Curriculum – MS in Marketing (STEM)

There are many roles in a traditional advertising or marketing agency, including media planners and buyers, creatives writers, art directors, broadcast producers, media buyers, print production managers and more. Let’s focus on the advertising account executive, or “AE,” since he or she plays a key role in the agency. In addition, AE jobs are often the most common way to move into advertising account management and, from there, to other areas of the advertising and marketing business. There is a growing convergence to digital.

A brand manager is responsible for the overall image and positioning of a product or company. Key elements of the job are researching the marketplace to determine where the product or client fits in (i.e., analyzing competitive positioning, products, brands and spending); developing marketing and advertising strategies and managing those budgets; helping create designs and layouts for print and digital advertising concepts signage and collateral; overseeing promotional activities; analyzing pricing and sales; and (re)evaluating how the brand can appeal to a wider consumer base.

Business Development professionals are responsible for the identification of profitable market segments, as well as the strategies and tactics to market and sell to them.

Consumer & Shopper Insights is an emerging area for marketing professionals who are not modelers, statisticians or data scientists. They often work more on the analysis and recommendation side of the profession. One who can connect the dots and tell stories — unlike most data scientists, who have never taken a consumer behavior course and often lack the connect-the-dots abilities needed for this job.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Digital marketing, also called online or internet marketing, is mainly focused on promoting the website through the use of search engine optimization, usability, pay per click ads on search, display and social media. Successful SEM professionals also conduct split testing, conversion rate optimization and analyze web analytics data. Depending on the company size, many also conduct emails and push/SMS text initiatives.

Wide range of possible roles, from creating to managing and promoting an ecommerce website. Professionals in e-commerce are responsible for conversion optimization, split testing, content and pricing management and User experience. Beyond these skills, it is essential for these professionals to have a strong understanding of the web analytics software that tracks the success and conversion rates of a website.

Analytics managers are responsible for coordinating analytics tasks for their organization, including creating effective strategies to collect data, analyze information, conduct research and implement analytics solutions for their products or services. Marketing analytics professionals spend approximately 70% of their time on statistical modeling efforts and the rest on applying business/marketing principles.

Marketing automation refers to software that exists with the goal of automating marketing actions. Many marketing departments have to automate repetitive tasks such as emails, text messages and push notifications sent out based on certain demographic traits of the user (insurance policyholder with upcoming expiration date), actions on the website (form submission, abandoned shopping cart) and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier and at scale (e.g., if a company sends one thousand messages out per day, this is difficult for one human employee to accomplish).

Marketing management is a functional area where the professional is responsible not for any one specialty area but for a wide range of initiatives and platforms. A marketing manager may oversee or conduct market research, digital marketing and advertising initiatives and data analysis. This is more common in small to medium-sized companies that do not have enough marketing employees to allow for specialization.

Mobile marketing professionals determine how to leverage and create mobile-friendly content. This area may include overseeing mobile app development, content management, social media marketing, digital advertising and especially push and SMS promotions. The role of the mobile marketing manager is to market products and services on digital devices of all kinds – not just smartphones, but ANY portable digital device that has connectivity to the web.

Product Management involves the launch of new products or managing of existing products or services through their life cycle. The product manager often has P&L responsibilities.

Social media professionals create, manage and monitor content across multiple social media platforms. It allows companies to engage with existing customers, conduct market research, manage the company and brand’s online reputation and reach new prospects. One important role is for the social media professional to identify and prioritize from the many social media platforms which aligns better with the target market (e.g., B2B vs B2C, under 25 vs over 50, consumer vs professional) and which helps and assists in conversion or other KPIs identified by the company as important. In addition, higher-paid social media professionals understand web analytics and are proficient with social media listening platforms. A social media executive is essentially responsible for planning, ideating, and executing an overall social media strategy for a brand on a daily basis.

A UX (user experience) specialist, also called a UX or usability analyst, ensures that products OR software/websites align with the behaviors and needs of how consumers use something. UX is more encompassing and includes many areas, such as customer service, the product or service use, post-purchase satisfaction, usability, etc. Usability tends to be a subset of UX and deals with how someone actually uses the product, website or software. Some positions are more for UX/usability with products (e.g., form factors for a car or mobile phone), while other UX professionals focus more on digital uses (software, apps and websites). Our courses have more depth in the digital area of UX, given our courses in web analytics that are one key pillar of digital UX)

Web analytics professionals measure, collect, analyze and present website data so actionable insights can be leveraged to improve business objectives such as revenue, profits and market share. Professionals are often responsible for analyzing digital data on the website and on apps across all devices (Desktop, Mobile, Tablet). The web analytics professional will create dashboards, perform deep analysis, determine what content is helping conversions and which one is not; identify trouble areas, create conversion funnels, identify which events (e.g., video ) contribute to conversions, analyze cohort segments and track and monitor other demographic and behavioral traits of web users.