 Hello and welcome to today's qualifications webinar, your next step towards becoming a marketing manager. Before we get started I'd like to go over a few items so that you know how to participate. The presentation will last for approximately 40 minutes. You'll be able to send text questions to today's presenter by typing your questions into the chat box of the control panel. You may send in your questions at any time during the presentation. We'll collect and address as many of these as we can during the Q&A session at the end. Unfortunately, we can't send the slides of the presentation. However, a webinar will be made available to watch on demand via our content hub exchange within the next couple of working days. I'd now like to hand you over to our presenter for today, Red Barrington. Hi everybody and thank you for joining me today. Today's webinar we're looking at how you can move towards your next step towards becoming a marketing manager. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the Chartered Institute Marketing Certificate in Professional Marketing Qualification. As my colleague says, if you have questions do just type them along and we'll answer those at the end of today's session. So in today's webinar I'm going to provide you with just a brief overview of the CIM qualification just to put this a little bit more into context. We're going to look a bit about what involved in the marketing manager's roles, the kind of skills that you now need as a marketing manager. We're then going to focus very much on that CIM certificate in professional marketing. We're going to look across the different modules. I'm going to present you a little bit of a case study of one of our students and then we're going to look more widely at CIM Memberships and how you can start studying for the certificate in professional marketing. But before we go on a little bit about me, as Sarah says, my name is Red Barrington. I have worked in digital marketing across digital marketing projects and strategy. For over 16 years I worked with brands such as BodaPhone, I've worked with brands such as the YHA Hostel Association, I've worked with brands across internationally and globally including in the Caribbean. I've also been working for over 11 years teaching CIM students, like potentially you guys out there, and been working with the Oxford College of Marketing. I develop a lot of training programmes and also courses for the college too. I'm also a chartered marketer. The Oxford College of Marketing are an accredited study centre with the CIM and they've supported students with CIM qualifications for over 20 years across global study centres and also through our online distance learning programmes. There are lots of different study centres available and they're available through looking at the CIM website at cim.co.uk. So as I said, we're going to start today by looking at the CIM qualifications themselves. As you can see on the slide here, you can move through four different levels of qualifications with the Charles Institute of Marketing. It really depends on your experience as to which level suits you. The first level of CIM qualification is the Foundation Certificate in Professional Marketing. This provides an introduction to those who perhaps don't work in marketing or look and start working in marketing. It's also suitable maybe for entrepreneurs who are just setting up their own business and want to find out and understand marketing a little bit more for their own business. What we're going to talk to about today is the Certificate in Professional Marketing. This is all focusing on building tactical marketing skills. So understanding how you can put together marketing campaigns, basic marketing plans, learning about digital tools and techniques. I'll talk a bit more about that in detail shortly. This is suitable for new marketing executives, marketing assistants, but also it's suitable for those who are aspiring to be marketing managers, which could be like yourselves. Then we've got the Diploma in Professional Marketing. This is where you're probably already working as a marketing manager and you're looking to develop strategic capabilities. So this would be for experienced marketing executives, so those maybe with two to three years experience and also current marketing managers. Finally, we've got the Marketing Leadership Program, which is for those who are very experienced marketing managers, sort of five to seven years experience or consultants. A focus for that marketing leadership program is about developing leadership skills and strategic business capabilities. If you are an international student, there is a further postgraduate diploma in marketing that you could look at too. But what you can see is there's a definite pathway for you as a student and also as a marketing practitioner, right from being a new into marketing, right the way through to those who have senior roles. So the certificate in professional marketing which we're focusing on today and its digital equivalent, which I'll talk a bit more about in a second, is the equivalent of a foundation degree. So these, as I said, are for marketing execs or marketing assistants, so you've probably been working in marketing for less than two years. They're designed to really develop your skills as a marketer with the aim of driving you towards being that marketing manager. I'm not sure if you are aware, but the CIM have recently revised their syllabus and so there's lots of adjusted content and some new and exciting modules as well that are included in with that revised syllabus. One of the exciting developments is that there's what we call a digital pathway, so it means that you can actually build and gain a specific digital qualification across any level. So right from the foundation certificate in digital professional marketing and right the way through the certificate, diploma and into then the marketing leadership programme which doesn't necessarily have a specific digital aspect to it. So if you choose to study the certificate in professional digital marketing, this really then focuses on building your digital marketing skills at tactical level. So it's really useful not just for marketing execs and marketing assistants, but those of you who might be wanting to move towards digital marketing management or you're working as a digital assistant right now or a digital marketing executive. So as I said, today's webinar was focusing about how you can become and the next step towards becoming a marketing manager. And when I started putting together this webinar, I started to think about what's actually involved in a marketing manager's role and what skills do marketing