The Online Master's in Marketing

The Online Master’s in Marketing creates a new type of marketing leader by cultivating disparate skills in the analytic, strategic and creative facets of marketing.

Renaissance Marketers are not interested in business as usual.

They are adept at the digital and analytics-based skills that drive innovative decision-making. They are capable and fluent in the rapidly evolving technology that defines their profession, and they recognize its role as a catalyst for collaboration and insight.

They are modernizers in a dynamic world and are not bound to the mechanistic rhythms of conventional workflows. Embracing ambiguity and iteration, Renaissance Marketers understand that the best use of time is often nonlinear.

To Renaissance Marketers, no challenge is simply an obstacle to overcome.

They treat even the most difficult problems as opportunities for strategic creativity and inventive brand strategy. They approach their work informed by, but not beholden to, time-tested methods: They balance the wisdom to respect proven processes with the courage to adapt them—or even radically change them—to meet current challenges.

Renaissance Marketers look outward.

They understand that broad collaboration is key to identifying problems and creating solutions. As a result, they act with humility, engage with empathy, and create a culture of respect in which all are challenged to do their best work. They cultivate new ideas by inviting diverse perspectives, engaging in deep immersion, encouraging open debate and treating every idea as a hypothesis to be tested.

Renaissance Marketers make an impact on the problem at hand, the companies for which they work, the market they serve and the world they inhabit.

Are you ready to become a Renaissance Marketer?

At the core of our Online Master’s in Marketing program lies the Marketing Challenge: the defining, unifying project that you create, refine and build throughout your coursework. To complete it successfully, you must expand your thinking and adopt a broader, strategic view of marketing.

The challenge is an opportunity for you to embrace new ideas and new initiative, and to become a richer asset for your company.

Work starts right away in the foundational Renaissance Marketer course. You’ll start to develop your unique Marketing Challenge, establishing parameters for a project you’ll work on throughout the master's program.

At the beginning of each course, you’ll identify areas of your Marketing Challenge that need development, and the current class’s possible impact on its outcome. At the course’s end, you will update your challenge’s parameters, discuss the course’s impact on it and outline your next steps.

As you grow professionally through work on the Marketing Challenge, you’ll create value for your current business. The challenge gives you occasion to reach out to senior leaders in your company with whom you don’t interact on a daily basis. In meeting with them, you’ll have the chance to demonstrate strategic skill by addressing your challenge’s tactical requirements. You will become adept at collaboration and relationship-building through peer discussions.

William & Mary students have recently created and addressed these Marketing Challenges:

• With podcasting companies focusing predominantly on high-income audiences, how do we create compelling podcast content for an underserved population and connect it to a brand that serves that audience?
• How do we increase referrals from general veterinary practitioners to veterinary neurologists?
• How do we create and market a content creation company for Black men?

Study with faculty creators and innovators who have been influential in building nationally and internationally known companies and brands, including:

• American Express
• Arby's
• Best Buy
• Burger King
• Discover Financial
• Domino's Pizza
• Expedia
• Geico
• Kraft Foods
• MetLife
• Microsoft
• Mondelez (Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Velveeta)
• Morgan Stanley
• Old Navy
• Taco Bell
• Target
• Turkish Airlines
• Uber
• UPS
• Volkswagen
• Walmart
• Zillow

Curriculum

• Complete in as few as 15 months
• 1 free program prep course
• 1 on-campus residency
• 2 opportunities to start per year