MSc Digital Marketing Strategy Curriculum
The programme consists of nine taught modules (7 core and 2 electives), assessed through a blend of written examinations and continuous coursework. Taught modules run across two terms: Michaelmas Term (September–December) and Hilary Term (January–April). The final Trinity Term (April–August) is dedicated to your dissertation or company project.
The modules listed below are for the 2026/27 academic year and are subject to change.
| Module | ECTS |
|---|---|
| Digital Design and User Experience | 5 |
| Digital Marketing Communication | 5 |
| Digital Marketing Strategy | 5 |
| Marketing Intelligence & Analytics | 5 |
| Transformation Management for Individuals & Organisations | 5 |
| Research Methods | 5 |
| Digital Marketing Practice | 10 |
| Ethical Business for Digital Marketing | 5 |
| Social Media Marketing | 5 |
| Dissertation or Company Research Project | 30 |
Taught modules normally take place across Michaelmas and Hilary terms, with the final Trinity term dedicated to the dissertation or group consultancy project.
|
September-December Michaelmas Term |
January-April Hilary Term |
May-August Trinity Term |
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| Core |
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|
Electives (Choose two) |
Note: Modules offered each academic year are subject to change. The modules listed above and below are the modules and timetable for 2026/27.
Module Descriptions
Digital Design & User Experience (5 ECTS)
Create digital experiences that engage users and drive conversions. Explore the technologies shaping online behaviour and learn how to evaluate, design and improve user journeys across websites, search, email, social and mobile. Through practical work with no-code platforms, analytics tools and AI-supported design, you will build a conversion-focused website and learn how to optimise digital experiences for changing technologies and customer expectations.
How this fits your MSc journey: Connect digital marketing strategy with hands-on UX design, technology selection and conversion-focused execution.
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate digital technologies: Critically examine the tools and platforms that support search, display, email, social and mobile marketing.
- Improve user experiences: Apply practical frameworks to assess and enhance the digital experience of a product or service.
- Build practical design skills: Create a conversion-focused website using contemporary no-code and digital marketing technologies.
- Respond to emerging change: Assess the implications of generative AI, cookie deprecation and other market developments for digital design and UX.
- Bridge strategy and execution: Use digital insights to improve audience engagement andoptimise marketing investment.
Digital Marketing Communication (5 ECTS)
Design digital communications that reach customers across the full journey. Learn how to research, plan, develop and implement campaigns using paid search, display advertising, SEO, organic and paid content, and performance measurement. This practical module uses contemporary marketing and AI tools to turn business objectives into coordinated, measurable channel strategies.
How this fits your MSc journey: Establish the core planning, channel and measurement skills that support Digital Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing Practice.
Learning outcomes:
- Map the customer journey: Assess how digital channels influence customers in an omni channel environment.
- Develop channel strategies: Create digital marketing plans suited to different organisations and business scenarios.
- Define target audiences: Research and develop customer personas for digital communication.
- Use contemporary tools: Apply digital marketing and AI tools across paid and organic media.
- Build an end-to-end plan: Integrate strategy, channels,content and execution into a complete campaign plan.
- Measure business impact: Select relevant metrics and evaluate how digital activity contributes to business goals.
Digital Marketing Strategy (5 ECTS)
Build the strategic thinking behind effective digital marketing. Move beyond channel tactics to diagnose the current position of a real SME, understand customers through evidence, identify performance and compliance gaps, and develop improvements that can be tested. Using SOSTAC and RACE, you will progress from an AS-IS audit through customer insight and gap analysis to a practical TO-BE strategy and proof plan.
How this fits your MSc journey: Integrate strategy, customer insight, privacy, measurement and AI-supported research into a coherent, client-ready improvement plan.
Learning outcomes:
- Structure digital strategy: Apply SOSTAC and RACE to audit how organisations create and exchange value online.
- Audit digital readiness: Assess digital presence, cookies, consent, tracking logic and measurement gaps.
- Build evidence-based personas: Use assumptions, AI support and public digital traces to develop testable customer hypotheses.
- Map customer journeys: Identify touch points, emotions, pain points and gaps between company messaging and customer response.
- Design an actionable plan: Present objectives, tactics, controls, proof plans and ethical safeguards with professional rigour.
