Introduction

For many people, this is the final stage in their academic marketing education. The focus is on strategic marketing, ie creating value for an organisation through a strong customer focus. Strategic marketers champion the customer experience and exert a strong influence on the organisation to adopt a customer orientation, contribute along with other directors and senior managers to its competitive strategy, align the organisation's activities to the customer, and manage the organisation's marketing activities.

You might benefit from taking this course if:

• You have achieved the CIM’s Professional Diploma in Marketing (previously known as the Advanced Certificate in Marketing) and wish to continue your studies.
• Your role requires you to influence strategic decisions organisation to create value for customers and other stakeholders.
• You manage and measure marketing activities.
• You need to formulate, present and justify customer-focused and innovative marketing strategies.

This qualification is increasingly seen as a benchmark of competence at the highest level. It’s for those who have already gained a significant level of knowledge and/or experience of marketing. Earning this qualification will also give you access to many MBA and other higher degree programmes.

Course content

Our Postgraduate Diploma course is run over two half-year semesters, with study breaks in each semester. Each semester covers two modules and lasts between ten and 13 weeks. At the end of each semester you sit two exams.

Our current Postgraduate Diploma is arranged to cover the qualification’s four modules like this:

First semester 

Analysis and Evaluation including the roles of marketing used by organisations, the business intelligence required to inform an organisation’s strategy decision making, the impact of major international trends and methods for conducting a detailed strategic audit of an organisation’s internal and external environments and for assessing the situation facing an organisation in order to develop alternative scenarios.

Strategic Marketing Decisions including the identification and comparison of strategic options and marketing decisions, the role of brands, innovation, integrated marketing communications, alliances and customer relationships in creating exceptional value for the customer, the creation of innovative and creative marketing solutions and making decisions concerning the investment in marketing.

Second semester 

Managing Marketing Performance including the evaluation of techniques for integrating teams and activities across an organisation, the barriers to effective implementation of strategies and plans involving change in the organisation and measures to prevent or overcome them, the acquisition, development and retention of marketing skills and resources and the evaluation of systems for controlling marketing activities.

Strategic Marketing in Practice including the evaluation of marketing issues within various environments, the opportunities presented by contemporary marketing issues, the creation of a customer-focussed and innovative competitive strategy, the direction and management of marketing activities as part of the implementation of strategic direction and the adoption and maintenance of a strong market and customer orientation with measurable marketing metrics.

 

Course schedule

Each of the two semesters in a year's course blend evening tutorials and full-day study workshops. This schedule has been created to give you enough time for home study and to work on case studies, while at the same time allowing enough time for in-depth discussion of the core concepts.

Entry requirements

The CIM’s entry requirements for this course are that you should meet one or more of these criteria:

• CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing (previously known as CIM Advanced Certificate in Marketing).
• Degree (undergraduate or postgraduate) with significant marketing content from a CIM-approved university OR a non-marketing degree plus three years’ management experience.
• Six years' operational marketing experience, three of which should be at management level.
• Hold other appropriate qualifications approved by CIM.

Enrolment

We organise small study groups for the Postrgraduate course depending on numbers interested, so please contact us to discuss your requirements for the full course or individual modules. 

Fees

Here are our fees for the course, along with details of other costs for students or their employers:

* NOTES:

1. Payment by instalments is available to students who are paying for their own studies (ie if their employer isn’t paying).

2. If you need to take just one or two of the second semester's modules to complete your Postgraduate studies then please download an enrolment form for module fees.

Please contact us for information about paying by instalments or taking selected modules.