Our Student Stories blog series highlights the experiences of GreenFig students currently enrolled in our Digital Marketing Science course.  Here, we will introduce you to several current students, find out what drove them to GreenFig, what skills they are developing right now, and what they aim to achieve with their microdegree from GreenFig.

Fall 2017 Digital Marketing Science: Learning the marketing skills relevant to…… now

“If I had only known this back then…”

That was Jen Sharp’s initial thought when she reflects on the first half of her experience as a student in GreenFig’s Digital Marketing Science course.

Her second thought, “And now, if I could only work for one of these people.”

Before enrolling in the course this fall the former inside marketer at a healthcare software company wanted to broaden her skills and gain an understanding of higher-level business strategy. In her previous position, she was responsible for implementing tactical initiatives such as sending out campaigns, managing outside vendors, and handling logistics for tradeshows.

Jen says she did not have a deeply rooted understanding of skills areas such as SEO or content marketing and her company’s “strategy” often felt like throwing marketing darts at a board and hoping one lands.

While her degree is in project management, her skills and understanding of digital marketing were largely self-taught.

What she was missing, she says, was a higher-level view of how multiple marketing tactics coalesce to support a broader company-wide marketing strategy.

“Just in the short time I have been taking this course, I have already learned more than I did from my entire college degree,” Jen says. “The information is very relevant to what is happening and what you need to land a great position right now.”

Jen credits her industry instructors, many of whom are current CMOs, with helping her hone her technology skills and understand the importance of foundational aspects of marketing, such as crafting personas.

“The instructors go so in-depth,” she says. “When you wear a lot of hats you do not get to dive deep into SEO or content or whatever it may be. It is refreshing to learn from leaders that support what it takes to have a really good marketing program.”

Jen hopes to leverage her microdegree from GreenFig to land a marketing or sales position or a hybrid role, where she can apply her new skills in alignment. To that end, networking with her fellow students and with course instructors have been an unexpected bonus.

“I’m learning that marketing is extremely complex and changing on almost a daily basis,” she says, adding “If you are not keeping up, you are falling behind”.