2014 GOMC Registration Instructions

Registration for the annual GOMC competition usually starts some time in February or March. The date varies from year to year, and there is no way to know for certain, other than waiting diligently for GOMC's official announcements on their official website.

FAQs

Q: Do students need to provide credit card information?
A: No, they should never have to provide credit card information

Q: If the student already had an AdWords campaign set up, can the campaign be migrated to the competition account?
A: Yes, see instructions for Step 7 below.

Q: How do I apply for the $250 promotion code?
A: You don't need to apply for it in 2014. The funding comes with the competition account. There is NOTHING you need to do to get funding other than getting access to your competition account.


Official instructions from GOMC
Student Registration & Crediting
Please always be sure to provide legitimate address and phone number details. If data is not legitimate, we will not be able to provide your team with the Competition Account & Credit, as a result this will delay the launch of your campaign.
If you are a member of a team which has requested access to the Competition Account & Credit more than 5 days ago, but haven't received it yet, please ask your team captain to contact us (http://goo.gl/BCJ9tM).

Google+ Pre-/Post-Campaign Reports length
It's been brought to our attention that our Guidelines specified length of both Google+ Reports (Pre-/Post-Campaign) as 2 pages. We would like to confirm that each of the Google+ Reports needs to be 4 pages long (GOMC T&C pt. 12) and this should include any tables and figures.  

IMPORTANT: All participating teams, who have already uploaded their Google+ Pre-/Post-Campaign reports shorter than 4 pages, will need to re-upload 4 page versions to be considered for Google+ Social Media Marketing category judging. Reports can be resubmitted by re-uploading them through the student dashboard. We apologize for the confusion and inconvenience it may have caused.

Contacting GOMC team
When contacting the GOMC team (onlinechallenge@google.com), please use the account that your student team is using to access the student dashboard. This will help us to quickly identify your account and ensure that we are talking to the account owner. If you ask your professor to contact us on your behalf, please provide him/her with your registration email address and the full name (captain), so we can easily identify your account and provide the necessary support.

Here is a list of major steps that may happen (based on what actually happened in 2014 - Note that the procedure varies from year to year):

1. Professor Registration. GOMC faculty registration begins (before the student registration does)
The faculty member fills out a short form on the website which asks for the official website listing of the faculty member on the university's website. The faculty member receives the following confirmation message:

Dear Professor,

This email is to confirm that we have received your registration for the 2013 Google Online Marketing Challenge.
Your registration will be reviewed and verified within the next 3-5 days and we will notify you once it has been approved.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

A few days later the faculty would receive an email message confirming that the faculty registration has been verified. The faculty member should notify the student of the email address the faculty member used for registration (which should be the faculty member's university address.)

The confirmation email message looks like this:

Congratulations, your registration for the 2014 Google Online Marketing  Challenge has been verified and approved! Here are the recommended next steps moving forward:

1. Familiarize yourself with the "Discover GOMC" 
(https://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/discover/) section on our site, where you will find the Guidelines, Terms & Conditions and more.

2. Add our Google+ Page 
(https://plus.google.com/+GoogleOnlineMarketingChallenge) to your circles. This will be our main communication channel for Challenge-related messaging, ranging from news/updates, Hangouts On Air, and alumni stories. 
Our Google+ Page will also enable you to network with other academics from different countries or regions.

3. Learn about the "Digital Marketing Course" 
(https://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/dmc/), our new learning/teaching resource. This fully pre-packaged, 8-modules program will help your students to set goals and shape their advertising strategies for the 2014 Challenge and beyond.

4. Start forming your student teams and work with them on identifying potential partner businesses. Please also make sure that students add the Google+ Page to their circles as well.

A few things to note:
- The core Challenge as well as Student Registration will start on March 5th.
- Your student teams will need to provide your email address used during your registration in order for them to register under your name. Each time they complete a registration you will receive a confirmation email with name of the team captain and a link that you must click on to verify the team.
- To start off, up to 10 teams can register under your name. If you will have more than 10 teams, please contact us at onlinechallenge@google.com to request a cap increase.

