CIM Professional Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing

What is the CIM professional Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing?

The CIM Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing is a challenging, high-level two stage marketing qualification that demonstrates specialist professional knowledge and Chartered Marketer status.

The qualification aims to enable marketers to 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.

This qualification is aimed at marketers who have already gained a significant level of knowledge and/or experience of marketing. The focus is on the strategic aspects of marketing management and is ideal for Marketers working at a strategic level or aspiring to do so.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) proposed new definition of marketing is:
'The strategic business function that creates value by stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand.  It does this by building brands, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits.  By operating customer-centrically, marketing brings positive return on investment, satisfies shareholders and stakeholders from business and the community, and contributes to positive behavioural change and a sustainable business future'.

The definition places the emphasis on the needs of the customer and addresses the diverse and challenging environment in which today's marketers have to operate.

By the end of this qualification you should be able to:

• Make the transition into strategic marketing management

• Work more cross-functionally at a senior management level

• Make a significant contribution towards the organisation’s corporate and business strategy

• Contribute to board decisions

• Demonstrate a high level of leadership and influence

Staffordshire University has had a long and successful relationship with the Chartered Institute of Marketing, with many lecturers actively involved as chief examiners/examiners or contributing to CIM syllabus developments.

Staffordshire University delivers a comprehensive portfolio of CIM courses including:

• Professional Certificate

• Professional Diploma

• Professional Postgraduate Diploma
  

The Professional Diploma is delivered by way of 4 modules with the overarching aims of building practical skills in operational marketing management and broadening students’ strategic perspective.

1 - Emerging Themes

• Critically evaluate a range of key emerging macro-environmental themes and make a critical assessment of their significance for a specific sector or industry

• Propose strategic marketing responses to the key emerging themes judged to have the greatest potential impact on a specific sector. Responses should reflect contemporary marketing practice.

2 - Analysis and Decision

• Carry out a strategic marketing audit to critically evaluate a range of strategic marketing options available to an organisation.

• Utilise a range of financial and other measurement tools to assess the financial and non-financial benefits of recommended strategic marketing decisions

• Utilise a range of risk assessment tools to critically assess the risk of strategic market decisions and their impact upon an organisation.

3 - Marketing Leadership and Planning

• Critically evaluate ways of delivering an organisation’s corporate mission and vision effectively.

• Develop marketing strategies to establish competitive and sustainable marketing and relationship strategies.

• Utilising a synergistic planning processes, develop strategic plans, taking account of different planning frameworks and organisation resource capabilities.

• Determine the most appropriate organisational structures for market-oriented and/or changing organisations, whilst evaluating the resource implications and requirements.

• Develop sustainable competitive advantage through suitable approaches to leadership and innovation.

4 - Managing Corporate Reputation

• Critically evaluate the way organisations develop their identities and how some organisations use these to form images and assign reputational status.

• Critically analyse the elements that contribute to the identity that an organisation projects to its stakeholders, sometimes through a corporate brand.

• Critically evaluate linkage between how an organisation wants to be seen and how it is seen, namely corporate communications.