Digital Marketing: Customer Engagement Strategy

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Coursera

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Details

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

12 hours 37 minutes
Sessions

On-Demand
Subtitles

Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, English, Spanish, Thai, Indonesian, Kazakh, Hindi, Swedish, Korean, Greek, Chinese, Ukrainian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Hungarian, Bengali, Pashto, Urdu, Azerbaijani, Farsi

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Overview

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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.

Syllabus

Course Overview and Module 1: Foundations of Digital Marketing in an Omnichannel World

This module provides an overview of the course content. It also introduces digital marketing fundamentals, focusing on search, omnichannel strategy, and consumer behavior across digital and physical channels, with an emphasis on trust and cohesive customer experiences.

Optimizing Digital Presence

Module 2 explains how marketers design content for visibility, virality, and trust across humans, search engines, and generative AI. It highlights the shift from SEO to GEO, the factors that drive content sharing, and the role of authentic brand–customer interactions in building long-term reputation.

Social, Influencer, and Community Strategy

Module 3 explains how brands integrate paid, organic, and influencer marketing into a cohesive strategy that builds trust, extends reach, and drives sustained growth through coordinated content and data-driven planning.

Digital Service Management

Module 4 examines how AI is transforming customer service from reactive support to proactive, personalized experiences, highlighting AI as the service front line and the evolving collaboration between humans and intelligent systems.

Taught by

Kevin Hartman

Reviews

4.2 rating, based on 35 Class Central reviews

4.5 rating at Coursera based on 4822 ratings

Start your review of Digital Marketing: Customer Engagement Strategy

Anonymous

A rather linear and boring course, containing only videos with the bulk of theory and only some slides to remind you that you`re not in a classroom with the professor at the desk and you taking notes. You think you`d expect a lot more from an online…

A rather linear and boring course, containing only videos with the bulk of theory and only some slides to remind you that you`re not in a classroom with the professor at the desk and you taking notes. You think you`d expect a lot more from an online course, maybe some interviews, some case studies, something to make the course somewhat fun and actual. Also the main source for this course was a book written 10 years ago which again makes you wonder...
Very different from Aric`s first course from this specialization which was a joy to go through and where you could tell that the professor was really trying!
This course is helpful if you work in the field and you need extra help understanding the concepts or if you want to finish the Digital Marketing specialization. Otherwise you might as well do something else with your time.
Anonymous

As a traditional analogue marketer I found this course really helpful in getting to grips with key terminology, models and approaches. I now feel much more comfortable discussing the online part of campaigns and communication.

My approach was to do the reading first, then go back to lectures, quizzes and assignments a few days later. This worked well for me, as the lectures are a re-cap of the readings, so serve as a kind of curation and reminder and helped to cement the learning.

As well as the other courses in this specialisation, I would recommend 'Understanding Media by Understanding Google' as a good background to this area for any fellow 'analogue dinosaurs'.
Anonymous

For someone who has had virtually no training in marketing analytics other than the occasional online article this class was immensely helpful. As the name implies it is a course in "theory" so you will be provided with a solid framework to help you understand some of the "Why?" and "How?" thoughts that drive marketing analytics.

So, if you're someone with little experience go for it. If you're an active practitioner this course may not offer anything new, but it would still be worth taking either as a refresher or for the benefit of gaining a different perspective or both.
William Billeaud
3

UIUC is one of the top schools in the world. very rigorous.

Great teacher from Google and content.

Student grading by kids from all over the world is dubious. We have no idea of their credibility because there are no admissions standards.

Overall, unbelievable value regardless!
Anonymous

Kevin Hartman is a bvery good teacher; He is easy to follow, not simple though, which shows the professional level of the course. His course uses online script - presentation-, so as a foreign student with English as a second language, I could easily follow his lecture, by relating content both from his voice and presentation.
The course presents current market, trends and thoughts of professionals, which is the reason I took it, since I work in the Greek market - which is influenced a lot from the US trends. References, articles, posts, were great, and easy to read, without being long.
I have being participating in other courses in Coursera, and I will miss Mr. Hartman's lecture-style.
Thank you
Cratecruncher
22

I just completed the course and felt the coursework and quizzes a bit too easy. Much of the information in the course is garnered from external reading assignments which I found very informative. But the course itself seemed more a collection of lists of "tools" to use in different situations followed by a simple machine-graded quiz and an essay question which is peer reviewed.

