The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success

Chapter 4 Construct an Internal Marketing Academy

Businesses must take the initiative to mold their own modern marketers.

KEEPING PACE OR FALLING BEHIND?

As demand for performance-driven, digital-savvy talent rises, universities are struggling to prepare students for the reality of a rapidly changing industry. Courses in analytics, automation, content, email, mobile, social, and other critical areas are rarely deeply integrated into marketing programs.

While digital-related courses are commonly offered as electives, our research of the top 10 undergraduate marketing programs in the United States, according to the 2014 U.S. News & World Report rankings,¹ showed only one, Indiana University Bloomington (@IUBloomington), has a required digital marketing course—Analysis of Marketing Data.

College students generally have opportunities to learn digital marketing strategy and tactics. However, because of the way the higher education system is structured, many can earn undergraduate marketing degrees without taking a single digital class.

In “Will Universities Evolve?” Rand Schulman (@randschulman), executive-in-residence for new media/marketing at University of the Pacific (@UOPacific), states, “U.S. universities are not adequately training students to meet the needs of business in some of the most sought-after areas of marketing: social media, content marketing and content analytics. Clearly an imbalance exists between skills taught in classrooms and the skills sought in the ...