managers actually need. And what I ended up doing was going and looking lots of different marketing manager's job roles and listing the skills that marketing managers need and I popped them into a word cloud which you can see the results of here. And you can see there's some certain terms that have come up which are really quite important, marketing campaigns being one, management being another, things like budgeting, copywriting, social media, writing, website analytics, media skills. So some real important aspects and what I wanted to highlight to you really is these are some of the skills that marketing managers need but also how these can be developed by studying the certificate in professional marketing or the certificate in professional digital marketing. What I want to do now is demonstrate to you a little bit more about the benefits firstly studying at Level 4 but then move on and talk more about the individual modules that make up the certificate in professional marketing and the options that you've got available and how really they support your career into the future. But in terms of just generally a Level 4 qualification with the CIM as I said to you before, this is the equivalent of a foundation degree. And so the key benefits for you studying this and being a student is really that you are blending practical skills with academic understanding. These are practitioner qualifications. So we're stepping away from teaching you just the theory of marketing but we're going to teach you, we're able to teach you how to apply that to your organisation. So you're going to learn things that you can actually apply in your day-to-day job roles to improve yourself as a marketer and also move you towards being a marketing manager and getting you to start thinking more widely about the role that marketing plays within the organisation and how marketing can lead an organisation as well. So as you can see here on the slide, I've suggested that this qualification can benefit you in terms of increasing your confidence in the marketing discipline but most importantly it can improve your employability. So often recruiters will actually look out for a CIM qualification on potential candidates CV. So having one on your CV can really help differentiate you and also improve your employability as well. It shows your dedication to marketing and it shows your interest in marketing as well. Especially perhaps if you might have come away with a degree that isn't related to marketing as well. It could show that you have got knowledge in that particular area too. Also studying and joining the CIM qualification and then studying at level four qualification can really help you stay up to date with the latest marketing trends, helps you stay ahead in your field. Some of the modules which we'll talk a bit more about shortly are really focused on getting you to grips with some digital technology, understanding how that is changing and also how technology is driving changes for planning campaigns as well. Another key opportunity and benefit for studying at this level and also widely with CIM is that you've got an opportunity to network with other marketers. Now that's just not going through to a classroom. You don't have to study in a classroom to network with other marketers. Many of the colleges out there, the study centres out there, offer forums and Facebook groups. The Oxford College of Marketing, we have Facebook groups for our students and we use them quite actively to help students network and communicate with each other, especially good for study support. But CIM also have their own local and regional events that you can join in again with an opportunity to network and market yourself as well. CIM qualifications are globally recognised. You've got that opportunity of having on your CV, that international recognition of qualification and CIM play a vital role in setting industry standards as well. Finally, you can choose between two qualifications at this level, as I've already shown you. The traditional certificate in professional marketing but also you can choose that digital pathway as well. I've given you a bit of an overview of the benefits of this qualification but let's now look at the qualification structure itself before I then give you more detail about the individual modules and the course content. I'm hoping you can read and see these but this is the qualification structure. For the certificate in professional digital marketing or the certificate in professional marketing, you have to undertake three modules. Two of them are mandatory. The first one is applied marketing and the second one is planning campaigns. You will then choose an elective module, either customer insights or digital marketing techniques. The elective module you select will determine the qualification you come out with. So, as you can see, if you select digital marketing techniques, you will gain a certificate in professional digital marketing. If you choose customer insights, your qualification will be certificate in professional marketing. You'll also notice here that the diagram shows how the qualification is assessed and you'll see that there are two modules. The mandatory module planning campaigns and your elective module will be assessed by a written assignment and your mandatory module applied marketing is assessed by an exam which is currently a multiple choice examination. Let's now look a little bit more detail in what encompasses those specific modules and what you could learn and also how it can support your desire to become a marketing manager. The first module that you'll probably study on this particular qualification will be applied marketing. This is a mandatory module, as I suggested, and is assessed by an examination. Applied marketing really is your marketing 101. It's getting you to understand some of the basics of marketing and the role that marketing plays within an organisation and some of the key concepts that underpin the activities of the marketer. So, thinking about the customer behaviour, some of the key marketing concepts such as the marketing mix, such as undertaking an audit of the marketing environment, what the marketing environment is, some of the tools and the techniques that you might use to analyse that. Thinking about how the marketing mix and the digital marketing mix can be applied to organisations. The idea of the applied marketing module is not just about teaching you about marketing theory, but also getting you to understand how it applies across a range of business, range of businesses and organisations. They're not just B to C, but B to B and not for profit. The key thing here is about the application. There's been