HETIC 2008 official Online Marketing Challenge Blog

Being student at HETIC, we are in constant relation with announcers that want to communicate on internet. And though, the search of announcers seems to be more drawn – out than predicted.

After having studied the possibilities into HETIC network, we realized that every announcer doesn’t fit our waiting. That’s why we had to find solutions in order to discover websites that fit to our criteria.

First search criterion: Find an idea of a niche market in which we could make research to find the right announcer. In order to help to our research, we used directory like Dmoz. However, dissect the web is still a vast mission and we had to be lucky to find the real gem.

These research being inconclusive, it was our duty to make appeal to external relations: internship, teacher and friends… In fact, this method allows us to get contact with potential announcers more quickly.

In the end, one month was what we needed to take up this challenge. This event forced us to rework our schedule and then encroach upon our campaign work-time. Fortunately, our schedule allows us this light incident.

Once we had found the advertiser, and convinced him of the advantages that he can drag out from Adwords, the campaign could be released… However, some serious precautions had to be taken in order not to be roughly ban from the competition…The website “Ane gourmet” is the perfect example of one of our clumsiness. Our team chief had testified, since the first contact with our client, of the virtues and advantages of Adwords, as the benefits deriving of its setting-up.

This being so, across our team’s brief, one detail concerning an anterior participation of an Adwords campaign had been overrode. In fact, one rule of the Google Challenge is to choose an advertiser that had NEVER done Adwords since its creation!
Imagine our shock to discover that during our work of keywords optimization that our client had launched, behind our back, his own campaign in parallel! A communication error that could cost us our participation to this competition!

After negotiating with the advertiser, the tendentious campaign had been totally stopped and Google, already in the know, showed great comprehension to our problem.
Morale of this misfortune: clearly list points to get onto in the client – brief and respect it at the nearest single comma…

What’s a relevant ADWORDS strategy and how to define one ?

Defining an ADWORDS strategy in consideration of advertiser’s goals in finally the unique issue of the GOOGLE ONLINEMARKETING CHALLENGE.

While brainstorming about the best strategy to follow during the 3 weeks of the challenge, we asked many questions concerning budget, Ads delivery, keywords targeting, etc…

Here are some of our interrogations and the strategic choices adopted :

• Budget management : how to daily allocate the $200 granted especially among the different campaigns ? We have chosen to consider not only CPC Max for each Adgroup but also the number of keywords in each Adgroup.

• Keywords targeting : two opportunities are offered. Get an “exact match” targeting which appears to be precise but involves less exposure than a “broad match” targeting which can be faslty budget-consuming due to its higher display and lower precision. Considering the niche markets we are dealing with, it seems much reasonable to start with broad-match keywords in order to find searches made by visitors while controlling display by adding negative keywords.

• Geo-targeting : all teams have immediately chosen to limit Ads display to France. This choice was led by the low budget granted but also considering most of our websites are only french-speaking and do not deliver foreign countries.

• Key performance indicators : to enhance a PPC strategy, you first have to be able to measure its relevancy. This measurement starts with choosing performance indicators. At this point, we observe two distinct families :

1. Media performance indicators (CTR, quality scores) : it’s hard to define objectives because we have no information about performance as long as the campaign didn’t start.
2. Sales performance indicators (ROI, conversion rate) : defining those objectives is based on information given by business partners during their interview but also on Web Analytics historical data if existing.

Answering those questions leads to the strategy that will be followed by each team. We keep conscious that we may have to change it if we can’t meet our objectives.

Other elements are involved in our ADWORDS strategy definition such as keywords search, Ads writing policy or CPC Max computing…

So many passionating topics for PPC marketing’s lovers that will be undoubtedly the subject of a future post.

After a long research, we finally found our 4 business partners (www.lanegourmet.com, www.pnstore.com, www.naturalglam.com, www.sourcesofmusic.com ). We now have to meet them in order to conclude our partnership.

Business partners challenges

The interview consists to explain the details and the milestones of the competition, the challenges for them and for us. Indeed, it‘s important to explain what challenge can provide them:

. Visibility on the largest search engine
. 200$ marketing budget
. Strategic recommendations concerning their online communication
. Four young IT skilled professionals

Letter of Commitment

The other point is to sign-up GOOGLE’s letter to businesses which legally involves the business partner. In case of problem, I may have to use it.

Questions

Several questions are asked by the students to understand more closely their partner’s core business in order to not only write the report asked by GOOGLE but also create relevant campaigns.

Two companies embarrassed by questions concerning financial aspects of their business asked us to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

SOURCES OF MUSIC (SOM) is a French company launched in 2005 by Jacques CHALMEAU, its sole employee, that sells music publishing and master-works’ scores in PDF (paper versions and MP3 accompaniments are coming).

SOURCES OF MUSIC (SOM) is dedicated to classical music industry professionals. Typical customer is a 30 to 60 years-old male or female classical music professional. Main direct competitors are book publishers and few huge majors such as BMG, WARNER or UNIVERSAL lead this niche market.

The fourth website’s version has been released to generate incomes starting selling online. As a classical music expert, Jacques CHALMEAU manages himself PR strategy through regular radio interviews.

ADWORDS will drive a highly targeted and converting audience that will allow SOM to earn its first bucks on the Web.