COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TRADITIONAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING METHODOLOGIES OF AN ONLINE TECHNICAL COURSE

The study compares traditional and social media marketing strategies in launching a new online 24-week Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) course. The research course is non-credit and is offered by the Virtual Academy (VirtAc) in the Department of Applied Information Technology (AIT) of the Volgenau School of Engineering (VSE) at George Mason University (Mason). The research course is funded by a grant from Cisco. It is a fully online hybrid distance learning course that uses the asynchronous and synchronous delivery methods. The marketing team is cross-disciplinary with resources within Mason from the Marketing and AIT Departments.

The lessons learned in the areas of market segmentation, targeting, and positioning of the online course are analyzed. The marketing mix using the four P’s of price, promotion, place or delivery and product are applied using both traditional and new social media strategies.

A traditional “broadly cast” marketing strategy was used. It included print, poster, flyer, telemarketing and other media. Newer social media marketing techniques that were more “narrowly cast” also were used. These include Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter, and various forums. Comparative metrics and marketing return on investments were analyzed and are summarized in the paper.

Continuous quality improvement strategies from the initial course offering are discussed including marketing analytics. Quality improvement strategies are determined via data analysis of the first CCNA online course. This enabled us to understand the important elements of this course that are most effective for student learning. Based on this survey and analysis, we will determine the best teaching methodologies of the online course, and implement them in the second CCNA course to study the impact of this transition via the adoption of the best teaching methodologies toward student learning.

This paper elaborates on the methods, findings and best practices for marketing future offerings of online technical courses.