In a world of absolute chaos and uncertainty, the foremost thing we can do to help ourselves is up-skill ourselves in relevant skills. Digital marketing is one of the hottest skills that help us adapt to a rapidly changing world with increased automation and progressive technology. Digital marketing is a radical shift from traditional marketing and enables us to respond positively to the dynamic changes in the current scenario. We, at Advisor Uncle, bring you a detailed digital marketing course review of various institutes to help you make the right decision. Today, we will go through the details of the digital marketing course at upGrad in conjunction with MICA.
But before we delve straight into the digital marketing course review, let us run through digital marketing in general. Digital marketing revolves around digital platforms, digital devices, digital media, digital data, and of course, digital technology. These are essentially the five Ds of digital marketing that goes into making a successful digital marketing campaign.
Understanding each aspect of digital marketing is necessary for business profitability. The current generation is downright reliant on various devices and the internet for everything. In such a case, it is impossible and impractical even to ignore or try to escape digital marketing.
A lot of people have a lot of questions surrounding the digital marketing courses available today. For example, what is the eligibility for taking up such a course? What are the modules covered under a digital marketing course? What are the competencies you can develop after taking up a course in digital marketing? It is essential to understand all of this before we start the digital marketing course review.
While here, you might like to read through our top digital marketing courses in India.
Digital marketing course eligibility:
Organizations world over, small and big, are incorporating data-driven digital marketing to achieve better ROI and boost sales. Though digital marketing has been around for a while now, it continues to consolidate its dominance, and the trend will be so for quite some time.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to digital marketing campaigns and strategies. It is dynamic, and digital marketing efforts require a skilled professional to understand the various nuances and form a plan after carefully analyzing the data.
Most organizations feel there is a dearth of skilled digital marketers and are willing to pay very well for experienced professionals. The gap in demand and supply has made digital marketing a very lucrative profession.
Most professional positions require some degree or qualifications. The only eligibility for a digital marketing course is that of being a graduate. A graduate of any stream/discipline can take up the course and learn the nuances.
That is just the qualifying criterion. The trend suggests that working professionals, engineers, entrepreneurs, and homemakers are also taking up digital marketing and making a career or a career switch for themselves. So, the doors are open for practically anyone to learn digital marketing.
Digital Marketing Course Syllabus:
Moving on to the curriculum, you may have heard or even come across online the various modules of digital marketing courses. These include topics like search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing, content strategy, web analytics, digital media planning and buying, email marketing, mobile marketing, online reputation management, Adsense, blogging, and affiliate marketing.
These words are mere DM jargon until you learn the importance of each and how to execute each of them practically. For the benefit of new learners, let me briefly define each term.
For premium courses, check the Digital Marketing Master Course at IIM SKILLS.
Defining the Course Modules:
Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the process of optimizing your website for it to rank well on a search engine result page organically. It is the most important module. Good SEO improves the quality and quantity of traffic to a website naturally.
Search Engine Marketing: SEM is about advertising to increase the website visibility on the search engine. This is a paid effort to rank well. Paid Ad campaigns help achieve the goal.
Social Media Marketing: SMM involves advertising on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., to drive more traffic to the company/website.
Content Strategy: Content is the core of digital marketing. Relevant and valuable content plays a significant role in the success of digital marketing. The content strategy revolves around the creation and publication of useful and usable content across mediums.
Web Analytics: Yet another vital module is web analytics. Here, you will learn to track and analyze a website through Google Analytics. The focus is on exploring all the data and making useful inferences.
Digital Media Planning and Buying: It involves the when, where, and how often to advertise conversions. It is a strategic mix of media platforms for ad placement over some time.
Email Marketing: Using electronic mail to communicate with potential customers and nurture leads into conversions.
Mobile Marketing: It involves promoting your website or business via apps, and all else about app installation and metrics.
Online Reputation Management: ORM is the projection of a brand or business and also includes how to deal with crisis management. It determines how others see your business/website online and active monitoring to fix any negative comments.
Adsense, Blogging, and Affiliate Marketing: All of these are modes of monetizing a blog or website. After all, the ultimate goal is to earn money.
Skills you can acquire after a digital marketing course:
All digital marketing courses follow the “learn by doing” approach. It is more practical and allows you to master a topic by doing rather than just reading. Even with no prior marketing knowledge, by the end of a digital marketing course, participants can expect to be able to:
- Grow your business, help your client, or land a job as a digital marketer
- Make money as an affiliate marketer
- You can work as a freelance digital marketer too.
- Plan, execute and monitor digital marketing strategies and campaigns
- Optimize your website and marketing efforts
In addition to all of the above, participants can acquire skills like data analysis, writing and editing skills, search engine optimization and search engine marketing, better communication skills, email marketing, customer relationship management, social media skills, necessary design skills, mobile marketing and even making videos.
Furthermore, just one course in digital marketing opens up many doors and avenues. Some of the job portfolios include being a digital marketing manager, SEO manager, SEM/PPC (Pay per click) expert, web developer or web designer, social media manager, or even a content writer.
You may like to learn more about the Best Content Writing Courses available online.