Marketing Intelligence & Analytics (10 ECTS)
Turn marketing data into informed action. Learn how to acquire, manage and analyse information from surveys, CRM systems and generative AI, then translate findings into useful customer and market intelligence. Through practical datasets and tools such as Excel and SPSS, you will build foundational analytical skills and critically assess emerging uses of synthetic data and AI-supported research.
How this fits your MSc journey: Build the evidence, analytics and critical-thinking capabilities required to support data-informed marketing decisions across the programme and in professional practice.
Learning outcomes:
- Design an analytical approach: Select appropriate research and analysis methods for a managerial problem.
- Understand marketing intelligence: Explain howorganisations collect data and transform it into actionable insight.
- Apply analytical tools: Use relevant techniques to investigate real marketing and business questions.
- Interpret findings: Translate analytical results into clear, evidence-based managerial recommendations.
- Collaborate on data problems: Combine analytical reasoning, problem-solving and teamwork in applied tasks.
Transformation Management for Individuals & Organisations (5 ECTS)
Learn how to thrive amid continuous technological disruption. Drawing on the Permanent Reinvention Mindset, explore how careers, industries and business models evolve, and how individuals and organisations can adapt before change becomes unavoidable. Use memorable mental models, organisational cases and AI experiments to strengthen adaptability, resilience, focus, human connection and creative decision-making.
How this fits your MSc journey: Complement technical marketing skills with the mindset and human capabilities needed to lead change in organisations, brands and your own career.
Learning outcomes:
- Analyse disruption: Use the S-Curve and Infinity Curve to examine how AI and technology reshape careers and business models.
- Build adaptability: Apply Permanent Reinvention principles to develop personal andorganisational resilience.
- Reframe failure and resistance: Use practical mental models to improve decisions under uncertainty.
- Balance AI and human creativity: Evaluate intelligent tools and recommend approaches that retain meaningful human judgement.
- Reclaim attention: Assess how digital technologies influence behaviour and develop strategies for focus and purposeful action.
- Strengthen human conne ction: Use trust,empathy and professional networks as sources of leadership and competitive advantage.
Research Methods (5 ECTS)
Develop the research capabilities to investigate meaningful business and management questions with rigour. Learn how to define a research problem, engage critically with theory, choose and justify a methodology, collect and analyse data, interpret findings, and communicate useful conclusions. The module combines research theory with practical application and emphasises ethics, integrity and responsible decision-making.
How this fits your MSc journey: Prepare for the MSc dissertation or company project while building transferable research and evidence-evaluation skills for professional practice.
Learning outcomes:
- Define worth while questions: Refine research problems into focused questions that can contribute to knowledge or practice.
- Engage critically with evidence: Use high-quality academic and practitioner sources to develop an informed understanding.
- Design coherent research: Align the research question, theoretical perspective,methodology, methods and intended contribution.
- Collect andanalysedata: Apply appropriate methods while recognising their strengths, limitations and implications.
- Interpret and communicate findings: Develop clear conclusions and explain their significance to relevant audiences.
- Conduct research responsibly: Address ethics,integrity and stakeholder considerations throughout the research process.
Digital Marketing Practice (5 ECTS)
Operate as a supervised junior digital marketing consultancy team for a live client. Move from discovery and diagnosis through campaign planning, implementation, measurement, optimisation and final recommendations. You will combine SEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, paid search, content, landing pages, conversion optimisation and analytics, using AI transparently and responsibly throughout the professional workflow.
How this fits your MSc journey: Consolidate learning from across the MSc in a demanding live-client environment and develop the specialist, collaborative and professional skills employers value.
Learning outcomes:
- Diagnose digital performance: Research audiences, competitors, search visibility, content,websites and campaign readiness.
- Use AI responsibly: Select and evaluate AI tools withappropriate verification, disclosure, privacy and human oversight.
- Design andoptimisecampaigns: Implement and quality-assure paid search, SEO, GEO, content, CRO and landing-page activity.
- Measure and interpret results: Define KPIs,recognise data limitations and turn campaign evidence into prioritised recommendations.
- Manage clients professionally: Apply strong teamwork, communication, governance, risk management and stakeholder practices
Ethical Business for Digital Marketing (5 ECTS)
Make responsible marketing decisions in a digital environment where innovation often moves faster than regulation. Explore ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability through issues including data privacy, persuasive design, platform accountability, algorithmic bias, greenwashing, inclusion and generative AI. Learn to evaluate how digital marketing choices affect people, society, brand trust and long-term organisational value.
