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- 2013-11-22 18:41:31
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In case you are already on your way to winning the Melon Challenge and you want to try something new after, check out the annual Google Online Marketing Challenge. Stoil Stoilov, Google Student Ambassador at AUBG, and Vlad Muntean, participant in Google’s AdCamp 2013, led students through the guidelines for the competition in a short presentation on Wednesday, November 20.
[caption id="attachment_17307" align="alignright" width="200" caption="http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/"]
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The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an international competition for students, which gives them a chance to create a real life online marketing campaign using Google’s advertising tool AdWords. Participating teams will have to create an online campaign for a local business or NGO they choose and run it for a period of 3 weeks. The Challenge was initiated in 2008 and over 60,000 students from nearly 100 countries have participated in the last six years.
Procedure
The registration process opens officially in early January 2014. Students can form teams of 3-5 people and elect a captain. They also need to choose a professor who has to register their team and confirm each participating member. This serves as a verification of students’ eligibility to take part in the challenge. The professor can also act as a mentor for the team throughout the challenge. So far, Professor Nikolova and Professor Petkov have agreed to help teams from AUBG who want to work on the challenge.
[caption id="attachment_17295" align="alignleft" width="252" caption="Vlad at AdCamp /personal archive/"]
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Vlad Muntean advised participants to familiarize themselves with Google’s Advertising tools, and particularly AdWords, before they start working on the project. He explained the basics of the tool and gave some advice on strategic selection of keywords that students would have to use. Vlad was selected as one of the thirty B.A. students who attended the AdCamp in Dublin in September 2013, where participants were particularly acquainted with Google’s advertising sales and marketing operations.
According to Stoil and Vlad, the most important step of the process is choosing the business that the team will work with. Students will act as marketing consultants for the business and will advise them on their online advertising techniques. Teams can choose either a local business or an NGO. Stoil and Vlad advise participants to choose a local company which is not in a very competitive industry. Firms in traditional retail, travel or online businesses can lead to better final results than others such as web hosting/design, insurance or tech stores.
[caption id="attachment_17294" align="alignright" width="285" caption="Stoil at the Google's 2013 European Student Ambassador Summit /personal archive/"]
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Once teams have found a business they want to partner in, they have to fill in a Pre-Campaign Report. They will have time from February to June in which they can choose a 3-week period when they will be executing their campaign. In the end, a Post-Campaign report has to be submitted. If students had chosen to work with an NGO, they can apply for the Social Impact Award as well. If they chose to incorporate Google+ in their marketing strategy, they can qualify for the Social Media Award.
Judging & Prizes
All campaigns will be evaluated on 3 criteria.
[/caption]
The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an international competition for students, which gives them a chance to create a real life online marketing campaign using Google’s advertising tool AdWords. Participating teams will have to create an online campaign for a local business or NGO they choose and run it for a period of 3 weeks. The Challenge was initiated in 2008 and over 60,000 students from nearly 100 countries have participated in the last six years.
Procedure
The registration process opens officially in early January 2014. Students can form teams of 3-5 people and elect a captain. They also need to choose a professor who has to register their team and confirm each participating member. This serves as a verification of students’ eligibility to take part in the challenge. The professor can also act as a mentor for the team throughout the challenge. So far, Professor Nikolova and Professor Petkov have agreed to help teams from AUBG who want to work on the challenge.
[caption id="attachment_17295" align="alignleft" width="252" caption="Vlad at AdCamp /personal archive/"]
[/caption]
Vlad Muntean advised participants to familiarize themselves with Google’s Advertising tools, and particularly AdWords, before they start working on the project. He explained the basics of the tool and gave some advice on strategic selection of keywords that students would have to use. Vlad was selected as one of the thirty B.A. students who attended the AdCamp in Dublin in September 2013, where participants were particularly acquainted with Google’s advertising sales and marketing operations.
According to Stoil and Vlad, the most important step of the process is choosing the business that the team will work with. Students will act as marketing consultants for the business and will advise them on their online advertising techniques. Teams can choose either a local business or an NGO. Stoil and Vlad advise participants to choose a local company which is not in a very competitive industry. Firms in traditional retail, travel or online businesses can lead to better final results than others such as web hosting/design, insurance or tech stores.
[caption id="attachment_17294" align="alignright" width="285" caption="Stoil at the Google's 2013 European Student Ambassador Summit /personal archive/"]
[/caption]
Once teams have found a business they want to partner in, they have to fill in a Pre-Campaign Report. They will have time from February to June in which they can choose a 3-week period when they will be executing their campaign. In the end, a Post-Campaign report has to be submitted. If students had chosen to work with an NGO, they can apply for the Social Impact Award as well. If they chose to incorporate Google+ in their marketing strategy, they can qualify for the Social Media Award.
Judging & Prizes
All campaigns will be evaluated on 3 criteria.
- Campaign Statistics. These are automatically measured by Google. Based on the results, the top 15 finalists are chosen.
- Campaign structure & implementation of best practices. Judged for this criterion will be Googlers, and they will select the top 5 teams.
- Pre-Campaign & Post-Campaign Reports. An independent academic panel is created to serve as a jury. This is the step where regional and global winners are chosen.