Marketing Courses

Tailoring a certificate program for Technology Marketing for your organization gives you significant control for where and how to emphasize content, capability-building, team performance, and strategic need. Over 20 course options are available. Contact a Program Advisor to learn more and explore the possibilities of co-designing a unique program that meets your market challenge.

Strategic Technology Marketing Framework

The five-day Strategic Technology Marketing Framework workshop provides your business with a proven roadmap and set of tools for developing strategic plans for technical products/services, portfolios and business units. This contemporary and practical approach will guide participants through essential marketing elements, such as planning assumptions, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and value propositions. The course will help you to create powerful strategies that will resonate with customers, and differentiate your company from competitors. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Take a market-driven approach to business planning and create differentiated strategies
• Assess and gain insights based on the market sectors, customer groups, and competitors over short and longer-term planning horizons
• Systematically prioritize markets and customers so that you can optimize resources
• Establish MVPs (minimally viable products) and learn to pivot based on your learning
• Create a compelling positioning that meaningfully sets your product/service meaningfully apart from the competition
• Develop a holistic value proposition (beyond just the product)
• Determine how to establish and manage pricing based on value
• Create performance-measurable go-to-market plans 
• Link strategic requests to financial implications
• Continue to create plans in the future utilizing the roadmap and set of tools

Instructor: Mary Abbazia

 

Creating the Customer Journey

The two-day Creating the Customer Journey workshop enables you to help your organization become customer-focused and to provide valuable insights that are the foundation for differentiated value propositions. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Analyze the competitive situation of your market and scope the customer journey
• Create a chronological detailed customer journey that explains all pre, during and post-purchase activities
• Understand who/what are the customer influencers for each step of the journey
• Prioritize activities in the journey where a change to a specific customer’s behavior will make a positive impact on your business
• Develop customer insights to explain current behaviors and identify one or more insight that can be leveraged to motivate desired change

Instructors: Mary Abbazia

 

Product Life Cycle Management

The one-day Product Life-Cycle Management workshop is for people who are managing a portfolio and need to effectively allocate resources to grow their franchise. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges and begin to make critical decisions during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Identify current and future key customer groups
• Learn the key elements of life-cycle management at each stage
• Identify ways to include engineering, software development, IT, and other key development functions in the decisions and implementation of product life cycles
• Learn about the newest tools and techniques available to manage the process
• Build the business case to obtain resources and support

Instructors: Mary Abbazia

 

Needs-Based Segmentation

The two-day Needs-Based Segmentation workshop focuses on uncovering and leveraging customer segments to better target and create a differential advantage. The course will also help managers to allocate resources. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Identify current and future key customer groups
• Determine ways to uncover and define customer needs
• Utilize tools for segmenting customers based on their needs
• Establish a hypothesis for a needs-based customer segmentation (moving beyond classification)
• Leverage the segmentation scheme to develop differentiated strategies
• Integrate segmentation into value propositions
• Determine ways to implement within the organization and with the sales team

Instructors: Tom Spitale, Mary Abbazia

 

Scenario Planning and Simulations

The two-day Scenario Planning and Simulations workshop guides the extended product or brand team through “war gaming” simulations. Teams develop strategies and contingencies that reflect external planning assumptions prior to “pressure testing” their plans against key competitors. You will be assigned to work in groups with either teammates from your own business or staff from a competitor, and role-play accordingly.

Your teams will be able to:

• Develop scenarios and understand how they differ from a prediction
• Identify planning assumptions that will shape possible futures
• Prioritize planning assumptions based on likelihood of occurrence and business impact
• Clearly articulate key assumptions and their future implications on customers and the business
• Build expected outcomes into plans, and develop contingencies for those elements that give cause for concern
• Use techniques to test plans and potential scenarios
• Learn how to pressure test plans and contingencies through simulations (i.e. war gaming or scenario planning)

Instructors: Mary Abbazia, Tom Spitale

 

Information Systems in Marketing

The one-day Information Systems in Marketing workshop focuses on helping marketers to speed up decision-making within their organizations with systematic integrated data collection and visualization. You will learn to quickly assess informational needs, collect and develop the information from disparate data sources, and communicate insights to the appropriate decision-makers. You will apply these concepts to create and measure your own current strategy and tactics.