How this fits your MSc journey: Add ethical, social and sustainability judgement to the strategic, analytical and technical capabilities developed across the MSc.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand ethical foundations: Explain the relevance of business ethics, CSR and sustainability to digital marketing practice.
- Analysewider impacts: Evaluate how social and environmental challenges shape marketing decisions, trust and reputation.
- Debate emerging issues: Critically assess privacy, transparency, algorithms, generative AI and stakeholder responsibility.
- Evaluate organisational drivers: Examine how regulation, stakeholder pressure, consumer expectations and business value influence responsible practice.
- Recommend responsible action: Propose ethical and sustainable approaches that balance performance with wider consequences.
Social Media Marketing (5 ECTS)
Turn social media activity into measurable business impact. Explore platform behaviour and algorithms, content strategy, community management, social listening, influencer marketing, advertising and performance measurement. Working with a real client, you will develop and implement an integrated campaign while learning to use data and AI-supported workflows responsibly.
How this fits your MSc journey: Build the strategic, analytical and client-facing capabilities needed for careers in social media, digital marketing, communications and brand management.
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate platforms and trends: Critically assess the frameworks, technologies and developments shaping social media marketing.
- Understand audiencebehaviour: Analyse online communities, social influence and audience motivations to inform decisions.
- Audit social performance: Use social listening, analytics and competitor benchmarking to identify opportunities and risks.
- Develop integrated strategies: Translate audience insight, organisational goals and data into evidence-based recommendations.
- Run and evaluate campaigns: Design content and advertising activity using contemporary tools and AI-supported workflows.
Consumer Value Management & New Technologies (5 ECTS)
Understand how organisations create, measure and capture value from customer relationships. Link customer relationship management, lifetime value, profitability, loyalty, word of mouth and marketing return on investment with developments including generative AI, influencer marketing, livestreaming, video gaming and the metaverse. Learn to assess customers and marketing actions from both financial and managerial perspectives.
How this fits your MSc journey: Strengthen your ability to connect digital marketing and emerging technologies with customer profitability, strategic trade-offs and long-term value creation.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand customer value: Analysethe foundations of customer relationship management and customer value management.
- Measure financial attractiveness: Evaluate the profitability and long-term value of customers and customer segments.
- Prioritisecustomer actions: Recommend strategies based on profit potential and strategic relevance.
- Evaluate technology's impact: Assess how emerging technologies change customer management and value creation.
- Make evidence-based recommendations: Apply analytical frameworks to real customer and marketing decisions.
Digital Business Models (5 ECTS)
Understand how digital technologies reshape the way organisations create, deliver and capture value. Examine digital-first models across industries and use strategic tools such as the Business Model Canvas and Value Networks to analyse pure-play and established businesses. Through cases, workshops and forward-looking analysis, you will learn to diagnose digital business challenges and identify new opportunities for growth and innovation.
How this fits your MSc journey: Develop the strategic perspective needed to look beyond short-term marketing tactics and understand the wider digital business ecosystem.
Learning outcomes:
- Recognise digital-first models: Identify and explain the defining characteristics of digital business models.
- Assess operational challenges: Evaluate what organisations need to manage, maintain and scale digital models effectively.
- Apply strategic frameworks: Use consulting approaches and business modelling tools toanalyse real organisations.
- Collaborate on business design: Work with others to apply and refine strategic frameworks in practical cases.
- Think prospectively: Identify emerging trends and develop informed recommendations for future digital opportunities.
Social and E-Commerce (5 ECTS)
Learn how contemporary brands grow profitably across their own websites, marketplaces and social-commerce platforms. Take an operator's view of direct-to-consumer retail, the creator economy, generative AI, product discovery, conversion optimisation, customer retention, measurement and demand planning. You will analyse real businesses and build a functional Shopify store using AI-supported tools.
How this fits your MSc journey: Bring together brand, content, media and analytics around a measurable commercial outcome: profitable sales and repeat customers.
Learning outcomes:
- Evaluate the commerce landscape: Compare DTC,marketplaces and social platforms within a wider digital growth strategy.
- Design social-commerce approaches: Develop creator,influencer and affiliate strategies for a brand.
