Bethlehem University Marketing Students Wrap Up Google Adwords Campaigns

Marketing students taking E-Business course in the spring 2011 semester were enrolled through the registration of the Business Administration lecturer Ms. Nadira Alaraj, in the Global Google Online Marketing Challenge Competition.  The online marketing competition gives the students practical experience through marketing an online campaign, using Google Adwords for real businesses. Google Adwords, as illustrated in Fig. 1 below, as those ads are triggered by the keywords of user’s search terms and appears to the right of the screen of the search results on Google search engine.

Upon realizing of the importance of this opportunity Ms. Nadira Alaraj introduced the online marketing concept to the E-Business course which is offered to the minor marketing students.  The students formed 11 teams and each team received US $200 in their Adwords account to conduct their marketing campaign to their client.  One of the teams is seen, to the right, showing their work with Ms. Nadira. The students are Jessica Salameh, Ramzy Zreineh Firas Nofal. The following clients’ website Beit Jala Pharmaceutical, Caritas Baby Hospital, Carsales.ps, Dar Al-Kalima College, EnglishPal, Kattan Training, Murad Investment Tourism Resort, Nativity Bells Hotel, PalDemocracy, Sima Café, Sharikat Gargour Al-Tijariyyah, got an average of 1,700 visitors during the 21 days of the campaign period. 

This unique experience is a win-win situation for all stakeholders allowing students to learn how to write a consultant report for clients on the outcomes of their online marketing campaigns. Clients, for their part, got free online advertisement for their websites and experienced the benefit of improving their website content and interface and even Google got the advantage of spreading the awareness of one of its services to this region.

Fig. 1 The ad of one of the teams whose client was Beit Jala Pharmaceutical.