Step 1. Stick to one goal per campaign:
Ex: What do i wnat to achieve with the campaign?
Sell more coffee beanrs or gift baskets...
Separate campaigns by theme or product line.
Step 2. Make Ad Groups out of your keywords:
Organize Ad Groups by common theme or product.
Group similar keywords together.
At least 3 groups per campaign. Make distinct Ad Group for each group of keywords.
Step 3. Review, test, and refine
Are the keywords logically grouped into Ad Groups?
Does the budget match the goal? If the budget is low, trim the
number of keywords.
*Keyword matching options: broad, phrase, exact and negative match.
Selecting Keywords
Selecting keywords is one of the most important parts of a successful campaign. For information on how to choose the right keywords we encourage you to read Lesson 3 of the ‘Marketing and Advertising Using Google’ textbook from page 53 onwards. Understanding how to choose and structure your keywords will help you perform strongly in the competition.
In addition to keywords, picking the right landing page and creating compelling ad text are critical to optimizing your campaigns. Lesson 3 in the ‘Marketing and Advertising Using Google’ textbook will provide you with useful tips and tricks on this.
TIP: When you’re creating your keyword list remember negative keywords, which will help you create more targeted ads and reach the right audience! Negative keywords can be set at the Ad Group and campaign level. You can find more information on this and decide which level works best for you at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6635
Dos and Don’ts for account structure and campaign management
Do…
• create multiple Ad Groups per campaign
• group Campaigns by theme, geography or product line
• make it easy to maintain
• continue refining your keywords and ad text
Don’t…
• create just one Ad Group and a big list of keywords
• mismatch keywords in one Ad Group
• run dozens and dozens of keywords for a low budget
• stop checking your campaign statistics
What is the Quality Score?
The quality score is based on: the keyword’s click-through rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, landing page quality, and other factors specific to your account. You can find more information on how the Quality Score is calculated at
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10215. Based on this Quality Score, we assign your keywords a minimum bid you must pay per click in order to keep your ad running for any one of your keywords.
TIP: It is possible to view the current quality score status for your keywords. To see your Quality Score in your account statistics follow the steps listed at
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=53024.
TIP: Learn how to improve your ad’s performance and optimize your campaigns on page 62 of the ‘Marketing and Advertising Using Google’ textbook. You will find emergency tips and tricks to help you improve your quality score!
One can choose between Google's Search Network (patnered with AOL, shopping.com, ask.com) and Content Network(partners with about.com, lycos.com, nytimes.com).
The Challenge has two written components and one computed component.
• Pre-Campaign Strategy
• Post-Campaign Summary
• Campaign Statistics
It takes great Campaign Statistics to make the regional top five, and then great written reports to win.
Written Report Format
All written reports should be in English and use the following formatting: 12-point Times font, 2.54cm page margins, A4 paper, left-justification, 1.5 line spacing. A4 paper is a standard paper size, in the ‘Page Layout’ section of most word processing programs.
Pre-Campaign Strategy (30 points total, maximum four pages, submitted in English)
In addition to assessment of Communication and Readability (5 points), the Pre-Campaign Strategy has two components. A Client Overview (12 points) helps your team craft and defend your draft AdWords Strategy (13 points). Combined, both components should be a maximum of four pages. Ideally, the groups would gather input from their client SMEs in developing the Pre-Campaign Strategy. All groups must submit the Pre-Campaign Strategy to their professor and to Google.
Client Overview (12 points, about two pages)
This section provides a brief overview of the client and their marketing, as a foundation for the proposed AdWords Strategy.
• Client profile (2 points, a few sentences including some of the following. Please note that some clients may not want to share some information. You may note this in the report if this is the case)
- Name, location, url
- Sales and number of employees
- Goods and services offered
- Key online marketing personnel
- Age of the company
- url, website age, website management
- Company presence and sales via online and offline channels
- Other relevant information
• Market analysis (4 points, about a paragraph including some of the following)
- Current and potential customers
- Current and potential competitors
- Overview of the industry (key characteristics, competitive/saturated/mature)
- Projected and historical online spend for the industry
- Market position/specialties
- Unique selling points of the goods/services offered
- Seasonality of their goods/services or seasonality that the company has identified
- Other relevant market information
• Current marketing (4 points, a couple of paragraphs including some of the following)
- Website uses, e.g. sales, customer service
- Website strengths and weaknesses
- Website visibility, such as Google PageRank, incoming links, a few keyword search results, online advertising, and offline promotion of the url.
- If available, summary information from Google Analytics or other third party web tracking software
- Email campaigns
- Offline advertising
- Other online or offline marketing
• Conclusion on how the AdWords campaign should align with the client’s business (2 points, a few sentences)
Proposed AdWords Strategy (13 points, about two pages including sample AdWords and keywords)
Based on an analysis of the client, their website and their marketing, teams should craft an appropriate AdWords Strategy and metrics for their campaign. The Proposed AdWords Strategy should include:
• Number of Ad Groups and the focus for each Ad Group.
