You don’t get much for twenty five bucks these days, so when Unitec’s Digital Marketing lecturer, Patrick Dodd, approached a range of small businesses and challenged them to let his students run a full online marketing campaign for a mere $25 the response was huge.

The project saw students assigned in pairs to a business and tasked with designing a two week Google Adwords campaign, with CTR (click-through rates) being the metric of success.

Google was impressed enough with the idea to subsidise the initiative three-to-one, contributing $75 to each campaign bringing the total budget for the fortnight to $100.

The results were amazing.

Eileen Lee from Discount Tractor Parts in West Auckland had previously lacked the confidence to tackle internet-based advertising.

“We just needed a young person to show us how. Before, we’d done some trials in various papers for big money and gotten maybe one or two extra responses, but with this, the phone started ringing right away.

“Our September sales increased significantly and the students were fantastic to deal with, so you bet we’ll be doing this again.”

Dodd is delighted at both the effort put in by his students and the feedback he’s received from all businesses involved.

“A key area in digital marketing is PPC (pay per click) advertising and yet so many people lack the confidence to engage with it.

“I’ve not managed to find any other examples of students being encouraged to participate in this way to not only make a real impact to the business in question, but to learn all those soft skills like dealing with people, objections and overcoming challenges.”

Student Hannah Lawley knew what Google Adwords was prior to the project, but seeing for herself what it could achieve has made her a big fan.

“It just stunned me how effective it was. I would go so far as to say this is essential for any business and anybody can access this technology.

“It’s amazing to me that a small business can double its business overnight. What is twenty bucks to a business for that kind of exposure?

“A company that might have come up on page ten of Google before can now be on top of page one.

“It was such an eye-opener to me that we could make such a difference. I don’t see how any business could do without it!”

Businesses are lining up to access Dodd’s students through Unitec’s Department of Management and Marketing’s YoungMinds unit, which engages and interacts with businesses to provide online/web and social media-related services.

“It’s great that we’ve built the awareness that we want to work with business. It’s such a win-win – the students get to apply their learning, and in doing so are adding real value and the businesses are growing as a result.”

 

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