Where can you learn about the fundamentals of digital marketing? Here!

Each semester, this course kicks off the specialization by discussing how advances in information technology and digital media have already changed our understanding of marketing and will very likely continue to shape marketing in the future. As a core component of the SBWL, this course provides a basic framework for understanding digital marketing. We discuss the specific implications for brands when interacting and engaging with customers in digital environments and highlight fundamental differences between online and offline settings. Other topics covered include the marketing/technology-interface, specifics of the digital purchase funnel, customer-centricity and metrics for managing customer value, different digital marketing tools, and many more!

Do I really need this? The answer is YES, definitely!

Why? Because digital marketing and business analytics go hand in hand. This course provides you with the skills necessary to translate data on customer-firm interactions into information relevant for marketing decision making, to analyze customer responses obtained from A/B testing or business experiments, and to attribute the effectiveness of marketing interventions to a firm’s bottom-line performance. Didactically, we will focus on solving digital marketing cases using different marketing analytics tools. All of those cases come with data, sometimes observational, sometimes experimental, sometimes from surveys. You will learn how to deal with all of them in this class in order to answer managerially relevant questions we discussed in the digital marketing foundations course. 

You are free to choose from a wide range of electives offered by our institutes, or select one from the marketing department pool. Just make sure to pick one Course 3 and one Course 4 during the course of your studies.

A broad range of electives offers you the opportunity to dive deeper into specific topics and challenges related to the digital marketing environment. Not all elective courses are offered every semester, and some of them will flexibly cover contemporary issues with relevance for digital marketers. Typical course content includes, but is not limited to, current topics in mobile marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine advertising (SEA), Google Ads & Analytics, social media marketing, text analytics, machine learning in marketing, customer relationship management, and many more. Mix and match as you like! Just keep in mind that your selection will shape your profile as a potential employee and differentiate your career opportunities from your fellow students!

Now it’s time for action! 

This course is designed to offer you the opportunity to develop or strengthen your transferable skills. The aim here is for you to translate the skills you acquired as part of this and other specializations at WU into operational marketing plans. To this end, we will typically work together with industry partners that bring in their digital and data-driven marketing challenges for you to solve! Given what you learned in your other courses of the SBWL, you can now apply your knowledge and skills to real-world company problems. In order to benefit most from this course, the digital marketing lab will be offered in multiple parallel settings with smaller class sizes. Occasionally, the topics will differ across classes, such that digital marketing challenges may not only cover company projects but also applied research projects conducted by our faculty members. Overall, the digital marketing lab setting is designed to stimulate in-class discussion and empower you to work on business and/or applied research problems in a real-world environment. Don’t be shy, use this opportunity for networking as well!