Since the Challenge is over, there is nothing really much to blog about these days. Advice is always needed so why not some advice for next years Challenge participants. This is my personal advice but I'm sure Calli and Sarah will be happy to blog soon enough with their words of wisdom. So what advice shall I give?? Read along my bloggers....
Quick Tips To Succeed In The Google Online Marketing Challenge
1. Research & Learn as much as you can about AdWords
2. Pick a client that sells products and is someone who shows an actual interest in the challenge
3. Know your target market
4. Work as a team and help each other out
5. Schedule meetings to discuss the Challenge
6. Website Optimisation and choice of landing pages is key
7. The content network is either your friend or enemy, find out asap.
8. Geo-targeting is important and can affect the success of your campaign
9. Keep note of your progress..a blog is a good idea! :D
- Natasha
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Life After The Google Online Challenge
After three weeks of CTR's, CPC's, Keywords, Impressions and Adgroups..the challenge is now over!
I'm sure you are interested in how our campaign went so I have included our results below.
Impressions 104,826
Clicks 223
CTR 0.21%
Avg CPC $0.80
Cost $178.13
KeyWord w/ Most Clicks 'pilates perth' 20
Keyword w/ Highest CTR 'verve gym for women' 100%
KeyWord w/ most impressions 'yoga' 2,588
Ad with Most Clicks 26
Women's Only Boot Camp
4-Week Kick Start Program
Lose Weight and Feel Great.
VerveForWomen.com.au/bootcamp
Ad with Highest CTR 50%
Personal Trainer Perth
Womens Only Health Club.
Get Results. Stay Fit For Winter.
VerveForWomen.com.au/PT
Most Successful Campaign - Memberships
0.45%
I speak for the group when I say that this has been an unforgettable experience. There were definitely times when the word google gave me a headache but I have learned so much from this challenge that I wish I could do it again. The first week was a bit of a blur because everything was new to us and it was our experimental stage. We didn't change anything because we wanted to give all of our keywords and adgroups a chance, aww. Once we realised that the content network was NOT working in our favour, we turned it off and saw a CRAZZZY decrease in impressions. Just look at the differences in impressions while the content network was on and when it was turned off.
Week 1 Impressions *Content Network ON*
- 86,384
Week 2 Impressions *Content Network OFF*
- 11,911
Week 3 Impressions *Content Network OFF & Budget Increased*
- 6,252
While the content network may be great for a lot of products, we believe it isn't as helpful when selling a service.
We didn't get the CTR we had hoped for but we are still happy with the overall campaign performance. Our client wasn't as niche as we thought it was and our specific ad copy was TOO specific. We found that our more generic ads received more clicks and our niche ad groups such as postnatal fitness and mums were unsuccessful.
The girls and I are now busy working on our post-campaign strategy, powerpoint presentation AND personal reflections. The challenge may be over but we are STILL working hard. You will also be able to hear more from us girls once my online magazine is up and running. This challenge has given me the Internet bug and the online magazine I have always wanted to have will be created soon. Calli who owns a website design company *http://www.delishdesign.org/* will be designing the website. Sarah has offered to create the magazines logo and help with graphics. I will be the editor-in-chief and have already got some writers volunteering their services. The ECU Girls are going to take the Internet world by storm!! lol
- Natasha
I'm sure you are interested in how our campaign went so I have included our results below.
Impressions 104,826
Clicks 223
CTR 0.21%
Avg CPC $0.80
Cost $178.13
KeyWord w/ Most Clicks 'pilates perth' 20
Keyword w/ Highest CTR 'verve gym for women' 100%
KeyWord w/ most impressions 'yoga' 2,588
Ad with Most Clicks 26
Women's Only Boot Camp
4-Week Kick Start Program
Lose Weight and Feel Great.
VerveForWomen.com.au/bootcamp
Ad with Highest CTR 50%
Personal Trainer Perth
Womens Only Health Club.
Get Results. Stay Fit For Winter.
