The Online Master's in Marketing

A pre-program course designed to ensure all students begin the program with consistent knowledge of fundamentals. Online, but not instructor-led. Tutors available to all students. Consists of two modules: math for marketers and marketing principles.

This course can be waived by scoring 80 percent or higher on a marketing background assessment, by demonstrating three years of direct experience on a marketing team, or by possessing an undergraduate degree in marketing or an MBA.

Renaissance Marketer is a four-credit course and serves as the foundation for the Online Master’s in Marketing program. It will introduce students to a view of the traditional “4Ps of Marketing”—Product, Price, Promotion and Place—through a new lens: Renaissance Marketing. Renaissance Marketing acknowledges the new world of marketing: one that is more collaborative, dynamic and faster moving than ever before. In this environment, today’s successful marketers must apply the principles of the discipline in a different way. The course will also introduce students to a 5th “P”: Participation. With Participation, marketers engage consumers in the marketing process using technology, new forms of market research and advanced feedback techniques to co-create products, services, experiences and business models.

This course focuses on qualitative and quantitative analytics techniques designed to assess the current state of any marketing situation, such as how consumers are responding to current efforts, how their responses fit with expectations, and gauging the effect on purchase, repeat purchase and recommendation.

This course focuses on the use of research to plan and optimize future marketing efforts. Consumers expect personalization in exchange for a measure of loyalty. Customer analytics allow marketers to use customer behavior data to identify insights and help make key business decisions. Market segmentation is used along with predictive analytics to drive tactics such as product/service innovation, promotional activities such as direct marketing, distribution decisions like site selection, pricing tactics and customer relationship management.

The course will focus on an ability to innovate through several interrelated capabilities: a) the ability to identify unique insights into customers’ needs and motivations, b) the ability to identify and define the best opportunities for innovation given these insights, c) the ability to generate creative product and service solution concepts to exploit these opportunities, and d) the ability to continually learn from customer feedback and to iterate toward products and services that capture a disproportionate market share and/or that create new markets. Course activities will promote the development of each student’s innovation skills and mindset (e.g., design thinking), as well as equip each student to participate in and lead cross-functional innovation projects.

This course is focused on innovation tools and techniques appropriate to corporate strategy along with innovation management. Success factors in innovation management include: innovation strategy, innovation process, resources and organization, and innovation culture. Visual design, innovation techniques and cutting-edge tools are added to the traditional strategic toolbox to bring new insights into innovation management including business model canvas, value proposition canvas, strategy canvas, service blueprinting, corporate identity, branding and other visual marketing strategy tools.

Integrated campaign management entails the orchestration of paid, earned and owned media vehicles to create a marketing experience that increases consumer engagement, strengthens brand differentiation and demand, and moves consumers through the purchase funnel toward repeat purchase and brand advocacy. This course will approach integrated marketing communications through an experience-planning lens: teaching students to create integrated communications experiences that make strategic use of communications vehicles to drive brand and business growth.

This course explores the evolving world of digital content management and its role in integrated marketing campaigns. Students will examine how digital media tools and techniques can be leveraged to promote products and services as well as their personal brands. Upon completion of this course, students will have a working knowledge of the current digital marketing ecosystem, content marketing tactics and ethical practices.

The residency is designed:

• To help students better understand and assimilate into the culture of William & Mary and the Mason School of Business
• To teach content that is best learned in a face-to-face environment (e.g., experiential exercises)
• To allow students to make connections with faculty and each other along with an opportunity to create relationships that will endure beyond the end of the program

This course helps students with insights into the tenets of leadership—how to lead and motivate a team, how to handle crises and how to manage ethical considerations in modern marketing. The leadership content is designed to prepare students to practice the skills they learn in the program in a senior-level marketing position. It also serves to complete the study of the Marketing Challenge. Each student will prepare a presentation to give to the class on their Marketing Challenge.