Digital Marketing MSc
1 Year Full-Time | September Start

In this module, you will explore the important role of the website in an organisation’s digital marketing strategy.

You will learn the principles of website evaluation and will use analytic tools for the analysis of web data to help measure the effectiveness of web marketing and improve the user experience.

The module will aim to give you:

An Introduction to Web Marketing
Website Evaluation – comprising Context of Use & Usability, Layout & Navigation, Home Page & Testing.
Application of web marketing including search engine optimisation, pay per click, conversion rate optimisation
An introduction to Web Analytics, with particular reference to an industrial standard application (most likely Google analytics). This will cover determining how the software application works, data collection, analysis and reporting.
Campaign Metrics and Measurement.
Multichannel Metrics.
Consolidation and/or assessment.
At the end of the module you may be in a position to take the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) test as part of your broader Continual Professional Development.

In this module you will learn about a comprehensive range of research methods and business analytics techniques. This will equip you with the knowledge and practical skills necessary for you to conduct research at Masters’ level and prepare you to complete a Master’s Dissertation, Consultancy Project or Management Enquiry. By the end of the module you will know how to apply both quantitative and qualitative data collection and business analysis techniques. In quantitative techniques you will learn about sampling, questionnaire design, statistical inference, and hypothesis testing while qualitative techniques covered will include methods such as interviewing and focus groups. Analysis methods such as content analysis and thematic analysis will also be covered. In addition, you will gain some understanding of research philosophy (positivism and interpretivism) and research ethics and you will be able to write a research proposal to bring these ideas together.
Furthermore, this module will provide clear, critical, and analysis of data, you will also be able to consider the use of analytics implementation skills, where you will be introduced to analytics software such as SPSS. SPSS statistics analysis is one of the powerful solutions that is designed to help businesses and researchers to solve problems by various methods (geospatial analysis, predictive analytics and hypothesis testing).

Studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This

module is designed to support your transition to postgraduate level study in the use and practice of subject specific skills around assessments

and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to further develop your abilities to read and study effectively

for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your

use and application of language and communications skills suitable for a postgraduate level of study.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding postgraduate assignment briefs.

• Developing advanced academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.

• Practising advanced ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’

• Planning and structuring postgraduate level academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).

• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.

• Speaking in postgraduate seminar presentations.

• Presenting your ideas

• Giving discipline-related postgraduate level academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.

• Postgraduate level speed reading techniques.

• Developing self-reflection skills.

In this module you will learn to appreciate the role of a strategic manager of a modern day manufacturing and sales business in the context of an increasingly digitalised consumer-environment. You will be introduced to Marketing at a strategic level of a business, and understand how marketing decisions are made in the context of other essential business functions; i.e. financial planning, operations and supply chain management, and human resource management. In addition, you will learn to appreciate the digital nature of modern day business operations and marketing strategy.

The module will cover the following themes:

• Marketing planning and implementation – Includes market research, identifying good business opportunities, 4Ps of marketing management, and the basics of creating and delivering value to customers.
• Competitive market strategies – Covers different approaches to competing in a marketplace, how to be better than your competitors, developing sustainable competitive advantage.
• Product development – basics of new product development.
• Routes to market and multichannel marketing – Retailing and sales channel selection and management.
• Operations and supply chain management – managing the distribution network, stock management, managing the production output.
• Financial planning for operations and growth - Pricing decisions and cost management, basics of balance-sheets and profit & loss accounts, activity-based costing, investing in R&D projects.
• Managing employees for competitive advantage – How employees can be the source of sustainable competitive advantage, employee development and empowerment to foster creativity and breakthrough ideas, rewards & recognition.
• Introduction to promotional strategy – Introduction to marketing communications, and different promotional methods /tools.
• Introduction to digital and social-media marketing – Covers the digital consumer-space, and how to engage customers and build brands online.
• Marketing-related legislation – Deals with legal aspects of marketing, and basics of marketing ethics.

This module is designed to provide you with an introduction to how consumers behave in the digital domain and the opportunities this presents for organisations targeting them. At the heart of this is the concept of consumer behaviour, which has been revolutionised by emerging technologies, offering new opportunities for communication with companies and fellow consumers. This will be complemented by an in-depth review of how consumers can be profiled based on their lifestyle characteristics, and an acknowledgement of the role of database marketing in collating, updating and using data to deliver personalised communications messages.

