Setup

Simbound offers several licensing options for participants. As the instructor you will be prompted to select the licensing method fit for each new course you create. Each participant who logs in and uses the simulation will need their own user license. A common licensing method is to purchase licenses in bulk for all participants before the course starts. The user license is valid for one run of the simulation and for one participant only. Licenses can be purchased either by the instructor in advance or directly by the participant at the time of enrolment. The system will allow participants to continue enrolling even if the instructor's license balance reaches 0 or a negative number. The instructor will be asked to confirm that he or she will pay for any outstanding licenses used in this way. Participants will not see how many licenses the instructor has remaining nor will they see the price at which they purchased them.

A newer way to license a course is to use credits. When this feature is enabled, the participant will use 1 (one) credit for most actions or decisions they will make. Running the simulation will use 3 credits. The instructor can also choose to assign a starting amount of credits to each new participant enrolled in to the credit-enabled course. This will consume credits from the instructor account. The participant has the option to purchase additional credits when their initial allocation of credits runs out. You can monitor how licenses and credits are being used by going to the Profile section of the Instructor Account and then to the 'Licenses and Credits' log.

Please Note: A license will be restored only if the participant is removed from the course before the first round deadline of the course. You can check for multiple enrollments of the same participant and choose to keep one of the multiple accounts. As a result of this action, the licences that were initially used due to multiple enrolments of the same individual will be immediately restored to your account.

A course is a simulation instance that has the following main components: a name, a simulation scenario, a licensing method, a timetable and enrolled participants. Each new course is assigned a unique code or id by the system which also acts as the enrollment link. The code looks something similar to this: U1P23 (not a functional code).

In order to create your first course, click on the: Create Your First Course button placed on the left side of your dashboard.

This will launch the Course Builder utility, a tool designed to guide you through the necessary steps to configure the course; you will need to enter various information about the course, the course participants, select a schedule, and at the end you will be provided with instructions that will allow the participants to enroll in the course. The course requires general information such as the name of the course, the currency of the simulation economy, and the simulation scenario.

At this stage, the instructor decides whether or not to include bonuses by enabling this option. Bonuses reward students or teams with additional advertising budget when they meet pre-defined criteria, such as making a series of decisions or achieving certain results. For example, in the first round of the simulation, to receive the bonus, the student or team must add at least 20 keywords to an active ad campaign.

When you set up Participants, you can choose to have teams of participants or have participants play individually. Participants can progress individually at their own pace if you choose the cost-per-use licensing option. Without a team, participants complete each simulation round at the click of a button once they have made all their decisions. Other licensing options allow the instructor to issue licenses or credits to each new course participant. These are deducted from the instructor's account balance.

The instructor can also have the system prompt each participant to pay for their own individual user license or additional credits. The system provides several payment methods for this purpose. These include online payment by credit card,, Stripe, or directly to a bank account.

The Schedule (Calendar) step allows you to set up the schedule for the course and configure the number of practice rounds followed by real rounds with their corresponding deadlines. A practice round allows students to make decisions and gain an understanding of the results the simulation will produce in real rounds. Most decisions made during a practice round are not erased when the practice round is completed. This allows existing decisions to be carried over into the real rounds.

If your course is set up using the cost-per-use licensing method, you will not have the option to enable practice rounds. Instead, learners will be able to restart a simulation round as needed. There is a maximum of 2 Restarts which you enable for the entire simulation. This means that learners can go back to the beginning of a completed round to make new decisions and try to improve their results. Any decisions a student makes during the round are not erased when the round is restarted.

You can also choose to let participants preview results for a set number of rounds. The preview shows estimated results during a simulation round. Participants can view the preview to decide if they need to make adjustments to the simulation.

Further you can customize the course structure by deciding which simulations to start with. You can set the release of each simulation to coincide with a lecture. (e.g. weekly).

The final step is to confirm all of the course settings you have previously entered. Once the new course has been created, a unique enrollment web address (URL) is generated. Distribute this enrollment link to your students so that they can log in to the Simbound website and enroll in your course.

Courses can be cloned. This can save time and ensure that the exact same settings are used consistently across multiple courses. Starting from an existing course, you can choose to create an exact copy of it with the same settings: scenario, currency, availability of simulation sections, licensing method, number of teams, practice rounds, round preview and restart options, objectives, and test questions (if any). Existing participants are not transferred to the new cloned course.

When a course is no longer needed, it should be archived. This removes it from the main dashboard and erases it from the system over time.

Simbound lets you organize your course in different ways. You can change all course settings, except for the scenario and cost per use licensing method. Plan your course in advance to avoid making too many changes once it starts.

