Topics in Digital Marketing

Introduction

Rapid developments in digital technology and available data have transformed how companies and organizations communicate with their audiences. Digital marketing activities are nowadays established in the daily routines of marketers in addition to traditional marketing techniques to achieve a wider reach and closer connection to the audiences of interest. Companies interact with audiences in new ways, develop new products and services, and expand into new markets leveraging digital technologies and vast amounts of data. Consumers now regularly interact with each other and with brands on social media and through mobile devices sharing information about products and brands. This has changed how they approach and interact with products, services, and brands and the way they search for information. In addition, younger generations of consumers are hard to reach through traditional marketing channels. At the same time marketers are struggling to coordinate their digital marketing activities, to build a unified (digital) marketing strategy, and to evaluate the effectiveness of their digital marketing activities.

This course addresses some of the challenges and focuses on the larger strategic decisions that marketers face today in digital marketing, utilizing academic insights to support decision-making. It provides an overview of the digital customer journey, digital marketing activities, and the assessment of their effectiveness, and how to strategically align them. In addition, it covers selected aspects of how digital technology, artificial intelligence, and the availability of big data impact the digital customer journey and customer behavior, as well as reflections on potential problems and ethical considerations of digital marketing practices (e.g., consumer privacy, algorithmic bias, etc.). 

Course content

Digital marketing is a fast-developing field in marketing. This course will cover some selected topics in digital marketing but is not intended to give a complete introduction to all digital marketing activities. The topics will center around the following five aspects. The more specific sub-topics are exemplary and can be subject to change.

1. Digital customer journey
   • Important touchpoints and customer journey models
   • Current trends that are shaping/changing digital customer behavior (e.g., the role of AI in digital marketing)
2. Overview of digital advertising activities
   • Forms of digital advertising: display ads, video ads, search engine advertising, programmatic advertising, native advertising, etc.
   • Targeting and personalization
3. Measuring the effectiveness of digital advertising
   • Important metrics to evaluate digital advertising
   • Attribution, AB field testing, selection bias, etc.
4. Social media marketing
   • Strategic roles of social media marketing
   • Social media engagement and outcomes
   • Social listening
   • Influencer marketing
5. Ethical reflections around digital marketing
   • Data privacy, targeting/personalization, algorithmic bias, filter bubble, etc.

In addition, we may take deep dives into more specialized and state-of-the art fields of digital marketing research.