How to build a social media marketing course: a complete guide for lecturers

Central question: how should students think about social platforms as marketing environments rather than a list of apps?

Begin by separating durable marketing logic from temporary platform features. Students need a map of paid, owned and earned activity, algorithmic distribution, platform incentives and social touchpoints across the customer journey. The goal is to judge what a platform contributes to a marketing objective and what trade-offs come with that choice.

What this concept covers

• Social media within the marketing mix and integrated communications.
• Paid, owned and earned media, including hybrid activity.
• Platform business models, algorithms and attention markets.
• Reach, frequency, engagement, conversion and relationship-building as distinct purposes.
• Platform choice based on audience behaviour and strategic purpose rather than popularity.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Explain the role of social media in wider marketing.
• Distinguish paid, owned and earned social activity.
• Analyse how platform incentives shape visibility.
• Compare channels using audience, purpose and control.
• Identify when social media is the wrong channel for a problem.

How to teach it

• Map the customer journey before naming platforms.
• Give groups the same product and require one platform to use and one to reject.
• Contrast a high-reach campaign with a high-intent community programme.
• Refresh platform examples annually while keeping the decision framework stable.

Case-style example

Nori Home reaches 220,000 people monthly on Instagram at 1.8% engagement, 510,000 on TikTok at 0.9%, and 46,000 email subscribers at a 7.5% click rate. It has £40,000 for one quarter. Students calculate engaged users and compare social reach with owned-channel response, then recommend the role of social media. A reach-led and conversion-led answer can both be defended. Students discover that channel value depends on the objective, not the largest audience.

Where students struggle

Students often treat social media as one channel and platform popularity as strategic fit. Require the marketing objective before the platform name.

Reading and a quick check

Use Tuten, Social Media Marketing, 5th edition. Quick check: classify five brand activities as paid, owned, earned or hybrid and explain one ambiguous case.

Where it leads

Students can now examine the people and social structures inside those environments: consumers, communities and networks.

Central question: why do people participate, share, advocate, lurk or leave, and how should marketers respond?

Consumer behaviour sits at the centre of the course. Teach identity, social influence, participation inequality, electronic word of mouth, community norms and network effects, then connect those ideas to community design, service and advocacy without reducing people to clicks.

What this concept covers

• Motivations for social-media use and sharing.
• Community norms, lurkers, contributors, creators and moderators.
• Electronic word of mouth, social proof and peer influence.
• Network structure, diffusion and the limits of follower counts.
• Customer engagement as behavioural, cognitive and emotional participation.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Analyse why audiences participate in social environments.
• Distinguish audience size from community health.
• Evaluate peer influence on brand outcomes.
• Identify useful community-participation indicators.
• Design a community objective linked to a customer need.

How to teach it

• Map a familiar online community by participation role.
• Diagnose anonymised comment threads for norms and value.
• Ask why fewer views might produce more advocacy.
• Design one intervention that builds participation without manipulation.

Case-style example

LoopRun has 80,000 community members; 5% post monthly and those contributors generate 68% of replies and 41% of referral-code redemptions. A rival has 210,000 members, 2% monthly contributors and 19% of redemptions from community links. Students compute contributor counts and compare participation quality, then decide which community is healthier. Scale and depth support different defensible answers. Students discover why membership size alone is a weak measure of community value.

Where students struggle

Students often assume more engagement is always better. Distinguish useful participation from conflict, spam, low-intent reactions and algorithmic noise.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Appel, Grewal, Hadi and Stephen on the future of social media in marketing. Quick check: name one community metric that helps and one that could mislead.

Where it leads

With consumer and community behaviour established, students can formulate objectives and a coherent social-media strategy.

Central question: how do students turn business goals into a social-media strategy that can be executed and evaluated?

Teach strategy as a chain: business problem, marketing objective, audience, desired behaviour, channel role, value proposition, content and media choices, measures, resources and governance. Social activity should connect to the wider brand and communications system rather than operate as an isolated calendar.

What this concept covers

• Business, marketing, communication and social-media objectives.
• Strategy versus tactics and campaign versus always-on activity.
• Integrated marketing communications and channel roles.
• KPIs, resources, responsibilities and decision rights.
• Strategic coherence across audience, proposition, channel, creative and measurement.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Translate a business problem into assessable objectives.
• Differentiate strategy from platform tactics.
• Build an objective-audience-channel-measure chain.
• Integrate social activity with other communications.
• Critique a plan whose metrics do not match its objective.

How to teach it

• Rewrite a weak brief such as “grow Instagram” as a business problem.
• Use a one-page strategy template before content ideation.
• Remove one platform from a multi-platform plan and defend the trade-off.
• Attach a decision rule to every KPI.

Case-style example

Northlight Bikes wants direct-to-consumer revenue to rise from £8.0m to £9.2m. The board proposes “gain 100,000 followers.” Current social-assisted revenue is £1.1m, repeat purchase is 28% and email opt-in from social traffic is 6%. Students rewrite the objective, define two supporting KPIs and allocate a £180,000 budget between acquisition and retention. Follower growth and revenue-led approaches can both be argued. Students discover that a metric is useful only when tied to a decision.

Where students struggle

Students often start with content ideas and retrofit an objective. Require a behavioural or commercial outcome first.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Li, Larimo and Leonidou on social-media marketing strategy. Quick check: classify five proposed objectives as business outcomes, marketing outcomes, communication outcomes or platform metrics.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation can support this concept as an extended project because startup teams define a customer problem, customer segment, value proposition and channels. Add the social-media application in the lecturer brief or debrief rather than describing it as a built-in simulation task.

Where it leads

Once strategy is clear, students need to decide whom to prioritise and where that audience can be reached.

Central question: which audience should the brand prioritise, and where can that audience be reached efficiently and credibly?

Platform targeting options are not a substitute for market segmentation. Move from customer evidence to segments, then to targeting criteria, evidence-based personas or jobs-to-be-done, and finally to channel selection. The outcome should be a defensible focus rather than a list of every possible audience.

What this concept covers

• Needs, behaviour, value, lifecycle and attitudinal segmentation.
• Target attractiveness, accessibility, fit and competitive intensity.
• Evidence-based personas rather than fictional decoration.
• Platform and channel selection based on audience behaviour and objective.
• Targeting constraints from privacy, policy and data availability.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Create meaningful audience segments from evidence.
• Evaluate target segments against explicit criteria.
• Build an evidence-based persona.
• Select channels that fit audience behaviour and objectives.
• Defend trade-offs between reach, focus, cost and access.

How to teach it

• Give groups the same dataset and compare the segments they create.
• Contrast demographics with needs-based segmentation.
• Require evidence for every persona characteristic.
• Use a channel matrix scoring audience fit, format fit, intent, cost and control.

Case-style example

RidgeFuel is launching a breakfast drink with £120,000. Segment A has 1.4m consumers, 18% category growth and £42 monthly spend; B has 0.8m, 31% growth and £58 spend; C has 2.2m, 7% growth and £29 spend. TikTok index scores are 132, 168 and 88; Instagram scores are 151, 139 and 116. Students score attractiveness and accessibility, select one target and one lead channel, then defend the choice. Students discover that the largest segment is not automatically the best target.

Where students struggle

Students often write personas before segments or treat demographics as explanations. Make them show how target choice changes media, message and offer.

Reading and a quick check

Use Tuten plus the Go To Market pre-brief. Quick check: remove one audience from a three-audience campaign and justify why focus improves the plan.

Where a simulation fits

The Go To Market Simulation is the strongest fit. Students analyse customer and market evidence, choose a primary target, two launch regions and an access channel before positioning. Run it after STP teaching so it tests judgement rather than introducing the framework from scratch.

Where it leads

Target selection creates the basis for positioning: what the brand should mean to that audience and why.

Central question: how should a brand translate its positioning into a recognisable, credible social identity?

Positioning is not a tone-of-voice exercise. Connect audience insight, frame of reference, point of difference, reasons to believe and value proposition before deciding how the brand speaks and behaves socially. This also separates consistent identity from rigid sameness across platforms.

What this concept covers

• Positioning, frame of reference and point of difference.
• Value propositions, reasons to believe and message hierarchy.
• Brand voice, tone, personality and platform adaptation.
• Distinctive assets and consistency across social touchpoints.
• The relationship between positioning, creative choices and community expectations.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Develop a positioning statement from evidence.
• Translate positioning into a social message hierarchy.
• Define useful voice and tone guidelines.
• Evaluate whether creative reinforces the intended position.
• Identify when adaptation becomes inconsistency.

How to teach it

• Start with positioning before showing sample posts.
• Ask what positioning is implied by three posts from one brand.
• Run a “same message, different platform” exercise.
• Require reasons to believe for major claims.

Case-style example

Koda Outdoor sells premium commuter backpacks. Its priority audience values weather protection, repairability and understated design. Competitor A owns “technical adventure”; B owns “urban fashion.” Koda can position around “quiet durability” at £145 or “smart city performance” at £165. Survey preference is 46% versus 41%, while purchase intent is 34% versus 38%. Students choose a position, write a value proposition and three social-message pillars. Students discover that preference and purchase intent can support different defensible positions.

Where students struggle

Students often mistake voice for adjectives or write positioning any competitor could claim. Force a clear audience, alternative and point of difference.

Reading and a quick check

Use Tuten and Li, Larimo and Leonidou. Quick check: choose which of four captions best expresses a stated position and explain why the others weaken it.

Where a simulation fits

The Go To Market Simulation fits directly because students select a positioning theme, frame of reference, point of difference, value proposition, price, pack format and promotional message after choosing the target. Debrief whether the decisions tell one consistent brand story.

Where it leads

With audience and position fixed, students can build a content system that expresses that strategy repeatedly.

Central question: what content should the brand create, for whom, in which format, and how will it contribute to the strategy?

Teach content strategy as a resource-allocation problem rather than a brainstorming contest. Link content pillars to objectives and audience needs, choose formats that fit user behaviour, plan calls to action and cadence, and define how creative will be tested. The output is a repeatable editorial system, not a folder of disconnected posts.

What this concept covers

• Content pillars, themes, formats and editorial architecture.
• Creative briefs, hooks, storytelling, calls to action and accessibility.
• Short-form video, static, carousel, live, long-form and creator formats.
• Calendars, production workflows, repurposing and asset governance.
• Creative testing, fatigue and the balance between consistency and novelty.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Design content pillars linked to audience and objectives.
• Write a usable social creative brief.
• Select formats based on behaviour and strategic purpose.
• Build a realistic editorial calendar.
• Define a creative test and decision rule.

How to teach it

• Give students one positioning statement and fixed production budget.
• Require three content pillars and make them reject a fourth.
• Repurpose one source asset into four platform-native formats.
• Use a calendar only after objectives, audience and message are locked.

Case-style example

FreshFork has £24,000 for eight weeks of content. Recipe videos cost £1,200, average 84,000 views and 2,900 saves; founder clips cost £450, average 31,000 views and 1,750 saves; carousels cost £220, average 12,000 views and 980 saves. Students calculate cost per 1,000 views and cost per save, then allocate the budget while preserving three message pillars. Reach-led and save-led allocations can both be defended. Students discover that efficiency depends on the behaviour the content is meant to produce.

Where students struggle

Students often copy popular formats without asking whether the format helps the message, or build calendars that ignore production capacity.

Reading and a quick check

Use Tuten on social content and Dwivedi et al. on emerging digital and social-media questions. Quick check: decide which format to stop first if the budget falls 30%.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation can be a secondary bridge. Startup teams develop a customer segment, value proposition and Business Model Canvas; require a lecturer-set social content brief that translates those decisions into messages and channels. Do not describe content production as a built-in simulation stage.

Where it leads

Content enters a live social environment where customers reply, complain, advocate and create their own material, so community management comes next.

Central question: how should brands listen, respond and participate when they do not control the conversation?

Social media differs from many channels because audiences can answer publicly and at scale. Teach community management as service, relationship-building, listening, escalation and earned-media judgement. Students should separate signals from noise and design response rules before a crisis makes those rules urgent.

What this concept covers

• Community roles, response policies and service standards.
• Listening queries, themes, sentiment, share of voice and qualitative interpretation.
• User-generated content, advocacy, reviews and earned media.
• Escalation, moderation, misinformation and abuse.
• Real-time marketing and the risk of relevance without fit.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Design a community response framework.
• Interpret listening data alongside qualitative evidence.
• Distinguish routine service issues from reputation risks.
• Evaluate earned and user-generated opportunities.
• Recommend escalation and moderation rules.

How to teach it

• Triage a one-hour stream of fictional mentions.
• Define what can be answered by a community manager and what must escalate.
• Compare sentiment scores with underlying comments.
• Debate a trend where participation could create relevance or brand risk.

Case-style example

Orbit Air receives 850 social mentions after a baggage-system outage. Automated sentiment labels 54% negative, 28% neutral and 18% positive. Manual review of 100 posts finds 71% negative, while 22 high-reach posts repeat a false claim that all international flights are cancelled. Students estimate misclassification, prioritise response categories and draft a 90-minute escalation plan. One approach centralises replies; another empowers local teams. Students discover that listening data needs human interpretation and clear decision rights.

Where students struggle

Students often treat sentiment as precise or assume every negative post requires the same response. Emphasise materiality, customer impact, reach and verifiability.

Reading and a quick check

Use the social-consumer and ethics readings. Quick check: rank five fictional posts from “reply now” to “monitor only” and state the decision rule.

Where it leads

Organic and earned activity is only part of the system. The course can now introduce paid social as controlled distribution with measurable economics.

Central question: how should students allocate paid-social spend and learn from experiments rather than optimise vanity metrics?

Paid social brings targeting, auction economics and experimentation into the course. Students should understand objectives, media metrics, creative variation, frequency, learning periods and incremental testing without turning the module into a platform certification. The durable skill is choosing the right metric and experiment for the business question.

What this concept covers

• Campaign objectives, auction logic, reach, frequency and delivery.
• CPM, CPC, CTR, conversion rate, CPA, ROAS and contribution.
• Audience and creative testing, holdouts and experimental design.
• Budget allocation, pacing, saturation and diminishing returns.
• Brand versus performance objectives and limits of platform attribution.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Calculate and interpret core paid-social metrics.
• Choose campaign metrics that match the objective.
• Design a simple creative or audience experiment.
• Allocate spend using efficiency and incrementality evidence.
• Critique platform-reported performance.

How to teach it

• Use a spreadsheet with two or three ad sets rather than a live platform.
• Calculate the same campaign through CPM, CPA and contribution lenses.
• Require a hypothesis and stopping rule before showing results.
• Introduce holdout logic before attribution dashboards.

Case-style example

NexaFit spends £60,000 across two ad sets. A delivers 6.0m impressions at £5 CPM, 1.2% CTR and 4.0% site conversion; B delivers 3.0m impressions at £10 CPM, 2.0% CTR and 5.0% conversion. Average order value is £64 with 55% gross margin. Students calculate clicks, orders, CPA and gross profit, then allocate the next £20,000. One answer favours A on reach cost; another favours B on conversion. Students discover why media efficiency and commercial efficiency can point in different directions.

Where students struggle

Students often optimise CTR or ROAS without checking contribution, incrementality or data quality. Another error is changing several variables at once and calling the result an experiment.

Reading and a quick check

Assign a recent measurement or capability reading and current platform documentation only for mechanics. Quick check: identify which of four proposed tests can support a causal conclusion.

Where it leads

Paid media introduces another form of paid distribution: creators and influencers, where audience trust and fit matter alongside media economics.

Central question: when does a creator partnership add credibility and reach, and how should its value and risk be assessed?

Influencer marketing combines media buying, endorsement, community trust and creative co-production. Students should evaluate creator-brand fit, audience quality, disclosure, compensation, briefing, content rights and measurement rather than assuming that a larger follower count produces a better partnership.

What this concept covers

• Creator selection: audience fit, content fit, credibility and brand safety.
• Follower quality, engagement, reach, frequency and fraud indicators.
• Briefs, creative freedom, compensation, usage rights and exclusivity.
• Disclosure and sponsored-content identification.
• Measurement across awareness, traffic, conversion and incremental effect.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Evaluate creators using strategic and quantitative criteria.
• Write a creator brief balancing brand requirements and autonomy.
• Compare creators using cost and outcome metrics.
• Identify disclosure, rights and brand-safety requirements.
• Design a measurement plan beyond likes and follower counts.

How to teach it

• Give students three creator profiles with different audiences, costs and conversion histories.
• Score fit before calculating efficiency.
• Negotiate usage rights between brand and creator groups.
• Use a disclosure checklist in the rubric.

