Digital Marketing

Course Description

Digital Marketing introduces learners to the fundamental steps and strategies for promoting products via the Internet. Topics include mobile apps, SEO, social media marketing, virtual reality, and analytics, and the curriculum emphasises practical tools, methodologies, and the decision-making competencies essential for working in this expanding economic sector.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAR is the Marketing prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 3 credits, offered fall only, giving approximately 45 contact hours. ⚠ The single term of offering is worth planning around — missing it delays the course by a full year.

Digital marketing's defining characteristic is that it is measurable, and that is a double-edged property. It allows genuine experimentation and honest accounting for spend, which most of marketing historically lacked. It also means the work is judged on numbers, that the numbers can be gamed, and that a marketer who does not understand what a metric actually counts will be misled by their own dashboard. The analytical half of this course is the part that pays.

Daytona State does not publish a lecture and laboratory split for its MAR courses. The prefix is entirely lecture-based and unsuffixed, and its business-family siblings run at the standard 15 contact hours per credit — GEB1011 and MAN2021 are both live at 3 credits and 45 hours. This course is priced at that convention.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the digital marketing landscape and its channels.
• Build a digital strategy aligned to business objectives.
• Describe the customer journey and map digital touchpoints to it.
• Describe website structure and user experience as marketing factors.
• Describe landing pages and conversion rate optimisation.
• Describe search engine optimisation and how search works.
• Conduct keyword research and apply it.
• Apply on-page optimisation correctly.
• Describe technical SEO factors, including speed and mobile usability.
• Describe link building and distinguish legitimate from penalised practice.
• Describe local SEO and its importance to small business.
• Plan and run a paid search campaign.
• Describe bidding, quality scoring, and ad relevance.
• Describe display, video, and retargeting advertising.
• Describe email marketing, segmentation, and automation.
• Describe content marketing and its role in acquisition.
• Describe mobile marketing and app promotion.
• Describe emerging formats including augmented and virtual reality.
• Configure and interpret web analytics.
• Define conversions and set up conversion tracking.
• Describe attribution models and their limitations.
• Design and interpret an A/B test correctly.
• Calculate return on advertising spend and cost per acquisition.
• Describe privacy, consent, and data handling obligations.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe marketing automation platforms.
• Describe e-commerce platform marketing.
• Describe affiliate marketing.
• Describe customer data platforms.
• Describe artificial intelligence tools in marketing workflow.
• Obtain a Google Ads or Analytics certification.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The digital landscape
• Strategy and business alignment
• The customer journey and touchpoints
• Website structure and user experience
• Landing pages and conversion optimisation
• How search works and SEO
• Keyword research
• On-page optimisation
• Technical SEO
• Link building and penalised practice
• Local SEO
• Paid search
• Bidding and quality scoring
• Display, video, and retargeting
• Email marketing and automation
• Content marketing
• Mobile marketing and apps
• AR, VR, and emerging formats
• Web analytics
• Conversion tracking
• Attribution models and limits
• A/B testing
• Return on ad spend and cost per acquisition
• Privacy, consent, and data handling

Optional Topics

• Marketing automation platforms
• E-commerce platform marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Customer data platforms
• AI tools in marketing
• Google certification

Resources & Tools

• Federal Trade Commission — Business Guidance (ftc.gov/business-guidance) — free, plainly written, and the authoritative source on advertising law. Its endorsement guides and FAQ are the single most useful reading in this course.
• American Marketing Association (ama.org) — professional body, student membership, and its Statement of Ethics.
• Google Analytics and Google Digital Garage — free tools and certification-bearing training used widely by employers.
• Google Ads and Meta Blueprint certifications — free to study; employers ask for these by name and they cost nothing but time.
• HubSpot Academy — free certifications in inbound, content, email, and social media marketing.
• Florida Attorney General — consumer protection (myfloridalegal.com) — free; Florida's own enforcement guidance under FDUTPA.
• Census Bureau and BLS consumer expenditure data — free primary market data that most students never think to use.
• Build and publish something real — a campaign, a social account with measured results, an analysed A/B test. A portfolio with numbers in it outperforms a transcript in this field.

