Our MSc Digital Marketing Journey started six weeks ago. A breath-taking roller coaster ride that takes you through a multi-dimensioned universe and lands in such a real and amazing industry!
It is breath taking because from the first day you realise that the digital industry auto-feeds itself with tons of information. You need to take a breath and dive into this ocean of data and keep up to date with the incessant changes of the market. You need to rapidly find your pace. Because everything seems to be about understanding new trends and the digital marketers ability to adapt, it is very important to stay agile.
“At the end, integrating various aspects of analytics, SEO, design, content and social media to develop a holistic digital marketing strategy was intense.”(Karan Gupta, MSc Digital Marketing Student 2015-2016)
So far, students have been reading so many blog posts from the industry, watching inspirational videos and digital campaigns, getting familiar with key metrics and statistics of digital channels as pre-work. The Modern Marketing Game quests and challenges guide us and give us the right “tempo” to our research.
On Mondays and Tuesdays at the RGU, students experiment and share during those two intensive days of hard work in the classroom, also known as “The Lab”.
Every day it becomes more and more obvious that this field is very multi-dimensioned and that we are the right people at the right place.
“My most exciting experience so far has been getting to know the students! This year’s class is more international, with more diverse skills and knowledge – this is extremely useful for the live client we work with (an international language school) and means the student agency has global expertise to draw on. We can all learn from each other.” (Dr Simone Kurtzke, MSc Digital Marketing Lecturer)
The Team consists of 14 students and 3 lecturers that are all together of 10 different nationalities with different backgrounds and level of experience. We are designers, marketers, and people from communication agencies or corporate organisations, all from 20 to 50 years old. But of course that is not what I mean when I say multi-dimensioned.
Quickly, you realize that digital marketing comes in contact with many different skills, types of job and projects. In less than a month, we have acquired a general view of the differences that exist between content marketing, websites design, social media flows, data analytics and other SEO and SEM action plans. The potential of digital tools and platforms seems so big that you can’t embrace it all. How do you find your way?
Getting access to professional tools and the prototypes of new projects for real clients is the ultimate experience.
“I have just been impressed by how everything we learn ties in together and would be applicable to being a real (digital) marketer. I have enjoyed doing teamwork under pressure and having to think out of the box in comparison to other university courses I have taken.”(Ilias Angelogiannis, MSc Digital Marketing Student 2015-2016)
Eventually reality drives the class back to concrete actions, solving real business issues. Having DigitasLBi mentors and a professional coaching from Fifth Ring gives us a taste of what our next step could be, our next job!
We felt the pressure of delivering a customer proposal on time and matching with real clients brief (Macmillan cancer support and Befriend a Child and International House Aberdeen). We experimented the efficiency of creativity frameworks directly inspired from leaders of the industry (SPRINT).
And of course we are in charge of The Digital Scot website.