Executive Summary
Campaign Overview: The campaigns held to help JA Biztown to improve the traffic on its website through various ads. The company initially used only its website and various social media sites for advertisement. However, with the new campaigns, it was expected that the views on the website would increase leading to the acquisition of more volunteers.
Key Results:
The campaigns have proven to be successful to some extent. The achieved CTR was 0.82% on average; and the CPC was $0.38 0n average. The campaigns for junior achievement awards performed better than other campaigns with the best in terms of click through rates and CPC.Junior achievement awards showed 2.22% in CPC followed by volunteers who had a CTR of 1.17 and lastly attracting sponsors’ campaign scored 0.74%
Scheduling: The campaigns were scheduled to run from March to May, but instead ended in mid-April due to the positive outcomes. The group made changes in the initial schedule as well as in various aspects of the campaign.
Conclusion: The project enabled the group to understand various aspects of group dynamics as well as those of ad creation.
Future Recommendations: Future ads and campaigns should be tuned to the needs of the population and should be specifically driven towards requesting for project sponsorship.
Industry Component
The campaigns conducted can be said to have been successful to a certain degree. However, as challenges never fail to occur, the campaigns were also characterized with several challenges mostly pertaining to expertise. The following sections highlight the post- campaign design phases and the results achieved.
Campaign Overview: The campaign for JA Biztown was design to take into consideration three major aspects of the organizational operations. Initially, the organization had been doing well in terms of innovation, which led to winning awards. However, being a not- for profit organization, financing the organizational projects became difficult as the volunteers and donors are not sufficient to cater for the organizational needs and programs. The organization thus seeks persons to volunteer to offer training to the students as well as to cater for the funds required within the organization’s center. The campaigns were categorized into three classes based on events and operations such as the JA bowl-A-thon, JA Finance Park and JA Biz town. Each of these operational activities is made to help the organization to collect funds from willing supporters.
The campaigns were planned to consume a total of about $15 per week for the three weeks of campaigns. 40% of this amount was allocated to JA Finance Park campaign. Another 40% was allocated to JA Biz Town campaign while the remaining 20% was allocated to the bowl-a-thon. The campaigns were aimed at achieving an increment of the total website visits to the organizational website, which it uses as the main mode of advertisement. To achieve this measurably, a target of 1500 – 3500 impressions on Adwords was assigned. Similarly, the group decided to work towards a CTR of 1.5% and a CPC of between $0.15 and $ 0.21. To evaluate whether the campaigns were successful, the statistics pertaining to different campaign ads were collected. An improvement of any of the factors in a favorable direction was considered an indication of progress towards the desired direction. The campaigns were then conducted between March and end of March 2017. Throughout the period, the campaigns metrics could be viewed via Google Adwords to observe the progress made through charts. This enabled the group to monitor the Adwords campaigns satisfactorily throughout the three weeks period in which the campaigns were conducted.
Evolution of the campaign: At the beginning, the group had planned to engage in a one-month campaign that would help to realize the objectives of the group in terms of increasing traffic to the JA Biztown website. The execution of the plans began exactly as had been laid down in the campaign plans, with budgets being confined to the limits set during planning. However, the execution came with the need to make a few changes in the plans. The greatest change that was made during the campaigns was the decision to go on with the campaigns for only three weeks instead of the initially agreed upon one month. The rationale behind this change was founded on two reasons. First, it was realized that there was no longer significant change in the ad metrics from the second week of the month in spite of increasing operational costs. The greatest impacts were felt between the April 6th and 12th April 2017. This is probably because the ads were not common and gained from referrals made by others. It was determined that the costs of maintaining the ads at that time were not favorable to the organization or to the advertising group anymore.
The second reason for the elimination of the second week of campaigns was that after noticing the declining positive outcomes of the campaigns, the group realized that the funds that could have been used during the third week of campaign could instead be channeled towards re-marketing the organization to new potential volunteers, parents and students. This was based on the finding that as much as the organization needed volunteers, there were many parents and students out there who were willing to be part of the system. The only way to achieve this would be to market the organization as a source of help for needy children first before proceeding with the campaigns for volunteers.
