Imagine the following scenario:   
You’ve been hired as the Digital Marketing Manager for a company that sells tablet PCs. Along with your team you are responsible for the company’s digital marketing efforts (search engine advertising, email marketing, and landing page optimization). That means you manage a 15,000€ campaign budget!

In the course, you will be able to do that using a digital markting simulation called Simbound. This simulation allows you to test different keywords and bidding strategies in search engine advertising (SEA), test different versions of emails to reach out to your existing customer base, and optimize your landing pages. All while you compete against you rival companies to get the most customers.

Your job is to convince the Marketing Manager of your company that you are doing a great job in figuring out how to set up a campaign and test your setup given different objectives in the ten rounds of the simulation.
 

After completing this course, students will be able to

1. calculate the most important online marketing metrics and discuss their advantages and disadvantages,

2. describe how SEA works and optimize a company’s SEA campaigns(campaign structure as well as bidding),

3. describe what A/B testing is and how it can be used to optimize email marketing campaigns as well as landing pages,

4. analyze data from digital marketing campaigns and use that data to make qualified recommendations for improving these campaigns, and

5. effectively communicate digital marketing strategies.

This course will be held in Presence, Distance or Hybrid mode depending on the WU regulations regarding the pandemic.

Attendance of at least seven out of the eight classes is required. In special instances, there will be a possibility to compensate for one additional absence on individual basis.

Phase 1: Lectures & article presentations

• Introduction to the course and digital marketing basics
• Article I: Email marketing
• Article II: Search engine advertising
• Article III: Social media

Article (I – III) presentations are a group task. You will be divided in groups of 3 or 4.

Task for all articles: Prepare and submit a presentation about the article (10-15 slides) and be prepared to present it in class. Focus on the following points:

• What is the aim of the study?
• What theory do the authors use to justify their arguments?
• What are the corresponding hypotheses if they have any?
• What type of data did the authors use?
• How does the experimental design look like?
• What are the major findings of the study?
• What are the managerial implications of the study?
• What are the limitations of the study?

Phase 2: Digital Marketing Simulation

• Introduction
• Rounds 1 & 2
• Coaching 1: Plenary session
• Rounds 3 – 5
• Coaching 2: Individual sessions
• Rounds 6 – 10

Coaching Sessions (group task): In order to prepare you for upcoming decisions to allow improving your campaigns, each team has to send specific questions for each coaching session (by email to alicja.grzadziel@wu.ac.at). In these sessions, you will get advice and feedback on your questions.

Phase 3: Final presentations
Peer Review Presentation (group task):
At the end of the simulation, each team will get access to the whole dataset of one of their competitors in order to challenge the other team’s strategy in a peer review. Therefore, your task is to deep dive into the dataset of one of your competitors, analyze their decisions and campaigns as well as to benchmark their results against your own results.
The presentation should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Your final grade on a 100% scale is calculated as follows:
45% of the final grade is based on the submitted presentations of different papers,
15% of the final grade is based on the peer review presentation (20 min.),
40% of the final grade is based on your rank in the simulation and the effort that you put into it

The transformation of your grade on the 100% scale looks like this:
1: 100% - 90%
2: 89% - 80%
3: 79% - 70%
4: 69% - 60%
5: Below 60%