The First Meeting

Hi there. If you're reading this, you've somehow stumbled across the Google Online Marketing Challenge blog of Natasha, Sarah and Calli, 2nd years Public Relations students at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Maybe you meant to visit, maybe you're lost. ;) Howevever, Thank You for visiting our blog, and we hope you enjoy our posts!

When originally posed with the option of taking part in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, I did what many people would immediately do - I thought "That's too much work, requires too much thinking, and I don't have the patience." Then I remembered why I'm at uni, in the first place.I'm studying a Bachelor of Business, majoring in Marketing and PR, and I currently work full-time at a Fitness Marketing Company which mainly advertises through direct and online marketing. I adore the online culture, and I've been designing websites for over 10 years. I love a challenge. I want a job in the future which deals with the internet and marketing online. Now it's turned into, WHY NOT?!

My team members Natasha and Sarah, and I, met last Thursday to discuss. We had to firstly consider who we would choose to market, keeping in mind some important criteria:

• Small busines
• Local area
• Niche market, specified targeting
• Minimal competition
  

We've chosen one of my VIP clients at work, Verve Health Club in one of Perth's most affluent suburbs. We had a great brainstorming session about what kinds of Ad Groups we can create, the associated keywords, Ad wording, and most importantly, how to optimise our ads and make them as "specific and granular" as possible. We came up with some great campaign ideas. As I already have a good understanding of marketing concepts like "Unique Selling Point" and
"Call To Action", writing copy will be even easier. We've written 3 pages of meeting minutes, including one whole page of "To-Do"s for this week.

I emailed our client the appropriate letter, and we had our first REAL challenge. Verve, who currently is a Womens-Only Health Club, is opening their doors to men on April 1st. So our selling point of "womens only" is all but gone. We'll now have double the market to attract, but we'll have to play smarter to formulate our targeted ads.

Our Pre Campaign-Strategy is due Thursday, 2nd April. Today we have our meeting with Verve Health Club, where we can and formulate our campaign goals and strategy. At our meeting tomorrow, we'll use this information to create our strategy. To do this effecively, we're going to read the hell out of all of the user guides, tip sheets and other Google Online Marketing resources (our lecturer Peter Ling gave us two pages of links). I've just purchased the Full Disclosure Guide from GOMCHA, which on first glace looks fantastic (Now I want to write an e-book!!). I can't wait to educate myself to the brim and then have fun writing the Ads with Sarah and Natasha.

I'm the type of person who gets really passionate and stuck into things, so much that they consume my life (Sorry Rob). I guess this challenge kind of attracts people like that.

Here's a photo of myself at Duckstein Brewery in the Swan Valley, with a beer in true uni student style. I'll let the the girls post their pics.

Signing out for now,

-- Calli