a real step change in the qualifications that the CIM have produced. They're much more practitioner based now. They're really designed to get you to start applying the tools and techniques and theories that you learn as part of your studies. The next mandatory module is Planning Campaigns. As we saw when we looked at that word cloud, Planning and Managing Campaigns is a key skill that's desired for marketing managers. This module will really, really help and support you in developing skills into planning and then managing campaigns. This is a mandatory module and this is assessed by an assignment. You're actually putting together a campaign that's suitable for an organisation of your choice. This could be the organisation that you're working for. Again, it's very practical and it's something that you can use then in your workplace. As probably you might have gathered by the title, this module is all about developing effective marketing campaigns and how you can develop relevant marketing activities to influence and engage your customers or consumers. It could be businesses, it could be not for profit organisations, etc. You're going to learn about the stages of planning campaigns. You'll gain skills and knowledge as to how to then implement and prepare those campaigns as well as monitoring and measuring them. Again, it's very practical. The materials here are not just about the theory of putting it together. It's very much about how these apply across a different range of industries, giving you examples. A lot of the materials that come from the different campaigns that organisations have run and looking at the strengths and weaknesses of those particular campaigns and what we can learn to then take forward for our own organisational campaigns too. The next module I'm going to talk about is the elective module which is digital marketing techniques. If you undertook this particular module, this will result in you receiving a certificate in professional digital marketing. We might have covered a little bit about digital and planning campaigns, but digital marketing techniques is focusing more on pure digital techniques and some of the digital tools and techniques that organisations can use. I think it's important to point out here that we're not just explaining what these tools and techniques are. We're going beyond that now. Many of you who work in marketing already or are new into marketing, you'll have some idea. You'll know how social media works, but this is starting to get to think about actually how can we practically use these tools and the different digital tools. How can we use them and what examples of their businesses successfully using them now to achieve their objectives? How could our organisation then use these techniques to acquire customers to convert them once they've bought from us or engaged with them in a longer term? Another key aspect that this covers is aspects around content and content marketing. The role that content plays in digital marketing activities and digital marketing plans. As part of this, you'll also learn how to develop and evaluate digital marketing plans, as well as thinking about how we can measure those activities that we have planned too. Again, as part of what we've done with the college in developing our own materials for this particular course, it's very practical. We've looked at lots of different examples. Again, not just B2C. Many people think that I can't do a module around digital marketing because I work for a small business or I work for B2B or I work for a not-for-profit organisation. Digital is very applicable across every single market and it's very important that you'll learn as part of this module, module content and how it can apply across different market sectors. There is lots of application and practical aspects to it. Customer insights is the other alternative elective and this will mean that you gain the certificate in professional marketing. With customer insights this is all focused on the customer. The customer is the heart of everything we do in marketing and so this module focuses on how we can better understand our customers their needs and their wants to drive loyalty, to drive retention. It's all about understanding our customers of their behaviour, their current experience the customer journey and also then undertaking research to better inform the marketing activities we might do in the future. How can we use those insights? How can those insights then feed into marketing campaigns to create better campaigns? How can we cover some real key things around what influences behaviour? How can we enhance the customer journey and the customer experience? And then how can we undertake and apply research to gain insights and inform our marketing activities? It's all about analysing the customer and what insights can we gain to then use. What's really good about the revised CIM syllabus is actually you could do all four modules and gain a talk to your study centre about if you are interested in that. I kind of wanted to share with you a case study a young lady called Emily who is a student of the Oxford College of Marketing and she came to us and started studying the certificate in professional marketing and she felt that the qualification gave her a lot more confidence with marketing around planning and strategy. She was very focused on managing social media and content beforehand but now after studying the certificate in professional marketing she's got a lot more confidence to now understand marketing's wider role and also then how she can approach campaigns and also think about marketing at more strategic level. I had a chat with Emily and she's now studying with us professional diploma in marketing to take her understanding and learning to the next level. I had a chat with her and she said that the certificate was a real launchpad for her and her career and since she completed the certificate she's now relocated to London and climbed the career ladder gone from a marketing executive to a campaign manager for a large London organisation so it's really catapulted her career and she's been an exemplary student for us as well. So it just gives you a little bit of an idea of how such a qualification can benefit you and benefit your career. But it's not just about the career. CIM has an organisation and being a member of the CIM which you will be if you choose to study you'll be a studying member. There's lots of benefits as well that can support your career too. You get access to hundreds of ebooks so it's really great for studying by through this membership. Some of the core textbooks are within the ebook central that you'll have access to. I actually still use