Digital Marketing

This course examines how new digital tools, such as the Internet, smartphones, and 3D printing, are revolutionizing the world of marketing by changing the roles and practices of both firms and consumers. Marketing in a Digital World is one of the most popular courses on Coursera with over 500,000 learners and is rated by Class Central as one of the Top 50 MOOCs of All Time (https://www.class-central.com/report/top-moocs/). You will be able to: • Understand how digital tools are changing the nature of marketing • Explain how digital tools allow consumers to take a more active role in product development, promotion, placement, and pricing activities • Obtain a new set of concepts, tools, and stories to enhance your digital marketing efforts This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.

This course examines how modern digital marketing integrates technology, creativity, and analytics to shape discovery, competition, and customer experience across digital and physical channels. Through a progression from foundational strategy to content, ecosystem integration, and artificial intelligence, the course explores how brands build trust, deliver value, and drive measurable growth in the contemporary digital marketplace. Module 1 introduces the foundations of modern digital marketing strategy (i.e., how digitization reshapes discovery, competition, and consumer experience across online and physical channels). Module 2 builds on this foundation by exploring how content is designed for multi-audience environments where people, algorithms, and generative AI all “read” and respond to information differently. Module 3 examines the integration of paid, organic, and influencer activities into unified ecosystems that turn storytelling and trust into measurable growth. Module 4 concludes by showing how artificial intelligence transforms service delivery, where data, empathy, and automation combine to create more personalized and anticipatory customer experiences. Together, these modules chart how technology, creativity, and analytics converge to define success in the modern digital marketplace.

Successfully marketing brands today requires a well-balanced blend of art, science, and technology. This course introduces students to the systems and infrastructures that underpin modern digital marketing, from recommendation engines and visual analytics to blockchain-enabled transparency and advanced data measurement frameworks. The goal is to equip learners with the tools and reasoning needed to design, evaluate, and govern marketing technologies that drive personalization, trust, and performance at scale. Digital Marketing/Platforms, Data, and Technologies is the second in a two-part series of complementary courses. It focuses on how marketers use data architectures, algorithms, and integrity systems to understand consumers, predict behavior, and ensure fairness and accountability in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem. Together, these insights form the technological backbone of modern marketing strategy. This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.

This four-week Capstone of the Digital Marketing Specialization is designed to help you apply the principles you have learned in the previous courses. This capstone course is designed to give you hands-on experience in executing a digital marketing campaign for a fictitious firm selling electronics. In the previous courses on analytics and channels, you came up with strategies to identify a firm’s objectives, specify a few key ones, research alternatives to reaching the customer in their decision journey and finally propose a multi-channel digital marketing plan. In this capstone, you will execute a campaign, rather than creating another "plan". You will use an online simulation to do this. You will be a marketing manager for a firm selling digital cameras online through their webstore. You will be reviewing the products, pricing, margins, and historical sales. You will create a targeted ad campaign after researching appropriate keywords for the products you are selling. You will also review the basics of landing page design and search engine optimization. You will then create and execute an email campaign. Once these campaigns are executed, you get feedback on the KPI's such as revenue, profits, traffic, conversions. You will get an opportunity to redo this campaign, with new strategies, to improve your KPI's in the second round. This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

The Digital Revolution is dramatically altered the way many products are created, promoted, distributed, and consumed. Before the advent of new digital technologies such as the Internet, personal computer and smartphone, marketing was largely an Analog (i.e., physical) activity. Today, many marketing activities such as how products are promoted are increasingly Digital in nature. However, we still live in an Analog (or physical) World. For example, even today, most sales are still conducted in physical stores. Thus, both marketers and consumers must simultaneously navigate both the Analog and Digital worlds on a daily basis. This course examines both the Analog and the Digital and how these two forces relate to one another within the Digital Marketing Revolution. This course will begin with an exploration of the key differences between the Analog and the Digital and then examine four ways in which the Analog World has been affected by the Digital Revolution: Domination, Resistance, Synergy, and Transformation. This course will contain several examples of each of these concepts and explore their implications for both marketers and consumers. This course will also employ a variety of learning techniques, including video lectures, case studies, hands-on exercises, and interviews with leading marketing scholars. The learning approach will be highly interactive; you will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of hands-on activities and be a member of a rich learning community. I hope you will join us in this learning adventure. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: -Understand the key differences between Analog and Digital and the implications of these differences for marketing. -Understand the four ways in which the Analog is being affected by the Digital Revolution. -Develop and apply critical thinking skills regarding the role of both the Analog and the Digital upon both firms and consumers. -Learn several real-world examples of various strategies for successful marketing of Analog products and services in an increasingly Digital world. This course is part of Gies College of Business’ suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into these programs and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.

The proliferation of digital technology gives businesses an unprecedented and diverse new set of tools to reach, engage, monitor, and respond to consumers. The aggregated and voluminous digital data can also be leveraged to better target specific consumer segments. Following “Digital Media and Marketing Principles,” this course aims to give you a deeper understanding of core processes of planning a digital marketing campaign and the role of various digital channels in integrated marketing communication. You will be able to: - Adopt a holistic and integrated approach to digital marketing planning - Develop a purposeful content marketing strategy to achieve your business and marketing goals - Effectively mix paid, earned, owned, and shared media channels to discover, reach, and engage your customers - Critically evaluate the role social media platforms play in viral and influencer marketing campaigns - Evaluate and measure the success of digital marketing campaigns - Identify and manage risks in digital marketing This course is part of Gies College of Business’s suite of online programs, including the iMBA and iMSM. Learn more about admission into the program and explore how your Coursera work can be leveraged if accepted into a degree program at https://degrees.giesbusiness.illinois.edu/idegrees/.