Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing

Topics covered in this Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing

Component 1: Digital Marketing Strategy

• Principles of marketing: Segmentation, targeting, and positioning
• Traditional vs. digital communications: Comparing reach, cost, and measurability
• Working in digital marketing: Roles and skills in agency and in-house teams
• The STAR planning model: Four-stage framework for digital marketing planning
• Situation analysis and target-setting: Auditing performance and setting objectives
• Devising actions and selecting tactics: Matching tactics to objectives and budget
• Overview of digital marketing tactics: SEO, paid search, display, social, and email

Component 2: SEO, Search and Email Marketing

• SEO ranking factors: Technical, on-site, and off-site determinants of organic ranking
• Technical SEO: Site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability
• On-site content optimisation: Keyword research, meta elements, and page structure
• Off-site SEO: Link acquisition, social signals, and local search
• Paid Search fundamentals: Google Ads auction, Quality Score, and bidding
• Keyword selection, ad copy, and landing pages: Writing ads and designing for conversion
• Display advertising: Formats, targeting options, and creative principles
• Email marketing: Campaign types, list management, and performance metrics

Component 3: Business Data Analytics

• Business analytics and big data: Categories of analytics and organisational context
• Secondary and primary data: Sources, limitations, and quality criteria
• Data types: Quantitative and qualitative data and implications for analysis
• The business analytics process: Problem definition through to reporting
• Dataset preparation and cleaning: Missing values, duplicates, and formatting issues
• Exploring data with Excel and AI tools: Pivot tables, charts, and AI-assisted analysis
• Key statistics and correlation: Descriptive statistics for marketing data
• Predictive analytics and reporting: Algorithms, forecasting, and evidence-based reports

Component 4: Digital Business Models

• The digital consumer in Ireland: Device ownership, usage patterns, and behaviour
• Customer journeys and engagement: Touchpoints and engagement opportunities
• Evolving online attitudes: Privacy, trust, and brand authenticity
• Innovation and the hype cycle: How disruptive technologies reach mainstream adoption
• Consumer adoption of innovations: Rogers’ diffusion model applied to digital products
• Generating and screening business ideas: Ideation tools and prioritisation frameworks
• Digital business models and e-commerce: Pure-play models, e-commerce categories, and platforms
• The Business Model Canvas: Analysing and designing digital businesses

Component 5: Social Media Marketing

• Participation as the fifth P: User-generated content and co-creation
• The four zones of social media: Community, publishing, commerce, and entertainment
• Needs and motives of social media users: How motivations differ across platforms and age groups
• Awareness and engagement metrics: Impressions, reach, likes, shares, and clicks
• Share of voice, sentiment, and conversion: Advanced social metrics and attribution
• Meta, Instagram, and TikTok: Organic and paid strategy on consumer platforms
• LinkedIn, YouTube, and X: B2B, video, and real-time brand communications
• Developing a content marketing plan: Planning, producing, and distributing content

Assessment

• This programme is assessed entirely through continuous assessment. There are no written examinations. Learners demonstrate their competence through three assessment types: (1) Assignments: Structured tasks requiring learners to demonstrate understanding of specific learning outcomes. Assignments are typically short-to-medium length written responses addressing a defined brief, (2) Projects: Larger structured tasks requiring planning, independent research, and problem-solving to produce a final output relevant to digital marketing practice, (3) Portfolios: Collections of work produced over time that demonstrate the learner’s developing skills, competencies, and achievement of learning outcomes across the programme.
• All assessments are submitted online through the CMIT eLearning platform. Tutor feedback is provided within 10 working days of each submission. Learners must receive feedback on a submitted assessment before proceeding to the next submission.
• Assessment work is marked by a CMIT Internal Assessor and subsequently reviewed by an Internal Verifier as part of CMIT’s quality assurance process.

Certification

• Learners who successfully complete all programme components and assessments are awarded the Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing by College of Management & IT (CMIT).  The programme is benchmarked to Level 7 on Ireland’s National Framework of Qualifications and is not a registered NFQ qualification.