Student Guidebook 1.5b - Login | Simboundgame.simbound.com/uploads/courses/COMMON/manua… · ·...

Student Guidebook Version 1.5b

Student Quick Start Guide

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Welcome to Simbound

Simbound is a simulation game which allows you to carry out Internet marketing operations in a risk-‐free environment. Are you ready to experience what it feels like to be an eMarketing professional? Now is your chance.

Depending on your game scenario, you are going to have different activities:

-‐ Advertise products or services on Baigoo – a fictitious Search Engine

-‐ Manage the website of your virtual business

-‐ Send out e-‐Mail Newsletter Campaigns to virtual subscibers


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Table of Contents

4 Getting Started 5 Learning Outcomes 6 Activity Goal 7 Simbound Website Management 8 Simbound Search Engine Marketing (SEM) 14 Quality Score

15 Simbound E-‐mail Marketing


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Registration

Your instructor will issue you with a course code which you will need in order to register as a student from the http://simbound.com website. You might receive this invitation via your e-‐mail address or your institution’s learning management system.

Getting Started

Each Simbound game instance consists of 3 to 10 decision-‐making rounds. Your instructor will set a deadline for each round. You will need to input your marketing decisions at any time before the round deadline in order to be issued with results. It is recommended to allow at least 1 hour for the preparation of each round

If you are part of a team please note that any changes you will make to the Simbound account will overwrite decisions previously saved by your teammates (if any). It is recommended you discuss your strategy and decisions with your teammates prior to each round deadline.

You will receive information on your business details and game scenario under the “Messages” tab once logged into the game

Your instructor can reset each round

deadline. In case you didn’t save your

decisions in due time ask him about this

option


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Learning Outcomes

On completion of the game Simbound Students should be able to demonstrate:

• Why online advertising can provide a fast and measurable method for validation of sales propositions • Awareness towards the main methods of performing e-‐Marketing operations including: Search Engine Marketing, Website Management, E-‐mail newsletters • Knowledge in planning, managing and measuring outreach campaigns • How to measure and improve online channel sales through iterative operations

• How to interpret the main operational metrics for each online marketing channel:

Search Engine Marketing Clicks, Impressions, Click-‐Through-‐Rate, Cost per Click, Average Ad Position, Conversions

Website Management: Unique Page views, Traffic Sources, Conversion Ratio

E-‐mail Marketing: Leads, Open Rate, Click-‐through Rate, Conversion Ratio


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Activity Goal

Your specific goals are to create and optimize online marketing campaigns via multiple online marketing channels such as Search Engines, your own website and e-‐mail marketing newsletters.

By using different online promotional tools your objective is to reach as high as possible a value for cumulative profit during the full run of the game.

The Search Engine Marketing module has a cost component. This will be factored in when measuring performance on this channel. The website manager and the e-‐mail marketing components won’t incur costs.

Some Instructors prefer to use team rankings as a way to motivate students to engage with the game. In this case please note that your Instructor can add or remove new game rounds at their own will.

If you do not have specific goals to reach as handed out by your instructor, you can always turn to the in-‐game objectives which are presented each round. Please be aware the round objectives are provided only as reference to guide you through the game and are not the sole purpose to each round.


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Simbound Website Management

In Simbound students manage landing pages with the goal of increasing conversions (clients). A landing page is the first page that a potential customer gets taken to after clicking an ad. As such landing pages are an essential part of an online marketing campaign.

Creating Your first Landing Page

Once logged into your account go to Website Management and click the Create New Landing Page button.

Depending on which visitor type you are targeting you can select between different content elements to include on your new landing page.

Click the Want to know more ? link found at the bottom of each landing for more information.


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Setting up Landing Pages for different Visitor Types

In the standard Tablet PC’s game scenario we have 3 types of website visitors. Below you can see what keywords they are using as an indicator of their purchasing intent.

Visitor Type What They Want Baigoo Trigger Keywords

Buyers want a particular product galaxy,ipad,thinkpad,ideapad,playbook

Interested want a brand or manufacturer

apple,android,samsung,sony,windows,asus,lenovo,blackberry

Random don't know what they want

the rest of the keywords

Each landing page will have the Baigoo Ads pointing to that address presented on the left side . Once you are done creating your new landing page you will be issued a Page Score, which is a measure of how well your new landing page is expected to perform in terms of user response (conversions).


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Baigoo Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term which includes Internet Marketing techniques that promote website visibility in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Methods include: Paid placement -‐ also referred to as Pay per click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Contextual advertising, Digital asset optimization and so on. With Simbound you will carry out PPC Marketing as well as monitor search rankings of your landing pages.

Paid Search Engine Marketing (also known as Pay Per Click Marketing)

Millions of search queries are executed over the major Search Engines every day. People are actively seeking out information about brands, products or services. Paid Search Marketing is the practice of getting paid ads to be shown amongst search results. For each time an ad is displayed, it’s said it accrues an Impression. Each click on an ad will cost the advertiser a sum of money – Cost per Click (or CPC).

PPC Marketing is a good way to offer your website fastexposure to highly

relevant prospects. As people are searching online for products and services, it is to your

advantage to improve brand presence at the critical time when they’re researching purchase

options.


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Search Engine Marketing Example

Simbound Ad Performance

1. User generated search

2. Paid Ads

3. Organic Search Results

Did you know most Search Engines use the Generalized Second Price Auction mechanism to sell their

keyword inventory ?


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Your first Baigoo PPC Campaign

Once logged into your student account go to Search Engine Marketing and click on the Create New Campaign Button. This will launch a campaign setup tool which will guide you through the process of keyword selection, location targeting, budget and so on.

