MCA-128
Digital Marketing
Marketing on the channels people actually use — email and display, search advertising and SEO, the social platforms one by one, and analytics.
- Semester
- Semester 2
- Credits
- 4
- Scheme
- 3 lectures + 1 tutorial a week
- Contact hours
- 40 across four units
- Category
- Open Elective - I
What the paper is
Digital Marketing is an open elective, which means it is taken alongside a full technical load and is examined accordingly: broad, descriptive and current rather than deep. It moves from strategy, through the paid and owned channels, to measurement.
Unit III is the largest at twelve hours and covers the platforms individually — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, plus mobile. Each gets the same treatment: what the platform is good for, how a campaign is built on it, and what it reports back.
The last unit, SEO and web analytics, is the one with the most overlap with the rest of the degree. It is also the most durable: the specific ad products change constantly, but how a search engine crawls and ranks, and how attribution works, do not.
What to concentrate on
- The P.O.E.M. framework — paid, owned, earned media — is the organising idea of the paper and the fastest way into a strategy question. Learn it early and use it as the skeleton for long answers.
- Unit IV is compact and reliably examined: on-page versus off-page optimisation, how search engines work, and the Google Analytics metrics named in the syllabus. It is the cheapest unit to secure.
- For the platform unit, prepare one comparison rather than five descriptions — audience, ad formats, targeting, and what each platform measures. Comparative questions are the common form.
Syllabus, unit by unit
Summarised from the approved scheme. Hours are the contact hours the scheme allots, which is a fair guide to where the marks sit.
Unit I · Introduction to digital marketing
10 hours- Evolution from traditional to modern marketing, the role of the internet, current trends and infographics
- Implications for business and society; the emergence of digital marketing as a tool
- Drivers of the new marketing environment, digital marketing strategy
- The P.O.E.M. framework, the digital landscape, the digital marketing plan and models
Unit II · The digital marketing mix and paid channels
10 hours- Internet marketing: opportunities and challenges, the digital marketing framework and mix, impact on integrated marketing communications
- Email marketing: opt-in permission marketing, online PR, interactive advertising, online partnerships, viral marketing, blogs
- Search engine advertising: ad placement and ranks, creating campaigns, campaign report generation
- Display marketing: types of display ad, buying models, programmable digital marketing, analytical tools, YouTube marketing
Unit III · Social media and mobile marketing
12 hours- Social media platforms, penetration and characteristics; building a social media marketing strategy; influencer marketing
- Facebook marketing: advertising campaigns, adverts and marketing tools
- LinkedIn marketing: strategy, lead generation, content strategy, analytics and targeting
- Twitter marketing: how it differs from other channels, content strategy, advertising campaigns
- Instagram and Snapchat strategies
- Mobile marketing: forms and features, campaign development, mobile advertising analytics
Unit IV · SEO and web analytics
8 hours- Introduction to and the need for SEO; how search engines work
- On-page and off-page optimisation, SEO tactics, introduction to search engine marketing
- Social media metrics, Google Analytics and Google AdWords
- Data collection for web analytics, multichannel attribution, universal analytics, tracking code
How it is examined
- Question 1 is compulsory, covers the whole syllabus, and is made of objective or short-answer questions. It carries 12 marks.
- The rest of the paper is four units matching the four above. Each unit sets two questions and you attempt one, so there are four more answers at 12 marks each.
- Examiners are asked to map every question to a course outcome using Bloom's taxonomy, which is why questions are phrased as “apply”, “analyse” or “evaluate” rather than only “explain”.
The pass mark is 40 out of 100 in every paper.
Learning objectives
- An overall understanding of digital marketing
- Strategies for marketing products and services digitally
- Understanding of digital marketing platforms
- Techniques for search engine optimisation and mobile marketing
- Insight into current trends and digital and social statistics
Assumed beforehand
The scheme lists no prerequisites for this paper.
Books it is taught from
- TB1Seema Gupta, “Digital Marketing”, McGraw Hill, 8th edition, 2018
- TB2Ian Dodson, “The Art of Digital Marketing”, Wiley, 2017
Notes for MCA-128
Lecture notes, question papers and assignments filed against MCA-128 are in the library. Everything there has been checked by a moderator before it appears, and an account is free — new ones are approved by hand, which is what keeps the shelf clean.