Theories are crucial, of course. Everything in marketing education is built on top of that, and it should be. If you have so many ways to make digital marketing education more accessible and enjoyable, why not make an effort to do so?
Marketing textbooks are so uninteresting that you’ll get the same response from any student who inquires about them. It’s tedious to read all those ideas with only a few practical examples sprinkled here and there. Even if they are given a few case studies, they are written in a format based on the traditional method of teaching theory.
Professionals know that the old ways of teaching no longer work. The use of technology and hands-on experience is an absolute necessity for marketing education.
A great digital marketing course should include the following features:
- Be multidisciplinary in your thinking.
- Theory and practice should be combined.
- Provide a proper business context for the situation
- Applied learning should be the focal point.
- Adapt to a landscape that is rapidly changing.
Teaching Marketing to University Students: Some Tips
The Crucial Approach Is Experiential Learning
Students today anticipate exciting educational techniques. The didactic approach, formerly considered the gold standard in lecture halls worldwide, is no longer appropriate for marketing education.
Christy Price, a psychology professor at Dalton State College, conducted an analysis of Millennials’ learning behavior and came to several significant conclusions:
Students prefer research-based active learning approaches. They learn more efficiently when the lecturer encourages them to undertake research and draw conclusions instead of the more traditional method of digesting material received during lectures.
Millennials desire to acquire knowledge that applies to their lives. They will lose interest in the presentation if the professor does not connect marketing ideas to contemporary cultural examples.
They desire a less formal educational setting. Students today desire interaction with their lecturers.
What do we learn from this?
Instead of lecturing, the professor should provide guidance and encourage students to study. They can make recommendations for further research into famous culture marketing examples. When students perform research, they can share and debate their findings in a relaxed manner via fun presentations and dialogues.
Additionally, the teacher should encourage children to learn through hands-on projects. We are not discussing essays or research papers. Let us now go to that point.
Group Projects Outperform Essays
Essays have little bearing on a marketing student’s future. They are required to write essays for scholarships and university applications. However, it’s a major disappointment once they begin attending classes and the professors begin requiring additional writings.
These assignments are written in an out-of-date format. We cannot expect students to be enthusiastic about researching real-world marketing examples and writing about them in the formal 5-paragraph format. We need to instill a sense of excitement in their assignments.
Either way, students will be expected to submit their assignments once in a while in form of essays.
As a student, you may not have the time and may wonder, “Who is going to write my essays?”
Online Education
It’s a well-known fact that when students cannot obtain the necessary education in university, they resort to eLearning for digital marketing. Google’s Digital Academy offers some incredible courses. Most colleges make their courses available for free via Coursera and similar sites. As a result, if you fall short of their expectations, they will find a means to get the knowledge. However, for a professor, this constitutes a failure.
That is why you should ensure that all of your lectures adhere to the format desired by students. They want to work through the lessons at their own pace. Rather than taking notes in class, they would like to have access to the same lecture online during study time.
Make every effort to establish an appropriate curriculum for an online course. Then, upload all lessons on YouTube or another site to ensure that your students hear them. This is how you extend the reach of your knowledge outside the lecture hall and give a more accessible format for your students’ lessons.
Instruct Students in Content Marketing
Your students must be familiar with conventional marketing ideas, which means you’ll cover the marketing mix theory, Ansoff’s matrix theory, and any other classical marketing techniques that remain effective to some level.
However, you must also educate students about contemporary marketing and contrast it with the more traditional tactics of the past.
When your students are no longer confined to their desks, they will likely engage in content marketing methods. You want to instill in them a sense of preparedness for that future. They should be familiar with all theories and techniques, but they should also be encouraged to experiment with new trends and their own ideas.
You can explore the most compelling current examples of content marketing in the lecture hall. Solicit research from your students and propose discussion starters. You can invite students to join a private Facebook group and continue the debate there.
Make your Lessons Analytics-Skilled
Digital marketing analytics must be covered in your course. A marketing effort is never complete without the appropriate tools and techniques for analyzing the outcomes. Current and future marketing professionals must constantly monitor the performance of their campaigns.
Instruct your students to use critical technologies such as Google Analytics and Kissmetrics. Assign them tasks that require them to develop a marketing strategy and analyze its results using these tools. Developing into a superb marketer is entirely dependent on experience. What good is a marketing degree if education does not provide that experience? Make your classes worthwhile. Analytics education is critical!
Students Have High Expectations; We Must Live Up to Them.
Marketing is not a subject taught in books or lectures as mentioned above. Students must be familiar with some theory to comprehend buyer psychology. However, they will be unconcerned with memorizing all of this knowledge to perform well on an exam. The lecturer should motivate them to put theory into practice, which will require them to alter the types of assignments they assign.
Got any great ideas for making your upcoming lecture more interesting? An excellent place to start is with a group activity that encourages students to learn by doing. Students will evaluate the findings, and you will hold a class discussion to discuss them.
