Digital Marketing: Strategy and Tactics combines a high level strategic view of digital marketing and its challenges and opportunities, with a tactical approach using exercises and projects to learn and use the tools and techniques of digital marketers.  From the web to mobile, email to apps, social media and user generated content, the course will develop a strategic framework for planning and analyzing digital marketing strategies.  Students will leave the course with a working knowledge of the tools and processes for creating, managing, and executing digital marketing plans.

The course will cover the range of digital advertising and marketing channels as well as touch upon new and emerging channels and developments.  Discussion will focus on strategies and metrics for success, measurement and optimization techniques, and planning and goal setting.  Using a variety of practical tools and techniques in practical exercises and projects, students will gain an understanding of using digital channels to achieve their marketing goals.

Student teams will gain practical experience in usage of channels such as

Search – SEO and PPC - Optimization and Marketing

Display – Banners, Video and Beyond – Advanced topics

Email – Design and Deployment

Social – Networks, Media, and Content  - Inbound Marketing

Mobile and Emerging – Mobile Web, Apps and Ecosystems, Gaming, and beyond      

Any traditional business now sees the Internet as a vital part of a multi-channel approach to marketing to new customers and servicing the old.  This course will explore the Internet as a source of product information, public relations, marketing and advertising medium, a customer relationship management tool, and a customer service channel.   Internet marketing and issues such as:

• Social Media, Behavioral Targeting, and Privacy
• Tracking and accountability, (incl. click fraud, etc.)
• Channels of online marketing, from search, to email, to banner ads, to blogs, etc.
• Self-service and community based support, incl. open source and user generated content

Speakers and real-life group project companies will provide hands-on experience and real life feedback from practitioners. Past speakers have included founders and senior executives of Foursquare, Thrillist Media Group, Yodle, AppNexus, Hubspot, and Squarespace, and project companies have included NBC Universal, LVMH, and other large and small digital companies and agencies.

Students will have exercises and homework related to using the tools of digital marketing, from planning tools, to user generated content, to metrics and measurement.  Grading is based on the following:

• Take Home Final Exam (50%)
• Group Project (30%)
• Homework (Blogging and tools) (10%), and
• Class participation (10%).

Jeremy Kagan

Adjunct Professor of Business

Jeremy Kagan is a growth and innovation consultant, and advisor to corporations, startups and digital media companies. He is the former Managing Director of the Eugene Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School, where he oversaw the entrepreneurial curriculum, student programs, the Lang venture capital fund, and the Columbia Startup Lab. While there, he launched the Columbia Alumni Virtual Accelerator (CAVA), and the...

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