• Keywords and negative keywords
• Text for at least two AdWords versions for each Ad Group
• Daily and weekly plans for spending their campaign budget
• Network(s) for their AdWords ads
• Target audience settings
• Ad Serving options
• Keyword Bidding
• Geotargeting
• Goals for impressions, clicks, CPC and CTR
• Proposed success metrics
• Other relevant information
Communication and readability (5 points)
The Pre-Campaign Strategy should have a logical flow, be easy to follow, use proper English and avoid grammatical mistakes.
Post-Campaign Summary (70 points total, maximum eight pages submitted in English)
The Post-Campaign Summary has three components, an Executive Summary (6 points),
Industry Component (24 points) and Learning Component (20 points). The assessment also includes Communication and Readability (10 points), and relevant use of Tables, Figures and Charts (10 points).
Executive Summary (6 points, one page)
This stand alone document provides your client with a project snapshot and highlights four key factors:
1. Campaign Overview – a basic review of the project by introducing the campaign goals and operational details.
2. Key results – discuss the overall campaign performance as well as the performance of each ad group. Specifically, you will want to reference each group as well as the overall campaign. This section should provide a brief overview of the key metrics.
3. Conclusion – a clear synthesis of the content of the report and key items. This is your chance to tie together the entire package and focus the client’s attention on the most important project aspects.
4. Future Online Marketing Recommendations – simple, actionable and well-justified advice on what your client should do in the future with respect to online marketing.
Develop the Executive Summary after you generate all other content, as it summarizes and will overlap with your content in the Industry Component.
Industry Component (24 points, maximum four pages)
This is the team’s chance to share the results with their client and expand upon the Executive Summary. The ideal approach is to write the Industry Component first and then summarize this content for the Executive Summary. As a rule, you would include most if not all of your Charts, Tables and Figures in your Industry Component and cover the following areas:
1. Introduction – Overview the Industry Component section and introduce it’s core content.
2. Campaign overview:
• Review the major campaign goals (strategic goals as well as metrics: CTR, CPC, and Impressions, etc.) set prior to the project and discuss your general strategies for approaching each goal
• Operational details (campaign dates, money spent, ad groups used). Review the basic schedule and cost structure you followed, your methods for monitoring the account, etc
3. Evolution of Your Campaign Strategy:
• What were the major changes you made during the campaign and what led to these changes?
• How did these changes affect your campaign?
4. Key Results – Summarize your results based on three weeks of data, such as:
• Overall performance of the campaign and individual ad groups
• Discussions of performance of the initial campaign and changes in performance following your optimization efforts
• Discuss the keyword combinations that were effective and ineffective
• Highlight your success stories and make quick, but clear references to the failures you experienced
• When discussing performance, refer to the metrics such as:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Click Through Rate
- Average Cost per Keyword
- Total Cost of Campaign
- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions
5. Conclusions – Synthesize the Industry Component, tie together the entire package and focus the client’s attention on the key project aspects. Take this opportunity to repackage all the information from the data section to display your practical lessons learned to the client. The goal here is to develop a great transition that summarizes the critical results and starts to link these results to the future recommendations in the next section.
6. Future Recommendations – Provide simple actionable and well-justified advice on what your client should do in the future with respect to online marketing.
Learning Component (20 points, maximum three pages)
The teams’ reflection on what they learned should cover four points:
1. Learning objectives and outcomes – what did the team hope to learn? How well did the
team meet their learning expectations? What else did they learn? What key outcomes will the team remember? What were the expected and unexpected outcomes from participating in the Challenge?
2. Group dynamics – what problems did the team encounter and more importantly, how did they overcome these problems? What were some of the expected and unexpected outcomes from working as a group?
3. Client dynamics – what problems did they encounter and as importantly, how did they overcome these problems? What were some of the expected and unexpected outcomes from working with the client?
4. Future recommendations – what would they do differently in the future to improve their campaign strategy, learning experience, group dynamics and client dynamics?
Communication and readability (10 points)
The Post-Campaign Summary should have a logical flow, be easy to follow, use proper English and avoid grammatical mistakes.
Charts, Tables and Figures (10 points)
Teams should intersperse relevant charts, tables, figures to illustrate their results. In addition, teams should label and refer to the charts, tables and figures in the body of the report.
To succeed in the Campaign Statistics you should ensure your team is doing well across the areas listed below.
A) Account Structure
B) Optimization Techniques
C) Account Activity & Reporting
D) Performance & Budget
E) Relevance
Important notes
Invalid clicks: The Challenge discourages Invalid clicks and Google has practices and procedures in place to detect invalid clicks in the competition. Students, classes and institutions risk disqualification for excessive invalid clicks on an account. You can read about how we detect and track invalid clicks at
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6114.
Competitors’ keywords: In many cases the use of a competitor’s name is subject to editorial and content restrictions, particularly if trademarked. Teams should review Google’s AdWords policies at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=70534 to ensure their ads and keywords comply with these guidelines. Failure to comply with the guidelines penalizes a team’s Campaign Statistics.
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