INDIVIDUAL LEARNERS

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Digital Marketing
Nanodegree Program Syllabus
Overview
The first two courses of this digital marketing journey are designed to define a learner’s business value proposition, marketing
objectives and KPIs, target personas and customer journey, marketing channels, and content strategy. They will also have an
opportunity to build more data-driven marketing insights about their customers and digital presence using Google Analytics
and reimagine the future of their marketing capabilities by exploring newly emerging marketing technologies, what they can
offer, and how they can adapt to the everchanging landscape of digital marketing.

Then, learners will build hands-on campaign skills with one of our five optional/elective courses in marketing channels—
creating marketing content, amplifying their message through social media, making content discoverable in search, and
running campaigns on a few major marketing platforms such as Facebook Ads and Google Ads.

Learning Objectives

A graduate of this program will be able to:

• Develop digital marketing strategies by setting up their own marketing framework of business goals,
market insights, customer journey, marketing channels, and marketing objectives.

• Plan effective marketing content and channels that can maximize the ROI of their marketing campaigns.

• Analyze their audience and marketing performance along with newly emerging marketing technologies
to upgrade their marketing strategies.

• Create a marketing campaign using the most effective channel to achieve their marketing objectives on
popular marketing platforms such as Facebook and Google Ads.

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Program information

Estimated Time Skill Level

3 months at 10hrs/week* Beginner

Prerequisites

No experience required

Required Hardware/Software

Learners must have access to:

• A Google account

• Bing Webmaster Tools or Google Site Manager

• Google Site Explorer or AHRefs

• Screaming Frog

• SERanking

• Google Ads account

• Spreadsheet

• Presentation tool

*The length of this program is an estimation of total hours the average student may take to complete all required
coursework, including lecture and project time. If you spend about 5-10 hours per week working through the program, you
should finish within the time provided. Actual hours may vary.

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 Course 1

Marketing Fundamentals
Building a digital marketing strategy is a journey—let us be your guide. In this course, we offer a framework to help learners
define their business’s value proposition and branding and map out their customer journey, content strategy, and channels to
achieve their business goals.

Course Project

Get Ready to Market

In this project, learners will strategize marketing plans for their own company or a sandbox company
(Magnolia Coffee Company) we’ve provided. They’ll summarize the business model of the company,
articulate the marketing objective, and develop a target persona for the product you choose to market.
Based on their framework, learners will map out the stages and touchpoints of their customer journey and
plan different types of content and channels at each stage.

Lesson 1
• Become familiar with Udacity’s digital marketing framework and how each part
Introduction to Digital works together for your marketing strategy.
Marketing Framework

• Identify the business you market and their core components.

Lesson 2
• Explain how a business’ value proposition is a key starting point for marketers.
Your Business Value
• Align the marketing strategy with the company branding strategy.

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 • Build customer empathy maps and target personas.
Lesson 3
• Build your customer journey in five stages.
Your Customer
• Map out the key touchpoints and stages of your customer journey.

• Explain how different types of channels affect your marketing strategy.

Lesson 4 • Recognize that your choice of marketing channels depends on your customer
journey.
Marketing Channels
• Identify the most relevant marketing channels to suit your customer journey.

Lesson 5
• Describe the role of marketing objectives, KPIs, and metrics.
Marketing Objectives • Identify relevant KPIs given marketing objectives.
& Performance

• Plan your marketing content by understanding your customer personas and

classifying three types of content to serve them.

• Create and manage your content using creative storytelling and curation
Lesson 6 strategies.

Plan Your Content • Develop execution plans to distribute, promote, and monitor your content by
creating a content calendar.

• Identify the ideal type of landing pages or website structure to host your
content.

Lesson 7
• Identify the key skills and experiences required to become a digital marketer or
Working in Digital work for digital marketing projects.
Marketing Roles

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 Course 2

Marketing Data & Technology

Measurability and data makes digital marketing powerful and rapidly expand everyday. Digital marketing can be tracked, so
it can affect business goals and marketing efforts. In this course, learners will understand the value of marketing data and
trending technologies and how popular marketing analytics tools, like as Google Analytics, can help them understand their
audience, measure the success of their acquisition, understand engagement efforts, and evaluate their user’s conversions to
their goals.

Course Project

Using Data & Technology to Create Successful Digital

Marketing Strategies
In this project, learners will explore marketing data to build data-driven insights for their marketing plans.
Using data and Google Analytics, learners will answer questions and derive key insights about audience,
behavior, and conversions from existing marketing efforts. They’ll also identify key areas of focus or change
for their marketing plans.