VerveForWomen.com.au/PT
Most Successful Campaign - Memberships
0.45%
I speak for the group when I say that this has been an unforgettable experience. There were definitely times when the word google gave me a headache but I have learned so much from this challenge that I wish I could do it again. The first week was a bit of a blur because everything was new to us and it was our experimental stage. We didn't change anything because we wanted to give all of our keywords and adgroups a chance, aww. Once we realised that the content network was NOT working in our favour, we turned it off and saw a CRAZZZY decrease in impressions. Just look at the differences in impressions while the content network was on and when it was turned off.
Week 1 Impressions *Content Network ON*
- 86,384
Week 2 Impressions *Content Network OFF*
- 11,911
Week 3 Impressions *Content Network OFF & Budget Increased*
- 6,252
While the content network may be great for a lot of products, we believe it isn't as helpful when selling a service.
We didn't get the CTR we had hoped for but we are still happy with the overall campaign performance. Our client wasn't as niche as we thought it was and our specific ad copy was TOO specific. We found that our more generic ads received more clicks and our niche ad groups such as postnatal fitness and mums were unsuccessful.
The girls and I are now busy working on our post-campaign strategy, powerpoint presentation AND personal reflections. The challenge may be over but we are STILL working hard. You will also be able to hear more from us girls once my online magazine is up and running. This challenge has given me the Internet bug and the online magazine I have always wanted to have will be created soon. Calli who owns a website design company *http://www.delishdesign.org/* will be designing the website. Sarah has offered to create the magazines logo and help with graphics. I will be the editor-in-chief and have already got some writers volunteering their services. The ECU Girls are going to take the Internet world by storm!! lol
- Natasha
Monday, May 4, 2009
Day 11..
Good Evening Everyone..
We are now in the middle of the challenge and well, after a brillant sucess with our pre-campaign strategy (well done girls :p), we are a bit concerned about the time we will have to write our post's one, which is apparently due few days after the actual campaign finishes. Anyway, we're already thinking about it and we'll try to do our best!
Our CTR is now higher as we removed the content network from our campaign settings
(that one has generated many impressions but few clicks in comparaison), but yeah we still need to improve our ads. We might do some changes next thursday and increase the budget as we didnt spend half of it yet.. hope the 10more days left will be full of surprises!
Winter is coming and so does the exam period... Im a bit stressed, but heyhey that means holidays are coming too.. Im flying back to Reunion and to France for more than a month; Lucky me :p Just have to be patient til then (its not really hard as the challenge keeps me quite buisy!)
Sign off for now..
- Sarah =)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The First Week
Our first week 'review' was held on Thursday. We were able to discuss the results so far and some of the factors we need to consider to create an increasingly 'successful' campaign. This 'game' has been a lot harder than we thought!
First of all.. what IS successful? High CTR? Or High Impressions? We believe a high CTR portrays success. Therefore, we've tweaked the campaign as follows.
The majority of our impressions were on the content network on sites which were medium to highly unrelated to our business or target market. Check this out.. it gave us a laugh:
Anyone for a six pack? Well our site is a women's gym. We did get a click from this site though! And just because we're offering women's fitness programs doesn't mean we can help you include children in your wedding vows! We had around 8000 impressions on Gmail, and also lots on MySpace. Considering how broad the content on these sites can be, no wonder our CTR from them was around 0.10%.
We did get some clicks off the content network, and in reality as a business owner I'd probably still place my ads on there to cast a wide net.. but it was dragging our average CTR way down. So we decided for this week we'd test our campaigns just on the Google and search networks.
Also, we discovered one of our campaigns was set geographically for Australia, not Perth. 1000s of impressions were wasted in VIC, NSW and QLD. All fixed. This is certainly a learning experience!
The past two days have seen our impressions in the hundreds not thousands (due to content network removal).. however the CTR has risen due to more targeted impressions.
Until next time...
-- Calli
First of all.. what IS successful? High CTR? Or High Impressions? We believe a high CTR portrays success. Therefore, we've tweaked the campaign as follows.
