About the course
How do you know what consumers really want? How do you know which consumers to go after and how to get them interested in your products and services? You need to develop an effective marketing strategy.
Marketing is a core business process that helps companies develop strong relationships with consumers – it is used to identify the right consumers, anticipate their wants and needs and ultimately create value for them and for your organization. Realizing the essential function that marketing plays in any company will help you better understand the relationship that companies need to build with their customers, how they do it, and the impact these activities can have on a company’s bottom line.
This course is aimed at anyone looking to either gain an insight into marketing or build some skills in marketing. It is geared mainly toward people with no previous experience in marketing. Among other things, this course provides key insight on marketing as a key business process, its link to overall corporate strategy and how online and social media marketing is changing the face of marketing by bringing companies and customers closer together than ever before through new technologies. The importance of marketing planning is also discussed including careful consideration of key concepts such as segmentation, targeting and positioning. This course will also address the traditional Marketing Mix, its evolution and its critical role in marketing planning and execution.
The course is broken down into 6 parts: 1. Introduction to Marketing; 2. Planning and People; 3. Product and Price; 4. Place; 5. Promotion; and 6. Marketing and Ethics. Each part contains a series of separate lessons and areas. Continue reading below to find out what these areas cover.
What’s in the course?
Introduction to Marketing
- The Marketing Function in Organisations: identify the key objectives of the marketing function in organisations
- Social Media and Online Marketing: identify the key characteristics of the Internet as a marketplace
- Targeting, and Positioning: match each core market identification activity with its description
- The Marketing Mix: identify the elements of the marketing mix; identify elements of the modern marketing mix
Planning and People
- Strategic and Tactical Marketing Plans: recognise examples of marketing goals and types of marketing plans in a scenario; identify the advantages of marketing planning
- Planning: Research and Budgeting: recognise characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research; identify examples of typical marketing costs that have to be budgeted for during the creation of a marketing plan
- Planning: Development, Execution, and Evaluation: recognise guidelines on how to develop and execute a marketing plan; identify how to evaluate your marketing plan
- People, Employee Engagement, and Internal Branding: recognise how companies can help people to act as a key part of the marketing mix
Product and Price
- Understanding Products and Product Offering: recognise examples of several components of a product offering; identify the typical responsibilities of marketing in the context of the development of new products
- Product Life Cycle and the Marketing Mix: make some marketing mix related decisions at several phases of the product lifecycle in a scenario
- Pricing Objectives, Strategies, and Promotions: classify pricing objectives as being primarily financial or marketing objectives; recognise examples demonstrating the use of several pricing strategies; recognise examples demonstrating the use of several types of promotions
Place
- Understanding Distribution Channels: identify the key considerations in selecting appropriate distribution channels for your products; identify the key characteristics of push and pull distribution
- Distribution: match distribution strategies and strategic distribution relationship systems with their description; identify guidelines for selecting and managing intermediaries
- Online Distribution: identify the key characteristics of the Internet as a distribution channel; identify the benefits to companies of using online distribution
Promotion
- Introduction to Marketing Promotion: sequence the promotional communications goals; match promotional techniques with their description
Media and Marketing Campaigns: match characteristics of marketing communication campaigns to either traditional or online media
Evaluating Marketing Campaigns: sequence the process to calculate Return on Investment (ROI) on marketing campaigns; recognise the advantages of calculating ROI on marketing campaigns
Marketing and Ethics
- Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in Marketing: identify types of societal expectations that corporations should address along with traditional organisational concerns
- Traditional Areas of Concern in Marketing Ethics: identify examples of deceptive, offensive, and objectionable marketing practices
- Creating an Ethical Marketing Environment: match each example with the stage of ethical development it represents; identify guidelines for creating an ethical marketing environment
- E-marketing Ethics and the Marketing Mix: classify examples of various e-marketing ethical issues according to the variable of the marketing mix they affect
How is each course taught?
All courses are online and self-paced, meaning you do it in your own home, in your own time, at your own pace. Each lesson is pre-recorded allowing you to pause, fast-forward, skip sections, or go back to another lesson if you need to. The lessons are multi-media based, which means video and audio are used to teach the lessons. Most lessons are also interactive, prompting the learner to participate. This involves answering on-screen questions, and participating in tasks.
Example of Part 1: Introduction to Marketing
How long will it take me to complete each course?
As mentioned above, our courses are self-paced. Some people finish their course faster than others. The total running time for the combined courses however is 6 hours.
What do I need?
All you need is an internet connection and a PC. While most of the lessons work on MACs, we recommend you use a PC for the best performance. Certain parts of the course may not display properly on older MACs. Once you’ve logged into your course, you may be prompted to down certain free plugins such as Java. Just follow the on-screen prompts.
