Kelli S. Burns, Ph.D.

I watched a webinar called “Teaching A Digital Marketing Course In 2017 & Beyond” that reviewed Stukent’s Digital Marketing Essentials by Jeff Larson and Stuart Draper. The course covers analytics, on- and off-site SEO, paid search advertising, online advertising, email marketing, social media, and web design, as well as many other topics.

Larson discussed some of the assignments he has previously used in the class including reselling products through Doba or Alibaba or setting up a Kickstarter account and then promoting the products through an online campaign. Another suggestion was to find a small business that the students could partner with to help them with its website. Larson recommended you find a business that can provide a responsive webmaster. He gives the students a choice of six projects to do for the business including an SEO audit, a paid search campaign (need a budget from the business of about $500-1,000 for AdWords), an email marketing campaign, a social media campaign, and a redesign/content project for the website (plus another one I didn’t catch). Another idea was to have students create a blog as a class and then run an AdWords campaign to drive traffic to the blog. He said the blog was usually abandoned after the class, but it might be interesting to create one that could be updated every semester by a new group of students.

One of the Stukent tools I was really interested in learning more about was the Mimic Pro Simulation that allows students to practice testing SEO and keywords with real data but in a simulated environment. Stukent also offers $100 in Bing Ads. Some of the other free tools they discussed in the webinar included Google Keyword Planner, Google Analytics Demo Account, and Facebook Ad Planner.

The Stukent resources also include expert lectures that students can watch. Larson suggested having students write a blog post on the expert lectures they watch. The authors also offer video lectures and case studies.

One little nugget I learned in this webinar is that the Google Online Marketing Challenge will be discontinued. That program provided students with $250 in AdWords for a campaign. I had my grad students participate a while back and hoped to pick it back up again, but I guess that won’t be happening.

One thing I can’t figure out is the cost of using Stukent. If you are interested in Stukent, go here to schedule a demo.

The more I am exposed to products like this, the more I wonder about the future of higher education. If students can learn everything they need to know through packages like this, what is our role? I have developed just one online course (Principles of Public Relations) and would definitely like to learn more about online course development. We might need to move into this realm in order to remain relevant.