BA (Hons) Digital Marketing & Content Creation

You’ll start this Digital Marketing & Content Creation course by learning about the principles of graphic design theory. These are common rules that designers use to make their work functional and appealing, so it engages with the right audience and creates a better user experience.

Across areas like typography, layout and design processes, you’ll learn how to organise and present information in a way that’s easy to understand and encourages interaction. You’ll also learn how to interpret and analyse your work objectively – and to be aware of any production constraints along the way. You’ll finish the year with a solid foundation in creating your own designs and images.

In this module, you’ll take a deep dive into digital copywriting, where you’ll consider how to adapt your writing style for different audiences, platforms and types of content. You’ll cover the entire copywriting journey, from generating ideas to writing compelling copy, as well as editing and proofreading your work.

You’ll look at platforms like websites and social media, and make use of structural tools to meet each stage of the customer journey. And you’ll learn how to adapt your tone to these, across different styles of content – including tweets, ads, case studies and press releases. Alongside the design skills you’ve built in the ‘Design Principles’ module, you’ll have the basic ingredients you need to create content across a variety of platforms and for a range of purposes and audiences.

This comprehensive introduction to digital marketing covers everything you need to know about the purpose of marketing, how to attract and engage your target audience, managing your reputation, working with influencers, and analysing your online performance through data.

We’ll also touch on wider principles of general marketing, teaching you about its role in building relationships with customers, and explain how to understand — and satisfy — those customers’ needs. You’ll discover the power of customer insights, and learn how market research can help you to plan a more effective and targeted strategy. And towards the end, we’ll show you how to apply all that knowledge to a digital context, using product, service, pricing, distribution, and promotion strategies to attract attention and drive action.

The best digital marketing plans are rooted in thorough and thoughtful research. With the right insights you’ll know where to find your audience, and what to say to them; which customers are worth pursuing; and what they think about your brand, product, or service. Without them? Your content might not get results.

That’s why market research is so important. In this module, you’ll build a comprehensive understanding of market research, including problem formulation, research design, data collection instruments, data analysis methods, and how to present your findings. You’ll learn how to design quantitative and qualitative research, and explore different data collection and analysis techniques. And most importantly, we’ll look at how to use all the insights you collect as the foundation for your marketing plan, turning all the data into information that informs your strategy.

In this module, you’ll learn how to create compelling assets and content that fit your goals and engage your audiences. You’ll consider why a compelling online presence is now such an important part of any business’s marketing plan and explore the various social and digital platforms, considering how content should be tailored to fit. You’ll also learn about the technical side of social — management tools, analytics, social listening, outreach, and more — and learn how SEO (search engine optimisation) and digital and social advertising can help your content to reach a bigger, and more targeted, audience.

Finally, you’ll touch on social media governance and reputation management, and look at creative ways to stand out and get noticed online. In the end, you’ll have the tools and understanding you need to attract the attention of your audience and tell them what to do next.

Building on your previous modules on content creation and digital marketing, this module will show you how to put creative content to work as part of a campaign. It explores where content fits into your digital marketing strategy; how to develop effective content for social media and other digital platforms; and what makes a successful content plan.

Over the course of the module, you’ll develop valuable skills in producing and managing digital content, building brands, and running digital marketing campaigns. We’ll teach you how to devise a strategy and what factors you should consider, from business goals and budget to how best to reach your target audience.

At the end, you’ll create a social media content plan for a high-quality digital marketing campaign, putting everything you’ve learned into practice.

Digitisation, social media and new technology constantly changes the way we use and pay for content, shaped by industry regulations. In this module you’ll look at key areas of media and advertising law, developing an understanding of copyright law and what it takes to protect works and their creators.

You’ll explore who has rights, how they’re licensed and how they can be infringed, as well as the ways in which the law is forced to adapt to new technological advances and changing business models. You’ll also take a closer look at legislation like the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Contempt of Court Act 1981, covering everything from broadcasting to sponsorship, and examining current issues around privacy, defamation and freedom of expression. Ultimately, you’ll have a broader view of how all this applies to using and commercialising your own content.

With good data, you’ll make better marketing decisions. Building on your introduction to market research and data analysis techniques in your first year, this module looks at how to collect, process, and analyse consumer and market data, and explores how that data can then drive your strategy.

Overall, it’s a much more detailed look at the world of data analytics, particularly focusing on social media analytics. You’ll learn about the technical language, concepts, and models, and explore how industry standard analytics tools can help you measure the success of your digital marketing. You’ll examine real-life scenarios and problem-based case studies, looking at how data could be used to find a solution. In the end, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how to turn data into meaningful insights, and turn those insights into actions.

Attracting the attention of your audience is only the first step. Once your customer is looking in your direction, you need to ensure you send the right message, in the right way — and that means carefully planned marketing communications.

A brand’s marketing communications can include advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations, guerrilla promotion and more, all of which can take place online and involve the production of compelling content. In this module we’ll explore all those aspects of digital marketing communications and discuss how, and when, to use them. 