Lesson 1
• Define the value of marketing data that can shape your business strategies.
Marketing Data for • Utilize the key metrics that can answer your marketing questions.
Your Business

Lesson 2
• Identify how to track and collect relevant data for your marketing campaigns.
A/B Testing & • Define the most common testing method and analytics models in marketing.
Attribution Models

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 • Set up a Google Analytics account and navigate the basic features and
Lesson 3 principles of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Pt. 1: • Analyze meaningful characteristics or patterns about an audience by

Getting Started & Audience understanding their profile and demographics and user trends in Google
Analytics.

• Identify the most effective marketing channels for acquisition plans by

reviewing Acquisition Reports by channel.

• Analyze user behaviors by understanding the common metrics and their

Lesson 4
definitions in Google Analytics and reviewing popular and engaging content.
Google Analytics Pt. 2: • Evaluate user behaviors in landing pages and websites in relation to acquisition
Acquisition, Behaviors & channels and exit points.
Conversion Tracking
• Identify the most effective conversion funnels to achieve a goal by using
Google Analytics eCommerce Reports and evaluating the effectiveness of
multiple channels in a conversion.

• Review the big picture of marketing technologies in the market to keep

Lesson 5 apprised of the ever-changing marketing landscape.

• Identify the most effective marketing technology platforms or tools that can
Marketing Technology
help you achieve your business goals.
& eCommerce
• Develop plans to build eCommerce capabilities for your marketing strategies.

• Identify newly emerging marketing trends and technologies that can evolve
Lesson 6
your marketing strategies.
The Future of Digital • Apply agile marketing principles to adapt your marketing strategies to the
Marketing ever-changing landscape of digital marketing.

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 Course 3

Social Media Marketing (Elective)

Social media has become one of the most powerful marketing tools available. In this course, learners will explore the
differences between the main social media platforms, the importance of planning, how to manage their social media presence,
how to build community, leveraging organic and paid to advertise, creating effective content for multiple platforms, and
actually creating 3 campaigns.

Course Project

Marketing Your Content

In this project, learners will build a real social media campaign strategy for a skincare brand. The project
includes researching and creating an organic advertisement strategy and a paid advertisement strategy as
part of a social media marketing campaign. Learners will be provided with numerous resources that include
information related to business goals and campaign objectives, past campaign performance data, audience
personas, and other information to help you build an effective strategy.

Lesson 1
• Explain why it is important to understand the social media landscape.
Social Media Marketing • Plan to map social media channels to your customer needs and journey.
Fundamentals

• Identify the most effective content type and format for a social media platform.
Lesson 2
• Implement your campaigns using appropriate tools to manage your
Organic Social Media community and monitor the performance.
Campaigns
• Identify the key metrics to measure the impact of social media campaigns.

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 • Explain basic elements of social media advertising and its pricing models.
Lesson 3
• Identify the most effective social advertising platforms for your marketing
Paid Social Media Campaigns objectives.

Lesson 4 • Set up your advertising account at Facebook.

Introduction to • Build a target audience using demographics, interests, and behaviors to

Facebook-Meta Ads identify custom and lookalike audience.

Lesson 5
• Develop plans for ad placements, budget, and schedule to create your ad.
Creating & Managing Ad • Evaluate your ads by reviewing the ad performance and setting up A/B tests.
Campaigns in Facebook-Meta

Course 4

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Essentials

(Elective)
Search engines are an essential part of the online experience. Learn how websites are optimized in search engine results
including link-building, keywords, and UX design, and conduct a search engine optimization audit with recommendations for
optimizing a website.

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 Course Project

Conduct an SEO Audit

In this project, learners will evaluate a website audit and recommend actions to optimize its ranking in
search engine results. They’ll also analyze competitors’ websites and offer, in ranked order, strategies for
search engine optimization.

• Explain why SEO is important for your marketing efforts to drive traffic from
Lesson 1
the search engine.
Intro to SEO • Identify where in the customer journey SEO can be most effective.

Lesson 2 • Build your keyword list and evaluate the list with the keywords that have high
volume, low difficulty, and high opportunity.
Keywords

Lesson 3
• Evaluate how SEO utilizes the site structure to enhance the visibility of your
On-Site SEO: Optimize UX & websites on search engines.
Design

Lesson 4 • Define and use types of links and methods of link building to build impact.

Link Building • Use link-building tools for competitive research and link analysis.

