Digital Marketing

Core Modules

• Digital Marketing Strategy

  In this module, you will be introduced to the core concepts of digital marketing strategies and establish the fundamentals of developing these strategies, methods, and practices. Further, the module discusses the core frameworks and tools to assess companies’ digital marketing strategies at micro and macro levels, including activities and outcomes for consumers and corporations and when there are shifts in society

• Search and Metrics

  Students will learn how marketers are rising to the opportunity of big data and attempting to deliver the promise of truly 1-2-1 marketing.   They will explore attribution and its importance in effectively allocating spend as part of omnichannel marketing.  Students will develop an understanding of web analytics and social media engagement by considering the usefulness of a wide range of digital metrics across the engagement funnel.  Students will gain an understanding of how to evaluate a marketing campaign’s effectiveness (e.g. ROI, ROAS…) by carefully considering objectives, outcomes, KPI’s, targets, and metrics selection and how these might be used to create a management dashboard.  The module will also consider the current regulatory landscape for data compliance and study a range of current ethical issues.    Students will learn how digital has been causing a paradigm shift from outbound to inbound marketing.  With greater focus put on content creation and curation, the module will explore how organisations seek to compete for the attention of audiences through organic means (search engine optimisation) and paid or boosted means (e.g. Adwords).   The module will consider the dynamic nature of algorithms and wider ethical governance issues. Students will learn how brands can harness electronic word of mouth through affiliate marketing to amplify their messages and reach a wider audience.

• Design Thinking

  This module will use the principles of Design Thinking to consider how digital customer journeys are designed and delivered.  Students will learn how to develop salient consumer insights to be able to explain multi-touch point customer experiences.  Using the principles of agile design, students will learn how to develop emotionally engaging customer personas and use them to design extraordinary experiences.  The module will consider how develop effective email and social customer relationship management engagement. 

• Digital Brand Storytelling

  This course aims to provide students with an overview of the art and discipline of digital brand storytelling across social media and online platforms. Students will learn how to harness the power of storytelling to build brands across digital platforms thus forging relationships with consumers and driving revenue.

  The first part of the course will introduce students to the concept of storytelling as adopted by organizations to build relationships with the brand. Taking a historical view, students will recognize how the growth of social media and digital platforms has taken the role of digital storyteller to new heights, helping organizations to drive their brand value proposition.

  Students will learn how narratives and content creation as originating from consumers outweigh the impact of firm-oriented narratives. They will be introduced to brand personas and brand narratives, as strategic tools adopted by business leaders in storytelling and in so doing will also address the issue of authenticity. The course will examine the science behind stories, exploring a number of different tried and tested storytelling frameworks for digital story building, including the story (narrative) arc, and Gustav Freytag’s pyramid. Students will be expected to critically assess the pros and cons of each and to identify which frameworks are most effective in constructing stories, which maximize impact on consumer-brand relationships.

  Finally, taking a case study analysis approach, the course will unpack a series of real-world digital brand stories including for e.g. Burberry, Airbnb and Naked Wines. Focus will also be on the inspiring, higher purpose, social stories which have emerged from brands such as TOMS, Dove and Lifebuoy. Students will learn how to create storyboards and to undertake a story brand audit, critically examining how real brands have utilized multiple digital platforms to tell and sell their stories.

• Digital Consumer in Online Culture

  This module engages with numerous fields including cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, and sociology in order to ensure that digital marketing is explored and understood not exclusively in terms of its immediate practical implementation and commercial potential, but also in terms of broader cultural impacts. Accordingly, this module seeks to survey the broader cultures of online activities as they become raised in public debates, considering phenomena like ‘fake news’, online dating, the harassment of women in online discussions, surveillance, mood management, the manipulation of debate, affective mapping etc.

• Advertising in a Digital Era

  Advertising lies at the centre of the digital marketing movement. Promotion, order reconciliation, search and service communication can all be embedded within advertising on digital platforms. Digitisation is changing the world of advertising, yet, old media remain stubbornly important and the craft skills of the traditional advertising communication disciplines that cannot be replaced by algorithms. This course critically examines the implications of digitisation for advertising from the departure point of the advertising and media agencies who are adapting to the digital era. Advertising as we know it is not being swept away by digitisation, it is changing in form, content and strategy. This course shows students how the digitisation of advertising for marketing is an evolutionary process and it attempts to show the lines of continuity between old media marketing and advertising, and new.  

• Research Methods for Digital Marketing

  The aim of this module is to prepare you for work on your independent business project. The module introduces various elements involved when undertaking the project, namely: topic choice, report structure, formulating research questions, research design principles, primary and secondary data collection, sampling decisions, how to collect quantitative and qualitative data, and data analysis and interpretation. The module will run over two terms (Part 1: Quantitative methods will be covered in the Spring term; and Part 2: Qualitative methods will be covered in the Summer term).

• Contemporary Issues in Digital Marketing

  This module explores key issues, new trends, future opportunities and challenges in digital marketing. You will be introduced to contemporary developments and consider how they impact the digital world and marketing practice, and you will get an insight into latest technologies, industry developments and practices as well as latest research in digital marketing. The module will cover a range of contemporary issues, such as, amongst other emerging technologies’ impact on digital marketing (Martech, metaverse, artificial intelligence, consumer intelligence scouting and social listening...etc) global crisis, harnessing digital marketing for a better work and how gender, diversity, and equality impact digital marketing.

• Digital Marketing Consultancy

  The module will facilitate the development of key employability skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, communication skills and client service skills. You will develop a sound understanding of the role of the consultant and the process of consultancy in the digital marketing space and using action learning you will engage in authentic projects to understand the real world of digital marketing. The module will include a project where you will be required to carry out work required to achieve a particular outcome as prescribed by a client and you will be required to present findings back to them. The consultancy assignment itself will take one of many forms in accordance with the client’s requirements, this may be (but not limited to) providing information, providing a solution, conducting a diagnosis, providing recommendations, or assisting implementation.

• Individual Business Project

  In this capstone module you will be given a topic, drawn from current issues faced by businesses, and you will be expected to identify and select an organisational or industry context. You will expected to undertake a substantial review of secondary sources, comprising both academic journals and industry publications. Using relevant market research techniques, you will undertake a substantive and unique primary research study, providing a critical analysis with key insights. You will be asked to make justified and feasible managerial suggestions, prepare an executive summary, and deliver a presentation to communicate your findings.

• Academic Integrity

  This module will describe the key principles of academic integrity, focusing on university assignments. Plagiarism, collusion and commissioning will be described as activities that undermine academic integrity, and the possible consequences of engaging in such activities will be described. Activities, with feedback, will provide you with opportunities to reflect and develop your understanding of academic integrity principles.