Graduate Certificate in Strategic Marketing Communications

About the Program

Strategic Marketing Communications is an experiential, career-focused program for graduate students who want to learn how to work in the multiple roles expected in the marketing and communications fields. Graduates will enter an evolving area of the communications sector. The move to integrate the ways an organization communicates to its internal and external stakeholders has grown, in part, due to the pervasive use of social media which both enhances and challenges communicators globally. All sectors of business and not-for-profit organizations must now manage both offline and online images and messages for consistency across the traditional silos of marketing, sales, advertising, and public relations. While graduates have the knowledge to work in these diverse fields, they do so by integrating the disciplines with a common strategic direction, to achieve the goals of the organizations that employ them. This strategic approach is emphasized through the planning phase and reinforced as students learn to produce professional collateral and digital content using industry-standard technology and emerging social platforms. Learning culminates in a client-based capstone project to develop an integrated marketing communications plan.

Program Outcomes

• Develop, write, and present clear, targeted integrated marketing communications materials including proposals and client pitches using persuasive advocacy skills.

• Develop and contribute to the implementation of integrated marketing communication plans by incorporating knowledge of, and the historical and emerging practices of strategic planning, public relations, marketing, and digital advertising that align with overall organizational goals and mission.

• Complete all work in accordance with codes of professional ethics, relevant law, and safety.

• Conduct secondary and primary research to support the development of measureable objectives, communication strategies and tactics as well as the identification and description of targeted markets and publics.

• Develop project, tactical and operating budgets using tools that evaluate capital investments and analyze cost behavior to meet client needs.

• Produce, and co-ordinate the production of visually effective print and graphic, digital, and multi-media communications using industry standard technologies.

• Write and edit clear, targeted copy for a variety of media channels, including offline and online content, as well as marketing and business applications aligned to organizational objectives and which engage a specific target, adapting language, tone and presentation style to the situation, on deadline.

• Apply project management techniques and software to develop and execute a project plan using a variety of methods to assess the execution and evaluate the return on investment.

• Enhance personal and professional development by working effectively and safely within the broader business environment, developing and managing relationships with key internal and external stakeholders, and in accordance with relevant professional association standards.

• Determine strategies for developing new products and services that are consistent with evolving market needs.

• Resolve specific advertising and marketing communications challenges.

• Compare strategic marketing communications principles and practices that address diverse stakeholders and different international/global cultural and business models.

• Distinguish between the disciplines of marketing, sales, advertising, public relations, and branding in the development of strategic plans.

• Critique the effective management of a professional selling practice using methods that qualify potential clients, compare core selling/communications/negotiation techniques.

• Incorporate adequate practices for the assessment of appropriate vendor selection criteria, identification of internal and external clients, and the development of professional working relationships with both in the planning and execution of marketing communications strategies

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