The Live Project: Launch Your Own E-commerce Business or a Blog Website
The programme is built around a single running project. From the first session, each group works on launching a real e-commerce business — choosing a product category, sourcing or defining products, building a live Shopify store, and driving genuine traffic, leads and sales to it with real budgets.
Every module contributes a decision or a build step to that business. Participants do not study digital marketing and then apply it. They launch a business and learn each concept when they need it.
By the end of the programme, each group has a live e-commerce store with real products, real campaigns across search, social and email, real customers, and a measured view of what it costs to acquire them.
PART A — FUNDAMENTALS OF MARKETING
13.5 hours
Module 1: Introduction to Marketing and Launching a New Product
3 hours
- What marketing is: exchange, value and the marketing concept
- Marketing orientation and the role of marketing in the firm
- The marketing environment: macro and micro forces
- What a product launch involves, and what typically goes wrong
- The launch decision set: market, competition, capability, timing, resources
- Demand estimation and market sizing (TAM / SAM / SOM)
- Go-to-market choices and sequencing
Live project: Groups are formed, and each group selects the e-commerce business it will launch — the category, the opportunity it is pursuing, and why. Initial market sizing for the chosen category.
Module 2: Market Research, Value Creation, Segmentation and Targeting
3 hours
- Market research: secondary and primary methods
- Digital research techniques — search demand, social listening, competitor analysis
- Identifying customer needs, jobs to be done and pain points
- From pain point to solution: how value is created
- Defining the value proposition
- Segmentation bases in digital markets
- Building and validating segments
- Targeting decisions and segment attractiveness
Live project: Each group researches its category, validates that real demand exists, identifies the customer pain point its products will address, writes the business's value proposition, and selects the target segment it will sell to.
Module 3: Branding and Positioning
3 hours
- Positioning and differentiation
- Positioning statements and messaging architecture
- Brand identity, brand personality and brand elements
- Building brand equity
- Brand consistency across digital touchpoints
- Translating positioning and brand into channel and campaign choice
Live project: Groups name their e-commerce business, develop its brand identity — logo, colours, typography, tone of voice — and write the positioning statement that will govern every campaign that follows.
Module 4: Product Decisions
1.5 hours
- Product levels and the product concept
- Product mix, product lines and portfolio decisions
- New product development and the product life cycle
- Product decisions in digital and e-commerce contexts
Live project: Each group finalises its product line — which products it will sell, how many SKUs, what variants, and how the assortment is structured. The sourcing approach is decided here.
Module 5: Pricing Decisions
1.5 hours
- Pricing objectives and approaches: cost, value and competition-based
- Price sensitivity and willingness to pay
- Pricing strategies for new product launch
- Discounting, promotional pricing and price architecture
- Pricing in the digital era: dynamic and personalised pricing
Live project: Groups set prices for every SKU, work out unit economics and contribution margin, and decide launch offers and discount structure. This margin becomes the ceiling against which acquisition cost is later judged.
Module 6: Distribution Decisions
1.5 hours
- Channel structure and channel design
- Channel intermediaries and channel functions
- Channel conflict and management
- Direct-to-consumer, marketplace and omni-channel distribution
- Webrooming, showrooming and channel transaction cost
Live project: Groups decide their fulfilment and delivery model — direct-to-consumer, marketplace, or both — and work out shipping, logistics and returns for the store they are about to build.
PART B — DIGITAL MARKETING CORE
34.5 hours
Module 7: IMC, Digital Marketing and Planning
3 hours
- Integrated Marketing Communication: principles and planning
- Traditional marketing communication channels
- Digital marketing communication channels
- Integration of digital with traditional communication
- The 6M model of marketing communication: Market, Mission, Message, Media, Money, Measurement
- The consumer funnel and its stages: ToFu, MoFu, BoFu
- Consumer journeys and touchpoint analysis
- Funnel metrics and stage-to-stage conversion ratios
- Cost metrics: CPM, CPC, CPL, CPA and ROAS
- From marketing strategy to digital execution
Live project: Each group applies the 6M framework to its own launch and maps the customer journey for its business from awareness to purchase to repeat, identifying which touchpoints it will own and what it will measure at each stage.
Module 8: Website and Landing Page Design
1.5 hours
- Website and blog design
- Landing page design and structure
- Tools: WordPress website
Live project: Groups design the structure of their store and the landing pages their campaigns will drive traffic to.
Module 9: Developing an E-commerce Platform with Shopify
3 hours
- Introduction to e-commerce business models
- Setting up a Shopify store: themes, navigation and structure
- Product catalogue, collections and variants
- Product page optimisation and merchandising
- Payment gateways, shipping and tax configuration
- Tools: Shopify
Live project: Each group builds and launches its Shopify store — products uploaded, collections structured, payments and shipping configured, checkout tested and live. The store goes live in this module.
Module 10: Search Engine Optimisation
3 hours
- SEO principles and best practices
- SEO audit
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO and keyword research
- Off-page SEO and link building
- Measuring SEO impact on SERP ranking and visibility
- Tools: Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Google Search Console
Live project: Groups run keyword research for their product categories, optimise product and collection pages, fix technical SEO on the store, and begin building links.
Module 11: Search, Display and YouTube Advertising
4.5 hours
- Design and launch of Google Search Ads
- Design and launch of Google Display Ads
- YouTube video ads for brand awareness
- Google Ad Grant programme
- Keyword strategy, ad copy and bid strategy
- Budget optimisation and campaign structure
- Tools: Google Ad account, Google Keyword Planner, YouTube Channel
Live project: Groups launch live Google Search, Display and YouTube campaigns, driving traffic to their store.