We’ll also look at how best to achieve different marketing objectives through those communications, whether the goal is to convert to a sale, change perception, increase brand recognition, or develop customer relationships. On completion of this module, you’ll understand the broad range of comms that go into a brand’s marketing plan and how they work together. Next, the ‘Digital Marketing Strategy & Campaign Planning’ module will take a focused look at where marketing comms fit into a digital strategy.

This module is a culmination of all the tools and principles you’ve learnt from our other modules, and allows you to see the bigger picture – your digital marketing strategy. Within this, we’ll show how to bring together every single communication, message and piece of content to achieve your objectives.

We’ll first teach you about how to build a successful strategy, touching on value proposition development, customer acquisition and conversion. We’ll then share how to engage your audience, looking at segmentation, targeting and brand positioning, and how to use this information to plan an effective campaign.

Finally, we’ll explore converting your audience, and how to build a competitive advantage. For more on the strategic side of digital marketing, you will study ‘Brand Development and Management’ in your final year. You’ll take a more comprehensive view of the different types of marketing comms, and how they might feed into a digital strategy.

With media-rich websites increasingly using video content, this highly practical module gives you practical skills in digital production, including how to plan, shoot and edit video content, and how to create and polish audio content. 

You’ll take a deep dive into technical aspects of industry-standard video and audio editing software, and see how historical, cultural, political and artistic developments influence editing techniques and practices. You’ll get to grips with a variety of editing concepts – such as montage and dialectical approaches – and touch on theories like Walter Murch’s ‘rule of six’, key components that make a cut. Finally, you’ll have a chance to look at different types of audio and video content, including podcasts, and audio for advertising and marketing. It all leads to the production of content, ready to showcase in your growing portfolio.

With the widespread adoption of mobile devices, it’s easier than ever to create and share images, audio and video. Participatory culture has also impacted how stories are told and films are made. In this module, you’ll gain a broader understanding of digital storytelling, to see how stories and meaning are shaped across web platforms.

You’ll see how professionals use technology to share content, grow audiences and create fan communities through a range of formats across both established platforms and evolving channels. You’ll also look at media narrative methods, branching out into citizen journalism and social media-based storytelling. And using a critical eye, you’ll examine case studies within the digital storytelling arena, gaining insights into what’s effective and what you could tap into as a content creator.

This module helps you build entrepreneurial skills, hone your commercial awareness and understand the tools needed to run your own business, with reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals framework. 

You’ll discover how purpose and values drive goals; how to balance risk-taking; ways to manage problem-solving; and how to communicate with customers. Practical aspects are key, so you’ll learn about managing resources, collaboration, and money – including pricing, cost structures and income streams. You’ll also get creative insights into ways to share your story, like pitching, presenting, building a brand and product curation. So whether you’re interested in a media-related enterprise, production company, creative agency or online business, you’ll get a solid understanding of what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

A brand is much, much more than a logo. It’s the public manifestation of an organisation, product, service, or individual, and comprises everything from name, language, and visual identity to behaviour and values. And however a brand looks and whatever it represents, it must work within industry regulations and stay true to the company’s strategy.

In this module, we’ll show you what’s involved in building and managing a brand in the creative industry. You’ll learn about the different models of brand building and what makes up a brand’s architecture, including the name, visual identity, messaging, positioning, values, and more. We’ll also examine celebrity brands; look at how brands are launched and change over time; learn how to create native ads and content for a closed network; consider the role and impact of regulatory bodies; and explore international brand strategies. Finally, we’ll discuss the importance of personal branding — what’s your brand, and how is it perceived by others?

When crafting a digital marketing strategy or planning online content, you need to understand the consumer: how they think, what motivates them, what they buy, and more. That means getting to know your target audience — because it’s only by knowing the consumer that you can decide how to reach them.

While you will have touched on target audiences in other modules, in this module we’ll dive much deeper, teaching you about consumer demographics, consumer psychographics, perception, consumer learning, and consumer culture. You’ll then learn how to use this understanding to inform digital marketing and brand positioning, ensuring you present an organisation, product, or your personal brand in a way that connects with the right people.

Advertising is a fast-moving, creative, and multi-faceted discipline — and with the wealth of formats and platforms online, it’s even more so in the world of digital marketing. Here, we’ll look at both the academic and practical sides of advertising, from understanding regulatory bodies to putting together a creative pitch.

Focusing specifically on online advertising, you’ll study theoretical topics like social and ethical issues; advertising around the world; and how advertising is regulated. And on the practical side, we’ll show you how to conceptualise, implement, and manage integrated advertising projects from a client perspective. That includes pitching ideas and strategies, following briefs, the importance of brand guidelines, and how to plan advertising campaigns.

Your final project brings together everything you’ve learned across the Digital Marketing & Content Creation course, ready to kickstart a career creating content. Drawing on techniques and insights from across previous modules, you’ll apply your creative skills, knowledge and understanding of content to address real-world marketing challenges through research, data analysis and strategy implementation. Through both qualitative and quantitative research – including interviews, focus groups, surveys and more – you’ll form a solid basis for a successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy that will help launch your exciting career in this creative industry.