Features

The Planner is used by participants to familiarize themselves with the conditions present in the simulation and contains relevant information about the business as well as some basic research, planning and collaboration tools. The business case document is available here as well, and participants can consult the value of their marketing budget and its distribution across rounds.

The system will maintain a record of the progress made by each participant and will periodically propose improvements to assist with decision-making and strategy formulation.

The addition of objectives or tasks can facilitate the establishment of an initial set of decisions. It is possible to create individual marketing plans and sales estimates for each round of the simulation. To assist in forecasting, the Planner can be utilized in conjunction with data from the Keyword Research section of the Advertising Simulation to quantify relative interest in specific products or brands.

Participants can assign tasks to their teammates or themselves. They can monitor and update the status of each task, which is beneficial in team environments and when individuals need to track their decisions and the status of completion.

The website simulation is a mandatory component of the program, offering participants the chance to interact directly with operations related to their website, including setup, development, and measurement of various properties. Participants are encouraged to experiment with different approaches with the objective of enhancing the response rates from the virtual audience visiting their website.

Website operations include the following: market or audience targeting, the creation of commercial descriptive information, promotional copy, and call to actions; the design of websites and digital assets; and the collection of information about prospective customers, which is then organized into leads or contacts. By conducting experiments with various versions of a webpage and setting up multivariate tests, participants will have the opportunity to apply the best practices they have learned during their theoretical course.

The instructor may assign tasks to participants, such as the creation of website pages in each new round for specific markets. Typically, participants will work on enhancing their website sales, gather customer data, expand their market reach, and assess the efficacy of varying prices, promotions, and products during the simulation.

Product performance is monitored across the entire website, including different rounds and the various sources of traffic, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer experience.

The performance of each website page will be stored and segmented according to the main traffic acquisition channels. The following channels will be monitored: Organic, Direct, Referral + Affiliate, Ads, and Email.

The Search Engine Marketing dashboard enables the placement and management of paid advertisements on the simulated search engine, Baigoo.

The user interface is structured similarly to that of marketing solutions, offering both data visualization, such as charts and reports, as well as dynamic data tables that serve as both a decision-making and reporting interface.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is an umbrella term that encompasses internet marketing techniques designed to enhance website visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The following methods are available: Paid placement is also known as pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), and contextual advertising. Simbound enables students to engage in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and monitor their website’s presence in search engine results (SEO).

The Ads dashboard features include:

- Conduct research by searching across multiple data points for keywords. Monthly Search Trends, Cost Per Click, Competition from other advertisers

- Create and manage a Search Engine Marketing Campaign The dashboard allows users to select keywords, allocate budgets, set bids, target audiences, write ad copy, and test multiple versions of the ad copy (A/B testing).

It also offers filtering options based on metrics such as clicks, impressions, CTR, conversions, and different rounds and markets and the option to export data for further analysis and reporting.

Please be advised that to explore these features, you must log in as one of the students in your courses in case you do not hold a student type of account. Further details regarding each simulation section can be found in the written participant guide.

The Simulation allows participants to select from a variety of email templates fit for various objectives (e.g. announcing the opening of their online stores or a time sensitive promotion) . Participants may then select a number of virtual contacts to whom the message will be sent. The implementation of an optional A/B test and the use of an optional price discount can enhance the final number of opens and conversions.

The section features a series of data and charts in the dashboard that will provide an overview of the main performance indicators. The number of opens, clicks, conversions, and unsubscribes across the rounds are tracked and presented.

The social media marketing simulation allows the management of both organic and paid social media marketing types and allows the carrying out of various common marketing actions such as boosting organic posts for more visibility, choosing various campaign performance goals (e.g. number of conversions, value of conversions, leads) and also presents audience segment data and campaign results using data visualization and segmentation tools.

The online brand community simulation enables participants to establish one or multiple virtual spaces for their virtual audience. A variety of community types are available for selection upon establishment, including support, advocate, social (network), contest, marketplace, and insight. The specific virtual resources required to set up each community can be increased with the recruitment of new community managers from within the course which can help recruit new members and improve engagement. Students can collaborate in the management of a community even if they are not part of the same team inside of the same virtual company.

Affiliate marketing allows businesses to expand their reach and improve their marketing results by enabling them to create and manage their unique affiliate network made up of commercial partners which can help extend the company value proposal beyond the organic and paid channels. Network members are then compensated on their performance through the payment of commissions based on the sales generated by each partner.

Simbound is an engaging, competitive game where participants strive to outperform their peers. After each round, players can access the Results and Rerports section to view their results and rankings. This section also provides insights into total traffic, comparative analysis, and teams' market share for each simulation, which can inform future strategy.

Instructors and participants can see the latest changes to the simulation here.

Instructors are able to view the amount of work completed by each student and assign a grade accordingly.

📝 Next Read: How to Setup the Simulation for your course