HETIC 2008 official Online Marketing Challenge Blog

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.

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.

L’ÂNE GOURMET is a French e-commerce website launched in march 2008 that sells local gastronomic products and is hiring two people.

ÂNE GOURMET (literally GOURMET DONKEY) aims not only to food lovers who want to buy authentic products but also to everyone looking for an original gift idea. On the French on-line market, the competition is led by BIEN MANGER (bienmanger.com), a website launched in 2001.

Web site’s ergonomics and usability are the main strengths to arouse the enthusiasm on the donkey mascot. The French map, as an interactive product finder, already appears to be its « killer feature ». Upstream of site launch, a viral marketing campaign relayed by various influential bloggers and social media, was led using a video and a blog recounting all about ÂNE GOURMET’s genesis. On the fringes of the challenge, an e-mailing campaign towards 15,000 targets will be sent while PR operations should start.

ADWORDS campaign will drive highly targeted and converting audience in order to increase turnover.

Created in 2007 in LYON (2^nd biggest city in France), PNEXT is a French company that sells Nintendo’s goodies via its website (www.p-nintendo.com) and is managed by the two owners and only employees.

Nintendo’s goodies market started in the mid 80’s when the Japanese brand invaded the video games’ market. However, French Nintendo’s lovers have always met difficulties to find products on their local market. Typical Nintendo’s enthusiast profile is a 16 to 25 years-old French-speaking European male inhabitant. PNEXT has no Nintendo-oriented competitors but it has to face not only various goodies e-tailers but also many EBAY stores.

Due to its youth, PNSTORE only starts to be indexed by search engines and since no kind of campaign has been performed so far, traffic mainly comes from referring websites such as P-Nintendo.com.

ADWORDS campaign will drive highly targeted and converting audience in order to increase turnover.

Studying in HETIC, we are daily in touch with advertisers willing to communicate on the Web. Therefore, finding a business partner in the Google Online Marketing Challenge purpose appears to be much more laborious than we had thought.

After considerating every opportunities within HETIC’s partners network, we quickly realized that few of them were meeting our main criteria : an advertiser acting on a niche market.

To find the perfect candidate, we started our searches with the help of websites directories such as DMOZ, with no success. That’s why we successfully decided to seek within our respective social networks (family, friends, business contacts, etc.).

Finally, signing-up business partners for the four HETIC teams wil have taken a whole month that made us modify our planning by reducing time initially dedicated to strategy brainstorming.