2010 seems to be a year filled with many exciting projects for me. One of my first is being a team leader for the Google Online Marketing Challenge for my Account Management class. I have to say I was rather excited in the beginning as I know that online marketing & advertising have quite a bright future with an increasing number of companies seeing them as a cheap alternative to traditional campaigns.
The GOMC is a nice way of promoting Google’s own services by getting university students to find a business that they are interested in and promoting it via AdWords with a set $200 budget during a 3-week campaign. Who gets what out of it? Google gets some insight into how its customers can use AdWords to maximize a company’s ROI and proves that great results can be achieved even with a small budget. Students get to learn essential online marketing skills that they can include in their resumes and maybe even use in their future careers. The teachers get a nice project for their students that requires them to act not just plan, and requires minimal involvement from the academia side. As for the selected business, it gets a university marketing team to devote its time and efforts into finding ways of promoting its website in the course of a month. Sounds like a win-win for all parties involved.
My team consists of 6 international students (Germany, Romania, Spain) excited about working on something new and challenging. Some of them are learning things about the web they did not even know were possible, others are mesmerized by how much Google can learn about you even through a simple search and others are a bit outraged that it is so simple for companies to find you, even without knowing too much about you. As for me, I am just excited to learn what lies ahead and if AdWords really is everything it promises to be.
Once we receive our voucher from Google, I will make sure to keep you up-to-date with what is going on in our campaign.
PS: A warm thanks to JT designs for this lovely infographic.
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Theresa Flaherty
6 months ago
Carmen – Good luck in the Challenge. I look forward to reading more of your blog posts in the future. Thanks for sharing your blog post on the Facebook fan page.
Theresa Flaherty, Ph.D.
James Madison University
Carmen
6 months ago
Thank you! Good luck with the teams you are coaching as well. I am sure it will be a fierce competition this year !
Sergio Falcón
6 months ago
Hello Theresa and carmen,
thanks to both for sharing your posts on the facebook group Google Online Marketing Challenge. Both posts are interesting and useful.
I am a spanish student (Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona) and this year is the first time that we (my team under the supervision of our teacher) make this competitive challenge.
I wish luck to your teams and i wait for more posts yours.