Throughout the module you will cover the following themes:

• Consumer Decision Making: understanding how consumers choose between brand offerings, and specifically how their use of digital channels has changed their consumer behaviour. This will link closely with multi-channel marketing strategy you will address in MK9700 (which is delivered concurrently).

• Journey Mapping: an appreciation of how consumers make decisions as they progress through their everyday lives, what influences these decisions and the critical company-consumer touch points.

• Customer Profiling: investigation of a range of criteria that can be used to segment and profile consumers, ranging from demographics to psychographic and geo-demographic data.

• Database Marketing: introduction to principles of database marketing, understanding the processes of data acquisition and data cleansing (linking with marketing legislation in MK9700 where appropriate).

• Customer Relationship Marketing: understanding how personal data can be used to forge customer relationships via permission marketing and personalisation. This will also address important decisions such as key account management and demarketing.

This module is designed to equip you with an overview of managing a digital marketing campaign alongside opportunities to utilise a range of digital media. At heart of the module is digital campaign management, which is continually evolving due to consumers’ digital media usage, offering interactive opportunities for businesses to communicate. You will explore this in the module by completing a group-based live marketing project which is a part of the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) National Student Competition, covering digital campaign management, developing content for digital platforms, the user experience through the digital area, the role of social media marketing, deploying email marketing, and affiliated marketing’s role in a digital campaign.

Throughout this module you will cover the following themes:

• Campaign Management: understanding the fundamentals of campaign management and specifically from a digital perspective and how evolving digital media can be utilised in a digital campaign. This will link closely with digital marketing strategy addressed in MK9700 and customer journey addressed in MK9701 (which are delivered in semester one).

• Content Management: an appreciation of delivering content through a variety of digital platforms including website, mobile, social media and email.

• User Experience: investigating what constitutes for a positive user experience through digital platforms, and how this will manifest itself on different platforms. This will link closely with website design and usability addressed in linking with customer relationship marketing in MK9701 where appropriate.

• Social Media Marketing: explore social media campaigns and appreciate what influences successful campaigns and their implementation.

• Mobile Marketing: investigate the growing importance mobile marketing plays within a digital campaign and its role within the customer journey. This will link closely with customer journey addressed in MK9701 (which is delivered semester one).

• Email Marketing: investigate strategies for email marketing and its ability to forge customer relationships, due to its personalised nature and its target approach (linking with customer relationship marketing in MK9701 when appropriate).

• Affiliated: appreciation of the role of affiliation marketing and how it can be used as part of relationship with external suppliers to drive traffic through SEO, PPC, email marketing, display advertising (linking with SEO and PPC in BM9700 when appropriate).

• Measurement: understand methods of measuring campaigns in order to value and judge success, allowing for development within future campaigns (linking with metric in BM9706 when appropriate).

This module engages you in personal and professional development in order that you develop and hone your teamworking, management and leadership skills, capabilities and attributes, and in so doing, enhance your employability. On this module, you will not only prepare for your first job after you graduate but also kickstart your commitment to life-long personal and professional learning. In the first part of the module you will be supported in a self-analysis by a range of activities, including the completion of self-administered tool-kits to demonstrate an increased self-awareness and self-understanding. This will also involve applying theoretical frameworks and researching contemporary literature for a more in-depth understanding of self. A key outcome of this process is how you will be able to exploit this development in order to lead, and manage, more effectively in your future careers. The second part of the module contains activities which enable you to build on your self-analysis and explore further your strengths, weaknesses and areas for development in the context of your career development plans. You will receive guidance on how to craft professional, postgraduate CVs, LinkeIn profiles, and supporting documentation to meet the needs of employer. Furthermore, you will use your understanding of self to help you to understand the key issues and specific challenges that you face, with your skills profile, in relation to your employability prospects in your target profession/industry/sector. This will also include the development of knowledge into the global graduate market, (including routes such as self-employment and developing your career with an existing employer) drawing upon local, national and international examples.