There are powerful tools available free online that could be incorporated into the coursework. For five stars, I feel some basic hands-on experience with "tools" should be required for an analytics course.
Anonymous

This course provides a good foundation for knowledge of business analytics. The videos are concise and informative. He stipulates at the beginning that reading material will be on the quizzes. It begins with some heavy reading, non of which is quizzed in detail. Then later some metrics from readings are quizzed. So for the most part there is no point in taking notes while doing the readings, except for the final module. I found this misleading and haphazard. However, on the whole, this is a solid and informative course.
Anonymous

This is a good course - I'm in digital marketing for quite some time now ... and still I learnt few new concepts and the exercices were a good opportunity to enrich my vision of the topic. Great Learning format as well. Liked the mini quiz!
Andrea
3

This was a great class and very well-instructed. The information was relevant both to marketers as well as those who need to have at least some knowledge of how social media is used to market to consumers. The terminology was clear (even to someone with an only adequate knowledge of social media marketing) and the processes used clearly explained. Great resources were also provided throughout. I highly recommend this course.
Anonymous

The major benefits I derived from this course were:
* A framework to cope with the messy world of online consumer activity, in the form of the CDJ framework and
* Illuminating insights into online marketing - Search, Display, Video and Social
Natalja Avramenko
2

It's a great course giving concise yes thorough insights into the Marketing Analytics. The course combines well video lectures and very interesting reading materials from real blogs and articles.
I enjoyed taking this course and learning a lot.
Anna Sharkey
2

Marketing Analytics in Theory is a very informative course, the slides were easy to follow, the lecturer clearly explained topics. Thanks Kevin!
Anonymous

I really enjoyed this course. A thorough immersion into the Digital Analytics world. Interesting readings and cases. I definitely recommend it!
Suntonu Bhadra
1

Immensely helpful for beginners of digital marketing. Thoroughly enjoyed the learning pattern and recap of lessons. Would recommend everyone to take, if interested to know about digital marketing things. As the course name suggested, relevant exampl…

Immensely helpful for beginners of digital marketing. Thoroughly enjoyed the learning pattern and recap of lessons. Would recommend everyone to take, if interested to know about digital marketing things. As the course name suggested, relevant examples have also been provided with each part. Improvement required on question part, as some of the question are related to memorising- not analytical. Also, Coursera needs to ensure "plagiarism free" assignments to be submitted here by some mechanism. Also, i expected some case studies, innovation discussion, tools usability feedback sort of assignments in this course- which would make it more interesting and insightful. After all, we are here to nurture our senses by developing knowledge horizon in digital marketing contents. Overall, Thank you Kevin for providing a great learning.
Anonymous

I thought the course was very useful as a foundation in theories of digital marketing and web analytics. For example, it helped me to consider where I would put my emphasis in digital marketing and web analytics for the new startup I'm developing. In fact, I landed a job interview on the strength of being in this, the second course of the digital marketing specialization. #digitalmarketing #MOOC #Coursera
Anonymous

This course briefs on digital marketing from theory - different channels of digital marketing, measuring metrics, different goals, tools we can use and metrics to evaluate tools, importance of company data maturity, and discussion on data privacy nowadays.

4-star course! I am now continuing with the series - taking on Digital Marketing Analytics in Practice. Many thanks to the organizer and professor for hosting this class!
Beate Pradel
1

I appreciated the very useful introduction to understanding web analytic tools, what to use them for and when. The list of free tools was also very helpful.
Anonymous

The course was very helpful in my carreer, (I have an MBA) and it was really well explained by the professor Kevin Hartman.
Alejandro Matheu
3

Really good course.
A little bit hard, if your are not familiarized with the terms.
Excellent Professor.
It's made for beginners - intermediate.
Anonymous

Few concepts such as Customer Digital Journey were very interesting. I would have enjoyed some more diversified learning material (Laboratory, Experience sharing, ...)