Digital marketing is an incredibly vast subject. You can select a particular topic or module and specialize in it and increase your earnings. A specialization will give you a niche job and a better income. That is not to say that a digital marketer’s salary is any less. The more skilled you are, the better pay you can expect.
Digital marketing is a skill-driven career path, where neither your age nor qualifications matter much if you have the right skills. Considering the current demand, it is the right time to take up a course in digital marketing and be a part of the digital marketing ecosystem.
Digital Marketing Course Review:
After having gone through what digital marketing is, and a brief about the course modules, eligibility, skills, etc., we can move on to the digital marketing course review. In this article, we will go through the course at upGrad.
A Brief introduction to upGrad:
upGrad is an online education platform that provides training programs in various fields in collaboration with world-class faculty. With the digital medium shrinking the world, upGrad’s vision is to build careers of tomorrow through their industry-relevant programs.
The online programs at upGrad are rigorous and help advance your career/professional journey. With personalized support from excellent faculty, upGrad is a great learning platform.
It has been just about five years since upGrad started, and it has collaborated with many universities and industry partners to provide the best training possible to people the world over.
Since their first program of entrepreneurship, upGrad has come up with numerous programs helping thousands of professionals. Currently, upGrad has courses in MBA, data science, machine learning, marketing, management, software and technology, blockchain, insurance, law, and upGrad for college.
As you can see, they have a diverse product portfolio with courses from MBA to insurance and law. Definitely, there is something for everyone to learn from this platform.
upGrad believes in LEADing the future of education where they have Long term thinking, Empathy and impact, Accountability and ownership, and Deliver excellence.
A little something about the founders:
The founders are Mr. Mayank Kumar, Mr. Phalgun Kompalli, and Mr. Ronnie Screwala.
Mr. Mayank, an ISB and IIT-Delhi alum, has ten years of experience in the education sector as an advisor and focuses on team building and partnerships at upGrad.
Mr. Phalgun Kompalli, an alum of IIT-Delhi, is also a part of the Forbes 30-under-30 group. With seven years of experience, he takes care of the operations and university relations at upGrad.
Mr. Ronnie Screwala is an entrepreneur and philanthropist and also ranked among the most influential people in the world (in 2009). A founder of various ventures, he is the MD of upGrad.
Courses at upGrad:
upGrad has over 34,500 active learners and 300 plus hiring partners. In each of the fields mentioned above, they have a variety of courses. Under the marketing field, they have digital marketing and an MBA in marketing.
On our digital marketing course review at upGrad, it is a postgraduate certification course in digital marketing and communication in collaboration with MICA. It is a course that includes social media, content marketing, branding, public relations, and even marketing analytics.
Moving on to the digital marketing course review at upGrad:
For the digital marketing course review at upGrad, let us take a closer look at every component from fee structure to the syllabus and other offerings.
Program Overview:
The digital marketing course review reveals that it has specialized tracks for executives, management, and leadership. While the executive track focuses on digital marketing basics and hands-on tools, the management track is about learning how to build and execute digital marketing campaigns optimally. The leadership track, on the other hand, is about planning, budgeting, and optimizing digital marketing campaigns.
The great thing about this course is that it is in collaboration with MICA. MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad), is among the top 10 MBA colleges for Marketing. It is an institute that excels in strategic marketing and communication.
Eligibility:
A bachelor’s or equivalent degree. Any fresher, entrepreneur, communication and sales manager, or traditional marketers can benefit from this course.
If you are someone who aspires to be an entrepreneur, you should read through the top entrepreneurship courses in India.
Course Fee:
The course fee starts at INR 87,750 + taxes for a single specialization. If you wish to go for the entire course, with all four specializations, the course fee is INR 127,750 + taxes. There are no-cost EMI plans available. You can check the website for those details.
This course fee includes a PG certification, alumni status from MICA, hands-on experience with the latest tools, Facebook certification, and hiring opportunities from renowned brands like Uber, Genpact, Microsoft, and more.
Course Duration:
A single specialization is six and a half months. On average, this course requires seven to nine hours per week, but the timing is flexible. Overall, the course has 50 hours of video content (two and a half hours per week). The remaining course hours are a mix of industry projects, live instructor sessions, and online/offline meet-ups.
If you wish to take the course with all four specializations, be prepared to invest eleven months.
Overall, on digital marketing course review at upGrad, we learn that the course has 180 hours of content, 15 live sessions, 15 case studies and projects, and learning of 10 different tools and platforms.
Skills:
Participants can expect to learn the skills of SEO, SEM, Social Media, Content Marketing, Branding, and Marketing Analytics.
Instructors:
The instructors for the digital marketing course at upGrad are eminent people and include:
- Falguni Vasavada-Oza (professor at MICA)
- Sakhee Dheer (digital marketing and analytics)
- Vishal Jacob (principal consultant at GroupM)
- Jaideep Prabhu (Professor, University of Cambridge)
- Karan Sarin (CMO, Razorpay)
- Dhaval Doshi (founder, Smarthome)
- Siddharth Deshmukh (professor MICA)
- Rajneesh Krishna (professor MICA)
- Sujoy Golan (VP and head of marketing, Lendingkart)
- Anita Basalingappa (professor, MICA)
- Michael Leander (CEO, Markedu)
- Jay Trivedi (professor MICA)
- Apurva Chamaria (Chief revenue officer, RateGain)
- Kavita Jhunjhunwala (founder and digital lead at Avocado tree)
Industry leaders, as faculty, are sure alluring.
