional manner requires significant planning and foresight by the organizers.

Obviously, you want motivated, involved organizers on your team. Try to recruit at least one “evangelist” from every community on campus. Entice them with:

  1. Networking opportunities with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, etc.
  2. Operational experience—marketing, fundraising, event logistics
  3. The opportunity to network with other groups on campus

Show recruits the benefits of helping organize the BPC as fast and as often as possible:

  1. Introduce them to everyone big and small
  2. Assess their personal organizing goal and work actively to fulfill it
  3. Give them leadership over their own project and let them run with it
  4. Communicate often

Recruiting participants
Making sure you attract high quality participants is more about how you structure the competition than how you market it. In particular, the structure of the competition should allow for feedback loops to help teach entrepreneurial know-how to the participants and help solve specific problems they may be facing (educational events such as workshops go a long way here). Further, the structure of the competition should ensure team diversity, and the BPC should be very focused and directed toward attaining this goal.

The participant recruiting process to should be able to address the following commonplace questions:

  • I don’t have any ideas
  • I don’t know how to find teammates
  • I don’t know how to write a business plan
  • I don’t have time
  • What am I going to gain by doing this?
  • I’m not mature enough

Building community
Often a primary reason for having a BPC is to build community—a network of people and organizations that serve to help each other out. In the case of a BPC, the community consists of students, professors, judges, sponsors, and local businesspeople serving as mentors. The thread that ties all these people together is the mission. Again, if articulated clearly and consistently by the Lead Organizer, the entire community will understand what the competition stands for.

In reaching out to build a community, make sure to select quality over quantity. You can build and sustain a community in some of the following ways:

  • Hold kickoff events, semi-final and final awards ceremonies

  • Invite representatives of the sponsor companies to both smaller and larger events

  • Hold a dinner in which teams are matched up with specific mentors

  • Keep judges involved in all the awards ceremonies, and make sure they get recognition for the time and energy spent reading and evaluating plans

Marketing
A core component of communications is marketing—making people aware of your event. Marketing tasks can be broken down into three categories: branding, communications, and event marketing.

1. Branding
You need to manage the design of the marketing materials (promotional flyers and posters, the final event program, t-shirts, banners, giveaways, etc.), as well as the competition website. The BPC website not only provides entrants with the rules and judging criteria, it also provides entrants with business plan tools (e.g., typical items to include in an executive summary and business plan, links to other BPC websites, business plan examples, etc.). Creative types are helpful with branding.

2. Communications
These people are responsible for working with the press (both on campus and nationally).
Once the BPC is established, they are also responsible for reaching out and looping in past winners and participants who are now in the entrepreneurial community. Good writers and strategists are helpful here.

3. Event marketing
These people are responsible for marketing the major final public event (i.e., working with the events staff). They coordinate the creation of the final event program by working with the branding people and talking to sponsors, judges, and mentors to ensure all the necessary content is delivered in a timely manner for inclusion. Strong logistical managers are helpful here.

Dealing with the press
The last step in the communications process is dealing with the press. Getting your story out to the press is important because:

  • Press releases explain to the world what the work you’re doing is about, and why they should care.
  • It's the responsibility of the BPC to give the participating teams as much exposure as possible. Press exposure ought to be one of the “value-added” features of the competition.

One typical approach to getting the story out there is to have a “calling week” in which you get in contact with as many media outlets as possible. Steps to having a successful calling week include:

  • Define your target press list. If you don’t have one, start building it. It will come in handy.
  • Prepare a Press Kit. The Press Kit usually contains the Press Release, Competition Process, and Fact Sheet. This information should be sent immediately after calling the reporter, either by fax or by email.
  • Prepare your “pitching paragraph.” Concentrate only on the most interesting story ideas for the reporter to cover. Different publications have different angles; customize your pitching paragraph according to what magazine/newspaper you’re talking to.
  • Practice making calls.
  • Determine the best time to call the reporter. For newspapers, you have to take into consideration the Monday business editions. Don’t call a daily newspaper after 4, as they will be busy with the next day edition. Morning is the best time to call TV stations.