ebook central especially when I'm doing a plan or putting together something for a client of mine. I often go to ebook central just to look for just to check something perhaps or maybe find a framework that will help me. So it's a really useful resource. There's also loads of studying resources that you can do including a study and assessment guide so they're very useful. You've also got marketing resources such as reports, journals as well so you've got access to latest marketing journals through EBSCO you've also got research as well so if you're doing something for work those sorts of resources can be really useful. There's a CIM content half with loads of online articles they've got a whole range of topics keeping you up to date with the latest market developments so again lots of useful information at your fingertips. Practical insight webinars again these are really useful for widening your understanding on some of the marketing aspects but for a practical perspective so again the focus here is really on teaching other practitioners some practical aspects. Catalyst magazine as you can see in the image here that's the magazine from the CIM that covers a range of topics on contemporary topics really useful and helpful for marketers too and finally we've got the CIM mentor scheme which you'll have access to as a CIM member now this is designed to match aspiring marketers with developing professional marketers with experienced marketers as a way to sort of mentor them and support them through their career and what they need to do next. I have a mentor that I utilise and it's really helpful across my career and especially working with a range of clients and running my own business it's really super helpful and it's something that you know anyone can really benefit from especially in the early part of your career and you're making a lot of choices so the CIM mentor scheme is excellent and certainly worth certainly a very good benefit of the CIM membership. I've talked a lot about the qualification itself and how it can support you and your next step in your career moving towards a marketing manager but what about the qualification entry requirements so in order to undertake this particular qualification you'll need one or more of what's listed on the slide so you'll either need to have a relevant level 3 qualification such as the foundation certificate in professional marketing or the foundation certificate in professional digital marketing and you'll need at least one year's experience in the industry as well so marketing. You'll need some form of professional practice but there is a diagnostic tool that's available from the CIM and if you are interested in studying for the CIM level 4 qualification you can get access to that from a study centre such as the Oxford College of Marketing. There are lots of different study options as well if you are interested in undertaking this qualification three key options are available to you not all study centres will offer these options for all qualifications so again it's worth speaking to more than one study centre just especially if you want for example classroom teaching which you choose is entirely up to you so the first option you've got part-time evening classes that you can attend is usually a block of evening classes once a week between around 8-10 weeks worth of teaching and people that choose part-time evening courses generally like the interactivity of the classes but also the direction that they get from tutors at the Oxford College of Marketing we use all marketing practitioners so all of our tutors are currently working either as consultants or in marketing manager or marketing director roles so it makes it quite interesting another option for studying is intensive weekends which is also called what we call blended learning so here you'll go to a weekend for each module usually one or two days that depends on the study centre you'll get that teaching over a weekend and you'll probably learn the entire syllabus in that time so it's very quick and intensive as the name suggests and then you'll move on to distance learning to then support you through the rest of the module and through your assessment and then finally you can study via distance learning so you can study online anywhere any time, any place in the world which is fantastic and so at the Oxford College of Marketing we have an online study support system and where you can listen to webinars for example to support your learning and you can also have interactive learning sessions which some of the other study centres also provide so what's again distance learning is fantastic if you are trying to juggle quite a lot of things and you can't always commit to studying once a week in a classroom many of our students who study with us love the distance learning especially because they have that interactivity opportunity with webinars and also supportive forums and Facebook groups too so that's all I wanted to cover in today's webinar I do hope you found it useful and this has grown your interest perhaps in studying the certificate in professional marketing there's some details there on the final slide if you're interested in the qualifications and membership and how you can get in touch with the CIN if you have any questions now I'll be glad to answer them for you Thank you Red so we're now going to answer some of the questions that have been submitted just as a reminder to our audience you can still submit your questions via the chat box in the attendee control panel just before we go on to the questions Red I wondered if you could just flick back to slide 4 one of the audience members missed the content on that side so it would be useful if we could have a look on the screen thank you That's absolutely fine so this slide provides an overview of the qualifications that the CIN offers the idea is that you move from perhaps being from an introduction to marketing through to providing for qualifications for those who are experienced in marketing and we work through different levels so the first qualification is the foundation certificate in professional marketing this provides an introduction to marketing and so it's suitable for those who are new into marketing maybe those who are entrepreneurs working at startups want to better understand marketing and how it can work in their organization the next level of qualifications the CIN offer is the certificate in professional marketing which we've been discussing throughout this presentation today this is about building on tactical marketing skills so it's suitable for those who are either new marketing executives who've been working in a marketing role perhaps for around a