Syllabus:
The digital marketing course review is incomplete without the syllabus. So diving into the syllabus, here are the modules:
- Marketing fundamentals (three weeks), two assignments
- Digital channel deep dives part one for five weeks with two assignments, and the second part is for eight weeks with four assignments.
- Marketing analytics and integrated strategy, three weeks with one assignment.
- Specialization in branding and communications for four weeks with two assignments.
- Marketing analytics specialization for four weeks with two assignments.
- Specialization in social media and content marketing for four weeks with two assignments.
Specializations, Projects, and Case Studies:
While there are common topics for the digital marketing course, there are four specializations available. These include Branding, social media and content marketing, marketing analytics, and marketing communications-PR.
For the branding specialization, the project is to build a strategy to achieve business goals for Loreal. The social media and content marketing project is for “The Quint,” learning how to tackle user reactions and social media crises. The marketing analytics specialization has a Google project, learning more about data-driven decisions for Google’s telecom clientele. Finally, the marketing communications-PR involves the Adfactors Case study as the project.
In addition to the above projects are case studies on Star Sports and Bajaj Auto project. So, participants can expect to run live marketing campaigns and get mentored by industry experts.
Certifications:
Participants get dual the postgraduate certification from MICA and upGrad and a certificate of completion from Facebook upon completing the FB module and FB campaign.
Also, participants get the privilege of joining the MICA network and an easily shareable digital certificate
Additional Benefits:
- From the learning perspective, participants get support in industry mentors, one-on-one feedback, and even individual student success mentors.
- For doubt resolution, there is a Q&A forum and expert feedback for the assignments and projects. There are also regular live sessions for doubt clarification.
- In the department of networking, there is the upGrad BaseCamp for career-building workshops and group activities.
The upGrad stats speak of a 42% average salary hike and 100+ career transitions. Whether it is career counseling, resume feedback, interview preparation, or job placement, upGrad helps with each of those.
Student Reviews:
For the digital marketing course review at upGrad, we also checked the student reviews. What we gather from the student reviews is that the course is engaging, interesting, well put together, has insights by industry experts, and has a holistic program.
Career Assistance:
Career assistance depends on student performance. Though upGrad does have several hiring partners, assessment for job opportunities depends on their program performance report.
Also, upGrad has the PAP, which is the Placement Assurance Program, but it comes with eligibility criteria which include completing the program with a minimum of 80% score, completing all projects and assessments, passing the employability test with a 70% score, and have 0-3 years of work experience. The PAP is valid only for six months after program completion.
upStart, the Free Courses at upGrad:
The upStart of upGrad offers free courses to help people explore and experience upGrad free of cost. It is a unique offering to help people up-skill. As a part of these courses, participants also have one-to-one access to industry mentors, great content, weekly live lectures, and even a certificate for the free classes.
The free courses at upStart are in data science, technology, and management, and digital marketing. Under the digital marketing segment, the free courses on offer include:
- Getting started with Digital marketing, which is a five weeks program. It includes fundamentals of marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, email marketing, and web analytics.
- All about social media marketing is a four-week course that includes the fundamentals of marketing and social media marketing.
- Learn the top digital marketing skills of 2020 is a six-week course that includes social media marketing, search engine marketing, and content marketing.
This priceless learning initiative by upGrad is an attempt to help people learn new and relevant skills, which can make a difference in their future careers and professions.
Since these courses are free, they provide a brief understanding of the different topics. They are best suited for working professionals with the flexibility of timing and investment of just about a few hours every week. Each of these courses is available to the participants for three months from the date of registration.
Concluding thoughts on the digital marketing course review at upGrad:
The course has an impressive set of instructors. Even the course structure overall seems excellent. It includes real-life case studies providing more clarity on each topic and individual student mentors. But at a time when most institutes are offering similar offerings at a much lower rate, the course fee in itself seems an impediment.
Another thought is about the lessons being through videos. Yes, there are live sessions, but sprinkled in between. Interactive session benefits far outweigh those of learning from videos. Yet, it is a personal choice and many may be comfortable with this format.
CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, learning digital marketing equips you with multi-skills. Even if you are aiming at becoming a niche specialist, taking a complete integrated digital marketing course first will do you good. It is important to understand the subject as a whole before going into details of a sub-topic individually.
With the amount of time that consumers dedicate to digital channels, the increasing amount of internet users each year only spells a boom time for digital marketers. It is something no business can exist without.
Before taking up a course, it is better to go through the digital marketing course review, either by students or on other platforms. The reputation of the institute, the modules included, the ratings and reviews by students, are all factors that can give you information about the institute. Most institutes provide a free demo. Make use of that before you make a decision.
Even after taking all cautionary steps, the number of institutes out there, teaching digital marketing is overwhelming. We hope our elaborate review of various institutes helps you make a choice.
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