Thank you for your interest and registering for the Challenge. Welcome to  GOMC and good luck!

Kind Regards,
The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

2. Student Team Registration. GOMC Student registration usually begins a few days after faculty registration. The team captain will fill out an online registration form which will ask for the faculty member's email address used for faculty registration, and also the student team's current email address account (the OLD account). As soon as the student's registration is complete, the faculty member will receive the following message requesting for team verification:

Dear Professor,

We received a team registration request for the Google Online Marketing 
Challenge from:
[Team Captain Name]
[Team Gmail Address]

If this is a captain of one of your teams, please click on the following 
confirmation link to enable student to get access to their competition 
dashboard:
http://www.google.com/appserve/onlinechallenge/verify/PZDexkDdgKWXscPzD0Jx4JHtuLk%3D

Kind Regards,
The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

3. Student Team Verification. The faculty member should click on the link to approve the team. This would trigger the following email message to the team's email address (the OLD account):

Dear [Captain Name],
Your registration has been verified by your professor: [Professor Name].
You may now login to your dashboard: http://www.google.com/appserve/onlinechallenge/dashboard/
Please note that dashboard login will be different from Competition Account login. The latter will be provided to you upon uploading AdWords Pre-Campaign Report and requesting access to Competition Account and Credit.
Thanks,
The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

4. Student Access to the GOMC Dashboard. The dashboard shows step by step what the team needs to complete in order to start the campaign. The team can log into the dashboard using the OLD account. Most importantly, the team captain should upload the pre-campaign report through the dashboard as soon as possible. See a screenshot of the student team dashboard here (Press Crtl and the + key together to zoom in and see details). This will trigger review of the account and consequently approval for competition credit and account. This process will take 5-7 days.

5. Student Access to the GOMC Competition Account.  When the pre-campaign report is reviewed and approved, the team will be given access to the competition account and $250 credit. To access the COMPETITION account, please follow these steps:

Step 1: Log into OLD ACCOUNT using the email address you provided upon challenge registration: http://accounts.google.com

Check to see if you have received the approval letter. Please forward the approval email letter to the instructor if you have received it.

Step 2: Access the competition dashboard using your OLD email address account (same as Step 1)

https://www.google.com/appserve/onlinechallenge/dashboard

Step 3: Locate and write down your AdWords Customer ID, Competition Account login email address and password. This new set of credentials is your COMPETITION account information. They should appear under the following section:

AdWords Customer ID

-

Competition Account Login

-

CompetitIon Account Password

-

Step 4: Login AdWords using your new COMPETITION account from Step 3. (you may have to sign out of your personal account and then enter this new information)

https://adwords.google.com

Step 5: Verify your identity by entering your phone number and receive a verification text message. The first part of the forum defaults to Afghanistan (please click on this to select your country).  Enter in your verification code received by phone

Step 6: We previously understood that each student would be able to access using their own email address, after adding them in the account as a user. Google has blocked this feature for the competition so all users must enter the account with the Google supplied User email and password. Please share the account information with your team members. Please share them with the instructor if you would like to.

Step 7: You should copy your OLD AdWords account to this new COMPETITION account using the AdWords Editor. To do so, you should first download the AdWords Editor. Then follow instructions available here to "import and then export" the campaign settings from the OLD account to the COMPETITION account: https://support.google.com/adwords/editor/answer/38654?hl=en

Note that to complete the "export" step, you must "post changes" in order for the ad campaign settings to appear in the COMPETITION account.

Alternatively, you can simply recreate your ads in the COMPETITION account manually, if using the AdWords Editor turns out to be cumbersome.

Once you have your campaigns, ad groups, and ads all set up in this new AdWords account, then you are ready to get the campaign started.The $250 fund is already available in the COMPETITION account. Just log in and you'll see funding available (in the upper right corner of the screen.) There is NOTHING else you need to do to apply funding, coupon code, etc with the COMPETITION account, because it comes with funding available in it.