Career Pathways

• Advertising, promotions, and marketing managers — SOC 11-2021.
• Market research analysts and marketing specialists — SOC 13-1161; strong projected demand and the most common analytical entry point.
• Public relations specialists — SOC 27-3031.
• Advertising sales agents — SOC 41-3011.
• Social media coordinator and content marketing roles — common entry positions, frequently the first rung.
• Digital marketing, SEO, and paid media specialist roles — the most measurable and among the best paid early.
• Marketing analytics — where marketing meets data work, and where pay rises fastest.
• E-commerce and brand management.
• Florida sectors that hire heavily: tourism and hospitality, healthcare, real estate, financial services, and a substantial small-business economy — and tourism marketing in particular is a distinctive Florida specialisation.
• Self-employment and agency work — a genuinely accessible route in this field, and one where a portfolio matters far more than a credential.
• Transfer to a bachelor's in marketing or business administration — management roles generally expect one.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Know what the metric actually counts before you act on it

• Analytics platforms report what they can observe, not what happened. Consent banners, ad blockers, cross-device use, and privacy features all mean the numbers are a sample with systematic gaps — and the gaps are not random.
• ⚠ Attribution is a model, not a measurement. Last-click attribution systematically over-credits the final touchpoint — usually branded search — and under-credits everything that created the demand. Budget decisions made on last-click routinely defund the channels that were working.
• Define the conversion deliberately. A "conversion" counted as a page view or a form open is not a business outcome, and optimising toward it produces expensive nothing.
• ⚠ Watch for double counting across platforms. Each ad platform claims conversions by its own rules, and summing them produces more conversions than actually occurred.
• Run A/B tests properly. Change one variable, decide the sample size in advance, and do not stop the test when it looks good — stopping early on a favourable reading is the most common way tests produce false results.
• Segment before concluding. An aggregate figure frequently conceals opposite movements in two segments.
• Tie everything to cost. Cost per acquisition and return on ad spend are the figures that survive a meeting; traffic is not.
• Report the uncertainty. Saying what a number cannot tell you is a professional strength, and overclaiming precision is how marketers lose credibility internally.

⚠ Search visibility is earned slowly and lost quickly

• SEO is a long-horizon activity. Results take months, which makes it hard to justify and easy to abandon just before it works.
• ⚠ Manipulative tactics carry real downside. Bought links, hidden text, doorway pages, and scraped content risk penalties that remove a site from results — and recovering from a penalty is far harder than earning the ranking honestly was.
• Write for the person, structured for the machine. Content that answers a real question and is structured clearly is what current ranking systems are trying to find anyway.
• Technical factors are table stakes — speed, mobile usability, crawlability, and working links. They will not win a ranking alone, and their absence will lose one.
• Local search matters enormously for small business, and a correctly maintained business profile with consistent details and genuine reviews outperforms most other effort.
• ⚠ Do not buy or fabricate reviews. Beyond the platform consequences, it carries federal exposure — see the regulatory note below.
• Expect the rules to change. Search and platform algorithms change continually, which is why understanding the intent behind them beats memorising tactics.
• ⚠ Generative AI content is not free ranking. Volume without substance is exactly what ranking systems are built to discount, and publishing unverified AI output also carries accuracy and liability risk.

⚠⚠ Marketing is regulated — the rules bind the marketer, not only the company's lawyers

• The Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising and marketing practice nationally, and enforcement reaches individuals and small businesses, not only large advertisers.
• Claims must be truthful, not misleading, and substantiated before they are made. ⚠ Substantiation must exist at the time of the claim — producing evidence afterwards is not a defence.
• ⚠⚠ Material connections must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Where an endorser is paid, given free product, employed by the brand, or otherwise connected, the connection must be disclosed in a way an ordinary viewer will actually notice — not buried, not below a "more" fold, and not in a wall of hashtags.
• ⚠⚠ Fake and incentivised reviews carry federal exposure. The FTC has rules addressing fake reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, and suppressed negative reviews. Buying reviews, writing your own, or conditioning an incentive on a positive rating are all unsafe.
• Florida adds its own layer: the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, Chapter 501, Part II, Florida Statutes, which reaches unfair or deceptive practices independently of federal law and allows private actions.
• ⚠ Florida's Digital Bill of Rights adds consumer data obligations for businesses meeting its thresholds — relevant to any marketer handling personal data.
• Email marketing is governed by the CAN-SPAM Act (accurate headers, identifiable advertising, a working opt-out, honoured promptly), and ⚠ text message marketing is far more tightly regulated than email under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, where per-message statutory damages have produced very large settlements.
• Children's marketing is separately restricted, and online data collection from children is governed by COPPA.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies emphatically. This is one of the fastest-moving regulatory areas covered anywhere in this repository — FTC guidance, state privacy statutes, and platform policies all change frequently. Verify current requirements with primary sources and with counsel before relying on any of this.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

MAR2720 is 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, offered fall only at Daytona State — ⚠ plan around the single term.

Take the free Google Analytics and Google Ads certifications alongside it. They cost nothing, employers name them, and they map directly onto this content.