Module 12: Social Media Marketing — Organic and Paid
4.5 hours
- Creating and managing social media pages
- Building and managing brand communities
- Consumer engagement and user-generated content
- Social media planning and scheduling
- Connecting the product catalogue to Meta
- Paid campaigns for lead generation and sales: Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads
- Tools: Meta Business Suite, Meta Ad account, LinkedIn Ad Account, Facebook Page, Instagram for Business Account, LinkedIn Page
Live project: Groups create and run the brand's social presence, and launch paid campaigns on Meta and LinkedIn for their own products.
Module 13: Lifecycle Marketing — Email, WhatsApp and CRM
3 hours
- CRM integration and customer data
- Nurturing leads for sales
- Email automation and drip sequences
- WhatsApp automation
- Lead scoring and qualification
- Tools: Hubspot, WhatsApp API
Live project: Groups build their customer list, set up welcome and post-purchase sequences, and WhatsApp order and re-engagement flows.
Module 14: Performance Evaluation and Optimisation of Live Campaigns
4.5 hours
- Google Analytics 4: measurement design and key events
- Google Tag Manager
- E-commerce tracking: product, cart and purchase events
- Traffic, content and audience reporting
- Consumer journeys and channel attribution
- Multi-channel attribution modelling
- Performance evaluation against funnel and cost metrics
- Diagnosing underperformance and optimising live campaigns
- Lead acquisition cost, sales conversion cost and ROAS against contribution margin
- Tools: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Live project: Groups analyse their own store data — which channels produced sales, what each customer cost to acquire, and whether acquisition cost sits inside the contribution margin set in Module 5 — then optimise campaigns accordingly.
Module 15: Conversion Rate Optimisation, Remarketing and Retargeting
3 hours
- Conversion rate optimisation: diagnosing where the funnel leaks
- A/B testing and experiment design
- Form design and lead capture
- Product page and checkout optimisation against live data
- Cart abandonment recovery
- Audience building and list creation for remarketing
- Remarketing and retargeting on Google
- Social remarketing and retargeting on Meta
- Dynamic product remarketing
- Frequency capping, audience exclusion and campaign hygiene
Live project: Groups identify where their own funnel is leaking, run A/B tests on product pages and checkout, set up cart abandonment recovery, and launch remarketing campaigns against audiences built from their live traffic.
Module 16: Strategic Influencer Marketing
1.5 hours
- The influencer landscape: mega, macro, micro and nano
- Identifying and vetting influencers for fit and authenticity
- Commercial models: barter, flat fee, performance-linked
- Briefing creators and managing the relationship
- Disclosure, compliance and brand safety
- Measuring influencer ROI and attributing sales
Live project: Groups identify and approach creators relevant to their product category, and design an influencer activation for their brand.
Module 17: Strategic Affiliate Marketing
1.5 hours
- Affiliate and partner marketing models
- Affiliate networks vs direct partner programmes
- Commission structures and payout terms
- Recruiting, onboarding and activating affiliates
- Tracking, attribution and fraud prevention
- Affiliate programmes for e-commerce and Shopify integration
Live project: Groups design an affiliate programme for their store, including commission structure and tracking setup.
Module 18: Digital Marketing Strategy, Allocation and Budgeting
1.5 hours
- Channel choice and channel mix, judged against observed performance
- Organic vs paid: allocation decisions
- Performance metrics and KPI selection
- Resource allocation and budgeting
- Revising the strategic digital marketing plan and proposal
Live project: Having run live campaigns across every channel and measured the results, groups revise the plan built in Module 7 — reallocating budget to the channels that actually performed, and defending the decision with their own data.
PART C — AI AND GEN AI FOR DIGITAL MARKETING
12 hours
Module 19: Launching Campaigns with Generative AI
3 hours
- Brand voice, consistency and quality control
- Creative production workflows for social and display
- Generative AI for text, image, video and audio
- AI-assisted copywriting for ads, email and web
- Building and launching a campaign end-to-end with generative AI tools
- Tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT
Live project: Groups build a complete campaign for their store using generative AI — creative, copy and variants — and launch it, comparing performance against the manually produced campaigns from Modules 11 and 12.
Module 20: AI Across Digital Marketing Channels
3 hours
- AI for Search, Display and YouTube Ads
- Performance Max campaigns
- AI for SEO and GEO
- AI for Social Media Marketing
- AI for performance evaluation and optimisation
- AI for digital marketing strategy and planning
- AI-based customer segmentation in CRM
- Tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT
Live project: Groups apply AI-driven tools across their live channels — moving campaigns onto automated bidding, optimising content for generative search, and segmenting their customer data in CRM.
Module 21: Digital Marketing Automation and Workflows with HubSpot, n8n and Zapier
3 hours
- Marketing automation platforms and workflow design
- HubSpot: contacts, lists, workflows and lifecycle stages
- Automating store operations: order notifications, review requests, inventory alerts
- Connecting the stack — store, email, CRM and ads
- Designing autonomous marketing workflows
- Tools: HubSpot, n8n and Zapier
Live project: Groups map the tech stack behind their business and automate their store operations and customer communication end-to-end.
Module 22: Live Project Work and Presentations
3 hours
- Consolidating the live project: store, campaigns, results
- Presenting the business case: opportunity, brand, execution, outcomes
- Live project presentations and evaluation
- Programme review and conclusion
Live project: Each group presents its e-commerce business — the opportunity, the brand, the store, the campaigns, the results, and what it learned about the cost of acquiring a customer.