The majority of our impressions were on the content network on sites which were medium to highly unrelated to our business or target market. Check this out.. it gave us a laugh:
Anyone for a six pack? Well our site is a women's gym. We did get a click from this site though! And just because we're offering women's fitness programs doesn't mean we can help you include children in your wedding vows! We had around 8000 impressions on Gmail, and also lots on MySpace. Considering how broad the content on these sites can be, no wonder our CTR from them was around 0.10%.We did get some clicks off the content network, and in reality as a business owner I'd probably still place my ads on there to cast a wide net.. but it was dragging our average CTR way down. So we decided for this week we'd test our campaigns just on the Google and search networks.
Also, we discovered one of our campaigns was set geographically for Australia, not Perth. 1000s of impressions were wasted in VIC, NSW and QLD. All fixed. This is certainly a learning experience!
The past two days have seen our impressions in the hundreds not thousands (due to content network removal).. however the CTR has risen due to more targeted impressions.
Until next time...
-- Calli
Friday, May 1, 2009
have a peek..
at this:
http://www.ecu.edu.au/pr/InsideECU/2009/04/ecu-students-use-google-to-help-small-business/
http://www.ecu.edu.au/pr/InsideECU/2009/04/ecu-students-use-google-to-help-small-business/
Friday, April 24, 2009
Day 1: HERE WE GO
Good Evening my bloggers!
At 12 this afternoon I had the nerve racking task of activating all three of our campaigns. The word PAUSE went *poof* and all I saw was the word ACTIVE in green for most of our ad texts. I quickly glanced at our account snapshot but to much sadness, there were NO clicks, impressions or anything that would make me less nervous.
TWO HOURS LATER
After some hard working cardio on the bike and some yoga to relax I logged back in and to my surprise and utter joy this is what I came across.
8 CLICKS and THOUSANDS of Impressions!
I became so excited I quickly messages Sarah and Calli who had already emailed me about it. While it may not be a lot of clicks, knowing that someone has clicked on one of our ad's is very gratifying and a big RELIEF. As a group we have created dozens of ad texts and have thought of at least a hundred keywords, so to see 8 clicks after 2 hours was real nice.
PROBLEMS ALREADY?
Ohhh-k, they are not real big problems but we have already recognised areas where we can definitely improve in. For one, we need to really make our keywords and ad texts specific because we do have a lot of ad's and a wide range of keywords. The campaign for memberships is not doing so well, whereas the campaign for group classes is doing really good. Daily spending so far has been good, and with only 10 minutes 'till the end of today's campaign we still have $2.11 left over from our daily budget. Google also contacted us through email, because a few our URL's were not working. I managed to fix this and we will keep note to type in correct URL's. There are many areas where we can improve and we intend to use this first week of the challenge to experiment with adwords and take notes of the pros and cons of certain keywords and ad texts we use.
WE EVEN HAVE A SCHEDULE
Because we are soo committed to this challenge we created a weekly schedule for the group. The schedule has allocated time slots for each team member regarding their "shift". The "shift" involves looking over our AdWords account while the other team members are working or at uni. I had a long shift today but I know Calli and Sarah had a peek to see how our ads were going.
Hmm, looks like I can't upload any images at the moment??? I was going to show you a screen shot of our schedule and the today's end results. Oh well :(
Slow internet is so painful for me, Prime Minister Rudd..bring on the new digital revolution now!
SLEEP TIME
My shift is officially over and so is today's campaign! This is definitely going to a fun experience and I am already learning so much. Good luck to all the other participating teams, especially everyone from ECU!!
Goodnight, Natasha!
P.S We finished today with:
At 12 this afternoon I had the nerve racking task of activating all three of our campaigns. The word PAUSE went *poof* and all I saw was the word ACTIVE in green for most of our ad texts. I quickly glanced at our account snapshot but to much sadness, there were NO clicks, impressions or anything that would make me less nervous.
TWO HOURS LATER
After some hard working cardio on the bike and some yoga to relax I logged back in and to my surprise and utter joy this is what I came across.
