Growth Hacking: Digital Marketing for Startups

Syllabus

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Class Syllabus Growth Hacking: Digital Marketing for Startups

Description of the Course

Students in this 4-week course will learn the principles of digital marketing and how to apply them to grow a company from an early stage. The course will be taught through the lens of growth hacking, focused on data-driven experimentation and optimization to maximize return-on-investment. A holistic marketing approach teaches students to scale a business in the most efficient way possible, combining channel optimization, creative strategy, and media analytics. Students will create a media plan to maximize revenue and make their case in a presentation to hypothetical startup clients. By the end of the course, students will understand how to use performance analytics to maximize revenue, design creative testing frameworks, and present their recommendations to make an impact.

Course Structure

Students will learn how to fuse media, creative, and communication skills together to create a revenue optimization plan. They will receive an industry overview and the principles of digital marketing through 3 live sessions online. The main topics of the course are data-driven marketing, using KPIs to gauge the comparative quality of channels and creatives, and allocating resources to maximize the bottom line. Students will crystallize their learnings in a presentation that communicates their plan and lays out the supporting data, preparing them not only to analyze and optimize marketing initiatives, but also to communicate their recommendations effectively in a work setting.

Course Objectives

In this course, students will:

• Analyze performance data to gauge the relative performance of media channels, creatives, and audiences

• Build a budget allocation strategy to maximize return on investment

• Create a framework for testing different messaging using audience data and creative iteration

• Select key visuals based on qualitative measures and audience learnings

• Present a recommendation to make a case for where, and how, and why to spend a limited marketing budget

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Course Outline

Week 1: Principles of Growth Hacking

• Video Introduction: Growth Hacking Principles

• Preparation: Creative and Media Marketing Overview

• Activity: Assets and Channels, and copywriting basics

• Discussion Board 1

• Live Session 1: The Basics of Digital Marketing: Media and Creative

• Weekly Office Hours

• Assignment 1: Value Proposition Testing

Week 2: Marketing Analytics and Yield Optimization

• Video Lecture: Marketing Metrics and Key Performance Indicators

• Preparation: Metrics by Channel

• Activity: Basic Marketing Analytics

• Live Session 2: Marketing Analytics and Yield Optimization

• Weekly Office Hours

• Discussion Board 2

• Assignment 2: Create a Revenue-optimized media plan

Week 3: Storytelling and Presentation

• Video Lecture: Storytelling- how to build an awesome deck

• Preparation: Examples and principles of storytelling

• Activity: Arrange slides to sell through a point

• Live Session 3: Storytelling and deck building

• Weekly Office Hours

• Discussion Board 3

• Final Project: Presentation of Media and Creative Recommendations

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Week 4: Presentation

• Preparation: Presentation Basics

• Activity: Presentation Prep

• Live Session: Presentations

Grading Policy

Component Percentage of Grade

Creative Phase Assignment 25%

Media Phase Assignment 25%

Discussion Boards 15%

Final Presentation 35%

Please note that you must attend all classes and receive an 80% or greater to receive the certificate of completion for the course

Technology Requirements

Students will need access to the internet and the Canvas Learning Management system.

Course Project Client

In the first week, students will be introduced to 5 different startups and how each one benefits from a unique marketing approach, eventually choosing one to take on as a simulated client. Students will gain an understanding of the data behind each company’s decisions, and start to come up with ideas on how they might be improved. As creative strategy and iteration is introduced, students will be tasked to select one of the example startups and build a creative testing framework to gain audience learnings. Students will also learn about key media channels and apply the tools they learn to optimize ROI with a set budget. At the end of the course students will weave creative and media together to create a cohesive recommendation for their client to maximize their growth.

Creative Phase

Once students have selected a startup as their client, they will receive more detail on what the company does, including information on its marketing structure and who

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their audience is. Using information about their client’s target consumers and value proposition, students will use audience data to write copy and select key visuals to effectively sell the product. Students will provide qualitative reasoning for their creative selections, and generate a framework to test their hypotheses proven by marketing KPIs.

Media Phase

Once students confirm their creative approach, they will dive into the metrics of success for their client. Each startup provides historical data for their marketing efforts that will give students what they need to optimize. Students will use media KPIs such as CPMs, CPCs, CTR, and purchase rate to back into revenue optimization. The end product of the analysis phase is a media plan, where students strategically allocate budgets to the different channels in order to maximize bottom line revenue.

Presentation Phase

In the final phase, students will combine their creative and media recommendations into a cohesive presentation for their client. Students will take a basic presentation format and populate it with data and rationale, selling their creative and media strategies visually, and presenting with the goal to get it implemented at their client’s firm. In their presentation students will frame their story using data to drive home their points across quantitative and qualitative elements. The presentation they build will be a shareable work sample to be used in college and job applications down the road.

Academic Integrity

Honesty is an essential aspect of academic integrity. Individual students are responsible for doing their own work and submitting original assignments as per the course directions. Plagiarism and cheating of any kind will not be tolerated.

Plagiarize: “To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own without crediting the source; presenting as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1973, 870).

This includes using information from the Internet without citing the website. Avoid plagiarism by appropriately acknowledging the source of the author’s words and ideas. Cheating: Submitting or presenting an assignment as your own when it was written or created by someone else is not permissible in this class.