A robust digital marketing strategy is crucial to connecting with your target audience and positioning your company for long-term success.
“[Digital marketing] technologies completely changed the way consumers connect with brands, how they search for information, and how they buy products,” says Harvard Business School Professor Sunil Gupta, who teaches the HBS Online course Digital Marketing Strategy. “They’re the reason digital marketing has become an integral and important part of every company.”
With impactful trends like the use of generative artificial intelligence and short-form video, an online marketing course can provide a foundation for leading in the digital age.
What Is HBS Online’s Digital Marketing Strategy Certificate Course?
Whether you’re a marketing or non-marketing professional, Digital Marketing Strategy can equip you with the tools to position products and services effectively, engage with customers, and measure campaigns’ success.
Learn more about Digital Marketing Strategy in the course trailer:
This certificate course is six weeks long and features modules in:
- Marketing in the Digital Age: Explore digital technologies and strategies to compete with emerging brands.
- Crafting a Digital Marketing Plan: Understand and establish your digital marketing plan's strategic components.
- Acquiring Customers: In this two-part module, learn the differences between paid, owned, and earned media and how to incorporate them into your marketing plan.
- Engaging Customers: Explain the importance of customer retention and explore strategies to increase engagement.
- Allocating Budget and Measuring Success: Discover how to measure success and create a digital marketing budget.
If you’re ready to become a more strategic marketer, here’s what to expect from Digital Marketing Strategy.
4 Features of HBS Online’s Digital Marketing Course
1. Real-World Case Studies
Learning business concepts through real-world examples is a pillar of the HBS Online experience. Like all HBS Online courses, Digital Marketing Strategy implements the case method, in which you assume the perspective of a business expert facing a challenge and consider how to solve it alongside peers.
“How do you go into an ambiguous situation and get to the bottom of it?” says HBS Professor Jan Rivkin, former senior associate dean and chair of HBS's MBA program, in a video about the case method. “That skill—the skill of figuring out a course of inquiry to choose a course of action—that skill is as relevant today as it was in 1921.”
Digital Marketing Strategy features cases on leading brands, such as:
- e.l.f. Cosmetics
- Mastercard
- OOFOS
- THE YES
- L’Oréal
- Adobe
Through their stories, you can apply your learning to real-world digital marketing examples.
For instance, the course features a simulation exercise centered on software company Adobe. In it, you’re presented with two years’ worth of data and executive insights. You’re then tasked with allocating the company’s digital marketing budget across five customer journey stages to maximize its revenue from yearly product subscriptions.
By completing interactive learning exercises like this, you can gain practical knowledge and leverage peers’ perspectives to improve your decision-making.
Related: 5 Ways Real-World Learning Can Boost Your Career
2. Global Community
One way to bolster your learning experience and network with peers before, during, and after Digital Marketing Strategy is by joining the HBS Online Community.
With over 30 Chapters to join and explore, the Community provides a space to:
- Give and receive support
- Expose yourself to diverse perspectives
- Cultivate lifelong learning
In addition to virtual and in-person events, you can expand your network through the Community’s discussion boards and messaging features.
Learn more about the HBS Online Community in the video below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more content!
According to a 2023 City Square Associates survey of learners who took an HBS Online course and one from a competitor:
- 74 percent said HBS Online was better at making learners feel like part of a global network or business community
- 67 percent said the ability to network with classmates during and after their course was better than other online business courses
- 63 percent said learning from classmates was better at HBS Online
By participating in the HBS Online Community, you can gain exposure to diverse business strategies, consumer behaviors, and cultural nuances to understand how demographics and regions affect your digital marketing plan.
Related: 9 Benefits of the HBS Online Community
3. Skills Development
To keep up with evolving customer needs, focus on developing digital marketing skills such as:
- Search engine marketing
- Data analysis
- Brand development
Beyond acquiring those skills, Digital Marketing Strategy helps you consider how to use them to achieve real-world outcomes.
"You’ll develop practical digital marketing skills and frameworks you can immediately apply to your role and organization—making you more marketable and helping advance your career," Gupta says about the course.
For example, data analysis is essential to formulating your digital marketing strategy. Channels such as your company’s website, social media platforms, and email campaigns offer several methods for collecting customers’ information. Yet, without defined metrics or key performance indicators, that data can lack utility.
Digital Marketing Strategy dives deep into how to use metrics to make data-driven decisions throughout the marketing funnel’s three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.
With data becoming the backbone of modern marketing, honing your digital marketing skills is more crucial than ever.
4. Faculty and Expert Practitioner Insights
A hallmark of the HBS Online experience is learning from distinguished faculty. In Digital Marketing Strategy, you’re guided by HBS Professor Sunil Gupta.
“I've taught courses on marketing strategy, digital marketing, and, more broadly, on digital strategy,” Gupta says in the course. “Digital marketing has been an important area of my research for many years.”
Through the course, you'll get a holistic view of digital marketing. Gupta will introduce brands, agencies, and expert practitioners, including:
- The Growth Agency’s Vice President of Client Service and Inclusion Marketing Bianca Reed
- OOFOS’ Head of E-Commerce Kate Laliberte
- MMI Agency’s CEO Maggie Malek
- HBS Online’s Senior Managing Director Simeen Mohsen
- Blogger, podcaster, and social media influencer Erica Ligenza
Each provides insights and knowledge they’ve gained throughout their career that you can apply to your role and organization.
For example, Ligenza shares her experience with influencer marketing partnerships to help you consider how to implement and measure them in your marketing strategy.
“I’m always first and foremost promoting things that I already know and use,” Ligenza says in Digital Marketing Strategy. “If there’s a brand that approaches me and wants me to promote their brand, but I've never heard or used their products, I have a vetting period where they can send the product my way. I'm happy to try it out, but I can’t sign a contract until I’ve actually used it and know that I can 100 percent recommend it to my audience.”
By learning from real-world experts like Ligenza, you can broaden your knowledge of digital marketing trends and how to capitalize on them.
Take the Next Step in Your Marketing Career
Taking advantage of professional development opportunities is crucial to advancing your career. Whether you’re a marketing or non-marketing professional, Digital Marketing Strategy offers a flexible, affordable way to develop your skills and knowledge.
Through real-world cases and an interactive, online learning experience, you can learn how to develop data-driven strategies and use the latest marketing tactics, tools, and trends to engage and retain customers in a digital world.
Do you want to understand marketing’s evolution? Enroll in Digital Marketing Strategy to explore the trends and tactics that could impact its landscape in the years ahead. If you’re interested in taking an online course but aren’t sure where to start, download our free guide to online learning success.