Before you do this it is recommended you perform Keyword Research to look for the best keyphrases that potential clients would use in their search queries. Remember – your goal is to obtain as many conversions (responses) as possible from your campaigns so make sure you optimize your campaigns as the game progresses. Click the Research tab to do this.

The typical PPC campaign setup process

Landing Page

Creation Keyword Research

Create PPC (SEM)

Campaign Optimize & Rekine


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PPC Campaigns Structure

The image to the right shows how PPC campaigns are organized in Simbound. It is recommended you group keywords with common meaning and you write custom adapted ads for each Ad Group. The system helps you with this by grouping search keywords under common ad group themes on step 1 of the campaign builder.

PPC Dictionary

On the Search Engine Marketing Overview tab you can consult a dictionary that explains PPC terms used in the game.

Keyword targeting in Simbound

In Simbound, you can only bid on exact type match keywords -‐ this means that your ad is only shown on searches using the exact search keyphrase as the selected keyword from the library

For example, if you are bidding on the word auto insurance, your ad will only be shown for searches on auto insurance, but not

for “best auto insurance” or something different. Most Search Engines have more options in terms of keyword targeting like

Phrase match: “best auto insurance” and Broad Match “ I want to insure my car”


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Ad Placement on Page

The position of your ads on the Baigoo Search Results Page is determined by numerous factors, including:

• Bid price Price you are willing to pay for one click on your ad

• Quality Score Efficiency score that Baigoo assigns to each advertiser for each keyword & ad combination

In Simbound you can carry out A/B ad tests to see

which ad version produces a better response rate

from your users. To do this go to Ads Tab under

SEM.

Note that Baigoo has positions 1 to 10 open for ads. These are shown on first page of results. If your ad does not reach position 10,

it will not be displayed at all. However, with a real Search Engine, there is no downward limit to your ad position, meaning that

your ad could show up on the 2nd, 3rd etc page of results.

An ad with a higher average ad position will tend to

benefit from a higher Click Through Rate

(clicks/impressions) than a lower ranked ad.


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Quality Score

Quality Score is an important factor in determining your ad’s position and your Cost Per Click. Here is a simple explanation of how Quality Score affects Ad Position – which is the average position of your ads on the Search Engine Results Pages.

Advertisers Max CPC Bid Value Quality Score Ad Rank Score

Bid Price X Qual. Score

Ad Position

Advertiser 1 $5.00 2 10 #3

Advertiser 2 $3.00 5 15 #2

Advertiser 3 $2.00 9 18 #1 (highest rank)

Quality Score is a figure from 1 to 10 where 1 means a poor match and 10 means good performance. If your QS for a certain

Keyword drops below the minimum threshold, Search Engines will block your ad from being shown on searches specific to that

Keyword. With Baigoo, the minimum threshold for Quality Score is 4. Qs is a decimal figure although it’s shown as an integer in

the tables


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Here is how Bid Price and Quality Score influences price paid per click:

Advertisers CPC Bid Value Quality Score

Ad Rank Score

Bid Price X Qual. Score

Price Paid

Closest Ad Rank below yours divided to your own Qual. Score

Advertiser 1 $5.00 2 10 5

Advertiser 2 $3.00 5 15 2

Advertiser 3 $2.00 9 18 1.66

Cost per Click is calculated by dividing the Ad Rank score of the advertiser directly beneath you by your own Quality Score. It is therefore imperative that you try to maintain your Quality Score as high as possible, in order to effectively manage your costs.

Quality Score is updated after each game round depending on your performance

Note this is an example with only 3 advertisers. In reality, there could be thousands of competing advertisers bidding for a single keyword (check each keyword’s competition to get an indicator of the competition. This is done on the research tab)


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Quality Score is calculated using the following factors:

The percentage of people who click on your ad after it has been displayed to them on the Search Engine Results Page. It is calculated by dividing Clicks over Impressions.

Note that the CTR’s impact on Quality Score is calculated for each position. So if you are

trying to improve your Quality Score by increasing your CTR for a specific keyword, you will

have to meet the CTR threshold as set for the position you occupy. For example, in order to

get a QS of 10, the CTR threshold for position 1 of a certain keyword is 20%., for position 2 it is

15% and so on. If you are increasing your bid to occupy position 1 and you receive less than

15% average CTR, then you are in fact hurting your QS for that keyword.

Ad Relevance How relevant your text ad is for each search keyword that you are targeting.

Landing Page The quality of the webpage that the user gets taken to after they click on your ad. Most of the time, quality refers to being able to convert traffic into goals (demo sign-‐ups, new customers etc).

CTR

(Click-‐Through-‐

Rate)


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Simbound e-‐Mail Marketing

From this section you can send out e-‐mail newsletters to your virtual subscribers (called leads), in which you can announce promotions and sales for your products. The standard game scenario has 3 lists which are the same used to differentiate website visitors: Buyers, Interested, Random.

Your first e-‐Mail Marketing Campaign

After you log into your account navigate to the E-‐mail marketing section. Click the New e-‐Mail marketing campaign you will be prompted to select the list of subscribers you want to send out the e-‐mail to. Each list contains multiple segments of subscribers which are grouped according to their interest (this is inferred from the landing page they used to complete the newsletter sign-‐up process)

Next step is to fill out the template with the promotional copy. Make sure to include a link to a landing page so that subscribers who will be opening your e-‐mails are directed to the right landing page.

You can also create A/B tests to test out two versions of the newsletter and find out which one performs better.


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Community

Should you have problems understanding how the game works, please refer to the Simbound community, where you will be greeted with support by other learners and instructors.

Further

Make sure you also check out the Baigoo Diagram under ‘My Course’ documents to understand how the simulation computes results.


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