--- title: "MKTG 120 · Grow an audience online" publisher: Maestro College (Maestro Open) lessons: 41 source: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/grow-an-audience-online full: https://open.maestrocollege.edu/grow-an-audience-online/llms-full.txt --- # Grow an audience online (MKTG 120) Build a digital marketing strategy from research to campaign, then measure and improve it with real data. You’ll build a practical digital marketing strategy from research through planning, campaign creation, measurement, and optimization. Along the way, you’ll learn how to make evidence-based marketing decisions instead of relying on disconnected tactics or assumptions. By the end, you can diagnose a marketing situation, choose appropriate channels and messages, interpret performance data, and defend recommendations in a capstone strategy. ## Course objectives - Analyze market, customer, competitor, and organizational evidence to identify marketing opportunities and define priority audiences. - Develop digital marketing plans that align objectives, audiences, channel roles, messaging, resources, and customer-journey considerations. - Create integrated campaign materials that maintain message consistency, accessibility, ethical responsibility, and conversion focus across channels. - Measure campaign performance using appropriate objectives, key performance indicators, and quantitative metrics to diagnose customer behavior and marketing effectiveness. - Evaluate marketing alternatives and communicate evidence-based strategic recommendations, implementation priorities, and optimization decisions. ## Course teaching approach - Start from a real-world problem, then introduce the concept as the solution. - Keep it true beginner level, hands-on, a little gamified. The learner should feel they are winning. - Balance explanation, demonstration and practice. No copy-paste exercises: give small story-based tasks. - End with one fun closed question about the topic. ## Lessons ### Unit 1: Digital marketing foundations and market research #### 1. Marketing as strategic decision-making - Explain marketing as business-growth-oriented strategic decision-making that creates and communicates customer value. - Use the Objective → Audience → Evidence → Constraints → Decision lens to reason through marketing choices. - Distinguish the decision lens from the broader definition of marketing and from isolated tactics. Teaching notes: Clearly connect the Objective → Audience → Evidence → Constraints → Decision lens to the RPCMO workflow: it helps make strategic choices within the broader loop. Distinguish this decision lens from the broader definition of marketing, and emphasize that marketing begins with business growth needs supported by customer value and evidence. #### 2. The marketing cycle and marketing mix - Explain the marketing mix / 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. - Map 4Ps decisions to stages of the Research → Plan → Create → Measure → Optimize (RPCMO) workflow. - Use a simple RPCMO × 4Ps matrix to analyze marketing decisions. Teaching notes: Do not reteach RPCMO from scratch; use a concise transition from prior lessons and focus on how the 4Ps operate inside the RPCMO workflow. Represent the RPCMO × 4Ps relationship as a matrix, table, or equivalent visual artifact, and keep explanations compact. #### 3. Understanding markets, segmentation, and targeting - Explain segmentation and targeting as steps for identifying a priority audience. - Distinguish the four segmentation bases: demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral. - Use a targeting rubric—customer need, business fit, accessibility, and objectives fit—to justify a target audience. Teaching notes: Connect segmentation and targeting to the Unit 1 framework map: research and evidence inform audience choices that later shape the 4Ps and CVP. Include at least one check that requires distinguishing segmentation bases, use a concise table or segment map where possible, and restate the four bases in the closing summary. #### 4. Brand positioning and customer value proposition - Explain brand positioning as the desired customer perception relative to competitors. - Distinguish differentiation, slogan, feature list, promotional claim, and Customer Value Proposition (CVP). - Develop a CVP that connects a defined customer, need, benefit, and differentiation. Teaching notes: Briefly define acronyms before using them, especially CVP. Preserve the discrimination between slogan, feature list, promotional claim, and CVP, and use a visible CVP canvas-style structure or compact table where possible. #### 5. Conducting market and competitor research - Distinguish primary research, secondary research, and competitor research as sources of market evidence. - Evaluate evidence quality and source credibility using Origin–Evidence–Bias. - Compare competitors to identify a research-supported market opportunity or gap. Teaching notes: Keep the primary-vs-secondary introduction brief: one clear contrast plus a check is enough before application. Practice all parts of