Here is what to consider when creating a course:

1. The amount of time required for initial instruction of participants in the simulation activity.

Simbound is a challenging learning experience. Give participants time to enroll and prepare before the simulation begins. Tell them what the simulation involves. Send them the business case document and the weekly guides a few days before the first round. You can also arrange an initial meeting to discuss the system.

Recommendations:

- 1-2 days preparation time for beginners
- 1-2 hours preparation time for professionals

1. The expected number of participants who will sign up for the course.

If you intend to have teams in your course and you already know the number of participants, you can plan the course structure by selecting the appropriate number of teams and the size of each team. Additionally, you may choose to assign individual participants to teams prior to distributing enrollment links. This can be accomplished via a spreadsheet or a list. If you elect to have participants utilize the simulation on an individual basis (without teams), the creation of teams is not required. Please select the cost-per-use licensing option for this.

If you're enrolling more than 100 people in your course, invite a co-instructor to help manage participants and answer questions. Make sure your Instructor account has enough licenses before sharing the enrollment link. You can also break down the course group into two units.

Recommendations:

- 2 to 4 beginners per team
- 1 to 3 professionals per team

1. The Schedule for the simulation

Choose how long the course will be and how long between rounds. The best time depends on things like the starting skill level, whether the participants are on a team or not, how much time is available, and how much practice is included. Allow at least one hour between each simulation round. This time is for the participant teams to interpret results and make new decisions.

Recommendations:

- Less experienced participants should play at least 4 rounds with an additional one or two practice rounds.

- Professionals can play 2-6 rounds (10 being the maximum)

Once the course is created, you can invite people to enroll. Send them the URL with the course code from the last step of creating the course. You can also copy the enrollment link from the course settings. Click "Invite Participants" on the Participants tab to send the link to multiple people at once.

Once everyone is enrolled, start the simulation. The system provides ready-made scenarios with data and instructions for running a simulation. The system tracks participant engagement and decisions and generates results and reports automatically at set times.

For courses where participants use credits and can progress on their own, results are shown when requested. Round deadlines can be added to credit-based courses as well. To access course settings, click on the course name on your dashboard.

From here you can view or change the general settings of a course. These are: Course Name, Course Code, Course Currency, Preview Results option, Payment Methods, Show/Hide Simulation Sections, Adjust Traffic and Enable/Disable Bonuses. You can invite other instructors to help you manage your course from there. You can send an email to enrolled participants 24 hours after they join the course to remind them to start the simulation.

The first time a participant logs in, they will see a short tutorial on each page of the simulation. This will stop the user from doing anything else on that page until they've finished the tutorial.

The Participants section lets you manage all enrolled people and their teams. You can invite participants to the course by email and remove accounts. Send messages to participants or teams here. This shows the number of decisions each person or team makes in the simulation.

You can create three test accounts for each deadline-based course. This option is not available on a credit-based course, but you can move participants from one deadline-based course to a credit-based one. Click a name to move a participant to another team or course. You can remove test accounts at any time.

You can log in as each participant to access their account. Anything you do on a participant account will be saved, so be careful.

Please note that teams can be added or removed from the course at any time. Once a team or participant has been deleted, it cannot be undone.

Each course includes optional activities to help participants engage with the simulation. Some activities can be customized. You can monitor participants by:

Objectives

You can add new objectives for each round of the simulation. Add objectives from the calendar. Objectives help instructors guide participants and measure their engagement with the course. You can change or remove objectives at any time. Don't change or remove an objective once the course has started.

Bonuses

This feature rewards participants with extra advertising budget based on their decisions and results. Bonuses encourage participants to make certain decisions and improve their results. You can turn them on or off from the course settings. Bonuses make the simulation more competitive and reward good performance.

Tests

Test questions help you measure understanding and learning progress among participants. Tests are added from the calendar. A test has one or more questions on a topic. Tests can measure ad campaign performance or product sales. Each question has four answers, one of which is correct. If there is more than one correct answer, selecting one will validate the question. Each student or team gets a different set of answer choices. The system puts together the answer options from all the decisions and results of each person or team. Participants cannot copy answers from each other. They must look at their own decisions and results to find the correct answer.

The results section shows how well the participants are doing. You can view different data on decisions, results, and more from each simulation section. Web, Advertising, Email, and Community results are shown for each team over one or more rounds. Read comments from participants in each round. You can also see the results of the optional Simbound quiz.