This option is offered as an alternative to the NBS Masters’ Dissertation on all 1-year MSc programmes and in the second semester of year 2 on the 2-year programme variants with Study Abroad and with Advanced Practice (if the students select an Internship in semester 1), again as a Dissertation alternative. It is also offered as alternative to the Management Investigation on the MBA.

On this consultancy based module you will enhance your individual effectiveness and employability skills by locating the learning and development in an organisational context. In doing so, you will promote personal and group development, commercial awareness, and a range of inter-personal, intellectual and practical skills and knowledge centred on and demonstrated through a group negotiated real-time work-based project.

The content of the management report will be unique. The nature and scope of the area of your investigation will be defined and agreed in collaboration with the organisation and the University supervisor. The syllabus will include:

• Conducting research in organisations.
• Identifying researchable questions.
• Consultancy and project management skills.
• Research methods and doing a literature review
• Presentation, communication and report writing skills.
• Analysing findings.
• Writing recommendations and action plans.
• Reflecting on work based experiential learning.

In undertaking this project based module, you will critically reflect and evaluate upon organisational practices and their relation with academic theory, and in doing so, provide practical and actionable recommendations through an investigative management report.

The assessment for your module consists of a Group Consultancy Report (7,000 words) and Final Client Presentation, weighted at 60%, alongside an Individual Assignment comprising a Literature Review (4000 words) and a Reflective Learning Statement (2,000 words), weighted at 40%.

In this module you will gain an understanding of the academic skills that are required to produce a Masters Dissertation. By the end of the module you will have written a 15000 word Masters dissertation. The areas included are:

• Justification for the choice of topic
• Appropriate understanding, awareness and critical analysis of existing and up to date literature evidenced by a comprehensive and well-referenced literature review with an extensive reference list
• Selection, justification and application of an appropriately rigorous methodology - including limitations of the approach selected
• Clear statement of the findings of the research
• Critical analysis of the findings
• Explicit links between the analysis and the conclusions supported by critical argument
• Evidence of original work or thought for example in the form or context of the data collected, analytical process or application of findings

The Masters’ Management Enquiry module is a student-led individual project that enables you to undertake a significant piece of assessed

work commensurate with a capstone module and is offered as an alternative to the Masters’ Dissertation and Masters’ Consultancy Project.

The module aims to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate an authentic engagement with managers and/or professionals in your

discipline (this enquiry has to be discipline specific), and to integrate the knowledge you have developed during your programme to explore

the theory in practice. The learning on this module is experiential and problem based, where the focus is upon you discovering, probing and

questioning key practice-based issues. Through the module you will be offered the opportunity to develop and enhance key transferable

employability skills including; time management, project management, communication (written, aural and verbal), negotiation, persuasion and

influence, discovery, initiative, problem-solving and analysis.


The module has five thematic areas; explore, review, engage, reflect and connect. These form the key elements of the assessed submission

which is a single 15,000 word report.


Part A (35%, 5,000-5,500 words)

Explore: Interviewing a manager and/or professional in your discipline. In this interview you will either explore a key issue which you feel the

discipline is facing or, alternatively, explore with the manager or professional the key issues that they feel they are facing in practice. It is

expected that you will apply non-verbatim documented conversation and provide evidence of the key ideas emerging within the submitted

enquiry report (e.g. within the appendices).

Review: Critically examining the academic and practitioner literature to support the exploration, displaying an ability to critically assess and

appraise the knowledge of your discipline related to a specific key issue arising from your exploration.


Part B (65%, 9,500-10,000 words)

Engage: Displaying an authentic engagement with the discipline problem/issue identified in Part A, by collecting/generating and analysing

further live data (beyond the initial interview) regarding the discipline problem/issue. This live data may be primary data (e.g. further interviews

with, or questionnaire to, managers and/or professionals in practice) or secondary data (e.g. industry data). Application of appropriate,

ethically-considered, research methods and appropriate qualitative or quantitative data analysis.

Reflect and Connect: Demonstrating an ability to critically evaluate and reflect on the issues arising from the Management Enquiry.

Demonstrating how you have connected and fed-back to the participants of the Enquiry (usually the manager and/or participants) your key

findings to provide clear prioritised, well-justified, practical and actionable recommendations for change/enhancement/improvement to existing

practice to show how the recommendations would potentially affect workplace professional decision making.