IIMs offering courses in Digital Marketing

In the last decade, our lives have been digitized to a large extent. We do most of our tasks through laptops and smartphones. Today, an average person spends about two hours on social media daily. The ever increasing dependence on social media and the internet has led businesses to move to digital platform. Thus, the rise of digital marketing - a form of marketing in which a seller meets/approaches his prospective buyer online, through various digital tools. A major reason behind the rapid rise of digital marketing is that it is fast and cheap. Digital marketing includes all kinds of marketing done online, including ads, blogs, features, vlogs, celebrity endorsements, promotion through social media tools, etc.

Given the rapid rise of digital marketing, many MBA institutes have begun to offer full-time, part-time and certificate courses in this field. In this article, we have listed all the IIMs which offere digital marketing courses; But first know the types of digital marketing.

Types of Digital Marketing

Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to gaining web traffic through search engine tools. The main aim here is to rank higher on the Google search list; meaning the link to your website appears higher than your competitors’ when a user searches on Google using a keyword.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Pay Per Click Advertising or PPC is almost same as SEO i. e. driving web traffic to own website but it involves money. A company pays to be ranked higher on search and for a long time. It also includes paying agencies for search engine ads, ads on social media websites, banners, sponsored content on other websites and other such tools.

Public Relations: Public Relations (PR) not a typical digital marketing method, but it is going in that direction fast. PR can help gain good results as it is all about exposure. The more your website/product is talked about the more reputation it will gain. PR can play an important role in creating a buzz online.

Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing involves attracting new customers and retaining current customers by the means of social media. It involves connecting with them directly on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. constantly attending to their queries, and sharing information about deals, discounts, contest, new services and events.

Content Marketing: SEO, PR and Social Media Marketing together refer to content marketing. Content marketing is the most important part of digital marketing, only good content can bring good web traffic. The only rule of content marketing is that the content/blog/feature/must be helpful to potential customers. It must attract the customers and be relevant; be it a blog, video, tweet or podcast.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate Marketing refers to marketing done by others on your behalf for a agreed upon fee. Affiliates can be bloggers or influential figures of the industry who help in attracting more customers and get paid commission in return.

Viral Marketing: Viral Marketing as the name suggests, involves making your website or product the topic of discussion on social media and elsewhere. It involves combining content marketing, PR, SEO, social media marketing, affiliate marketing and all other forms of marketing.

Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is somewhat similar to hiring a celebrity to endorse a product. It refers to attracting more customers through someone who has great influence in that particular industry or has huge following.

Online/Digital/Website Marketing: An amalgamation of all the above is online/digital/website marketing. Many digital marketing agencies have come up to take care of this part of the business.

In India, digital marketing is fast catching up and there’s huge demand for professionals trained in this aspect of marketing.

Many institutes like IMRI, TISS, Indian School of Business, AIMA, Great Lakes Institute of Management-Chennai, Manipal University, Digital Marketing Training Institute-Mumbai, Delhi School of Internet Marketing-Kolkata and private agencies like NIIT, TalentEdge, DigtalVidya, Simplilearn offer long term and short term courses in digital marketing.

In this article, we have featured the Indian Institute of Managements offering courses in digital and social media marketing.

IIM Ahmedabad – Open Programme: Digital and Social Media Marketing

Among the top Open Programmes offered by IIM Ahmedabad, Digital and Social Media Marketing is one the most popular ones. The four-day programme helps the participants in understanding the consumer behaviour and find new ways to reduce marketing costs by using social media. It includes, content marketing, social media advertising and search engine optimization.

Programme Fee: Rs 1, 80,000 + tax

IIM Calcutta: Executive Programme in Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy (EPDSMMS)

EPDSMMS is a six-month programme divided into three modules. The first module will be conducted online while the rest two will be conducted as face-to-face classes on IIM Calcutta campus. This course was launched in April 2017, in collaboration with Training.com a multi-modal learning platform by NIIT.

Programme Fee: Rs 2,30,000 + tax
Campus Visit Fee: Rs 48,000 + tax

IIM Indore: MDP – Digital Marketing

The IIM Indore offers several short term management development programmes including social media analytics, business data analytics, supply chain analytics, project management, strategic planning, managerial effectiveness and digital marketing. The three-day digital marketing course includes training in digital marketing strategy & operations, advertising & public relations and email, social media & search engine optimization.

Programme Fee: Rs 42,000 (+ tax)

IIM Kashipur: Executive Certified Program in Digital Marketing (ECPDM)

IIM Kashipur offers ECPDM, in collaboration with Talentedge. The program is aimed at providing the candidates skills and knowledge to understand emerging practices in the field of digital marketing. The primary method of instruction is through live lectures that will be delivered online or classrooms (weekend schedule). The lectures will be delivered by eminent faculty from IIM Kashipur. The program includes class exercises, presentations, take-home exercises, simulation and case studies.

Programme Fee: Rs. 70,000 + tax (payable in instalments)

IIM Bangalore: Advanced Digital Marketing (ADM)

IIM Bangalore offers Advanced Digital Marketing course which is a 2-day programme conducted on campus. This programme is essentially for professionals already functioning in the domain. The programme is most suitable for mid-level and senior digital marketing managers and entrepreneurs.

Programme Fee: Rs 1,44,000 + tax