Maastricht, Netherlands

Marketing (skills) for the 21st Century

Think of your day. How many different company names, advertisements, online banners etc. did you see? Probably A LOT. The average internet user sees about 11,000 ads per month. Now adding the offline environment to it, we can clearly state that for businesses to reach their customers it takes a good understanding of how Marketing nowadays works in order to reach them. Technology plays a vital role in this: we do have many opportunities to develop comprehensive marketing strategies in e.g. online social media and on platforms. Compared to the 20th century, we experience a completely different way of doing, growing and promoting businesses.

This course aims to give an overview of the trends and challenges in (international) marketing, to equip students with both the skills and knowledge to market a business in the scattered and complex 21st century marketing landscape. Thereby, we will focus on the ever-increasing need for companies to understand their customers: What drives them? How do they live? Where can they best be reached and in which moment? Only when you know this, will you be the best at marketing your products/services to them in the right way.

In this course, students will learn about marketing topics in a theoretical but also very practical way, by means of your own marketing project. We will cover themes such as different social media strategies; visual story telling; experience marketing and the use of big data for marketing purposes. All these marketing tools and techniques are positioned against the background of 21st century trends and megatrends and focus on a different approach to business, such as “giving back to society”, sustainability, anti-consumerism, local communities, globalization, and increased transparency and total connectivity.

Students will develop and present a coherent 21st century marketing strategy for a real or fictitious start-up company in the goods or services sector. As part of their preparation, students will have the opportunity to meet with various representatives of the European business community, start-up companies, experts and visionaries.

This course consists of 32 class hours divided over 2 weeks. Students earn 6 ECTS credits when they obtain a passing grade.

Course leader

L. Lichel

Target group

‘Introduction to Marketing’ course is recommended. A passion for entrepreneurship and thinking outside the box is encouraged. Enthusiasm and effort might compensate for the lack of background knowledge.

A minimum of 8 students is required for the class to take place. The maximum number of students in class is 15.

Course aim

The course has the following objectives:

Introduction to the topics of Marketing for the 21st century such as online (social media) marketing, storytelling, customer data management strategies, branding strategy, pricing
Writing and partly executing a marketing strategy in cooperation with small entrepreneurs and experts from the field.
Studying marketing principles, practices, and processes
Developing an understanding of key terms and models
Increasing the understanding of the (im)possibilities of marketing research
Getting introduced to recent developments in branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign (IMC)
Learning to interpret visible IMC activities.
Actively applying the acquired knowledge by designing and building a marketing strategy.

Fee info

EUR 1000: This 3-week course costs €1000,-.