Your teams will be able to:

• Understand the purpose and benefits of a Marketing Information System (MKiS)
• Define and build linkages between strategy/tactics, data collection and information development and visualization of insights
• Understand the skill sets needed to create, implement and maintain and MKiS
• Articulate the relationship between a MKiS, the Internet of Things, Big Data, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Agile and Content Marketing

 

ROI and Finance for Marketing Professionals

The two-day ROI and Finance for Marketing Professionals workshop provides a must-have set of tools for any professional who needs to quickly gain a foundation of financial skills. You will o apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Understand common financial terms and how they relate to marketing
• Analyze financial statements: net income statement, balance sheet, cash flow
• Identify and influence the drivers of working capital
• Use discounted cash flow to calculate ROIs and net present values (NPVs) of projects
• Create financial models for calculating marketing project/activities ROIs and NPVs
• Understand all elements (ROI, strategic initiatives, resources, etc.) that impact marketing activity choices

 

Project Management in Marketing

The three-day Project Management in Marketing workshop enables someone new to project management to understand all the key elements. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions

Your teams will be able to:

• Work with key internal stakeholders to identify the scope and key deliverables of the project
• Determine the work streams with responsibilities and milestones
• Assess the budget of the project – with risks and opportunities
• Utilize tools to schedule and manage the project
• Enable change management techniques and tools

 

Behavioral Leadership

The two-day Behavioral Leadership workshop focuses on the critical leadership skills needed to excel in today’s highly competitive business environment. You will learn the tools and models successful leaders use to accurately assess themselves, their colleagues, and the situations that arise in the workplace. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life leadership challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Enhance leader trust and credibility
• Utilize the skills, talents, and energies of each individual on the team and align them with customers' needs and values
• Provide positive team direction
• Assess personal leadership styles and skills
• Manage the culture—the beliefs and values of the organization to promote growth
• Create a vision for each leader and help the leader to instill that vision/direction into his/her team
• Assess your organization's mission, core competencies, and vision
• Identify how your organizational culture builds trust
• Determine your customers' needs and values
• Align and engage competence and commitment to meet customer needs
• Assess your leadership style and challenges

 

Building and Sustaining High-Performance Teams

High-performance teams are essential for organizations to respond to the competitive pressures in changing domestic and global markets. With this course, you will gain the skills for developing high-performance teams across a range of categories: virtual teams, project teams, product development teams, and autonomous work teams.

During the two-day Building and Sustaining High-Performance Teams workshop, you will learn a proven process with tools to help improve your teaming skills. You will also learn to apply concepts from the course to your own real-life team-building and team-sustaining challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Lead effective virtual teams
• Build team member capabilities and contributions
• Develop a collaborative team culture and reduce conflict
• Recognize and deploy team member strengths
• Anticipate issues and facilitate team member interaction
• Deal with the special challenges of virtual teams, project teams, and self-directed teams
• Enhance team problem solving and decision making in high performance teams
• Understand the role of teams for leading change
• Build high performance teams
• Overcome obstacles to team performance
• Achieve the full potential of virtual teams
• Understand motivation and behavior in teams
• Enhance team problem solving and decision making
• Provide effective team leadership

 

Influencing Without Alienating

Professional success depends upon the ability to influence people at all levels of your organization. The three-day Influencing Without Alienating workshop emphasizes how to increase your personal competence for communication, influencing, and problem-solving. The course focuses on the real-life problems and challenges that you face in the workplace. Throughout this workshop, you will practice techniques on videotape, critique yourself, and receive coaching on how to enhance your ability to get things done while building positive working relationships with others.

Your teams will be able to:

• Increase influence by reducing aggressive/abusive interactions
• Remain calm when dealing with conflict and difficult situations to set the stage for growth versus residual hostility
• Exercise personal power to positively impact co-workers and the organization
• Work more effectively with others through honest and open communication
• Participate proactively in meetings
• Understand others' underlying concerns and creatively problem-solve to achieve alignment and commitment
• Value your own needs and the needs and differences in others
• Listen to understand
• Understand internal obstacles to effective management
• Build esteem and confidence
• Initiate and maintain change

 

Strategic Pricing

The two-day Strategic Pricing workshop focuses on how to price products and services based on customer value, versus cost or competitor benchmarking. You will learn a proven process with tools to help improve pricing decisions. You will also apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Create pricing strategies to increase profits
• Understand the impact of value-based pricing
• Determine how costs, competition, and customer values can and should influence the pricing strategy
• Use practical tools to measure customer value, conduct break-even analysis, analyze price relative to perceived value, measure price sensitivity, determine the highest and lowest pricing options and conduct trade-off analysis
• Determine when and how to raise and lower prices and set price throughout the product or service life cycle
• Establish steps to integrate strategic pricing in your business environment

Instructors: Mary Abbazia, Tom Spitale

 

Developing Innovation

The two-day Developing Innovation workshop is an energizing session led by seasoned working professionals who share how to apply best practices (and avoid worst practices). During this interactive session, you will learn several creative and analytical techniques that you can immediately share with your associates—methods to drive greater innovation in your business. We address issues such as new product development, strategic planning, marketing, operations, branding, and strategic alliances.

Your teams will be able to:

• Manage by imagining: Gain techniques for helping your team become more imaginative problem-solvers (such as opportunity redefinition, wishing, sacred cow, questioning assumptions, positioning continuums, mindmapping, and triggered brainwalking
• Create a total innovation enterprise – learn 10 principles and practices for creating a successful, company-wide innovation program.
• Apply The Ideator’s Quest, A Mythic Journey from Imagination to Innovation – you will learn how to use the hero's mindset to become the leader of successful innovation initiatives!

