Welcome to Internet Marketing Strategies!

The syllabus is up on the course website and hopefully that answers most of your questions about the course. I'd like to expand on a couple of issues for those of you who may still be considering whether to sign up for the course.

This is a marketing strategy course, the focus being on integrating internet marketing strategies and programs into traditional offline strategies and activities. As this chart suggests, it is a complex and fascinating activity. The graphic is one perspective on the basic activities of integrated marketing communications, on and off the web.

The prerequisite for the course is one marketing course--undergraduate or graduate, no time period specified for completion. I do not recommend that people take the course if they do not meet the prerequisite. The course assumes marketing knowledge at that level. More, it assumes an ability to apply the marketing knowledge you already have.

If your marketing course was taken some time ago, or if you are determined to enroll for the course without the prereq, I strongly encourage you to get a basic marketing textbook at a local college bookstore or online. Look for the required text for either the undergraduate or graduate core marketing course. Online, here are some suggestions, all recently updated:
Philip Kotler's Marketing Management text is the classic text
His shorter framework text (Kindle and paperback editions available)
Pride and Ferrell (loose leaf edition available)
Kerin, Hartley and Rudelius (Kindle and loose leaf editions available)
If/after you have a background in basic marketing management:
A marketing strategy text (Kindle and paperback editions available)
A somewhat shorter strategy text (Kindle and paperback editions available)

Don't settle for a (cheaper) trade book on marketing, Internet marketing or social media, although there are some very good ones. If you do not meet the prerequisite, you need a textbook with broad, conceptual coverage not something from the popular business press. And you need to get started on it right away!

A final word of warning for those with an IT or engineering background. A marketing course by its very nature focuses on people and how they behave--not on technology, systems or products. That can be a difficult attitude adjustment for people who have a technical, as opposed to a business, background. It can be handled, but it's good to go into the course with the understanding that the perspective must be on people and how they behave, not on the technology of the Internet, fascinating though it is.

I look forward to meeting you in person on January 25 or via the student information form in early February!

Please get all the material (described in gruesome detail in the syllabus) assembled and be ready for the first class, in person or by video (available no later than Friday following the class on Wednesday).

The semester passes quickly, so be ready to get off to a flying start!

MLR