The Plato Society

As part of my Springboard Digital Marketing course in 2019, I participated in the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge. This gave me the opportunity to create and execute an online Google Ad campaign for a nonprofit with a monthly budget of $10,000.

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I was paired with The Plato Society, an educational non-profit dedicated to providing intellectually-curious adults with the opportunity to pursue learning and form a community with like-minded individuals. Plato Society members paid an annual fee to participate in 3 semesters worth of stimulating study discussion groups focused on a wide variety of topics. The ideal target audiences were adults over 50 years old and seniors, including the retired or semi-retired, who resided in Los Angeles and could attend these study discussion groups in person.

The overall goals of the marketing campaign were to:

  • -increase awareness and web traffic
  • -attract younger members (ie. anyone 50+ that may not be retired yet)
  • -encourage people to either sign up to become a member or sit in on a course to decide if the Plato Society was right for them.

I started off by running 3 main ad groups in Google:

The Plato Society Branded Campaign
- included Plato Society-related keywords. This ensured that we control the brand message and we owned the real estate when someone searched "Plato Society".
Retired/Elderly/Senior Campaign
- included keywords related to retirees, elderly and seniors.
Related Discussion Clubs Campaign
- included keywords of various clubs such as book club, socrates club or debate club that had a similar target market to the Plato Society.

Please note this page is still in progess and will be updated with full campaign results by mid-December 2021.