Hello,

This page outlines important information to help you make the most of the Challenge. Please read through it carefully as it contains key things you will need to know.

(If clicking on any links below does not download a file or open a webpage, just copy and paste the address into your browser)

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***Download your guides to the Google Online Marketing Challenge***

To help you, a selection of guides and a textbook,'Marketing and Advertising Using Google', for the Challenge follow.

If you have accessed these, please note we updated some of these early this year and we suggest you use the latest versions. If you haven't already accessed these, you may download these documents from the following links:

- The Student Guide - http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/student_guide.pdf
- The Textbook - http://www.google.com/events/business_educators/files/MarketingAndAdvertisingUsingGoogle.pdf

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***How to set up student accounts for the Google Online Marketing Challenge***

We're ready for your student teams to begin creating their AdWords accounts and request the US$200 allocated for their campaign. The process works like this:

1) Your students download the 'Guide to Setting Up Your AdWords Account' at http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/adwords_setup_guide.pdf (2mb file).
2) They should follow the steps outlined to open an AdWords account and generate their unique Customer ID (CID). The guide explains what they will need to do and uses screenshots to keep things simple.
3) Each student team will need to nominate a Team Captain and provide your professor with the Team Captain's name, Captain's email address and corresponding CID.
4) Your professor will enter your details along with each team captain's name, email address AND corresponding 10-digit CID number in order for us to process the account. Incomplete details cannot be processed. Your professor can add multiple teams by clicking 'add a team' and submitting them all together.
6) Once we receive your professor's request we will process the account details and allocate the US$200. When this is complete we will send both your professor and the team captains an email to confirm.

The process can take a while so we recommend you submit the team details to your professor as soon as possible.

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***IMPORTANT points about creating student accounts***

Please read these carefully. Failure to set up an account correctly will cause significant delays in a team's start date and can even risk disqualification. Pay close attention to the points below!

1) Teams MUST SET UP THEIR ACCOUNT IN US DOLLARS EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT LOCATED IN THE US. We can only apply $200 to US dollar accounts. Note: Only the currency must be US Dollars; teams can choose their own language settings for the account.
2) Teams must SELECT 'STANDARD EDITION' when setting up their account. The Challenge uses 'Standard Edition' accounts only. Do not choose 'Starter Edition'.
3) As we will credit accounts for the Challenge, DO NOT ENTER ANY PAYMENT INFORMATION. A notice in a team's account will appear asking them to submit payment information to activate the account. Please ignore this notice; students DO NOT ENTER ANY PAYMENT DETAILS.
4) When teams are editing campaigns or creating new campaigns, MAKE SURE TO PAUSE ALL CAMPAIGNS UNTIL THE START DATE FOR YOUR CLASS. Teams must wait until their nominated start date before launching their campaign. STARTING CAMPAIGNS EARLY COULD RISK DISQUALIFICATION AND WASTE BUDGET. Teams can learn how to can pause and resume ads at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6281

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***Uploading reports for the Google Online Marketing Challenge***

Please read carefully the following details.

In order to be eligible in the Challenge, all student teams MUST submit both the Pre-Campaign Strategy and Post-Campaign Summary reports. The form to upload reports is at https://services.google.com/inquiry/gomc_report. Please note the following:

- The Pre-Campaign Strategy should be submitted to professors and to Google before the teams start their campaigns.
- The Post-Campaign Summary should be submitted to professors and to Google within 3 weeks after their campaign has ended and must be with Google before the 12th of June 2009.
- The reports should be uploaded in one of the following formats - Word Document (.doc), PDF (.pdf) or Rich Text Format (.rtf)

Teams should refer to the student guide (http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/student_guide.pdf) for more detail on structuring their reports.

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***Start a blog about the Challenge experience!***

We want to see some great blogs that tell the world about your experiences during the Challenge. Starting a Challenge blog is easy – once teams have created a Google account, they can go to http://www.blogger.com and enter the same details they use to get into AdWords. Students should follow the steps to create a blog, then send us an email at onlinechallenge@google.com with the URL so we can check it out. We're looking for entertaining and informative blogs that share their thoughts on AdWords, their experiences with  businesses and how they are enjoying the Challenge. We might even link to the best ones via the Challenge website.

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***Request your $50 voucher to learn about AdWords***

We encourage you to try AdWords for yourself by sending an email to onlinechallenge@google.com requesting a voucher for $50 free online advertising. Simply create your own AdWords account and use the voucher code we will supply. Instructions to redeem your voucher, along with terms and conditions, will be emailed to you.


Thanks and good luck!
The Google Team