Essentials of Marketing

This course is offered as part of the Museum Futures wraparound programme.

Essentials of Marketing is a six-module online course that helps learners build a solid foundation in the marketing skills needed to effectively promote your venue. Learn about the marketing mix, campaign planning, audience and brand development, and how to evaluate your activity.

Applications are open for both the October 2025 and January 2026 cohorts. 15 fully funded places are available for each cohort.

Museums Galleries Scotland has teamed up with the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) to offer several fully funded places to those who work or volunteer in the museum sector and have marketing responsibilities within their organisation.

• The Essentials of Marketing modules work together to help you develop a rounded sense of what marketing is, with a focus on the arts, heritage, and cultural sectors.
• As well as providing you with practical skills and tools, it will also help you better understand the context and contribution of your role in marketing within your organisation.
• It will support the confident application of those skills in the workplace and lay the foundations for strategic thinking.
• You’ll also be part of a cohort learning together, helping you to create a supportive community of peers from across the wider arts, heritage, and cultural sectors.

The whole course takes place on an online learning platform, where you’ll be able to access all the course content and digitally network with other participants in your cohort through the platform’s messaging function.

The course includes a mixture of video tutorials, written resources, quizzes, and practical challenges to help cement your learning.

Over eight weeks, you’ll explore key concepts and practical examples across six modules, starting with an introductory live session. Each module will take up to two hours to complete.

A new module will be released each Monday throughout the course, and participants will have a further three weeks after the release of the final module to complete it.

You will receive your certificate on completion of all modules by the course completion deadline for your cohort.

Introductory live session

The course will launch with a live online session on Zoom. This session will introduce you to the course, explain how it will work, and how to use the Essentials of Marketing online platform. It’s also an opportunity to meet the rest of the cohort and start making connections.

Module 1: The Role of Marketing

This module will help you develop an understanding of what marketing is and what its purpose is. You will explore the breadth of the marketer’s role and what it entails. You’ll also gain insight into the key areas we need to think about as marketers.

Module 2: Understanding your Audiences

This module looks at the role data plays in marketing and how it can help you understand your audiences. You’ll learn about how to collect data, the types of data marketers can collect and how they can use this data. We’ll explore the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, and you’ll also gain insight into segmentation, personas, and empathy maps.

Module 3: Knowing your Brand

In this module you’ll develop an understanding of what a brand is. Covering topics such as brand values, personality and positioning, you’ll explore the different elements of brand management and discover how you can support your organisation’s brand in your role.

Module 4: Campaign Planning

Planning a marketing campaign is a key part of a marketer’s role. In this module you’ll learn how to develop a marketing campaign. You will develop skills to choose target audiences and craft key messages for them. You will also learn how to identify what channels to use for different audiences and how to monitor and evaluate them.

Module 5: The Marketing Mix

This module delves deeper into the Marketing Mix focusing on the key elements of ‘promotion’. You will learn about the AIDA model and develop the skills to decide what mix of marketing activities to use to achieve your marketing objectives and reach your target audiences.

Module 6: Monitoring and Evaluation

In this module you will learn the difference between ‘monitoring’ and ‘evaluation’, and the importance of building both into your marketing activity from the outset to help you assess whether you’re achieving your marketing objectives. You will discover the tools and framework you will need to turn the data you gather into actionable insight and develop the skills to decide what data to evaluate and monitor and when.

There are two cohorts available, with fifteen funded places on each cohort for Scottish museums and galleries.

October to December 2025

Monday 13 October 10:30am — 11:30am: Course launch with introductory live session

Monday 20 Oct: Module 2

Monday 27 Oct: Module 3

Monday 3 Nov: Module 4

Monday 10 Nov: Module 5

Monday 17 Nov: Module 6

Monday 8 December: End of course

January to March 2026

Monday 12 January 10:30am — 11:30am: Course launch with introductory live session

Monday 19 Jan: Module 2

Monday 26 Jan: Module 3

Monday 2 Feb: Module 4

Monday 9 Feb: Module 5

Monday 16 Feb: Module 6

Monday 9 March: End of course

Applications are open to both AMA members and non-members, working or volunteering for accredited or non-accredited museums or galleries in Scotland. Only one person can apply per organisation.

Criteria:

You will work or volunteer in a role that helps contribute to the marketing of your museum or gallery.

The organisation you work for meets the Museums Association definition of a museum

You will have engaged with the MGS’s Organisational Health Checker and discussed your funding and wraparound options with a member of the Museum Futures team, identifying marketing as an area for development.

Please note: If you have already paid for a place on either of the cohorts, please let us know. If you meet the criteria and your application is successful, you will be offered a refund and a funded place on the course of your choice.

Once you have undertaken the Organisational Health Checker and consulted with the Museum Futures programme team, please complete and submit an online application form.

October Cohort | Application form 

January Cohort | Application form 

The Application deadlines for each cohort are:
Monday, 15 September, for the October course
Monday, 1 December, for the January course.

We will assess each application and contact each applicant. Arts Marketing Association will then be in touch with information on the course.

Other key dates:

October course
MGS will email all applicants: Friday, 19 September
Successful applicants must accept a place by: Wednesday, 24 September

January course
MGS will email all applicants: Friday, 5 December
Successful applicants must accept a place by: Wednesday, 10 December

If you have any queries, please email Louise Storie, Marketing and Communications Manager at louises@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk