Available in Clearing

Digital Marketing & Social Media at UCA

Want to take your place in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and social media? Our BA (Hons) Digital Marketing & Social Media degree course, taught at UCA Epsom’s Business School for the Creative Industries, will give you the skills to get there.

You'll learn the fundamentals of the discipline, from media planning and buying to brand identity, marketing, and communications. You'll explore the impact of social media on society, politics, and the economy — plus the practical elements of using social media as a business tool.

You’ll have the chance to apply your skills in a specific area of interest within the creative industries – choose from Cosmetics and Beauty, Fashion, Games, Lifestyle, or Music. And in your second year, you’ll be able to pick from a range of exciting elective units to broaden your knowledge even further.

By the end of your degree, you’ll be an expert marketeer and a highly effective social media manager with the knowledge you need to use paid, owned, and earned media to meet business goals, plus a detailed understanding of how to target your core audiences and harness the power of influencers. You’ll be adaptable and quick-thinking, with a detailed grasp of the role that digital marketing and social media play in different global markets.

 

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Call: 01252 918 240 Apply Online

Course entry options

Select from the following options to find out more about the different study options available for this course:

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
P304
Campus
UCA Epsom
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
3 years full-time
Entry requirements

112 UCAS points

International equivalent qualifications

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
P30A
Campus
UCA Epsom
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
4 years full-time
Entry requirements

UK: 32 UCAS points
International / EU: 12 years of schooling (with good grades)

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
P30C
Campus
Start date(s)
Duration
Entry requirements
Close
Institution code
C93
UCAS code
P305
Campus
UCA Epsom
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
4 years full-time
Entry requirements

112 UCAS points

International equivalent qualifications

Close
Institution code
C93
UCAS code
P30B
Campus
UCA Epsom
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
5 years full-time
Entry requirements

UK: 32 UCAS points
International / EU: 12 years of schooling (with good grades)

Close
Institution code
C93
Campus
Start date(s)
Duration
Entry requirements
What you'll study

What you'll
study

The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Principles of Marketing
This is the introduction to to the concepts, theories and models utilised in marketing and communications, providing the basis for further study. Specifically, this unit introduces you to the objectives and theory of marketing as a business function. It explores the role of marketing within organisations and how marketing can be used in the achievement of an organisation's goals and objectives.

Social Media: The Campaign
In Social Media: The Campaign, you’ll be introduced to the concepts, theories and models used in social media campaigns providing the basis for further study. You’ll learn about the objectives and theories of social media campaigns and places social media in the wider marketing landscape.

Navigating the Consumer Journey
Navigating the consumer journey should be the priority for your business. You may have the best goods and services in your industry, but if you are not connecting with your audience, your efforts will yield poor results. To learn more about this you’ll learn to work with frameworks such as AIDA, develop personas and assess situations using marketing methodologies, and examine successful brands to see how they reach their audiences provides insights that will help you develop your own.

Understanding Consumers and Audiences
The consumer is at the heart of the marketing process. Understanding how and why we behave in response to products and services is complex, involving social and psychological dynamics. This unit explores what happens before, during, and after the point when someone buys something, examining the ways consumers find and engage with information during the decision-making process and how their own lived experiences impact the ways they interpret data and make decisions.

Industry Brief in Branding & Communications
Assuming the role of an industry professional in your field, you will respond to a brief provided by an internal UCA client. You’ll take part in client meetings, check-in presentations and deliver a final pitch in which you will explain your research, insights and concept development.

Elective units

You will study one of the following elective units:

Experience Economy
In this unit you will explore experiences as a distinct fourth economic offering (beyond commodities, goods and services). Using case studies from a range of businesses, this unit will focus on creative insights sought by businesses that aim to generate memorable experiences for their users, audiences and/or consumers.

Brand Logo and Design
A brand is built of many things, and crucial amongst those are the visual and lived experience of the brand. We can understand brand as the external image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with by identifying the name and logo. Branding is essential to identify and leverage competitor advantage in a crowded marketplace. It helps differentiate products and services from competitors and captures a target market, maximising customer loyalty and ensuring brand success. Understanding the principles of design and brand building is an essential skill to have in Creative Industry.

Managing Creative People
You’ll consider and reflect upon the key skills and attributes effectively manage creatives. This unit will develop your understanding of the knowledge, skills, and personal qualities required to responsibly manage diverse teams in the cultural and creative industries. 

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Multiplatform Delivery
While media planning has always been integrated across available channels, today the content development process is integrated across practices into activities that used to be considered separate. On this unit, you’ll design a campaign/delivery that harnesses the communicative and persuasive power of multiple channels.

Principles of Content Creation
You’ll discover why, where, and how to deliver brand concepts and content in this unit, using relevant skills in strategy and tools of content production. You’ll undertake brand content projects in which you will first consider the strategy (platforms, channels and tactics) and then use tools and processes to develop your understanding of the creative potential of design and copy in relation to brand communications.

Storytelling and Narrative
Telling stories is one of the most powerful means that we have to influence, teach, and inspire. It forges connections among people, and between people and ideas. Stories convey the culture, history, lifestyle, and values that unite people, they engender emotion and loyalty. In this unit you’ll learn how integral storytelling, and any narrative you wish to communicate, is to any business.

Influence, Self-branding and Promotion
The topic of influence and influencer-led marketing is covered in this unit and you’ll develop a framework for understanding contemporary challenges to visibility, traction, and communication that face creatives seeking to represent clients, employers, and themselves including their values across social media platforms, professional networking websites, and freelance labour marketplaces. This unit applies a critical and theoretical lens to the subject, questioning the roles that influence and promotion plays within society and business and how you can develop your own brand within that context.

Creative Business Brief in Branding & Communications
Assuming the role of an industry professional in your field, you will respond to a brief provided by an industry client, such as a brand or advertising agency, also acting in the role as the client. During the course of the four weeks, you’ll participate in client meetings, check-in presentations and deliver a final pitch in which you will explain your research, insights and concepts and campaign executions.

Elective units

You will study one of the following elective units:

Cross-Cultural Management
This unit will introduce you to the importance of cross-cultural awareness and intercultural competence for business success in the global cultural and creative industries. It will explore the risks, uncertainties, and topics of debate within intercultural creative business and management, inviting you to consider what kinds of sophisticated, proactive leadership skills are needed to ensure positive cross-cultural collaboration and cooperation.

Creative Content: Analogue and Digital
The focus of this unit is to continue building your knowledge of and experience with design approaches and methodologies, specifically related to both analogue and digital design. The creative approach is specific to industry, encouraging outcomes through the approach of concept, vision and idea making. Students are required to develop a range of physical proficiencies that utilise both analogue and digital skills that investigate, generate, articulate and communicate ideas and solutions applicable to standards, approaches, and methods practiced across the Creative Industries.

Managing International Tours & Events
In this unit, you will critically examine concepts and working practices related to the touring of arts and music events on an international level. You’ll identify potential international markets for distinct cultural products and assess the feasibility of touring to those markets, considering financial and logistical aspects.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Core units

You will study the following core units:

Strategic Planning
You’ll be introduced to the concepts, theories and models used in strategic planning by businesses. The content will cover how strategic planning is actioned taking in the processes, management and key thinking that goes into formulating strategy documents and plans. During this unit, you will engage with the strategic planning process to develop a proposal that will then be executed as your Degree Project.

Creative Enterprise and Engagement
Whether you’re working for yourself or working in-house, you’ll learn how to oversee projects, collaborate with colleagues, set timelines and scope and price work appropriately. The purpose of this unit is to get you up to speed with the essentials you need around new work projects and thinking like an entrepreneur, whether you’re working as a freelancer or a consultant in marketing and social media or you’re in-house and issuing bids and tenders for work.

Ethics and Society
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that is pertinent to understand and learn about in relation to business, art and society at large. In this unit, you will learn how to reflect on issues that face us in society using a range of philosophical sources and methodologies to be able to analyse situations through a philosophical lens.

Degree Project
In this final unit, you will apply your learning to create a distinctive piece of work for your degree project. The purpose of your degree project is to allow you to identify opportunities successfully in your specialist subject area to promote and to develop your career.

Through research, you will independently identify and/or generate innovative opportunities within your specialist subject area. Your portfolio will consist of a series of outcomes that showcase your knowledge, and your key attributes and skills as a reflective creative practitioner. You will be expected to consider the theoretical and professional contexts of your exploration.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Industry placement
offer

Preparing graduates for successful careers underpins everything we do, and all students on this course may be offered support to identify and prepare for an industry placement according to their individual needs. We’ll draw on our wide range of contacts within the creative industries to help provide you with opportunities that align with your interests and future career aspirations.

Course specifications

Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.

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Each year, we’re privileged to be able to share our graduates’ incredible work with the world. And now’s your chance to take a look.

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Fees & funding

Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,250
  • BA course: £9,250

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated International Foundation Year: £9,250 (see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,250 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated International Foundation Year: £16,950
  • BA course: £17,500

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,390. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Please note: The fees listed on this webpage are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.

Facilities

The UCA Business School for the Creative Industries, based at our Epsom campus, is the first of its kind in the UK. There’s dedicated studios and study areas, digital media suites equipped with Macs and PCs which are programmed with specialist software including Adobe Creative Suite, Dreamweaver and After Effects. There’s a modern library with a wealth of books and thanks to its location, many collaborative opportunities with students from other courses.

View 360 virtual tour

Lecture theatre, UCA Epsom

Business School Studios, UCA Epsom

Library, UCA Epsom

Business School, UCA Epsom

Career opportunities

Digital Marketing & Social Media graduates can expect to leave their studies with an extensive knowledge of the very fundamentals of the industry that can enable students to develop their career in a variety of different roles. 

These include:

  • Marketing and social media manager
  • Digital marketing and events co-ordinator
  • Digital marketing assistant
  • Social media officer
  • Digital brand manager
  • Marketing and content executive.

Your training on this course will prepare you for a wide range of postgraduate courses.

We offer postgraduate opportunities in our Business School and we will help you find the correct course for you and support you in your application should further study be for you.

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Entry requirements

These courses don't require a portfolio. If you receive an offer, you’ll be invited to attend an Applicant Day where you can meet the course team and learn more about the course. 

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