Case-style example

Luma Skin can hire Creator A with 1.2m followers for £36,000, expected reach 420,000 and 1,050 tracked purchases, or six niche creators costing £5,000 each with combined reach 270,000 and 1,380 purchases. Gross contribution per purchase is £42. Students calculate cost per 1,000 reached, CPA and expected contribution, then score audience fit out of 10. Scale and conversion support different defensible choices. Students discover that creator selection is a portfolio decision, not a follower-count contest.

Where students struggle

Students often compare creators on engagement rates without checking audience relevance, rights, disclosure or conversion economics.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Hudders, De Jans and De Veirman plus Beichert et al. on influencer economics. Quick check: identify three pieces of evidence required before approving a partnership.

Where it leads

Creator activity can now connect to the path from social discovery to purchase, including social commerce and channel integration.

Central question: how does social activity move customers from discovery to action across social, web, retail and CRM touchpoints?

Social rarely owns the whole conversion journey. Map discovery, consideration, purchase, service and advocacy across social platforms, websites, marketplaces, stores, email and CRM. Teach social commerce as an integration problem: reduce friction while preserving measurement, customer experience and channel economics.

What this concept covers

• Social discovery, consideration, conversion and advocacy.
• Native social commerce, shoppable content and off-platform checkout.
• Landing pages, lead capture, CRM, email and retargeting hand-offs.
• Channel conflict, customer data and experience consistency.
• Conversion rate, assisted conversion and incrementality.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Map a social-to-purchase journey.
• Identify friction and hand-off failures.
• Evaluate native versus off-platform commerce.
• Connect social acquisition to CRM and retention.
• Recommend measures for assisted and direct conversion.

How to teach it

• Map one purchase journey from first exposure to repeat purchase.
• Use conversion rates to identify the highest-value friction point.
• Compare native checkout with brand-owned web on friction, data and margin.
• Require a post-purchase action, not only acquisition.

Case-style example

Mallow Coffee receives 100,000 social product views monthly. Native checkout converts 2.8% at £22 average order value and 48% gross margin. Click-through to the brand website is 12%; the site converts 8% of those visitors at £31 average order value and 52% margin, while 14% join email. Students calculate gross contribution from each route and recommend the primary call to action. One route wins on friction; the other on basket value and data capture. Students discover that conversion rate alone does not settle a channel decision.

Where students struggle

Students tend to treat the last click as the whole journey or prioritise low-friction checkout without considering margin, data access and repeat purchase.

Reading and a quick check

Use Tuten with a current omnichannel or social-commerce reading. Quick check: identify one metric for discovery, conversion and retention in the same journey.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation is a useful secondary fit because teams define customer segments, channels, revenue streams and unit economics on a Business Model Canvas. Require students to explain where social discovery and acquisition sit within that wider channel model.

Where it leads

Once the journey is mapped, students need to measure what social activity contributed and how confidently they can make that claim.

Central question: what can social data tell us, what can it not tell us, and how should students evaluate marketing value?

Teach a hierarchy from business outcomes to marketing outcomes, behavioural metrics and diagnostic platform metrics. Then introduce attribution uncertainty, experiments, incrementality and qualitative evidence. Students should make decisions with imperfect data rather than decorate reports with dashboards.

What this concept covers

• Metric hierarchies and KPI selection.
• Reach, engagement, traffic, leads, conversion, retention and customer value.
• ROAS, ROI, contribution and customer-acquisition economics.
• Attribution, assisted conversion, incrementality and holdout tests.
• Dashboards, benchmarks, data quality and qualitative interpretation.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Build a KPI hierarchy linked to objectives.
• Calculate and interpret social performance measures.
• Distinguish attribution from causation.
• Evaluate source quality and limitations.
• Recommend an action based on evidence and uncertainty.

How to teach it

• Give students an overfull dashboard and make them delete half.
• Attach a decision to every retained KPI.
• Compare last-click attribution with a holdout test.
• Require a limitations paragraph in every analytics output.

Case-style example

Verde Mobile reports £480,000 of platform-attributed revenue from £120,000 of paid social spend, implying 4.0x ROAS. A matched-region holdout shows sales were £1.84m with social and £1.72m without it; gross margin is 45%. Students calculate incremental revenue, incremental gross profit and an incrementality-adjusted return, then compare it with platform attribution. The performance team can defend continued spend; finance can defend a cut. Students discover why attribution and causal lift answer different questions.