Location Targeting: Another change that was accomplished was in campaign locations targeting outlook. It was decided that a radius location-search strategy would be suitable for the campaign due to the confinement of most of the students within the localities of the JA Biztown centers. As such, volunteers would also be needed to come from the same locations in order to offer technical expertise where there was need for them to be present. All these changes affected the campaigns albeit to a small extent. For instance, the changes in the campaign duration reduced the cumulative reach that the campaigns could have achieved. This thus affected negatively the overall outcomes of the campaign about the goals that were previously set by the group.
Key results: The most impressing results were obtained during the second and third weeks of the campaign. Throughout the three weeks, the following table gives a description of the overall achievements in terms of various metrics.
| Campaign | Ad Impressions | CTR | Clicks | CPC |
| Attracting Sponsors | 3102 | 0.74% | 23 | $0.39 |
| Volunteer | 511 | 1.17% | 6 | $0.37 |
| Junior Achievement Awards | 45 | 2.22 % | 1 | $0.10 |
From these results, it is observable that the Junior Achievement Awards ads achieved the greatest outcome in terms of click through rates at 2.22% and also the best CPC at 0.1. Most of the outcomes achieved were before the changes initially mentioned. From these results, the success of the campaigns was eminent especially for Junior Achievement Award operations, which performed well in CTR as well as in terms of low CPC. This was an indication that the awards offered the best opportunity for the organization to get in touch with potential stakeholders such as volunteers through Adwords. It could also indicate that award ads were most suited to the objective they were intended to achieve in comparison to other ads.
Conclusion: The campaigns helped to achieve the goals that had been set by the group. Through the observed improvement in the impressions, CTR and CPC values, it can be said that the campaigns were successful to a large extent. The evaluation strategies put in place to follow up on progress were also satisfactory as they considered the factors that are outlined by various authors as the indicators of advertisement success. However, translation of the clicks and impressions created into actual volunteerism is the most challenging part of the campaigns as this is difficult to achieve since they arise from intrinsic values associated with the persons who interact with the ads.
Future Recommendations: Although the campaigns satisfactorily achieved the intended objectives, it is recommended that future campaigns should focus more on the needs of the targeted populations. For instance, it is probable that potential parents may be unlikely to offer sponsorship to the programs offered by the organization. This means that while volunteers may be reached, getting the right amount of funds for the resources required in the programs may still be a challenge. This calls for the need to focus more on campaigns that drive people towards sponsorship through appealing keywords rather than those that call for volunteers.
Learning Component
Learning Objectives and Outcomes: By participating in the challenge, the team aimed at learning how to create lasting impressions in the minds of viewers through ads. The belief that words can make or break deals was the motivation behind the participation, as the group believed that through mere words displayed as ads, it was possible to turn around the operations of the organization of choice. During the challenge, all team members therefore learnt the dynamics of ad creation as well as how to incorporate different aspects of art into ads that attracts not only viewership, but also the most underlying objective of connecting the viewer to the advertised products. The team expected to be capable of raising the ad views from 0 to a maximum of 10,000 impressions and subsequently raise the number of ad clicks. However, this was not achieved since the ad impressions were ended before the speculated time. The team members however learnt how to operate successfully as a team.
Group Dynamics: While working as a group, we managed to collaborate and successfully complete our tasks as stipulated in the project. In spite of our efforts to work together, there were challenges faced especially in the group formation stages of the project. For instance, leadership gaps, lack of consensus on various issues pertaining to the project and resistance to change among some of the group members were some of the challenges experienced. Through this, we realized the need to work together, build consensus around important concepts such as the campaign subject and the leadership structure of the group. Effective leadership and delegation of duties helped us to realize all the goals of the group. Moreover, a clearly outlined group objectives and plans helped to steer all members towards aligning their personal goals with the overall group objectives. In this way, the team was able to work together successfully.
Client Dynamics: In terms of working with the client, the group experienced a few challenges. While the client was not difficult to work with and was supportive enough, the major challenge faced was in putting together campaigns that would advocate for the organizational needs without marketing the organization as a product. The support from the organizational management and collaboration between the team members enabled idea sharing which led to the realization of the most optimum campaign strategy. Initially, we had expected the work to be strenuous due to the nature of the organization. This was however not the case due to the collaboration between participants.
Future Recommendations: Based on these experiences, it would be recommended that any plans for campaigns should only be made following the constitution of the campaign group as well as understanding of the organization. Otherwise, it is possible for a campaign to fail due to the time wasted in-group formation activities.