Digital and Social Media Marketing

Coursework Assessment Summer 2023

The Brief
Your manager has asked you to pitch the outline for a digital and social media marketing strategy for
the area for which you are primarily responsible. This could be related to a product/brand/charity or
something else that you are involved with.

The outline should be no more than 15 slides, with 3500 words of supporting speaker notes. It is
suggested that you use the PowerPoint facility of printing the slides with the notes underneath, save
this as a pdf and upload that into the Turnitin submission area on Moodle.

The presentation should include an audit of the current digital and social media marketing
activities, prior to detailing ideas for your strategy using a variety of appropriate digital and social
media communications.

The plan should have at least 2 clear, measurable objectives, based around an identifiable theme or
focus for the chosen strategy and should be based on evidence and reasoning, i.e. well supported
from a variety of sources and from an analysis of current activity and trends.

Examples of themes could be (but are not limited to):

 Lead generation, using email to attract more customers

 a community-based focus, to encourage sign-ups for newsletters, garner customer feedback,
encourage influencer engagement
 an engagement focus around a cause, encouraging people to take part in a park run, or
skydive, or cake sale (as examples)
 an event focus, e.g. Valentine’s Day, May Bank Holiday

Reasoning should demonstrate use and consideration of course concepts.

Your submission MUST incorporate at least 3 digital and social media models, such as, but not
limited to SOSTAC, 5S, RACE, PESO, eSWOT, ….

Your content strategy should include at least 2 different types of content (see the Periodic table of
content for more details).

Note: In the following guide, the use of report, presentation, submission and assignment relate to
the brief above.

Assessment criteria:
Your submissions will be assessed based on the criteria described in the module outline.

General guidelines to gain a good mark

Quality and quantity of information: Developing a good submission will require extensive use of a
wide range of information sources, and should demonstrate initiative in searching out relevant
information. Submissions which lean too heavily on a very narrow range of sources, are unlikely to
gain the higher marks. Corporate publicity and advertising, company and industry reports,
independent market research, case studies and academic research articles are all relevant sources
when gathering information about the company/brand/product. If you are using sensitive
information that is only available internally then please check permissions for use.

Quality of analysis: Submissions being genuinely analytical and evaluative will be marked up while
merely descriptive reports are unlikely to gain the higher marks. A description tells you how
something is. An analysis tells you what its significance is. An evaluation says if it is right or wrong.
Analysis and evaluation require writing argumentatively. Anything taking the reader away from the
argument should be placed in an appendix.

Application of relevant theory: A good submission will take every opportunity to appropriately apply
the social media and digital marketing concepts, models and techniques that you will encounter in
the module and its associated reading. Students are encouraged to use relevant academic sources
which were not discussed in the class and are not in the reading list.

Suggested Plan format

Slide 1: Introduction– should be informative, with the company logo and name on it, and should use
a slide deck that clearly identifies the corporate brand, along with your student number.

Notes for the Introduction slide should provide a brief Executive Summary summarising the key
messages of the presentation. It should offer a clear statement of the purpose of the presentation,
the problem or opportunity that the company faces and could include the message developed, the
target audience, the communication approach used, the main contents created, the main channels
to be used, the timeline, the means of evaluation to be leveraged, and the costs of the strategy. The
executive summary makes a single paragraph of 200 words plus or minus 10%.

Slide 2: Agenda – shows the main sections and, if appropriate, sub‐sections of the presentation,

If you have run out of words on slide 1, then the notes for this slide may provide in one paragraph a
brief overview of the company’s current digital and social media strategy: the market or product
category in which it operates, its target audience and its positioning, the company’s context (e.g.
employees, competitors, consumers, partners, macro-environment) and why that makes digital and
social media marketing an important topic. It could also include the main digital or social media
marketing problem(s) the organisation is facing, and outline briefly how your analysis will allow you
to understand and resolve such problem(s).