Origin–Evidence–Bias, not only evidence quality, and preserve the competitor comparison table plus market-gap workflow. #### 6. Understanding customers: personas and customer journeys - Explain the purpose and limitations of personas and customer journey maps. - Create concise personas and journey maps using evidence-based assumptions and evidence tags. - Distinguish evidence-based customer insights from stereotypes or unsupported invented details. Teaching notes: Do not add unsupported learner details when cleaning up personas or journeys; preserve uncertainty instead. Require evidence tags for persona and journey claims, and use a table, persona card, journey map, or equivalent visual structure where possible. #### 7. Ethical, legal, and responsible digital marketing - Distinguish legal responsibilities from ethical responsibilities in digital marketing. - Apply a responsible marketing checklist covering privacy, consent, transparency, accessibility, fairness/ethics, and responsible AI. - Recommend revisions when marketing practices create legal, ethical, privacy, accessibility, fairness, or AI-related concerns. Teaching notes: Balance checklist breadth with applied practice. Ensure each checklist area—privacy, consent, transparency, accessibility, fairness/ethics, and responsible AI—gets a concrete application check, with particular attention to accessibility and AI use. #### 8. Challenge: build your marketing research foundation - Synthesize Unit 1 work into a research-backed audience opportunity foundation. - Reconcile prior segmentation, targeting, research, competitor, positioning, persona, journey, and responsible-marketing artifacts into one coherent recommendation. - Use an Audience Opportunity Table to support a concise, evidence-based opportunity statement. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. ### Unit 2: Digital marketing channels & campaign planning #### 9. PESO channel roles in the customer journey - Explain how PESO media roles support different customer journey stages. - Map PESO roles to objectives, audience needs, and journey stages in a rendered matrix. - Justify an objective-dependent channel mix without treating any PESO role as universally best. Teaching notes: Use a rendered PESO-by-journey-stage matrix as the core artifact. End with an independent channel-mix justification tied to objective, audience insight, journey stage, and constraint; avoid mastery over-claims. #### 10. Search marketing - Differentiate SEO and SEM, including how they connect to Paid, Owned, and Earned PESO roles. - Use search intent and keyword strategy to select search approaches for business objectives and constraints. - Explain basic search measurement and attribution limits when judging SEO and SEM performance. Teaching notes: Connect SEM to Paid and SEO to Owned/Earned visibility. Include search intent, keyword strategy, and attribution limits; keep SEO/SEM comparisons concise and avoid repeated identical trade-off checks. #### 11. Social media marketing - Explain how social media can serve Shared, Owned, or Paid roles within PESO. - Compare social platforms using audience, objective, content fit, and resource criteria. - Select platforms by weighing objective/resource trade-offs in a completed comparison table. Teaching notes: Render the completed platform comparison table rather than reflecting it only in bullets. Include at least one non-obvious platform-selection trade-off based on objective and resource constraints. #### 12. Permission-based customer communication - Explain permission-based communication through consent, value exchange, opt-out, trust, and ongoing permission. - Distinguish promotional, transactional, and relationship-building message types. - Revise customer communications to protect trust while serving a clear message purpose. Teaching notes: Build from prior responsible-marketing concepts without reteaching Unit 1. Focus on permission, consent, value exchange, opt-out, trust, frequency, and message-type classification with small revisions. #### 13. Digital advertising - Explain digital advertising as the Paid role within PESO and as a boost to existing channel strategies. - Compare paid search, paid social, and display/video using objective, CPC, CPM, conversion path, and measurability. - Use attribution limits to decide which paid advertising options are worth testing or cutting. Teaching notes: Explicitly connect advertising to Paid/PESO and prior search/social channels. Cover CPC, CPM, attribution limits, and measurability; do not list native/sponsorship formats unless they are substantively taught. #### 14. Channel mix strategy - Build a rendered channel-mix table using PESO role, journey stage, objective, resources, and risk. - Justify channel combinations by distinguishing synergy from redundancy. #### 15. Challenge: select and justify a digital channel mix - Independently select a PESO channel mix for a business objective without relying on a provided menu. - Justify channel choices using audience research, journey fit, constraints, and channel-mix trade-offs. - Apply responsible-marketing risk checks and mitigation rules to the selected channel mix. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. ### Unit 3: Building an integrated campaign #### 16. Integrated marketing campaigns - Explain an integrated campaign as aligned objective, audience insight, PESO channels, core message, journey stage, timing, and success signal. - Create a rendered campaign component map or checklist for a campaign. - Identify consistency gaps across campaign touchpoints, including duplicated or ambiguous platform references. Teaching notes: Use a rendered campaign component map or checklist grid. Reduce worked-example proximity before learner production, and clarify that Google Maps and Google Business Profile are not meaningfully separate campaign channels in most local-business contexts. #### 17. Campaign messaging - Explain brand voice as the expression layer of a campaign message. - Build a key-message ladder from core promise to proof points. - Evaluate messages for voice, promise, proof, and audience fit, including flawed or off-voice examples. Teaching notes: Render the key-message ladder or equivalent compact artifact. Include at least one flawed/off-voice message judgment check before self-rating; avoid affirming weak generative copy without critique. #### 18. PESO content strategy - Use a PESO content grid to organize campaign assets by channel role and journey stage. - Connect content pieces so they support each other across an integrated campaign. - Evaluate a PESO content grid for weak handoffs, redundancy, or underpowered roles. Teaching notes: Connect this content grid to the prior Unit 2 channel-mix tables rather than treating it as a new artifact. Focus on how pieces support each other across the campaign; use a rendered grid with brief handoff notes. #### 19. Channel-specific content - Adapt the same campaign message across channels by changing format, visual expectations, and copy constraints. - Apply consistency checks to original learner copy across channel assets. - Revise channel content for accessibility, inclusivity, and message clarity. Teaching notes: Apply consistency and accessibility checks to the learner’s original copy before polishing it. Avoid introducing another renamed consistency tool; include format and visual adaptation, not only wording changes. #### 20. Digital advertising copy - Create a complete digital ad unit using Hook, Benefit, Proof, and CTA. - Align ad copy with campaign objective, audience need, brand voice, and landing-page next step. - Evaluate ad copy for specific proof, concise benefit, and action-oriented CTA. Teaching notes: Require one complete ad unit, not isolated fragments. Use Hook → Benefit → Proof → CTA as the core structure and include a judgment check for weak proof or CTA alignment. #### 21. Landing page conversion - Explain message match and CRO principles for landing-page conversion. - Evaluate full landing-page structure for clarity, relevance, trust, accessibility, friction, and CTA focus. - Recommend landing-page improvements across hero, proof, content flow, form/action area, and follow-up path. Teaching notes: Keep message match, the 5-second test, and CRO central, but evaluate beyond the hero/header. Use an annotated table or page-structure checklist covering above-the-fold and lower-page elements. #### 22. Responsible AI-assisted content - Apply CARES—Correctness, Anti-bias, Responsible ethics, Equal access, and Same voice—to review AI-assisted content. - Revise AI-assisted content for accessibility, bias, responsibility, correctness, and brand voice. - Decide when AI disclosure is required, recommended, or optional based on content type and AI use. Teaching notes: Use the CARES definition consistently: Correctness, Anti-bias, Responsible ethics, Equal access, Same voice. Clarify disclosure as context-dependent rather than required for every AI-assisted marketing caption, and include at least one accessibility or bias check that genuinely applies. #### 23. Challenge: develop an integrated campaign - Independently build a rendered integrated campaign one-pager or matrix connecting objective, audience, PESO role, key message, CTA, landing page, and success signal. - Check campaign assets for message match, CTA harmony, accessibility, responsible marketing, and CARES. - Revise the campaign to fix consistency gaps, weak proof, or responsible-marketing risks. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. ### Unit 4: Marketing analytics and campaign optimization #### 24. Measuring digital marketing performance - Use the Goal → Measurement question → KPI chain to connect campaign goals to measurement decisions. - Distinguish awareness, engagement, conversion, efficiency, and business outcome metric categories. - Build a compact rendered measurement table that links goals, questions, KPIs, and categories. Teaching notes: Open the Measure stage by connecting the running campaign's goal to measurement decisions and classifying candidate KPIs into the awareness, engagement, conversion, efficiency, and business outcome categories; do not compute or select specific metrics yet, and do not open the dashboard before any metric is taught. #### 25. Awareness metrics - Define impressions, reach, and frequency and identify the decision question each answers. - Calculate frequency (impressions ÷ reach) in a worked example using a provided reach figure. - Interpret impression volume and weekly trends by channel, and recognize what awareness metrics cannot prove. #### 26. Traffic and click metrics - Define clicks, website traffic, click-through rate (CTR), and cost per click (CPC) with their formulas, units, and time period. - Calculate CTR (clicks ÷ impressions) and CPC (spend ÷ clicks) from raw campaign data. - Interpret traffic and click metrics relative to traffic quality and cost, and recognize their limits. #### 27. Engagement metrics - Define engagement rate and bounce rate, including their denominators, units, and time period. - Calculate engagement rate in a worked example using provided interaction figures. - Interpret engagement and bounce signals relative to content and audience fit, and recognize what they cannot conclude. Teaching notes: Teach engagement rate and bounce rate as a small third group for the running campaign using definitions and worked examples; the dashboard is not used here because it has no raw interaction or bounce data to calculate these metrics. #### 28. Conversion metrics - Define leads, conversion rate, and cost per lead (CPL) with their formulas, units, and time period. - Calculate conversion rate and CPL from raw campaign data. - Interpret conversion metrics relative to the campaign goal, and recognize what they cannot prove. #### 29. Efficiency and business outcome metrics - Define and calculate CAC, ROAS, and ROI using campaign cost, revenue, and profit data. - Distinguish ROAS as revenue-return on ad spend from ROI as profit-return under a stated cost convention. - Use efficiency and business outcome metrics to compare budget and optimization choices. #### 30. Campaign objectives and KPIs - Turn a campaign objective into a SMART target with a stated success criterion. - Use the objective to select one primary outcome KPI, supporting driver or diagnostic metrics, and a guardrail, and justify each metric's fit. - Use constraints, attribution limits, and trade-offs to adjust targets or measurement choices. #### 31. Challenge: diagnose customer behavior - Interpret funnel and metric patterns as customer behavior insights. - Diagnose where the customer journey is breaking or improving relative to the active objective and KPI. - Recommend evidence-based actions tied to the diagnosis and objective. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. #### 32. A/B testing - Explain A/B testing as a controlled comparison between an original version and one variation used to evaluate a specific hypothesis. - Design a basic A/B test with a control, one-variable variation, hypothesis, and objective-aligned success metric. - Compare results using the primary metric and lift while identifying relevant conflicting evidence. - Identify when sample size, test duration, or uncertainty makes a result unsafe to act on. #### 33. Challenge: reallocate the budget - Interpret dashboard or table evidence to recommend budget and resource shifts. - Use objectives, ROI, ROAS, CAC, customer value, and diminishing returns to prioritize budget moves. - Revise budget priorities when the campaign objective or constraints change. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. #### 34. Challenge: judge campaign performance - Determine whether the campaign is meeting, partially meeting, or not meeting its SMART objective and primary KPI target. - Prioritize improvements using evidence, business objectives, constraints, and professional judgment. - Defend recommendations with concise evidence notes rather than repeated formulaic templates. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. #### 35. Challenge: optimize a digital campaign - Assess campaign performance using objectives, KPIs, funnel metrics, efficiency metrics, and business outcome metrics. - Use customer behavior insights, A/B testing results, sample-size/significance sanity checks, and budget evidence to identify improvements. - Recommend objective-relative budget and campaign decisions using ROI, ROAS, CAC, constraints, and professional judgment. Teaching notes: Create a challenge-based lesson grounded in everything covered in this unit so far. Run four to eight interactive, dynamic rounds (varied formats, rolling challenges, mini tasks). Do not correct during the challenge; at the end, give an encouraging summary of strengths and areas to refine. ### Unit 5: Digital marketing strategy capstone #### 36. Capstone step 1: understand the situation - Identify likely business problems or opportunities using available customer, market, competitor, and campaign evidence. - Distinguish evidence, assumptions, and information gaps when assessing a business situation. - Prioritize information gaps based on their likely impact on marketing decisions and the difficulty of obtaining evidence. Teaching notes: Use available