Professional Diploma
Your next step towards Chartered Marketer status and a Masters combining
professional training with academic rigour.
Is this qualification for me?
The CIM Professional Diploma in Marketing is a strategic-level qualification ideal for Marketing
Managers, Operational Marketers, Departmental Managers, Product or Brand Managers, and Account or Agency Managers, for example.
This qualification is for you if you already work in marketing and want to progress your career by improving your
knowledge and skills at the strategic level.
What are the entry criteria?
You should have one of the following:
- CIM Professional Certificate in Marketing
- Any bachelors or Masters degree (or equivalent) with at least a third of credits in marketing
- Suffient marketing experience to pass the CIM online entrance assessment for this qualification
If English is not your first language, you also need IELTS 6.5 or Trinity ISE III/IV.
What are the benefits?
You will benefit from being able to demonstrate strategic-level skills in planning, decision making, prioritising and
information management.
What are the modules?
This qualification provides the theoretical and practical knowledge and skills to manage the marketing function. This includes
people, budget and channel management along with risk assessment and delivery of the value proposition.
It involves studying four modules:
- The Marketing Planning Process
This module provides a detailed understanding of marketing planning, including the synergistic planning process and
its links with delivering marketing strategy. It also assesses the dynamic and complex nature of the marketing environment, and its impact
when developing marketing plans to achieve strategic outcomes and competitive advantage in the market place.
The unit considers segmentation, targeting and positioning. They are considered with a view to developing sophisticated
approaches to targeting customers and developing effective positioning strategies based on sound assessment of market segment opportunities
and value.
After studying this module, you will be able to:
- Evaluate the role of marketing planning and implementation in a range of contexts including the organisation’s strategy, culture and
broader marketing environment.
- Evaluate the interconnectivity between corporate, business and marketing objectives; and consider the impact of the external marketing
environment and the organisation’s resources on their development and achievement.
- Conduct a marketing audit including a detailed analysis of the internal and external marketing environments.
- Assess the findings of the audit and develop a marketing plan that responds to market and organisational changes,
and underpins the organisation’s marketing strategy.
- Determine the importance of segmentation, targeting and positioning and their relative interdependencies.
- Develop effective segmentation, targeting and positioning strategies which are innovative, cost effective, valuable and maximise the
potential marketing opportunities successfully.
- Utilise a range of positioning platforms including price, quality, service and brand perception, to establish an organisation’s marketing
positioning strategy.
- Recognise the significance of retaining existing customers through relationship marketing when developing
strategies to achieve marketing objectives.
- Managing Marketing
This module is about developing the marketer as a manager. You will gain the knowledge required to develop and manage
an organisation’s marketing infrastructure and capacity. This involves developing effective quality systems and processes to support
compliance, and developing approaches to measuring and monitoring marketing activities.
The unit also covers developing and managing marketing teams. It provides a detailed understanding of managing the
financial aspects of the marketing function to ensure that its financial performance is consistent, reliable and effective.
After studying this module, you will be able to:
- Recommend how a marketing function should be structured to deliver competitive advantage, and marketing and organisational success.
- Assess a range of approaches that can be used to manage the marketing function on a day-to-day basis.
- Prepare plans for showing how a team should be structured, selected, formed, managed and developed to demonstrate
effective performance against objectives.
- Critically assess the organisation’s resource needs and capabilities for the marketing team and manage its marketing
activities effectively and efficiently.
- Prepare appropriate budgets and accounting documents to support the financial management of the marketing
function and associated marketing activities.
- Critically assess the ongoing financial situation including manageability of the budget,
financial stability and success of the marketing function.
- Delivering Customer Value Through Marketing
This module’s focuses on developing and executing marketing activities that deliver stakeholder value, achieve customer
satisfaction and meet organisational objectives. It covers developing the product portfolio, managing marketing channels, managing the
communications mix and managing the service expectations of customers.
After studying this module, you will be able to:
- Develop and manage a brand and product portfolio in the context of the organisation’s marketing strategies and objectives.
- Develop and implement an effective and efficient channel management strategy which reflects the needs of stakeholders and
considers the impact of the external environment.
- Develop an effective and innovative communications strategy, which delivers the organisation’s proposition to the market through
segmentation and targeting of internal and external markets.
- Utilise an innovative and effective integrated marketing mix to reinforce the organisation’s brand values, overall marketing
proposition and competitive advantage.
- Determine customer requirements for product and service delivery to ensure the marketing proposition
is customer-focused, efficient and effective.
- Project Management in Marketing
This module provides an in-depth knowledge of project management in the context of implementing a marketing proposal.
It gives you the skills to develop and deliver a justified management process to support the initiation, implemention,
risk management and control of marketing projects.
The module also focuses on evaluating proposals for marketing projects. It looks at prioritising proposals according to
fit-with-market conditions, organisational capacity, competitor activity and strategic management.
After studying this module, you will be able to:
- Identify the organisation’s information needs, scope of research and resource capability to underpin a
business case to support a marketing project.
- Develop an effective business case with justifications, financial assessments and consideration of the organisation’s
resource capacity and capability to deliver.
- Undertake a risk assessment program and make suggestions on mitigating risk in order to achieve business and marketing objectives.
- Design, develop and plan significant marketing programs using project management tools and techniques designed to deliver projects
effectively in terms of quality and resources.
- Integrate a range of marketing tools and techniques to support the development and implementation of a range of projects.
- Monitor and measure the effectiveness and outcomes of marketing projects.
