eMarketing is a fast moving industry. Translating learnings from this industry into resources and structures that can be shared is not always easy but it is what we’re dedicated to here at Quirk Education. We’ve been in contact with a number of interesting people in the process, and one of them is Karl Kasca.
Karl (pictured left) is one of the dynamic educators we’ve been in contact with since the publication of our textbook, eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing. Karl is the EVP of IncreaseOnlineProfits.com, a site which shows website owners how to attract more visitors and create more customers. He is also an information researcher specialising in market/product/industry trends and teaches Social Media Marketing and New Media Marketing at UCLA Extension. Enjoy.
eMarketing has emerged at a pace fast enough to unnerve professionals, how do you think academic institutions in general have done with integrating an eMarketing education into the curriculum?
I’m seeing more eCourses being assimilated into Extension programs and online or distance learning programs, but perhaps not as much into regular academic curriculums. Also courses like eMarketing and Social Media seem to be more elective classes than required classes. However even a casual Web search will show that academic institutions are adding eMarketing courses as fast as they can, probably because they need to, to stay competitive. But simply throwing a course with an “e” in the title into the course catalogue doesn’t mean it’s a good course with valuable cutting-edge content or that it’s taught well.
Are there enough texts and resources available on the subject?
This is always a challenge. There are a few good texts and authors, but certainly having more of a selection would be great. Also some textbooks might be very good, but they are also extremely costly. Even after finding a good textbook, there’s the issue of whether it’s revised periodically so that new versions are available a year or two later.
Quirk eMarketing Textbook
I found Quirk’s eMarketing textbook for my New Media Marketing class while searching for a low cost alternative to keep textbook costs down for my students. For full disclosure, I should mention that Quirk was gracious enough to provide me with an Instructor’s copy of their textbook. That said, I found Quirk’s eMarketing textbook to be very well written, concise and to the point regarding what people should know about internet marketing, as well as being fairly comprehensive in the topics covered.
Resources are everywhere given Google and the Web, but finding the resources you really need to know about is something else. Anyone can find a bad answer to a question using search engines. The question is: Are you finding a good solution, or the best solution for your needs?
What is the greatest challenge educational institutions face when it comes to implementing an eMarketing education?
I would say it would be traditional marketing versus eMarketing and selling eMarketing to the administrations. Social Media is amazing and there are great case studies showing that it can be quite successful for particular companies, but there’s something of a stigma which could almost be called a “Twitter factor” where many people think a social networking tool like Twitter is nothing more than a way to see what people ate for lunch. They don’t realize that the power of Twitter (e.g., Dell Outlet) and some of the other tools can be quite dramatic. So lumping this misconception about Twitter and Social Media in with eMarketing may negatively affect the acceptance of eMarketing programs.
Academic institutions are making major efforts to embrace and use Social Media to attract and engage potential students, so you would expect them to add eMarketing courses to their curriculums so they would be found by students doing online searches as well as persuading students to enroll, especially when comparing schools with eMarketing courses or programs versus those without them.
So getting back to your question: Budget, funding, and support of eMarketing programs at many levels are needed both for businesses as well as educational institutions and all of those factors are challenges these days.
Lastly, according to a recent article, “Will Social Media Courses Enable a Cultural Shift in Higher Education?” educational institutions may need entire cultural shifts for openness to these efforts to succeed.
Do your students display an interest in eMarketing material and a career in eMarketing?
Yes, my students absolutely love eMarketing material, especially Social Media. It’s interesting, as a topic like email marketing is almost “old school” and traditional now. But it’s funny that when students learn more about it and how deep it is and how much knowledge goes into doing email marketing, they all of a sudden find the subject a lot more interesting. Everyone’s interested in Social Media – that’s an easy sell as it has a current “Wow!” factor, but showing how other eMarketing strategies (email, SEO, SEM, etc.) can be very effective is sometimes an eye-opening experience.
We’re seeing more Social Media Managers taking our eMarketing classes now, or those who have newly-added responsibilities for eMarketing and/or Social Media. Also some students are in career transition and they realize that having “eMarketing” or especially “Social Media” on their job resumes will help them in the job selection and interviewing process. These skill-sets are becoming prerequisites for recruiters now.
Does the inclusion of eMarketing result in any major shifts in the curriculum? Is it best to integrate it with marketing or to teach it as a separate course?
I think that teaching eMarketing as a separate course makes more sense at this time. It’s easy to compartmentalize eMarketing and/or Social Media courses, but it’s also very important strategically to assure that these courses are seen as important parts of larger holistic marketing efforts and overall marketing success. That said, there’s bound to be overlap as definitions of eMarketing and Social Media evolve and change. Also, there’s a question of the level of depth which can be achieved in a single course. Certainly any part of eMarketing could be its own course: There could be separate courses in Email Marketing, SEO, Social Media, etc. Otherwise students are getting an overview of eMarketing and some details, but all of these sub-areas could cover much more than is allowed in a typical quarter or semester.
How important is the contribution the academic world can make to the evolution of eMarketing in practice?
The academic world is very important since educators can make students aware of best practices and knowledge about the most effective strategies and methods of eMarketing. Also academic research about eMarketing and studies in eMarketing education can be helpful to ongoing improvement in the field.
Given that eMarketing is such a dynamic and fast changing industry, what steps can institutions take to ensure that what they are teaching is on par with current developments?
Monitoring best practices and case studies about eMarketing from well respected journals can be helpful for staying in tune with current developments. And of course Google Alerts re: eMarketing are a great way of keeping informed about eMarketing developments and trends.
Things are moving and changing fast in the higher educational arena, for instance there are now even “Universities with the Best Free Online Courses”.
Bottom line: eMarketing is becoming a necessary skill-set which academic institutions should consider adding to their curriculums (depending on their overall strategic plan) so that their students will emerge with the most powerful abilities to communicate and eMarket and their companies and they will be as successful as possible.
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I'm so glad to see a growth of formalized education on this topic. I of course have a question in my mind as to whether they (the institutions) will ever be able to keep up to date with the evolving trends, but its still great to see.
Thanks for the enlightening post!
Posted by Derek Jansen on 2011/01/25