Lesson 5
• Determine and compare audit priorities.
SEO Audit & the Future • Develop recommendations based on audit findings.
of SEO

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 Course 5

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) (Elective)

Optimizing visibility in search engine results is an essential part of digital marketing. Reinforcing findability through search
engine marketing (SEM) is an effective tactic to achieve your marketing objectives. In this course, learn how to create, execute,
and optimize an effective ad campaign using Google Ads.

Course Project

Evaluate a Google Ads Campaign

In this project, learners will be be building and evaluating the performance of a Google Ads search
campaign. For the first part of the project, they’ll create their campaign from identifying the product and/
or brand and working all the way to the KPIs. For the second half of the project, they’ll evaluate an existing
campaign and provide optimization suggestions based on the provided data.

Lesson 1 • Build the structure of your Ad Groups based on marketing objectives, customer
segments, and keyword searches.
Intro to SEM

Lesson 2
• Develop Keyword lists with both short-taill and long-tail keywords.
Keywords

Lesson 3 • Engage searchers by strategically developing the four components of dynamic

and text ads and selecting appropriate ad extensions for your market.
Ads

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Lesson 4 • Explore the relationship between Ad Rank and CPC Bid, and budget for your
Maximum CPC Bid.
Ad Rank & Maximum CPC Bid

• Develop key performance indicators.

Lesson 5 • Evaluate the key metrics and run A/B tests to optimize SEM.

Metrics & Optimization • Optimize your keywords by identifying specific keywords and using match
types and negative keywords.

Course 6

Digital Advertising (Elective)

Display advertising was the first form of advertising on the web. It’s still a powerful marketing tool strengthened by new
platforms like mobile, new video opportunities, and enhanced targeting. In this course, learn how display advertising works,
how it is bought and sold (including in a programmatic environment), how to set up a display/video advertising campaign using
Google Ads, and strategies for effectively reaching audiences across multiple channels.

Course Project

Plan a Multichannel Ad Campaign

In this project, learners will develop a plan to effectively run a multichannel shopping campaign, featuring
display, shopping, and YouTube video ads. They will first measure the effectiveness of previous advertising
campaigns and recommend ad optimizations based on these results. Learners will then evaluate
multichannel test results to determine whether these recommendations will achieve their marketing
objective. Using the previous results, they will plan their next multichannel campaign and provide
recommendations to further optimize their display and YouTube video ads.

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 • Identify the key players, ad types, and benefits for digital advertising.

Lesson 1 • Describe the flow of an ad and advertising dollars from an advertiser to a

publisher in an ad marketplace.
Audience Fundamentals
• Explain the methods and challenges when collecting and targeting audiences
using first and third party user data.

• Select the right display and native ad formats to engage audiences across web
and mobile app channels.
Lesson 2 • Select the right video and emerging ad formats to engage audiences across
streaming channels.
Multichannel Formats
• Explain the value of using responsive display ads and testing to drive return on
ad spend for retail ads.

• Select the right metrics and audience targeting options for your programmatic
ad buy along the customer journey.
Lesson 3 • Explain the different metrics for brand and performance ads to measure
results across the customer journey.
Programmatic Technology
• Differentiate the methods and pricing models used to buy display ad inventory
programmatically.

• Set your bid, budget, and testing strategy based on your advertising goal.

Lesson 4 • Select the right targeting tactics to reach audiences on the Google Display
Network and YouTube.
Campaign Planning
• Select the right video ad formats and specs to engage audiences on YouTube
and its video partners.

• Manage your account and control your campaigns through Google Ads’
self-serve platform.
Lesson 5
• Create display and video campaigns and measure the results using Google Ads.
Campaign Management
• Optimize your campaigns through recommendations, automation,
experiments, and ad groups using Google Ads.

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 Course 7

Email Marketing (Elective)

Email is an effective marketing channel, especially at the conversion and retention stage of the customer journey. In this
course, you’ll learn how to create an email marketing strategy, create and execute email campaigns, and measure the results.

Course Project

Market With Email

In this project, learners will plan and prepare an email marketing campaign for a Sandbox product
(Company A or B) or for their company’s product/service. They will write an email and evaluate the results
of an email campaign.

• Design effective and secure contact forms by understanding the opt-in process
Lesson 1
and legal requirements in email advertising.
Email List Generation • Build your subscriber list for your emails with contact forms using MailChimp.

Lesson 2
• Draft clear, concise, and compliant copy for each email element.
Create an Effective • Create an email using MailChimp.
Email Campaign

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Lesson 3 • Create an email plan by understanding different types of email campaigns and
building an email calendar.
Create an Email Plan

• Analyze the results of your email campaign using the key metrics such as open
Lesson 4 rate and conversion rate.

