Student Guidebook Version 1.2b

Student Quick Start Guide

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Activity

Depending on your game scenario, you will be advertising products or services on Baigoo – a fictitious Search

Engine.

Activity Goal

If you do not have specific goals from your instructor, you can follow the in-game objectives. The ultimate goal is to obtain the highest cumulative profit and the best Value/Cost Ratio. This involves yielding as many conversions (sales) as possible, by effectively utilizing your campaign budget to target search keywords. You will receive a new set of results with each new deadline, conditioned you meet the objectives proposed.

Student Quick Start Guide

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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 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 immediate exposure 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.

Student Quick Start Guide

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Paid Search Engine Marketing Example

Example of Simbound Ad Results

1. User generated search

2. Organic Search Results

3. Paid Ads

Did you know most Search Engines use the

Generalized Second Price Auction mechanism

to sell their keyword inventory ?

Student Quick Start Guide

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Creating your first PPC Campaign

Once logged into your student account go to Search Engine Marketing and click on the Campaigns Tab Button. Next click the symbol to the right which will guide you through the process of setting up your campaign.

Before you do this you can also do some 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.

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

Student Quick Start Guide

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PPC Dictionary

On the Search Engine Marketing overview page you can consult a dictionary that includes many different PPC terms.

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”

Student Quick Start Guide

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Ad Placement on Page

The position of your ads on the 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 Search Engine assign to each

advertiser for each keyword & ad combination

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

version produces a better response rate from your users.

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.

Why is Ad position important ?

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 Bid Price 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

Student Quick Start Guide

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

Advertisers Bid Price Quality Score

Ad Rank Score

Bid Price X Qual. Score

Price Paid

Closest Ad Rank below yours / 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.

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 this)

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Quality Score is influenced by:

CTR (Click-Through-Rate) 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 dividing Clicks by 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 keyword that you want to bid on.

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).

Student Quick Start Guide

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Community

Should you have problems understanding how the game works, please turn to the Simbound community, where

you will be greeted with support by other Digital Marketing learners. If you help out other users you can receive

game bonuses that will improve your overall results.

Further

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

simulation computes results..