Google Online Marketing Challenge—the Game I Experienced

In early July 2008, I received an email from Lee Hunter, Google's product marketing manager:

I am very, very happy to inform you that your team finished as a Regional Finalist for the Asia Pacific region! This is a fantastic achievement and places you in the top teams from some very tough competition…………As Regional Finalists, your team and your professor are invited to join the Regional Winners in a day-trip to the Google office in Sydney. Google will pay for any flights and accommodation

This means that in the Google Online Marketing Challenge competition, my team placed in the top 3 of Asia (& top 10 of the world). We had finally been rewarded after several months of competition.

About the Competition

Google Online Marketing Challenge is a competition that is combined with a university’s curriculum. First, the groups had to find a small-to-medium business that had fewer than 100 employees. Then each team uses Google’s AdWord system to set up a series of keyword ads, which are broadcast on the internet for three weeks to attract customers. Before setting up an advertisement, each team is required to write a pre-campaign strategy to evaluate the effect of the advertisement. Then each team needs to write a post-campaign strategy to analyze the popularity and traffic of the keyword ads. For running the campaign, Google sets up an AdWord account of U.S.$200 each to every participating team.

Google Competition Post Campaign

INDUSTRY COMPONENT

Campaign Overview

In our pre-campaign strategy, content network was not used to post our advertisement. The number of visitors to the site were not substantial and our exposure has been limited due to insufficient publicity. Commencement of our content networks took place shortly after this situation. There was a decrease in the number of clicks but the popularity increases as we proceed on with more positive awareness of our advertisement via the general public.
On the following week, we expected an increase on the number of clicks. Our approach was to increase advertisement frequencies so as to achieve our goal. Apart from using content network, we performed enhancement to the search engines with better keywords capabilities. This, increases our popularity. Regular ad scheduling was not recommended. Improved and more user-friendly webpage design were created to maximize our effort to bring public attention. However, our click rates were still not ideal.
On the last week, to raise our click through rate, we not only improved our content of ads but started to use negative keywords for searching network and negative website for content network. We deleted some redundant keywords and ad groups, the bidding price decreased. Our click rates increased during the last few days.
Our program coincides with Mother’s Day celebrated and therefore, we added the keyword “Mother’s Day” for two weeks. It had high click rates, but it required high bidding price as the keyword had a lot of users bidding.
Also, there were some ad groups with higher click rate but less impressive, for example, the “special" group.

Precampaign Srategy (revise)

Client profile:

Boite de bijou (http://www.boitedebijou.com.tw/ ) is a bakery founded in 2006 which provides high-quality bread and cake to its neighborhood in Taipei, Taiwan. The company has 14 employees.

Market analysis:

Boite de bijou provides French desserts and traditional European bread. They ensure that their products are all natural and are freshly-baked within the day. There are only few competitors in the market. These shops serve consumers whom are willing to purchase fine bakery products, which is identical to Boite de bijou.

Current marketing:

Boite de bijou generates its revenue through shop retailing. Its website is mainly for product information and not meant for online orders. We strongly recommend to introduce e-orders as most consumers are going online and want hassle free shopping. This will also benefits consumers who are not living in Taipei. To go online is a profitable measure to boost its revenue.