The course begins with a dive into developing a marketing analysis for e-commerce stores. A market analysis demonstrates that you know your customers, including who they are, their characteristics, and why they are likely to buy from your business. In this section, we will guide you through how to utilize local/regional marketing research and analysis tools, help you to understand why you need a marketing analysis, and how to create your own marketing analysis. The objective of this first section is to help students to understand the purpose and usefulness of a marketing analysis, and how having a marketing analysis will better support the overall marketing of their e-commerce store.

Building upon the market analysis, this section takes students a step further into developing a marketing strategy for their e-commerce business. Students will first be challenged to evaluate their current strategy (or lack thereof), create audience personas, set measurable marketing goals, and then implement these components by developing a full marketing plan using a helpful template to guide them along the way.

Now that you have completed your marketing analysis and marketing strategy, it’s time to build on those efforts with a solid path forward into marketing your ecommerce business. In this section, we will guide you through some of today’s most valuable marketing channels that you can consider when developing your own ecommerce marketing strategy. Students will learn how their online store can make or break their e-commerce business.