Aug. 2, 2018

This paid piece is sponsored by the USD Beacom School of Business executive education program.

Does your business need marketing help but lack a dedicated marketing department?

Are you looking for ways to strengthen your approach to digital and social media?

Or are you wondering whether to keep marketing in-house or outsource?

Guide your marketing in the right direction with an upcoming course taught by marketing veteran Emily Paulson, now a faculty member at the USD Beacom School of Business executive education program.

Her course will send you back to work with tools you can apply immediately.

It will be held Sept. 20 and 27 from 9 a.m. to noon at the University Center in Sioux Falls.

To learn more and register, click here.

We sat down with her for a preview of what to expect.

How can businesses assess where they’re at with their marketing and whether this course is a good fit? Are there things they should look for?

If you don’t have a marketing team or dread meeting with the team you do have, then this class will help remedy that feeling. If you have hired a team to create marketing for you but have no idea how to talk to or work with them, then this class will help. Overall, this course is the marketing oxygen you need to game-change your marketing. The most important component of marketing is when it’s working: you can see the results from numbers and you can feel it through your interactions with colleagues and best of all – your customers.

Lots of businesses – especially small ones – know they need marketing help but can’t justify a full-time person or entire department. Are there simple starting points for them to tackle it?

The starting point is to understand what marketing really is. It is more than “getting the word out” through advertising. It should be present in all of the points of a customer’s journey. Ensuring that the customer’s experience from website to doorstep to sales conversion is on point, on message and on brand is what marketing can help with. Collaborating with other parts of the business, such as the operations and sales teams, helps to ensure alignment.

Regardless of the size of the business, there are ways and resources to make marketing resources lean, and we will learn more about these in this class.

Social media is an area of marketing that can feel overwhelming to businesses. Do you have any strategies for how to approach it?

Businesses should be authentic in their use of social media channels and content. Consumers are savvy enough to know when the message feels contrived or if a business is trying too hard. They recognize if the business is posting to the wrong channels or demographics. Doing one thing very well rather than many things marginally well is definitely the right approach. Social media is such an excellent tool to pull back the curtain of a business a bit and see inside, and businesses need to dig deep inside their brand to do it well. 

What sort of businessperson should consider taking your course? Is it mainly for marketing specialists or could any professional benefit?

Any professional that has any involvement with marketing either directly or indirectly will benefit from this class. It will also be helpful for business leaders who have a vested interest in the success of their company’s marketing efforts and for those people who pick up marketing duties in their job without any formal training or background in marketing. We will cover a fresh approach to how any business should approach their marketing strategy or work better with their own internal marketing team. My hope is to have a diverse class in terms of experience and professional experience so that the learning can be collaborative.

Give us an idea of what to expect during the class. What’s your teaching style like? 

My teaching style is engaging and charismatic. I like to ask good questions to fuel discussions and collaboration in the classroom so that we can all learn from each other. People can expect interesting information presented in a unique way so that they will retain the insight learned. There is no “death by PowerPoint” in my classes, but rather a fast-paced learning environment filled with in-class activities, videos and the sharing of practical tools and techniques.

How else can businesses work with you to address their specific marketing needs?

The Beacom School of Business does partner with businesses to develop custom training programs to meet their specific needs. Through the executive education department, we meet with companies to gain a feel for what their need is, select the best faculty to help them and then collaborate to create a solution unique to them.

To learn more and register, click here.