This course builds on top of the courses "Social Media Marketing Fundamentals" and "Advanced Social Media Marketing," enabling students to apply the range of their newly acquired social media and marketing skills in a simulated real world environment. Students will expand upon the social media marketing strategies they have created during the "Advanced Social Media Marketing" course, adding the depth required to succeed in a Silicon Valley work environment.

Emphasis is placed on creating a social media campaign that:

• Teaches students to support all of their decisions with facts
• Acknowledges the reality of often limited resources and competing priorities
• Presents a clear assessment of the best marketing mix without a bias for social media
• Demonstrates the application of cutting-edge social media tools, techniques and concepts
• Gives students the opportunity to present and defend their ideas in front of a Silicon Valley employer
• The course will further hone students’ social media marketing proficiency by introducing concepts like cross-platform campaigns, programmatic marketing, as well as the application of social media management tools for teams.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, you should be able to

• Allocate resources to each step of your project
• Assign objectives, metrics, and tools to each channel
• Create highly targeted ads using advertising networks and platforms
• Conduct additional market research to validate your social strategies
• Evaluate the practicality of marketing automation and analytics tools for your project, in the areas of planning, execution, decision-making, monitoring, and reporting
• Apply best practices for cross-platform campaigns across different devices
• Expand your target audience personas
• Create a professional looking project presentation

Note

It is important that you have already successfully completed the two prerequisite courses, MKTG.X415 Social Media Marketing Fundamentals and MKTG.X416 Advanced Social Media Marketing prior to enrolling in this final Capstone course. If you have any questions or have not met the prerequisite requirement, contact the department for approval by emailing extension@ucsc.edu before enrolling in this course.