year and certainly aspiring marketing managers the diploma in professional marketing this is more focused on developing strategic capabilities and managing marketing so strategic marketing planning for example and also managing resources in a marketing department or managing brands and this is more suitable for experienced marketing executives so those that probably have two or more years experience in a marketing role or marketing managers and then the final CIN qualification is for the marketing leadership program and this is about developing leadership skills strategic business capabilities this is really for very experienced marketers with sort of five to seven years experience in the marketing role marketing directors or marketing consultants I think I mentioned when I previously looked at this slide and showed the slide that if you are an international market there is a further postgraduate qualification that's similar to the marketing leadership program that you could look at but this is just what I put here just for the UK audience I hope that's all Thank you Red for clarifying that for us so just to go on to some of the other questions then so the first question is roughly how big are the assignments that we would have to complete on this qualification I'm now trying to add up some numbers in my head I think the yes around 5000 words broken down into three tasks we usually recommend based on the total qualification times around about 20 hours to be spent on your assignment now that sounds like a lot of time but actually when you break it down into days that you might spend in a few hours here and there it's not really that long at all it would be based upon an organisation that you're working for right now one you might work for in the past or one that you're very familiar with very practical and as part of your assessment you would be supported by a tutor who would give you feedback on a draft of that assessment as well Thank you Red another question about the assignments do the students work on them individually or as a group you always work on your assignment individually as it's about your own organisation or an organisation of your choice around collusion that CIM details so we always recommend you work on them individually that's not to say that you're not in a classroom you're talking about the different tasks but you would work on them individually because you're not allowed to obviously work with each other on those sorts of things as part of the rules for the qualification that CIM puts out Thank you another question is can a student just do one module or do they have to do all three of the modules to get the qualification To get the qualification you have to do all three modules however CIM have a bite sized approach so if you wanted to take just one module you could gain an award in a specific for a specific module so an award in digital marketing techniques I think that's correct Sarah Yes that is correct so you can do all three and gain the full qualification but if you're restricted with time or you just plan to do and one of them that took your interest and yes you can just do a module as a standalone and still achieve an award for that module Next question specifically here from somebody is they're saying they're not a marketing executive however they work for a marketing software organisation and are heavily involved in marketing strategy and implementation and this qualification would be suitable for them That's a great question I hate to say this but it really does depend in terms of how long you've worked in that role what you're involved in your day to day involvement is in marketing and what's great is we do the CIM offer a diagnostic tool and also study centres can advise based upon your individual circumstances and that's what I would advise in this instance I certainly think you'd be able to do this particular qualification and you'd be suitable for it but I do wonder whether if you have got extensive experience especially around strategic elements and it also depends whether you've got a degree or relevant degree you might want to look at the next level up which is the level 6 qualification which is the diploma in professional marketing but again it depends on the length of your experience in marketing in that role but I would suggest that you speak to a study centre of your choice now be able to help you Thank you Red another question do all assignments need referencing or is it just certain modules that require this so if you're doing an assignment based module so for this certificate in professional marketing and certificate in professional digital marketing and you're doing an assignment so that would be the planning campaigns module customer insights and digital marketing techniques to reference because it's an academic qualification even though they're very practical we still have to adhere to academic standards so yes you would need to reference using the Harvard method in an examination as it's a multiple choice examination you're not required to reference you just need to tick some boxes Thank you The next question is can I take a break from studying midway through a qualification excuse me yes you can so study centres will offer you a different amount of time to complete your studies the qualification usually takes around one year to complete all three modules but you can if life happens things get busy at work things happen at home and you might need to take a break from your studies so the Oxford College of Marketing we offer three years for you to complete your qualifications so if you do need to take a break you've got that opportunity and I know other study centres offer some additional time over a year that you might need for your qualifications so yes, bottom line is if things happen and you need to take a break you certainly can Thank you Red and another question here do I have to be signed up to study centre to do the qualifications Yes you do you do need an accredited study centre to undertake a CIM qualification Thank you We don't seem to have any more come through so I'm just going to give it a couple more a few more seconds to see if anyone wants to send us any more questions just before we close the webinar Okay I do have everyone found it useful today Okay so nothing else has come through so I'd just like to say thank you to Red for presenting the webinar and thank you to everyone for attending Once you leave today's webinar you will receive a survey on the presentation and we would really appreciate it if you could provide us with your feedback On behalf of CIM I'd like to thank you for being with us today and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day