Student Guidebook

Version 1.2b




Student Quick Start Guide


2

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, its 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 theyre
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 2
nd
, 3
rd
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.

Student Quick Start Guide


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Quality Score
Quality Score is an important factor in determining your ads 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 its 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 keywords competition to get an indicator of this)


Student Quick Start Guide


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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 CTRs 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


11

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..