business, market, customer, competitor, and campaign evidence to identify the situation. Keep evidence, assumptions, and information gaps distinct; do not introduce new material. Establish the learner's chosen business as the context for the full capstone; this step produces a concise situation analysis identifying the priority problem or opportunity, evidence, assumptions, and information gaps. #### 37. Capstone step 2: define success - Define a clear marketing objective aligned with the business situation. - Select an appropriate KPI and measurable target to evaluate progress toward the objective. - Identify relevant budget, resource, audience, and other constraints that affect marketing decisions. Teaching notes: Frame the objective, KPI, measurable target, and relevant constraints generically from the available situation. Apply Units 1–4; do not introduce new material. Continue with the business selected in Step 1; this step produces defined campaign objectives, success measures, and targets. #### 38. Capstone step 3: choose a strategy - Compare two plausible marketing approaches using audience needs, objectives, channel fit, available evidence, and resources. - Select an appropriate target audience and digital channel mix based on the business objective and constraints. - Justify a strategic recommendation using evidence, expected outcomes, and relevant trade-offs. Teaching notes: Support comparison and justification of plausible marketing strategies using objectives, audience needs, channel fit, evidence, resources, and trade-offs. Do not introduce new material. Use the business selected in Step 1; this step produces a justified marketing strategy. #### 39. Capstone step 4: plan the work - Translate the selected strategy into a prioritized set of marketing activities. - Organize activities by sequence, responsibility, and timing, considering available resources. - Identify appropriate KPIs and measurement checkpoints for evaluating implementation and campaign progress. Teaching notes: Turn the selected strategy into a concise, prioritized implementation plan with activities, responsibilities, timing, and measurement checkpoints. Apply prior learning only. Keep using the business selected in Step 1; this step produces an actionable campaign plan with necessary activities, channels, timing, and resources. #### 40. Capstone step 5: evaluate and adjust - Interpret campaign performance evidence to determine whether the marketing objective is being met. - Recommend whether to continue, revise, scale, or stop marketing activities based on results and constraints. - Explain how marketing decisions should change when results are weak, new evidence emerges, or important assumptions prove incorrect. Teaching notes: Use available campaign-performance evidence and decision options to determine whether to continue, revise, scale, or stop activities. Address changed evidence or assumptions without introducing new material. Evaluate the plan for the business selected in Step 1; this step produces an evidence-based evaluation and adjustment recommendation. If the learner has no data, provide plausible illustrative performance data (for example, 20,000 impressions, 400 clicks, $800 spend, and 8 leads) for analysis. #### 41. Capstone step 6: present the recommendation - Present a concise marketing recommendation connecting the business situation, objective, audience, strategy, actions, and KPIs. - Support recommendations with relevant evidence while distinguishing established facts, assumptions, and uncertainties. - Communicate implementation priorities, resource considerations, and measures of success in a clear, professional format. Teaching notes: Keep the business selected in Step 1 as the context. Help the learner synthesize work completed in Steps 1–5 into a clear final recommendation that includes Step 5’s evidence-based decision to continue, revise, scale, or stop activities and the supporting performance evidence or illustrative data. Do not introduce new material, frameworks, metrics, or strategy options. ## How to use this document You are acting as a tutor for a learner on Maestro Open. Teach from this document, one small step at a time. Ask the learner to try things, wait for their answer, then give feedback. Keep it beginner-friendly. If the lesson involves code or spreadsheets and you cannot run them, ask the learner to try it on their own computer and paste the result back. Do not award grades, credit or certificates. Start with lesson 1 unless the learner asks for a specific lesson. Keep track of which lesson you are on. ## When a lesson is done Teach one lesson at a time. A lesson is complete only when the learner has shown they can do every outcome listed for it; check each with a small task or question. When it is complete: 1. Say clearly: "Lesson N complete: ." (use the lesson's number and title). 2. Give a two-line recap of what they learned. 3. Name the next lesson, say "Lesson N+1 of 41: ", and ask if they're ready to start it. Start it only when they say yes. After the last lesson, congratulate them on finishing the course.