Digital Marketing and Innovation

The advent of new technologies, digital innovation, and social media increasingly represents a paradigmatic shift of both management and marketing disciplines: modern companies need to radically change their traditional way to do business and gain sustainable competitive advantage in the long run. Although strategic marketing still relies on traditional frameworks such as segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) as well as the marketing mix (4-6Ps) to provide services and products that effectively satisfy customers' needs and relieve their pains, marketers need to constantly develop innovative strategies able to create tailored and customized touchpoints at every stage of the customer journey (i.e., awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy). This is particularly true in digital environments and e-commerce characterized by social media platforms, online communities, virtual landscapes, and two-way interactions between consumers and companies. As a result, one of the main new challenges of marketing refers to creating: (1) user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, (2) optimization of online contents (SEM and SEO), and (3) ground-breaking value propositions to reach product-market fit. Building on this, the goal of the present course is to teach students how successful companies - either B2B, B2C, or C2C - lever differentiation in respect to competitors and thus sustain their position in online and offline markets. Students will work in teams with the aim of creating and implementing a digital marketing plan to launch new products/services in the online environment.

At the end of the course, students are expected to have learnt the following topics: be able to strategically scan and map digital ecosystems of modern industries; assess customers' pain points and provide painkillers to fully address their expectations; design innovative value propositions tailored on "buyer persona"; create positioning/perceptual maps through a customer-centric perspective; manage a digital communication funnel/learning process to test and validate product-market fit; critically evaluate companies' profile and position on the main digital channels (Instagram; Facebook; LinkedIn; Google Search; Twitter; YouTube; etc.); present through a final pitch their digital marketing plan and new product development.