Slides 3 – 6: Situation analysis – presenting the current digital and social media marketing activities
of the organisation contextualized in the market in which it operates.

These slides could consider the 5Ss, eSWOT or PESO as a framework, to analyse the company’s
current digital strategy, alongside other models which identify factors impacting on the company
(current digital marketing activities and fit with the company’s marketing communications, how
successful it is), competitors (what they do and how successful they are, best practices), customer
insight (demands and preferences), context, and collaborators. Data from similarweb, social
searcher, social blade, screamingfrog (for SMEs), SEMrush, etc should be incorporated to show

You do not need to expand on all dimensions of the models in your notes, but you do need to
highlight the most important points. The situation analysis should clearly identify the specific
problem faced by the company and/or opportunity revolving around digital and social media
marketing, echoing the one articulated in the introduction. Keep it brief, to the point, as this is only a
starting point to develop your recommendations so focus on what is key to know. Use tables and
diagrams to summarise, or appendices to support.
Slides 7 – 9: Objectives and Strategy

The notes for these slides will provide a clear, interesting and convincing direction for the future
digital and social media marketing activities. You could base your objectives slide around the 5S
model, if you have used it to audit the company in your situation analysis, or use a SWOT/TOWS
approach.

In the strategy you should summarise the proposed focus, depict the target audience and how it
relates to the company’s current target audience, articulate the general message to be used, the
tagline and the slogan(s). Any changes to the digital marketing mix can be mentioned here and then
expanded upon in the Tactics. A pictorial representation of the customer journey could be one way
of showing this. Make sure the message is clearly aligned with the company’s positioning to
articulate a communication approach based on concepts considered within the module. Explain
briefly why each section of your strategy is relevant and make sure all points are aligned with the
objectives.

Slides 10 – 13: Tactics

These slides will articulate the detail of your digital and social media marketing strategy and how it
could be implemented. This could include a presentation of the digital (and traditional, where
relevant) channels selected and why, which content should be created and how the content will be
created and distributed. This section could be structured around the RACE (SmartInsights) model,
with slides on Reach, Act/Convert and Engage stages, or could be based on the different media
forms, or could be based on each objective. Where appropriate, a 6 - 12 month calendar could be
included either as a slide or as an appendix.

Slide 14 – Control

Explain how you will monitor whether the activities within the plan have performed well. It is very
important that you revisit your objectives to show how you will keep the plan on track.

Slide 15 – Summary

This final slide will summarise the overall presentation and show a conclusion.

Additional Information:

List of References – you need to list the sources you have cited in the assignment. This includes
books, journals, and reports that you have read but also the company website material that you
have analysed (website pages, online marketing communication material, social media platforms).
All data used to build the assignment should be referenced in text and reference details offered in
the list of references. Only the references used in text should be detailed in the list of references
section.

The recommended format is as follows:

 BOOKS: Surname, name initials, (date of publication), Title of book (italics or underlined),
publisher, place of publication, chapter number. Example: Kotler, P., Armstrong, G.,
Saunders, J. and Wong, V. (1996) Principle of Marketing, European Edition, Prentice Hall,
Europe.
 ARTICLES: Surname, Name initials, (date of publication), “Title”, name of journal (italics),
issue, page numbers. Example: Houston, F. S. (1986) “The Marketing Concept: What It Is and
What It Is Not”, Journal of Marketing, 50, (April), 81--‐87.
  REPORTS: Surname, Name initials. (date of publication). “Title”. Series Number. City:
Publisher, p.Pages Used. Available at: http://Website URL [Accessed Date Accessed].
 WEBSITE: Surname, Name initials, or Website name (date of publication) “Page Title”.
Available at: http://Website URL [Accessed Date Accessed].

Appendices – Non‐essential yet useful information in support of arguments may be included in the
appendices (e.g. tables, charts, cuttings, illustrations, etc.). Be careful when choosing what to include
in the report and what to put in an appendix.