Measure Results • Use A/B testing and segmentation to improve your content and better target
specific subscribers.

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Meet your instructors.

Dawn Raquel Jensen

VP of Customer Experience

Dawn Raquel Jensen merges social media, marketing, training, and strategy together as an
embedded CMO to organizations and business owners. She received her EMBA from the Quantic
School of Business & Technology. Dawn resides as VP of Customer Experience and an adjunct
professor in social media for Seminole State College.

Benjamin Kepner
CEO of Global Social Media Marketing

Benjamin is a CEO of Global Social Media Marketing, Udacity instructor, Google For Education
Certified Trainer, and Digital Workshop Center Google Ads & Google Analytics instructor. Benjamin
holds a BBA in marketing for international business from the University of Georgia and 50 digital
marketing certifications.

Erica Reid
Digital Marketing Manager

Erica Reid is a digital marketing consultant with a specialization in social media marketing.
She formerly worked as digital marketing manager for Sysco Foods, Phillips 66, and Shell Oil
Company, where she led content development and brand strategy for various platforms. Erica
has a MA in digital communication from NYU.

Matt Bailey
Founder & Lead Trainer at SiteLogic

Matt Bailey is founder and lead trainer at SiteLogic, and teaches digital marketing to the world’s
biggest brands and most recognized universities. With over 25 years in digital marketing and a
Master of Education in instructional design, he is known for his dynamic training style and ability to
simplify complexity.

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Liana Gross Furini
Performance Marketing Manager

Liana Gross Furini is a digital marketing specialist, with 10+ years of experience. She is well
versed in all types of paid media, and more recently have been focusing her career on paid social
and paid search. Liana holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising and a master’s degree in social
communications.

John Triggs
Product Leader

John Triggs is a product leader who helps businesses connect with customers through digital
marketing technology. He has led teams at Amazon, Capital One, and comScore. He has also helped
clients achieve marketing goals through digital automation, personalization and insights. He has a
Duke MBA and a UVA systems engineering degree.

Jen Crompton
Digital Marketer & PR Professional

Jen Crompton is a digital marketer, writer, and PR professional that has worked with companies
of every size across most industries. She formerly served as an adjunct at Philadelphia
University and a mentor for Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence. Jen earned her
degrees from Ursinus College and Rowan University.

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Udacity’s learning
experience

Hands-on Projects Quizzes

Open-ended, experiential projects are designed Auto-graded quizzes strengthen comprehension.
to reflect actual workplace challenges. They aren’t Learners can return to lessons at any time during
just multiple choice questions or step-by-step the course to refresh concepts.
guides, but instead require critical thinking.

Knowledge Custom Study Plans

Find answers to your questions with Knowledge, Create a personalized study plan that fits your
our proprietary wiki. Search questions asked by individual needs. Utilize this plan to keep track of
other students, connect with technical mentors, movement toward your overall goal.
and discover how to solve the challenges that
you encounter.

Workspaces Progress Tracker

See your code in action. Check the output and Take advantage of milestone reminders to stay
quality of your code by running it on interactive on schedule and complete your program.
workspaces that are integrated into the platform.

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Our proven approach for building
job-ready digital skills.
Experienced Project Reviewers

Verify skills mastery.

• Personalized project feedback and critique includes line-by-line code review from
skilled practitioners with an average turnaround time of 1.1 hours.

• Project review cycle creates a feedback loop with multiple opportunities for
improvement—until the concept is mastered.

• Project reviewers leverage industry best practices and provide pro tips.

Technical Mentor Support

24/7 support unblocks learning.

• Learning accelerates as skilled mentors identify areas of achievement and potential
for growth.

• Unlimited access to mentors means help arrives when it’s needed most.

• 2 hr or less average question response time assures that skills development stays on track.

Personal Career Services

Empower job-readiness.
• Access to a Github portfolio review that can give you an edge by highlighting your
strengths, and demonstrating your value to employers.*

• Get help optimizing your LinkedIn and establishing your personal brand so your profile
ranks higher in searches by recruiters and hiring managers.

Mentor Network

Highly vetted for effectiveness.

• Mentors must complete a 5-step hiring process to join Udacity’s selective network.

• After passing an objective and situational assessment, mentors must demonstrate

communication and behavioral fit for a mentorship role.

• Mentors work across more than 30 different industries and often complete a Nanodegree
program themselves.

*Applies to select Nanodegree programs only.

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Learn more at
www.udacity.com/online-learning-for-individuals →

12.09.22 | V1.0