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So a few of you actually have emailed me telling me to get in on the Google Online Marketing Challenge designed for college students. Unfortunately since I’m not in college, I can’t compete in this I don’t think, but I’ll think about it out loud right now and let you guys know how I would win it. To get a quick idea of what it is, I’ll post a quick quote about it from Google :

Student groups will receive US$200 of free online advertising and then work with local businesses to devise effective online marketing campaigns. They will outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess their results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing.

How I Would Win

Alright now here would be my strategy in winning this baby. Keep in mind I haven’t thought about this at all, and I’m 100% thinking out loud with you guys here.

So the first thing that popped into my mind was the gym that I used to work out at. It’s a nice gym and used to be pretty crowded when it first opened (I was one of the first members). After about a year or so, less and less people kept their membership, and now it’s not that lively at all. You could tell they were getting desperate because they’d always call me saying I could have 50% off my membership if I renewed, and all these other deals. I’d probably work with these guys in getting their business back up and alive.

The next thing I thought of, was that there’s a vitamin/supplement store right next door, almost connected, to the gym. But they’re two separate places, they don’t work together at all. Before I started promoting the gym, the first thing I’d do is try to set up some deals between these two neighboring places. I’d talk to both places and try to get a partnership formed that could include possible deals like :

• Spend $50 or more at the vitamin store and get a free gym membership next door.
• Sign up for a 3-month plan at the gym and get $50 in free supplements/vitamins.
• Sign up for an aerobics program at the gym (which is free, but you obv have to pay for the gym membership), and get a free bottle of Hoodia or something from the vitamin store.
• Buy a fat burning product and get a free one-hour session with a personal trainer.

Just things like that in which both parties would benefit from increased business. Now that we have some deals set up, it’s time to advertise them. Because I established a partnership in which both places generate traffic for each other as well as themselves, I just doubled my audience. Instead of advertising to people who are just looking for a gym membership, we can also advertise for those searching for diet pills (which is a much larger market).

Next comes my lucky $200 in Adwords. Not much at all, but I guess we can try and make it work. Since we now have a larger market, there’s a ton of different things we can test. For one, we’ll obviously have geotargeting on, and I’ll be targeting cities within maybe 30 miles of the gym. That may even be pushing it, as there are fitness centers everywhere. I’d make adgroups for the following types of keywords :

• fitness centers
• gyms (local gym, gym in _____, etc)
• weight loss center
• weight loss (in general)
• diet pills (as well as Hoodia, etc)
• supplements

The list goes on and on. I could generate quite a number of keywords from all those topics. Now as far as potential ad copies, I’d write something like :

ABC Gym Buffalo
1 Month Free Membership.
5 Miles From {Hometown}.
ABCgym.com

ABC Gym Buffalo
1 Month Free Membership.
Free Supplements. Call Today!
ABCgym.com

Weight Loss Clinic
Find a Weight Loss Clinic
in Buffalo. Free Consultation!
ABCgym.com

Free Hoodia at Buffalo Gym
Sign Up for 1 Month and
Receive a Free Bottle of Hoodia!
ABCgym.com

I could write hundreds of different ad copies all day and split test them all. The ad would go to the companies website, and depending on the type of ad, would go to a different page. If someone clicked through the keyword “hoodia”, I would emphasize the free bottle of Hoodia with a 1 month membership. I’d have a contact form as well as the companies phone number. Since we have multiple pages, we can track where the converting traffic is coming from. I know that this company doesn’t advertise on Adwords, so perhaps they could increase business quite a bit by doing so. Once we got customers filling out forms and giving us their phone number, we’d start the second phase of our strategy in actually reeling them in. If the customer is about to turn down the offer, we make a “personal” offer and offer them two bottles of Hoodia, or two months at the gym, etc. From there we can look at revenues and profits, and see if the entire thing is making or losing us money.

I would definitely have to think about it and set it up for a couple weeks, but this is just my thinking right at the moment. So with 20 minutes of thought, that is how I would win the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

How would you win? Tell me either in your own blog post, comments, or through email. I’ll pick my favorite entry and post about it.

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