Marketing professor's students rise to the 'Challenge'
Dr. Theresa Clarke, professor of marketing, provides students with some proven strategies to help their clients stand out along the congested information superhighway.
When your classes have produced three of the past five
winners of the Americas Region in the Google Online Marketing Challenge, and placed
20 other teams in the top 100 worldwide, the search is on for the secret to
your success.
Dr. Theresa B. Clarke, professor of marketing in James
Madison University¿s College of Business, first incorporated the Challenge into
one of her classes in 2008. ¿That year we were a finalist in the
Americas Region ¿ in the top 10,¿ she says. The following year, despite having
to recruit a group of students to take a class centered around the competition
for no credit, one of Clarke¿s teams won the region, which covers all of North,
Central and South America. A JMU team won the Americas region again in 2011.
This year¿s winning team consisted of 2012 marketing
graduates Rachel Krause, Nicole Behr and Tara Goode, who created a Google
AdWords campaign for Triple C Camp, a youth camp and challenge course in Charlottesville.
The JMU trio outperformed more than 11,000 students in 86 countries. This
weekend, Clarke and the students will tour the Googleplex in Mountain View,
Calif., where they will receive laptops and other prizes.
Challenge participants create online marketing campaigns
with AdWords, a pay-per-click service
using customized search terms, to drive traffic to their client¿s
website. The teams choose a business or nonprofit organization that has not
previously used AdWords, then meet with the client to discuss their marketing
and advertising needs. From those discussions, the students develop a four-page
report that outlines their strategy. Then, armed with a $250 budget, they
execute that plan over a period of three consecutive weeks. At the conclusion
of the campaign, each team drafts an eight-page report, which is sent to both
the client and to Google for judging.
¿The project is unique in so many ways,¿ Clarke says. ¿It¿s
real world, it¿s real life, it¿s real money and real time. The students learn
about AdWords, then they have to go out and learn client skills and how to run
a live marketing campaign, which entails everything from developing the ad to
bidding on key words to optimizing client accounts, testing and research.¿
For the past three years, Clarke has taught the class in the
spring as a special-topics course (Marketing 490), with the Challenge serving
as her students¿ semester project. Clarke runs the course, which is capped at
15 students, very much like a graduate seminar. ¿I like to have students up and
running on the first day of class,¿ she says. ¿That requires that they do some
studying over winter break, and they take what amounts to a final exam in the
second week of the course. But I expect them to know the material so they can
apply it. I set the bar high, but they always seem to rise to the occasion.¿
For purposes of the Challenge, Clarke divides her classes into
teams, each with a team leader, a strategist ¿ a big-picture person who serves
as the primary contact with the client ¿ and an analyst, who is focused on
achieving results during the campaign. ¿That works pretty well,¿ she says.
Clarke then provides students with some proven strategies to
help their clients stand out along the congested information superhighway.
¿From a marketing standpoint, when consumers are searching, it¿s important to
get your product or service to appear high in the list of results,¿ she says.
¿There¿s a big difference between an ad appearing on page one versus page two.¿
She also invites JMU alumni who are working in the field of
online advertising, such as Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo in
Charlottesville and Joe Erfe and Andrew Nelson of Silverback Strategies in Alexandria, to be
guest speakers throughout the semester. ¿I have so many alumni, especially the
younger ones, who get satisfaction from coming back and talking to students,¿
she says.
This month, Clarke will lead a workshop at the Marketing
Management Association Fall Educators Conference on how to successfully
implement the Challenge in the classroom. And for the first time in the spring,
she will offer the Google Online Marketing Challenge experience as part of a
special-topics course, Online Search Advertising, within the Innovation MBA
Program at JMU.
Dr. Clarke blogs at http://theresabclarke.com.
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By James Heffernan ('96), JMU Public Affairs
