New Oxford-MBS digital marketing program offers global view
Melbourne Business School and Oxford University’s Saïd Business School have created a new Digital Marketing & Analytics program for marketers facing the global challenge of digital transformation.
The program provides an international view of the best practices organisations are using to succeed in a rapidly evolving global market.
It draws on Saïd’s expertise as a global leader in digital transformation through its Future of Marketing Initiative and our Centre for Business Analytics’ leadership in data-driven decision making.
“Digital transformation is a global issue that shouldn't be dealt with in geographical silos. Bringing two leading institutions from across the world will help marketers address the constant changes and challenges in the digital landscape,” Melbourne Business School’s Ujwal Kayande says.
Know your digital challenge
Saïd Business School’s Andrew Stephen says the program is designed to help marketing managers identify their organisation’s unique digital challenges.
“Organisations need to tailor their digital marketing to their particular goals and understand the different marketing channels and techniques that work best for them,” he says.
The right measureDigital advertising research has shown the successful digital efforts depend on the stage of a brand’s development, making understanding what works and what doesn’t in each case essential.
“In terms of measuring the quality of your digital ad campaign, there's never a one-size-fits-all approach,” Professor Stephen says.
With software-driven marketing and precision targeting now possible, Professor Stephen says it’s important to design experiments to measure the impact of any digital advertising strategy and customise it if necessary rather than put all your trust in automation.
“It’s important to not just make assumptions about what's going to work, but actually test it and have appropriate frameworks to do that in an adaptive way in real-time. Technology is just a tool, but it's constantly becoming more sophisticated, and you need to know how to use it, when to use it and that you're using it correctly.”
Digital skills gap
With all marketing in the process of becoming digital, Professor Stephen says new technology can quickly leave many marketers – young and old – with a digital skills gap.
“Executives and their teams, looking to make an impact in their organisation, need to upskill to be on top of the changing market and find smarter way to extract greater value from data,” Professor Stephen says.
Context is everything
Another fundamental challenge for marketing executives is to understand where the data they are collecting is coming from.
“It's all about the context you’re operating in. You can't decontextualize marketing, customer insights or analytics,” Professor Stephen says. “They exist within the context of the data itself and how its generated – by your customers and the marketplace – and then there’s your business decision environment. It all has to be pieced together.”
Learn more
Find out more about the Digital Marketing & Analytics program.
Professor Andrew Stephen
L’Oréal Professor of Marketing
Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Andrew is one of the world’s leading marketing professors and an expert on digital marketing, particularly social media and digital transformation, with extensive experience in helping organisations identify how to build strategic marketing value through new digital channels.
Professor Ujwal Kayande
Professor of Marketing, Director of the Centre for Business Analytics
Melbourne Business School
Ujwal is recognised globally for his research and teaching excellence in the areas of digital marketing strategy and analytics. He serves on the editorial boards of two of the top four FT50 marketing journals and advisory boards of two start-ups. He also consults locally and globally.