Instructors: Bryan Mattimore, Tom Spitale

 

Launching New Products and Services

The three-day Launching New Products and Services workshop sharpens your strategies for launching new products and services with a proven methodology and tools. You will learn how to target segments based on your company’s ability to differentiate itself from the competition. You will also apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Use a systematic approach for launching new products and services
• Successfully launch new products and services in new or existing markets through a customer-driven process utilizing proven tools and techniques
• Identify and evaluate your market(s) potential
• Use customer segmentation to help uncover untapped market niches
• Expand beyond market niches by developing the brand
• Create compelling value propositions to capitalize on unmet customer needs during launch and throughout the life stages
• Develop and communicate compelling value propositions and communications
• Assess launch readiness, develop sequencing/timing, monitor progress post-launch and avoid the pitfalls of launch failures

Instructors: Mary Abbazia

 

Digital Strategy

The two-day Digital Strategy workshop provides the concepts, tools, and approaches to complement traditional marketing plans and activities with up-to-date digital strategies. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Understand the key elements of digital strategy – listening, speaking and connecting
• Determine which digital concepts, tools and approaches are useful to your business and industry
• Create your own digital strategy for your target audiences (listen to customers, dip into the conversations they may already be having, speak to customers in a more relevant way, connect with customers in more effective and efficient ways, and “learn from what you learned”)

 

Branding and Re-Branding

The two-day Branding and Re-Branding workshop focuses on addressing customer needs to develop and leverage brands for products, services, categories, or companies. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Establish meaningful branding for products, platforms, or business categories 
• Create compelling positioning and full-solution value propositions that address customer needs better than competitive alternatives
• Benchmark your brands to other brands and identify best and worst practices
• Develop solutions to successfully address launching products and services into complex markets, despite short runways

 

Critical Issues in Global Marketing

The two-day Critical Issues in Global Marketing workshop focuses on the many layers within a global company—and presents best practices that you can use to be more productive. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Identify and assess issues that are relevant in established and emerging markets 
• Understand potential risks, tradeoffs, and opportunities
• Establish global products and services strategies versus regional and/or country-specific strategies
• Create and manage global value propositions that are truly differentiated and resonate with the target customer groups.
• Assess global initiatives; utilize prioritization techniques
• Understand your customers regionally, by country, and globally
• Gain global organizational alignment
• Collaboratively build and manage ongoing global strategies

 

Integrating Marketing in the Business Enterprise/System Design

The two-day Integrating Marketing in the Business Enterprise/System Design workshop focuses on helping marketers bring science to the art of marketing. The course integrates into one system the four main components of the marketing process: strategy and operations; marketing analytics; multichannel execution; and digital intelligence capabilities. You will learn how to assess an enterprise marketing management (EMM) system for best fit and how to implement the system without overwhelming your budget. You will review case studies to elucidate the concepts taught in this course.

Your teams will be able to:

• Understand the purpose and benefits of an EMM
• Define and build linkages between strategy and operations, marketing analytics, multichannel execution, and digital intelligence
• Evaluate the characteristics of an EMM that fits best with your needs and corporate infrastructure
• Prioritize modules for streamlined implementation
• Build an ROI case for implementing an EMM
• Understand the skill sets needed to create, implement and maintain and EMM

Instructors: Mary Abbazia

 

Agile Marketing

This two-day Agile Marketing workshop focuses on helping marketers speed up the process of finding, testing, and commercializing profitable innovations in products, services, packaging, distribution, promotion, and price.  The course will integrate your own real-life products and services.  Inthe process, you will apply tools that will generate an abundance of creative marketing strategies, help prioritize the best strategies, organize marketing experiments to test the commercial viability of strategies, and detail scalable execution plans.

Your teams will be able to:

• Master a set of tools for generating an endless list of potential product, service, packaging, distribution, promotional and price ideas
• Utilize customer-centric frameworks and approaches for determining which of these ideas have the highest potential and should be tested
• Design experiments with powerful metrics that quickly determine the market reaction to marketing experiments while proving positive ROI, for fast-failing or scaling
• Know how to develop a champion/challenger culture that constantly tests the status quo and quickly capitalizes on success

Instructors: Tom Spitale, Mary Abbazia

 

Creating Compelling Value Propositions

The two-day Creating Value Propositions workshop provides skills and tools for generating value propositions for products, services, and brands that resonate with the target audiences. You will apply concepts from the course to your own real-life marketing challenges during individual and group breakout sessions.

Your teams will be able to:

• Create compelling value propositions through a clear understanding of customer needs and product/service point of difference
• Apply the elements of a value proposition to the business
• Understand how to develop the "complete product" to link the product/service point of difference to the target audience
• Understand channel and distribution alternatives for placement
• Learn the key elements of the promotional mix
• Learn how to price based on value, versus competitor or cost benchmarks
• Use digital activities to enhance your value propositions
• Execute your value propositions flawlessly

Instructors: Mary Abbazia, Tom Spitale

 

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