Where students struggle

Students often report whatever the platform makes easy to export. Require them to separate diagnostics from outcomes and state what the data cannot prove.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Li et al. on social media in marketing research and Laradi et al. on social-media marketing capabilities. Quick check: rewrite “engagement rose 34%” as a decision-oriented conclusion with one limitation.

Where a simulation fits

The Go To Market Simulation can support a measurement debrief because students receive a score, rank, strategy summary and cohort comparisons. Use these as evidence for reflection on strategy coherence, not as a substitute for marketing ROI or an automatic grade.

Where it leads

The final concept asks who is allowed to do what with social data and content, and how the course should handle privacy, ethics, crisis and AI.

Central question: how should marketers act when capability, speed and platform incentives move faster than governance?

Close the course by putting boundaries around the tools students have learned. Social decisions carry privacy, disclosure, accessibility, copyright, misinformation, brand-safety and crisis risks. Generative AI adds synthetic content, automated targeting and authorship questions. The point is not to turn marketing students into lawyers but to make governance part of marketing judgement.

What this concept covers

• Privacy, consent, data minimisation and responsible targeting.
• Advertising disclosure and influencer transparency.
• Copyright, permissions, user-generated content and accessibility.
• Crisis governance, misinformation, deepfakes and escalation.
• Generative AI for ideation, production, listening and analysis.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this concept, students should be able to:

• Identify material legal, ethical and reputational risks.
• Design practical approval and escalation controls.
• Evaluate responsible reuse of user or creator content.
• Critique AI output for evidence, bias and provenance.
• Defend a campaign decision balancing opportunity and governance.

How to teach it

• Use a commercially attractive but ethically ambiguous campaign.
• Design a minimum viable approval process for routine, creator and crisis content.
• Use a synthetic creator example to discuss provenance and disclosure.
• Make every capstone include a risk register and permitted-AI-use statement.

Case-style example

Aster Travel plans an AI-generated creator campaign for 18- to 24-year-olds. Production costs £18,000 instead of £55,000 with human creators, and pre-tests show 9% higher click intent. However, 37% of respondents incorrectly believe the synthetic creator is a real customer, and the image model used licensed stock with unclear derivative-use rights. Students decide whether to launch, redesign or cancel, specifying disclosure, rights checks and approval controls. Students discover that higher predicted performance can still be the weaker marketing decision.

Where students struggle

Students may treat ethics as a compliance appendix or assume anything technically possible is strategically acceptable. Bring trust, evidence and governance into the recommendation.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Granstedt on social-media marketing ethics and Dwivedi et al. on emerging digital and social-media questions. Quick check: write a four-line approval rule for AI-generated social content.

Where it leads

This closes the course. Students should now be able to design, execute, measure and defend a social-media strategy while stating evidence limits and governance controls.

10-week course structure

Compress without losing the decision chain. Combine environment with consumer behaviour, integrate paid social with creator marketing, and keep measurement and governance intact.

14-week course structure

Use the extra sessions for deeper community work, separate creator teaching, stronger measurement and more time for simulation debrief and final defence.

The Go To Market Simulation is the closest direct fit for Social Media Marketing. It is a 1.5-2-hour individual, competitive simulation in which each student acts as the founder of a protein-bar company entering the US market. Students move through segmentation, targeting and positioning decisions, select a primary segment and launch regions, choose an access channel and market-entry posture, then make positioning, value-proposition, pricing, pack-format and promotional-message choices.

Why it fits here

Run it after students know STP and basic positioning. That timing allows the exercise to test whether they can make a coherent set of choices rather than simply recognising framework labels. For a Social Media Marketing course, the strongest debrief question is how the chosen audience, positioning and promotional message should translate into a paid, owned and earned social plan.

What students do

• Analyse a common market briefing and customer-segmentation evidence.
• Select one primary target segment and two launch regions.
• Choose a targeting approach, access channel and market-entry posture.
• Choose a positioning theme, frame of reference, point of difference and value proposition.
• Set price, pack format and a promotional message, then write the reasoning behind key choices.
• Review a score, rank, strategy summary and cohort patterns in region, segment and pricing choices during reflection.

Recommended course placement

• At the end of Session 4 as the bridge from targeting to positioning.
• Inside Session 5 as the main application after a short positioning recap.
• Before a written social-media strategy so simulation choices become evidence to critique rather than a standalone outcome.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

• Basic segmentation, targeting and positioning.
• The difference between a customer segment and a persona.
• A simple value proposition and point of difference.
• Basic channel-role and promotional-message logic.

