Course Aims and Objectives
- To prepare participants for the ever-increasing number of career opportunities in the field of digital marketing and sales.
- Companies everywhere are looking for marketers with design flair, digital skills, creativity, website management & analytical ability, good writing skills, savvy on social media, customer & sales focused and passionate about creating excellent on-line experiences.
- Digital marketing trends are fully established and this course aims to equip learners with the knowledge and skills to pursue the future within a range of marketing and digital marketing contexts.
- Staff, business owners, managers from all sectors will gain valuable business development competence and the digital skills to further their organisation’s aims and/or profitability.
Course Content
Part 1: Marketing Practice 5N1400
The first part of the course covers essential marketing concepts and approaches and training in company analysis and marketing plans. Learning outcomes include:
- What is ‘marketing’, the marketing mix and the environmental factors which affect the marketing function.
- Consumer and organisational buying behaviour and the consumer decision-making process.
- Marketing information systems, market research and digital research processes.
- Knowing your customers, market segmentation, targeting and positioning.
- Product classification, product life-cycle and the importance of brands, image, packaging and labelling.
- Price and value, objectives and strategies in pricing and a variety of pricing approaches.
- ‘Place’ or distribution in marketing, physical factors, distribution channels and the use of intermediaries.
- Marketing communication process and the steps involved in developing a promotional programme.
- Digital marketing strategies of a range of companies, products and services – through examining case studies.
- Analyse company capability by conducting a situational analysis, SWOT and PEST analysis.
- Conduct a marketing analysis and set marketing objectives and digital marketing KPIs.
- Develop a marketing and promotional plan to include a digital marketing plan for a product or service.
Marketing Practice – Assessment & Coursework:
Assignment 1: Produce a Company/Situation Analysis for a Company or Product.
Assignment 2: Design a Marketing Plan for the Product or Company.
Exam: Marketing Theory & Concepts.
Part 2: Digital Marketing Skills
This part of the course aims to give participants the knowledge, skill and competence to develop and implement digital marketing strategies within a range of digital marketing business contexts. It will be delivered by a team of marketing, web and IT experts and will cover all aspects within current best practice and techniques for digital marketing. Participants will:
- Understand how the web is used as a marketing medium.
- Evaluate digital marketing strategies and explain their integration with traditional marketing.
- Carry out the analysis, development, implementation and control of digital marketing campaigns.
- Select appropriate e-marketing tools, e.g., social media marketing, blogs, rich media, email marketing, search engine optimization, online advertising and apply them to digital marketing campaigns.
- Understand the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of e-marketing tools.
- Plan all stages of a digital marketing campaign from inception to completion.
- Develop and implement a customised digital marketing campaign using a range of e-marketing tools.
- Monitor and analyse digital marketing campaigns using web analytics, social media monitoring and social bookmarking, to measure effectiveness against KPIs.
- Demonstrate client relationship management skills in establishing and managing business-to-business trading.
Digital Marketing Skills – Assessment & Coursework:
- Digital Marketing Campaign Portfolio: Participants will design and implement digital marketing campaign strategies and produce a portfolio of evidence to include:
- Planning & Strategy: Create a formal digital marketing plan for your company which would also enable effective use of a digital agency or external contractor if required. The plan would include:
- Situation Analysis – from Part 1.
- Action plan with clear objectives for the digital marketing plan, milestones, deliverables and resources.
- Strategies for monitoring, analysis and improvement based on performance of digital marketing activities.
- Website Maintenance: Create a basic website for a product or company, maintain and update it.
- Search Engine Optimisation: Set baseline and goals for SEO and measure activity against KPIs.
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC): Set and manage budgets for AdWords campaigns, measure and analyse effectiveness to effectively drive quality traffic to your website,.
- Digital Display Advertising: Create and implement effective digital display advertising campaign.
- Email Marketing: Construct and deliver an effective email marketing campaign to include data capture and subscriber segmentation, email design and content, email delivery, measurement and reporting.
- Social Media Marketing: Set up and prepare social media marketing initiatives including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Periscope and LinkedIn with defined goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for social media campaigns. Also using YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest.
- Engage with customers, react to current trends in social media and spot opportunities.
- Use analytics platforms, such as Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics to schedule, manage and report campaigns and social media activity, measure and optimize within the relevant privacy laws in this area.
- Mobile Marketing: create and deliver an effective mobile marketing campaign including mobile advertising and the range of technologies available to engage with consumers such as SMS, NFC, mobile sites, apps and Bluetooth.
- Analytics: set up accounts, measure, monitor and optimize your digital marketing activity by building an online reporting structure for your business.
- Demonstrate the importance of aligning business KPIs with your analytics goal configuration
- Use Google Analytics to develop a detailed profile of your target audience
- Assess the effectiveness of a website, i.e., technical performance, speed, levels of user engagement and conversion by tracking downloads, video views, purchases and registrations etc.
- Produce reports from analytics such as visitors, traffic, content, goals, e-Commerce, AdWords and event tracking.
- Planning & Strategy: Create a formal digital marketing plan for your company which would also enable effective use of a digital agency or external contractor if required. The plan would include:
Who is the course of interest to?
This course will be of interest to those who are passionate about becoming a digital sales and marketing professional. Ideally participants will have:
- A desire to progress a career in marketing, sales and business.
- An interest in the detailed aspects of website management and analytics.
- Design flair and interested in image editing and video editing.
- Savvy social media user
- Genuine interest in creating excellent on-line marketing, sales, purchasing experiences.
- Proficient written and verbal communication skills and editing ability.
- Basic ICT skills including web, social media, word processing and basic spreadsheets.
Entry Requirements
Level 4 or equivalent and/or have relevant work/life experience. Good computer skills. English language proficiency.