- Apply AI andmartech: Use tools across product discovery, service, creative, CRO, CRM and measurement.
- Build and grow a store: Create a functional Shopify storefront and drive, measure and improve traffic conversion.
- Use commercial data: Apply contribution margin, CAC, LTV,MER and cohort analysis to recommend a path to profitability.
- Recommend growth strategies: Use retailer and DTC cases toidentify and defend evidence-based opportunities.
Entrepreneurship, Creativity & Innovation (5 ECTS)
Learn how expert entrepreneurs act when the future cannot be predicted. Drawing on research into successful ventures and entrepreneurial failures, explore the five principles of effectuation and the difference between ideas and opportunities. Through cases and experiential exercises, you will practise creating opportunities, engaging stakeholders and making progress with limited resources and uncertain information.
How this fits your MSc journey: Develop an entrepreneurial way of thinking that can support new ventures, innovation within established organisations, consultancy and career decision-making.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand effectuation: Explain its core principles and distinguish effectual reasoning from predictive approaches.
- Decide under uncertainty: Apply effectual logic when information, resources and outcomes are unclear.
- Analyseopportunities: Use real cases to assess possible courses of entrepreneurial action.
- Co-create with stakeholders: Develop strategies through engagement, experimentation and iterative learning.
- Reflect on risk and assumptions: Critically examine personal approaches to failure, uncertainty and opportunity creation.
- Defend entrepreneurial choices: Communicate decisions using evidence and structured reasoning.
Digital Marketing & AI (5 ECTS)
Move from using AI tools to applying them strategically across digital marketing. Learn how AI can support problem diagnosis, campaign planning, idea evaluation, creative production, content repurposing and decision-making. Through a practical project, you will build an evidence-based marketing proposal while retaining human responsibility for judgement, ethics and final recommendations.
How this fits your MSc journey: Connect consumer insight, strategy, content, analytics and responsible technology use in a future-focused marketing workflow.
Learning outcomes:
- Understand AI-enabled value creation: Explain how AI is reshaping digital marketing andapply frameworks to campaign planning and evaluation.
- Diagnose opportunities: Turn customer, competitor, channel and digital-trace evidence intoobjectives and testable hypotheses.
- Apply AI across workflows: Use AI for ideation, evaluation, production,repurposing and presentation while retaining human oversight.
- Develop a strategic proposal: Connect audience insight, value proposition, content strategy, execution and evaluation logic.
- Use AI responsibly: Address privacy, bias, copyright, authenticity, transparency and brand safety in professional recommendations.
Sales Management (5 ECTS)
Master the art and science of selling in a digital-first world. Learn how to lead high-performing sales teams, convert leads into loyal customers, and navigate shifting buyer behaviours with proven, real-world strategies. Gain practical skills in SPIN selling, sales pipeline management, and go-to-market execution.
How this fits your MSc journey: Build strategic sales capabilities and leadership insight essential for driving business growth in modern markets.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply modern selling techniques: Use proven frameworks like SPIN selling to convert leads into opportunities.
- Understand evolving buyer behaviour: Analyse how technology and shifting preferences shape customer engagement.
- Lead with purpose and ethics: Evaluate the role of leadership and ethical decision-making in sales performance.
- Bridge sales and marketing: Examine how alignment drives value throughout the customer journey.
- Design effective go-to-market strategies: Craft integrated sales and marketing plans that deliver results.
Dissertation or Company Project (30 ECTS)
Define your career edge through a self-directed, high-impact project. Choose between an academic dissertation or a company-specific consultancy project to explore a topic that aligns with your goals. Whether developing a strategy for a real organisation or advancing digital marketing theory, you'll apply critical thinking, research, and analytical skills to deliver meaningful insights.
How this fits your MSc journey: Showcase your expertise and integrate everything you've learned into a final piece of work that reflects your professional or academic ambitions.
Learning outcomes:
- Develop a focused research question: Define a relevant issue and articulate its value to academic or business audiences.
- Critically engage with literature and data: Synthesise academic theory and industry insights to inform your work.
- Justify your methodology: Select and explain research tools that best suit your objectives.
- Analyse and present findings: Gather and evaluate data to support clear, evidence-led conclusions.
- Manage a complex project: Demonstrate autonomy, organisation and academic rigour in producing a high-standard final report.