96098 - Marketing, Sales and Platforms in the Digital Age

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the student knows the way in which marketing is understood and thought up to the digital age that has brought the proliferation of channels and technologies which in turn have radically changed the context in which marketers find themselves operating. The student acquires the new marketing skills: data and analytics, customer experience, content, omni-channels and personalization. The students knows the details of Digital Platforms and underlying reasons for adopting them in a business environment and the strategic and innovative technical details as microservices and API management to have a full picture of the key features that make a digital platform really valuable and effective for an organization. Moreover, the student acquires the key capabilities of an omnichannel platform and the standard tools used to select software and solutions the best fit a specific application. Playing with a high-level general-purpose solution (IFTTT) the student understands how much easy is to create new services on top of open platforms. At the end, the student knows platform business model fundamentals to have a full understanding of what make a digital platform a digital business ecosystem.

Course contents

“Marketing, Sales and Platforms for the Digital Age” is a comprehensive course for master’s students in the Digital Transformation Management program. It gives an in-depth understanding of how modern marketing is evolving with digital and AI, and of its impact on businesses. Through theoretical foundations and practical application, students explore key areas such as branding and emotional branding, marketing strategy, SEO and SEM, social media, content marketing, commerce and conversion, retention and customer value, data-driven decision-making, platforms, and the integration of AI throughout marketing.

The course is built as a single journey guided by one map, the Digital Marketing Matrix. The Matrix organises the whole of digital marketing into four streams and sixteen steps, and the class travels it from end to end: the Foundation, where we decide who we are and who we serve; Discovery, how people and machines find us; Conversion, how we turn attention into revenue; and Loyalty, how we keep, grow and prove it. Each session advances the map and adds a layer to a live plan, so students leave with a method they can repeat, not a set of topics they have merely heard.
AI runs through every stream rather than sitting at the end, because that is how the discipline is now practised. The final phase culminates in the development and presentation of a comprehensive marketing plan for a selected Italian brand, so that theory is translated into practice and students graduate able to build a world-class digital marketing plan for a company, startup or product launch.

OPENING THE MATRIX

Where are we going, and how?

• Session 1. Course and Matrix Introduction
  • –Course overview and how the journey works
  • –From traditional to digital to AI-native marketing
  • –The Digital Marketing Matrix: the map for the course and the plan
  • –Roadmap to building your Group project (Digital Marketing Plan)

  STREAM 1. FOUNDATION

  Who we are, and who we serve.

• Session 2. The Objective & The Audience
  • –Step 1. The Objective
    • What is a marketing strategy
    • Aligning marketing with business goals
  • –Step 2. The Audience
    • Market, competitor and opportunity analysis
    • Segmentation, targeting and the beachhead
• Session 3. The Positioning & The Proposition
  • –Step 3. The Positioning
    • Brand identity
    • Positioning and differentiation
• Step 4. The Proposition
  • Value proposition and brand promise
  • Voice, message and emotional branding

  STREAM 2. DISCOVERY

  How people and machines find us.

• Session 4. The Search & The Answer
  • –Step 5. The Search
    • SEO fundamentals and keywords
    • SEM and PPC; tools and testing
  • –Step 6. The Answer
    • AI Overviews and answer engines
    • GEO and AEO: being cited by assistants
• Session 5. The Social & The Content
  • –Step 7. The Social
    • Platform landscape; organic and community
    • Paid social; influencer and creator (macro, micro, nano)
  • –Step 8. The Content
    • Content strategy, storytelling, pillars, formats
    • AI-native content; measuring effectiveness

  STREAM 3. CONVERSION

  How we turn attention into revenue.

• Session 6. The Journey & The Commerce
  • –Step 9. The Journey
    • Omnichannel journeys and touchpoints
    • Mapping the path to purchase
  • –Step 10. The Commerce
    • E-commerce, D2C, marketplaces, subscriptions
    • Agentic and conversational commerce
• Session 7. The Optimization & The Activation
  • –Step 11. The Optimization
    • Conversion rate optimisation; landing and UX
    • A/B testing; experimentation
  • –Step 12. The Activation
    • Performance and paid media; retargeting, affiliate, programmatic
    • Retail media; the short-term half of the 60/40 split

  STREAM 4. LOYALTY

  How we keep, grow and prove it.

• Session 8. The Retention & The Lifetime
  • –Step 13. The Retention
    • Lifecycle marketing and CRM
    • First-party data and personalisation
  • –Step 14. The Lifetime
    • Customer lifetime value and loyalty economics
    • Predictive churn and next-best-action
• Session 9. The Advocacy & The Measurement
  • –Step 15. The Advocacy
    • Referral, community and word of mouth
    • Advocacy as the loop’s return path
  • –Step 16. The Measurement
    • KPIs and the measurement question
    • MMM, incrementality and attribution; governance and the EU AI Act

  THE PLAN

  Present the journey.

• Session 10. Final Group Presentations
  • –Consolidating the full plan across the sixteen steps
  • –Telling the strategy as one story
• Final presentations (15 to 20 slides) and Q&A
  • –Discussion, reflection and feedback
  • –Deliverable. The complete digital marketing plan, presented and defended.

 

Readings/Bibliography

• Dedicated Lecture Slides
• Selected Online Articles, Videos & Podcasts
  
• Details will be available in the e-learning web site of the course

Teaching methods

Lectures, seminars, case studies and group work.

 

Assessment methods

Differentiated examination methods are provided for attending students (participation in at least 60% of the lectures) and non-attending students:

• Attending Students
  • Group Work
    • Group presentation
    • Structure:15 to 20 slide presentation (PPT, Keynote, PDF)
    • Value 10pts (33% grade)
  • Individual Work
    • Written Exam
    • Structure: 2 short essays
    • Value 20pts (66% grade)
    • Length – 90 minutes
• Non-Attending Students
  • Group Work (excluded)
  • Individual Work
    • Written Exam
    • Structure: 3 short essays
    • Value 30pts (100% grade)
    • Length – 90 minutes
• Given that 37388 Entrepreneurship and 96098 Marketing, Sales and Platforms for the Digital Age are taught as integrated modules, your final grade for the combined course 96097 Marketing in the Digital Age, Innovation and Entrepreneurship will be calculated as the average of your grades across the two modules.
• As the final written exam is focused on your understanding of the core concepts and their real-world applications, NO external materials or devices, such as computers, tablets, phones, calculators, books, or notes, will be allowed. All you'll need is the knowledge you've built throughout the course and a good pen to put it into words.

Grades are assigned on the basis of an overall assessment of knowledge, skills, presentation and discussion skills of the topics covered. The ranges of grades correspond can be described as follows:

18-23: the student has sufficient preparation and analytical skills, spread however, over just few topics taught in the course, the overall jargon is correct

24-27: the student shows and adequate preparation at a technical level with some doubts over the topics. Good, yet not to articulate analytical skills with the use of a correct jargon

28-30: Great knowledge about most of the topics taught in the course, good critical and analytical skills, good usage of the specific jargon

30L: excellent and in depth knowledge of all the topics in the course, excellent critical and analytical skills, excellent usage of specific jargon

Teaching tools

Class presentations, additional readings, sources, and information about the program, will be available on the e-learning website after each class lecture.

Office hours

See the website of Timothy Sean Jr. O'Connell