Why MBA Students Should Learn Digital Marketing

Is Digital Marketing Essential for MBA students?

Marketing, as an MBA / BBA specialization, continues to be the most sought after PG degree for fresher and experienced candidates.  Seemingly, marketing & sales jobs pay 13%-45% more than other functions of the business. However, the evolution of digital marketing has funnelled the marketing talents available in the market. Candidates with good understanding of digital marketing and unified sales technologies are considered more positively driven and aspiring towards achieving personal and business goals.

“95% MBA colleges in India still don’t have a pure Digital Marketing curriculum. Even IIMs are yet to find their footing in the domain”

Some of MBA colleges already have a full-fledged curriculum for digital marketing. Sadly, there is not enough expertise in the field of digital marketing to train MBA / BBA students. There are major gaps in how digital marketing and related technologies are introduced in the marketing courses.

Why learning digital marketing tools & techniques while pursuing MBA is Important?

Digital marketing is exciting, conversational and business transforming activity. Those who love to be known as geeky and people-friendly, digital marketing landscape is the place to be. However, there are many more reasons why MBAs seek an entry into digital world

• Competitive market

There are only 13,000 digital marketers in India, who hold a formal degree in the vertical. According to an undisclosed source, Indian MNCs require 150,000 digital marketers to run their digital transformation processes

• Average pay is above INR 400,000 CTC

Digital marketing is the most well-paid job sphere in India. The vertical has witnessed 55% rise in salaries since 2012, especially after the arrival of major MNCs and e-commerce companies like Amazon.com and Salesforce.com. The average salary of a digital marketer with fresher’s MBA in marketing specialization is above INR 400,000 per year in metro cities

• Fast-paced career goals

In 2005, a digital marketer may not have been as clear in his/her career goals as today. Digital marketers are handling bigger teams with budgets running into millions of dollars. Top talents have an opportunity to become the Chief Digital Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officers.

• New job opportunities

The government of India has taken positive steps towards digitalization, introducing innovative programs like e-governance, Digital India, Re-monetization and Start-Up India. All these programs require skilled digital marketers. Most industry experts no longer believe that digital marketing is the future of every business; rather, it’s very much the present.

Do you really need a Digital Marketing degree with an MBA?

To understand how deep digital marketing has penetrated into every realm of business, take a look at popular job search sites, including LinkedIn, Naukri, Monster and Times Jobs. Nearly 90% of the vacancies in the IT and Service sector are attributed to digital marketing, SEO marketing, social media reporting, analytics and big data management.

Start-ups and Small Business Enterprises (SMBs) are eyeing talented MBA / BBA graduates to run key business operations. However, dearth of quality digital marketing exponents proves to be an equally daunting challenge for companies.

Fate of traditional marketing jobs

Are you aware of how marketing automation works? Have you heard about latest technologies like marketing Clouds, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and communication, CRM and ERP automation and so on? If not, your chances of getting a pay rise in your present job just got slashed by 75%!

“How about your chances of finding a new job without a digital marketing badge? Well, that’s even worse. Though FMCGs and automobile industry continue to hire sales and marketing professionals for field-jobs, availing fast tracked promotions in these businesses are hugely stunted due to lack of marketing automation. As most CMOs are looking for talented digital marketers to run customer-centric campaigns at much lesser cost of operations, the traditional marketing professionals are increasingly upgrading their skills to match industry trends.”

What an À la carte digital marketing curriculum looks like

Wondering where to start with Digital Marketing? Top digital marketing institutes are offering at least 5 diversified courses.

Look for the following topics in the course –

• Web analytics and conversion tracking
• Social media marketing for Facebook, youtube, Google+, Twitter, linkedin, Snapchat, Instagram etc
• Mobile marketing and in-app marketing
• Search engine marketing & Search engine optimization
• Google adwords
• Email marketing
• CRM and inbound marketing
• Website designing, UI and UX
• Display advertising, remarketing and retargeting

The Way Forward

With cutting-edge technologies taking over most or all of digital marketing channels, it is crucial for MBA / BBA students to add the most latest knowledge of digital marketing in their ammunition. By 2020, marketing as a specialization is set to be an entirely digital ecosystem, inviting talented marketers to churn the most out of their skills and experience.

We at digital skills designed ready to adopt digital marketing course for MBA / BBA students. Please get in touch with our course counsellor.