Digital Marketing Certificate Curriculum

The Digital Marketing for Executives Program introduces course participants to a variety of foundational concepts and technologies that are central to creating and launching an effective digital strategy. While the number and type of digital platforms continue to grow, students in this program will learn concepts regarding the evaluation of technology against organizational objectives.

​The program is presented as an eight-week, self-paced online course. Students participate in activities that use their existing organizational environments as the focus of the exercises, which equips them to apply concepts to their current projects. Quizzes reinforce the instruction. Additionally, online participants have access to resources that include video perspectives from professionals representing a range of organizational types, sizes, and industries. Because participant experience levels and industries vary significantly, this course is focused on concepts more than platform exploration.

During the eight-module Digital Marketing Certificate Program, you'll solve real-world challenges and use best practices used within top companies. DM experts guide you through every step of your journey. Build your toolset and develop your unique, personalized Digital Marketing Portfolio. Each of the program modules includes videos, references, assignments, discussions and hands on exercises.

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​Module 1

Digital Strategy
Discover elements that, when successfully pursued, can combine into a digital strategy that is aspirational, yet attainable. The module refers to some popular strategic frameworks.

• Blue Ocean Strategy: This framework challenges students to think beyond the common areas where competitors fight for market share and move toward spaces where little or no competition exists.
• SMART Goals: Thinking “big” is an excellent first step, but every strategy should also include goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
• Audience: Identifying primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences is critical to the creation of a strategy that reaches those most likely to engage with digital tactics.
• Message: Messages must be aligned to audiences to produce impact.
• Platform Selection: Platform selection should be one of the last elements of a digital strategy. When platforms are selected before a strategy is developed, it may not produce the results you expect.

Module 2

Why Client Insight is the Ultimate Guide for Digital Marketing
Client Experience drives a relevant digital marketing dialogue.it's important to first define why digital efforts matter to your customer engagement and why alignment between how you market the product and how your customer experiences the product is critical to client retention and revenue growth. 

• Identifying the Pillars of Client Experience (CX):  Find out how your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and a portfolio of marketing tactics all work together to create an unreplicatable bond and defensible hold on existing business.
• Meeting Customers Where They Are: Defining and iterating your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by vertical industry segmentation, company cultural values, contract requirements, and through buying behaviors will lead to increased client participation and mutual business benefit.
• Delving Into Account Based Marketing—Customer Insight To Drive Content Creation: Learn how to create client engagement and use the insight you gain to drive demand with targeted marketing. 
• The Promise of Brand & How To Join Forces with Customers in a Shared Mission: To become a trusted extension of your client’s business is an ongoing effort based on an empathetic and insightful approach that makes the client feel confident that the promises in your marketing messages are consistently delivered in the customer experience.

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Module 3 

Marketing ​Automation
Learn the fundamentals of marketing automation and the opportunities it presents to marketers who want to foster relationships with customers through digital interactions.

• Identifying the Business Need: Does marketing automation make sense for your organization? Find out through some high-level overviews of the technology and its benefits.
• Lead Generation & Building Your Marketing Funnel: When a customer engages with content, they are telling you they want more information. Through marketing automation, you can build interactions that will move them through your marketing funnel and into conversions.
• Working With Data: One of the benefits of marketing automation is access to significant amounts of data. How do you interpret and use data to inform other marketing decisions?
• Content Design: Gain best practices for content design and learn important opt- out requirements to ensure positive customer experiences.
• Workflows & Automation: See how to use marketing automation tools to deliver a clear path for users based on their choices.

Module 4

Content Marketing
Gain an understanding of the crucial elements needed to develop and deliver content marketing campaigns that can build reputation and engagement with customers and prospects.

• Audience and Voice: Learn the importance of defining your audience, including their concerns, feelings and other factors at different stages of the buying process.
• Content Framework: Discover elements of a campaign brief and the benefits of developing a brief prior to launching a content campaign.
• Creating Your Brand Story: Understand how content marketing helps you story tell not only about your products and services, but about your brand overall.
• Channel Strategies: Learn how to apply content in owned, earned, and paid channels or platforms.
• Tools of the Trade: The instructor shares her top tips, tricks, and resources to inspire content marketing campaigns.
• Measuring Success: Align measurement techniques to the traditional depths of the marketing funnel and discover why it is important to give content marketing initiatives time to take hold.

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Module 5

Social Media: Organic
Gain high-level views of opportunities for businesses to boost brand, product and service awareness through organic social media practices.

• Defining Brand Personas for Social Media: The importance of audience identification extends to social media. Know your audiences before you dive in.
• Understanding Social Media Platforms: See a baseline description of each platform’s current reach and popularity.
• Content Development and Posting Frequency: Gain recommendations on the type of content and the recommended posting frequencies for the most popular business platforms.
• Audience Interaction and Engagement: Learn ways to communicate with audiences using social media tools and see why established response times should be set for social media interactions.
• Leveraging Graphics, Video, and Live Streaming: See how the right visuals and motion can improve responses to organic posts.
• Organic Social Media Analytics, KPIs, and ROI: Learn how to measure effectiveness with organic social media posting.

​Module 6  

How to Drive Leads & Sales with Paid Search
Learn how paid search strategies are instituted and measured. Through this overview, you will explore the concept of paid search prior to investment.

• Drive Leads & Sales: Discover why an investment in paid search may be worth it for your organization. See how Google search pages are structured.
• Campaign Setup: See how to launch a campaign and the requirements for initialization.
• Keywords: Learn how keyword intent and match types can enhance or detract from campaign success.
• Creating the Ad: Find out how to use tools within Google to structure ads that are compelling, as well as calls to action that align with your objectives. See how the Google Quality Score affects performance.
• Landing Pages: Create landing pages that work.
• Measuring and Optimizing: Because paid search is an ongoing investment, see how to track performance and modify elements to improve results.

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Module 7

Data & Analytics
Unpack concepts regarding how to use data and analytics in alignment with business objectives and outcomes. This module removes some of the mystery around the data that many have but few understand how to decipher.

• Analytics Assumptions and Data Foundations: Dispel myths around analytics and see the data cornerstones on which businesses should focus.
• Apply Data to Business Outcomes and Information to Revenue: See how to interpret data in a way that is meaningful to decision- makers.
• Turn KPIs into Action: Move KPIs from intangibles into actions that can be tracked.
• Make Sense of Attribution: See differences between first, last, and linear attribution. View the effect that multiple touchpoints have on web conversions.
• Examine Behavioral Factors: See how raw data ignores human behavioral factors and how you can tie behavioral influences to online actions.

Module 8

Digital Transformation
Gain practical ways to bridge gaps between marketing and other functional areas to bring about digital transformation that benefits the entire organization.

• The Necessity of Planning: See how thorough planning must be completed before platforms or initiatives are launched to maximize buy-in.
• Build a Specification: Learn why it is important to build a spec before creating a Request for Proposal and how this step can help you gather quotes that are competitive and thorough.
• The Necessity of Process: See why process is a critical element regarding digital transformation and the long-tail effect of the institution of digital practices.
• The Necessity of Community: Discover how to build relationships that can bolster the success of your digital strategies through collaboration with other functional areas.

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Your Personal Digital Marketing Capstone Project

Illustrate your success at the George Washington University School of Business with a personalized, detailed action plan including your organization's goals and key performance indicators to develop an ROI strategy.