More reports are on this page. The Team Focus Report is useful and can be issued for teams and individuals. It includes information on the team's performance, changes in results, position in the rankings, and detailed information on operations and decision-making. You can download a snapshot of the ad simulation decisions and results for each round. This report is produced at the end of each round. It explains how the ad results were obtained. There is also a similar ads decisions report. This lists all of the current ad decisions. It is useful if you want to assess how a team has progressed. More reports are available. These include the results and decisions for each individual participant. There is also a report containing all of the results for all of the teams. Finally, there is a PDF report.

Use the Calendar page to manage your simulation courses. You can add, remove, restart, and change future dates for rounds. You can also add new objectives and tests for each round. If you delete a round, all of its results will be deleted too. Deleting a round also deletes any emails sent by participants during that round. You can still access websites, ad campaigns, and communities created by participants even after a round is deleted.

You can share files and other learning resources with participants in different formats. JPEG, PNG, GIF, PDF, Word, PowerPoint

As an instructor, you can view reports on how participants did in the simulation. The reports are in the "Results" section. You can also download the results in a spreadsheet.

The indicators demonstrate that participants are engaged with the novel and intricate advertising management system. The Simbound system gathers data that can be utilized for long-term studies.

The number of decisions made represents the frequency with which a participant has created or deleted a database entry. This could entail the addition of a new ad campaign, the deletion of a keyword, or the creation of a new ad for split testing.

Community activity - Number of posts on Simbound communities.

Metrics measure paid search campaign planning and execution. These basic metrics are relevant when talking about advertiser performance because they encompass many processes and tactics. We'll explain what each metric is about and how it's calculated.

Impressions: The number of times an ad is shown. Helps build brand awareness. Many other metrics depend on the number of impressions a campaign gets.

Not all impressions are equal in terms of brand awareness. Top fold (ad positions 1 to 5) are more visible. When paid ads appear near the organic search results, it increases brand awareness. This improves the overall click-through rate.

Impressions decide: Brand awareness, click-through rates, organic search results.

Clicks: A reliable indicator of purchase intent, this metric can help identify potential issues at the bottom of the purchase funnel. If there are a high number of clicks but a low conversion rate, it's likely that the content on the landing page or the pricing strategy for the products may need adjustment. In such cases, testing with different types of content can be a valuable approach.

Clicks depend on your budget, how many times your ad is shown, and where it is shown. Ads in the top position get more clicks.

Clicks decide: purchase intent indicators but also other indices such as CTR and conversion ratio.

Conversions: campaign objectives that have been successfully achieved by the advertiser. Online ads aim to get conversions. Conversions can be customers, demo sign-ups, or newsletter subscribers.

Setting conversion goals helps you measure and improve your campaigns and lower your advertising costs. A successful campaign costs less than an identical campaign with fewer conversions. Conversions are customer engagements used by search engines to compare performance.

Factors that influence conversions: the available budget, the quality of the advertisements that are targeted, and the elements at the bottom of the conversion funnel, such as the landing pages.

Determined by conversions: The Quality Score, which is a metric used to assess the performance of advertisers and influence the cost of advertising, is contingent upon the installation of conversion tracking. In Simbound, it is presumed that this tracking is already in place. Additionally, the following metrics are taken into consideration: Campaign Cost, Campaign Reach, and ROAS (if goals can be assigned a specific value).

Online advertising channels are easily tracked and measured, allowing for immediate financial results. The metrics below demonstrate the effectiveness of learning programs in meeting business objectives.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)  Cost per acquisition is how much it costs to get a new customer. Not all visitors complete the desired action on the landing page. This means that most of the money spent on ads is wasted. This increases the cost of acquisition because the cost of clicks from all the visitors who didn't complete the intended action has to be included when calculating the cost of a new acquisition.

CPA helps compare different advertising media and assess marketing performance. Instructors can compare teams' CPA values with Simbound to assess performance.

CPA is based on: CPC, conversion value, conversion rate.

CPA determines the most effective strategies for optimization, conducting audits of marketing channels, and comparing their relative effectiveness.

The return on advertising spend (or return on marketing investment) is a widely used metric, but it can be misleading for several reasons. In its most fundamental sense, the metric gauges the value yielded by marketing initiatives in comparison to the financial resources allocated to these initiatives (value/cost). If the ratio is greater than 1, the marketing campaign is deemed to have been successful in delivering quantifiable business value. A ratio below 1 indicates that the campaign was unsuccessful according to this criterion. In Simbound, the return on advertising spend (ROAS) is calculated by comparing the sales margin to the total marketing budget spent, with the exclusion of any long-term value factor.

What determines ROAS: The efficiency of the ad campaign settings, costs and customer response, as well as fluctuating demand and economic conditions.

ROAS determines: The perception of marketing results which subsequently gives rise to further action or analysis.