Delivery format

Suggested debrief questions

• Which customer evidence mattered most to your target choice?
• Did your positioning, price and promotional message reinforce one another?
• What social channel role follows from your chosen access strategy?
• Which cohort pattern surprised you, and does popularity imply quality?
• What would you test before committing a real media budget?
• Which part of your decision could you defend individually without referring to the simulation score?

The Startup Creation Simulation is a 6-10-hour team-based entrepreneurship and investment simulation. Roughly 70% of teams operate as startups and 30% as venture-capital firms. Startup teams develop an opportunity, problem-solution fit, customer segment, value proposition, TAM/SAM/SOM and a Business Model Canvas including channels, revenue, costs, unit economics and use of funds. VC teams define an investment thesis and criteria, then teams pitch and negotiate investment amount and equity ownership.

It is a secondary Social Media Marketing fit rather than a dedicated social-media simulation. The value comes from giving students a real strategic context - customer, proposition, channels, economics and funding - that the lecturer can extend with a social acquisition, community or launch brief.

Why it fits here

Students frequently write social plans before clarifying the business model or customer. Startup Creation reverses that order. The simulation makes teams commit to a segment, value proposition, channels and economic logic, after which the social-media assignment can ask which role social should play and what it must achieve.

What students do

• Startup teams define the opportunity, problem-solution fit, customer segment and value proposition.
• Startup teams estimate TAM, SAM and SOM and complete Business Model Canvas choices including channels, revenue, costs, unit economics and use of funds.
• VC teams define an investment thesis, investment criteria and decision process.
• Teams pitch and negotiate investment amount and equity ownership, creating an implied post-money valuation.
• Not every startup is funded, so teams must defend strategy and economics under competition.
• For this course, the lecturer adds a separate brief translating the chosen segment and value proposition into a social acquisition, community or launch plan.

Recommended course placement

• After Session 3 when the aim is to ground social strategy in a wider business model.
• Across Sessions 6-10 in a longer course where content, channel integration and social commerce need a common venture context.
• As an optional capstone extension rather than a replacement for the Go To Market application.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

• No prior startup or VC experience is required by the live product.
• For Social Media Marketing assessment, students should already understand objectives, segments, value propositions and channel roles.
• Basic unit economics helps students connect acquisition choices to business viability.

Delivery format

Suggested debrief questions

• What customer evidence justified your selected segment?
• How did the value proposition shape your channel choices?
• Where should social media sit in the acquisition and relationship system, and where should it not?
• What acquisition metric would matter to investors given your unit economics?
• Did funding pressure change your willingness to prioritise short-term reach over longer-term customer value?
• Which social-media recommendation is yours individually, and what evidence supports it?

Grading with the Go To Market Simulation

The simulation involves individual market-entry decisions across segmentation, targeting, positioning, region, channel access, pricing, pack format and promotional message. Lecturers can use the decision trail and reflection evidence without turning the simulation score into an automatic mark.

• Coherence between target segment, regions, channel, positioning, price and promotional message.
• Quality of the written rationale and use of market/customer evidence.
• Recognition of trade-offs and missing information.
• Ability to translate the launch decision into a paid, owned and earned social plan.
• Quality of post-simulation reflection: what the student would keep, change or test.
• Individual oral or written defence where local rules require attributable evidence.

Grading with the Startup Creation Simulation

The simulation involves team decisions about opportunity, customer problem, segment, value proposition, market sizing, Business Model Canvas choices and funding negotiation. For Social Media Marketing, assess the social-media extension that the lecturer explicitly adds rather than implying the simulation contains a built-in social campaign.

• Quality of the customer problem, segment and value-proposition logic that social activity must support.
• Consistency between Business Model Canvas channels and the proposed social role.
• A lecturer-added social acquisition, community or launch plan with clear objective and measures.
• Connection between customer-acquisition choices and unit economics or use of funds.
• Quality of team evidence such as pitch and negotiated terms, used as context rather than an automatic grade.
• Individual memo or defence that distinguishes the student's own reasoning from the team output.

The platform records decisions, negotiated terms where applicable and comparative outcomes across participants or groups. That evidence supports academic judgement; it does not replace it, and it does not establish which individual student made which argument.