IIDE Wins Big at GOMAC’21 – A Global Marketing Competition

We’re ecstatic to announce that IIDE’s PG students recently took part in an international marketing competition – Global Online Marketing Academic Challenge and we have secured not one, not two but the following three ranks for their all-inclusive marketing strategy & approach: 

• Rank #2 in the Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa Region
• Rank #2 out of 10 Indian Teams
• Rank #5 Globally

IIDE’s GOMAC team was led by our talented faculty member – Prathmesh Kavishwar who mentored our four students – Anand Shinde, Swetank Sharma, Bhavika Budhdeo, and Sakshi Shriwas in this challenge. 

Prathmesh expressed, “On behalf of all of us at IIDE, we’re extremely proud of our students and it was a great experience strategizing with them through all the steps of the campaign.”

GOMAC is a worldwide competition where college students with an extensive digital marketing background participate. 100+ colleges across the world take part each year. Teams compete against each other with real-life clients & budgets to create, run, optimize and report digital marketing campaigns.  

Their marketing efforts should result in boosting the actual sales of the company/brand chosen to showcase the effectiveness of their strategies. A minimum budget value was presented to the students which had to be complied with. 

The team worked with XP – Pens, a graphic tablet manufacturer & seller, and formed an integrated digital marketing strategy for them. Winning was not the sole goal for the team. Their main aim was to help XP Pens in achieving their objectives by applying the right skills and knowledge. And here’s how they managed to do it. 

A pre and post-campaign analysis were conducted to display their research, plan, execution, deviations, solutions, overall performance with statistics and recommendations. 

With the allotted budget at their disposal, they generated actual sales resulting in a 5x ROI. All credits to their mental agility. 

Owing to the pandemic, the teachers were facing quite a few problems when it came to online teaching. Taking advantage of this situation, the team decided to pitch the product as a solution to the teacher’s problem and targeted users in the lower funnel of the journey with an idea of lower spending but obtaining higher impact. 

Their strategy was based on a multi-channel approach instead of focusing on a single one. They strategically diversified their resources between search and social. Google display ads and search ads got them some amazing results because of their highly intent-driven nature. 

This multi-channel approach helped them stand out from the rest of the participants because they went beyond the suggestions of only search marketing. 

A significant trait that we witnessed in the participants was their calm and never-give-up attitude. The environment of the competition was highly business-simulated and there were many pressures and challenges along the way. Another hindrance was the virtual meetings. They had to meet each other as well as the clients and carry out the entire campaign virtually. 

But none of the students panicked at any given point in time. 

They kept their cool and always countered back with viable solutions & strategies. We’re extremely proud to see this sense of drive in our students because it is an important skill needed in the real corporate world. 

The campaign outcome achieved by the team was commendable. As mentioned earlier, they reported a 5x ROI. 

Nishit Shah, the Country Manager of XP Pens expressed: 

“The young minds from IIDE brought a fresh perspective to XP Pen’s digital marketing efforts. Right from research to execution to reporting of data they reflected great ownership and enthusiasm”

Here’s what the team had to say at the end of the competition:

“We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in the GOMAC challenge. It taught us the essential skills and knowledge required to enter the digital marketing industry. It was an amazing experience to work as a team. We combined our efforts and strengths to plan and effectively run the campaign.

We also tried to find the best solutions to meet our pre-campaign objectives and improve our techniques as we moved ahead in the campaign.”

Competitions are what motivates students to think out of the box, apply the skills they learned, and bring the best out of themselves. It helps unleash the underlying potential of students. 

Hence, IIDE students are encouraged and supported to participate in global competitions specializing in digital domains such as GOMAC. 

That’s not all. IIDE incorporates a student-oriented culture in various other ways like internships, super sessions, live projects, presentations & more. Check out this blog to read more about how IIDE makes its students industry-ready.