Now that search is starting to become more of staple in companies marking mix, I’m starting to see people asking about how to earn a degree (or at least take classes) in search marketing. While many firms offer classes for clients or as part of consulting packages, only a hand full of schools even offer classes on digital marketing; forget about find a legit class on SEO/SEM. That has recently caused me to ask myself what I would expect from a Search Marketing MBA. Since I’m a big Purdue fan, I’m going to use their MBA program overview to help build the Dream MBA in Search. After taking the required classes that every MBA has to take, I would finish my degree with these 7 elective classes:
- Digital Marketing Mix: How Users Interact With Brands Online
- Advanced Online Analytical Analysis: Understanding Users through Data
- Online Customer Communication Skills: Building Content People Want
- Search IT 501: Servers and Languages
- Search IT 601: Understanding Coding Languages
- Search IT 701: Advanced Server and Database Creation and Maintenance
- Advanced Online Customer Communication Skills: Perfecting Viral
Digital Marketing Mix: How Users Interact With Brands Online:
There are few people that understand one aspect of digital marketing, regardless of multiple channels. Being an expert in online display advertising as well search isn’t nearly as important as understanding how they affect each other. How does blogging about SEO lead to usage of twitter, which leads to people creating fan pages on Facebook, to people idolizing your brand, to people searching on Yahoo for your site, to people purchasing your product? Understanding how to manipulate the different mediums (both Paid and Free mediums) to one’s advantage is clutch.
Advanced Online Analytical Analysis: Understanding Users through Data:
Search is 1 part science and 1 part math. Read one of Lance Neuhauser’s words of wisdom on the topic to see what I mean. Search is one of, if not the, most data driven forms of media. We gain real data on what people actually DO, not just think they do. That is a big difference in thinking, and means that marketers need to know how to slice and dice data to its full extent. The science behind the Search comes in the way you can segment data and analyze consumer behavior based on a number of factors.
The Advanced Online Analytical Analysis class would be one part Stats (regression analysis, statistical significance, etc.), one part math (evaluating CTR, Bounce Rate, and coming up with math that creates KPI’s that we haven’t thought of yet), one part web analytics training, and finally one part test creation (because that knowing math doesn’t help if you can’t implement the findings). The better one is at segmenting data, the better they will be at Search.
Online Customer Communication Skills: Building Content People Want:
Look content is king on the internet. It doesn’t matter if the desired content is video, audio, or text, without content the internet wouldn’t exists. Marketers need to understand how to write and produce for the internet. Taking into account SEO, SEM, User Engagement, and closed-loop-marketing, marketers need to understand the ins and outs of creating content. This class would include basic PR practices, as well as video editing and directing skills, as well as trainings on how to strategically come up with content that links business objectives to people’s needs.
Search IT:
Three classes, one would think that this be the longest class description. In fact, it is one of the shortest. In order for search marketing to work, computers and humans must all work in harmony. Users have to be able to early use the digital content at hand, while spiders have to be able to read it. Because IT is so complicated, 3 classes would be a great start at understanding all of the ins and outs of what a SEO/SEM Guru needs to know.
Advanced Online Customer Communication Skills: Perfecting Viral:
At some point, online marketers have to stretch out from the class room to the real world. The last class would be pulling everything together. The text book would be The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This class would be all about taking content, developing a plan to distribute it in a way that allows it to go viral, analyze the response by segmenting all available data, and presenting a case as to why the program was a success or failure (depending on the strategy and desired results).
If you’re reading this and are a professor, feel free to contact me to make the class a reality. Cheers.