8 CLICKS and THOUSANDS of Impressions!
I became so excited I quickly messages Sarah and Calli who had already emailed me about it. While it may not be a lot of clicks, knowing that someone has clicked on one of our ad's is very gratifying and a big RELIEF. As a group we have created dozens of ad texts and have thought of at least a hundred keywords, so to see 8 clicks after 2 hours was real nice.
PROBLEMS ALREADY?
Ohhh-k, they are not real big problems but we have already recognised areas where we can definitely improve in. For one, we need to really make our keywords and ad texts specific because we do have a lot of ad's and a wide range of keywords. The campaign for memberships is not doing so well, whereas the campaign for group classes is doing really good. Daily spending so far has been good, and with only 10 minutes 'till the end of today's campaign we still have $2.11 left over from our daily budget. Google also contacted us through email, because a few our URL's were not working. I managed to fix this and we will keep note to type in correct URL's. There are many areas where we can improve and we intend to use this first week of the challenge to experiment with adwords and take notes of the pros and cons of certain keywords and ad texts we use.
WE EVEN HAVE A SCHEDULE
Because we are soo committed to this challenge we created a weekly schedule for the group. The schedule has allocated time slots for each team member regarding their "shift". The "shift" involves looking over our AdWords account while the other team members are working or at uni. I had a long shift today but I know Calli and Sarah had a peek to see how our ads were going.
Hmm, looks like I can't upload any images at the moment??? I was going to show you a screen shot of our schedule and the today's end results. Oh well :(
Slow internet is so painful for me, Prime Minister Rudd..bring on the new digital revolution now!
SLEEP TIME
My shift is officially over and so is today's campaign! This is definitely going to a fun experience and I am already learning so much. Good luck to all the other participating teams, especially everyone from ECU!!
Goodnight, Natasha!
P.S We finished today with:
| Clicks | 13 | |
| Impressions | 20,354 | |
| CTR | 0.06% | |
| Avg. CPC | $0.52 | |
| Avg. CPM | $0.33 | |
| Total Cost | $6.79 |
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Three Weeks of .... (insert word here)!
Our three weeks start on Friday. We're entering the ever-expanding world of Internet Marketing. The internet is by far the fastest growing industry, and source of opportunity, out there and it will only get bigger. There are social networking sites popping up all over the place. I have upgraded and matured from MySpace and Facebook, to LinkedIn, for professional networking, and Twitter (which a lot of companies are now using to help increase the flow communication to their clientele).
How would I describe this experience? I'm speechless. There are no words to describe being in 2nd year PR, and tackling a real-world situation where we're competing with REAL PROFESSIONALS. Some of these people are on excess of $150K a year because they're so good at what they do. We knew absolutely nothing about AdWords (I didn't even know thats what those little boxes were!) - now we're immersed in a sea of knowledge and information.
I have learnt, from my position as a Marketing Manager, that there is no substitute for work experience. I feel that my job puts my worlds in front of my classmates because I deal with Integrated Marketing Communications all day long. I don't study a unit, and forget about it - out of site out of mind. The Google Challenge will place myself, Sarah and Tash, as well as our student buddies at ECU and around the world, in an absolutely fabulous position. This will give us a huge advantage over our competing job applicants in the future. This challenge has now inspired me to strive towards a role in Digital Marketing. I could do this for a living!
--Calli
How would I describe this experience? I'm speechless. There are no words to describe being in 2nd year PR, and tackling a real-world situation where we're competing with REAL PROFESSIONALS. Some of these people are on excess of $150K a year because they're so good at what they do. We knew absolutely nothing about AdWords (I didn't even know thats what those little boxes were!) - now we're immersed in a sea of knowledge and information.
I have learnt, from my position as a Marketing Manager, that there is no substitute for work experience. I feel that my job puts my worlds in front of my classmates because I deal with Integrated Marketing Communications all day long. I don't study a unit, and forget about it - out of site out of mind. The Google Challenge will place myself, Sarah and Tash, as well as our student buddies at ECU and around the world, in an absolutely fabulous position. This will give us a huge advantage over our competing job applicants in the future. This challenge has now inspired me to strive towards a role in Digital Marketing. I could do this for a living!
--Calli
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