This online marketing analytics program from UC Berkeley will give you 75 credits toward a full Master's of Marketing degree for less than $1,000

• Marketing analytics are essential to a company's core business, driving important decisions related to the four P's of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
• If you want to learn more about marketing analytics and advance your role in your company without spending thousands of dollars, we recommend the Marketing Analytics MicroMasters Program ($896.40), offered by UC Berkeley through edX.

Marketing comprises everything a company does to attract and retain customers, which includes determining where and when a product is sold, its optimal price, how it's creatively positioned in consumers' minds, and even actual attributes of the product itself.

Behind such important decisions is the quantitative data, which takes skill and practice to analyze.

An MBA or Master's in Marketing degree helps professionals gain a more in-depth understanding of marketing analytics and adds value to their marketing careers. But the degree comes at a cost: top business schools such as those at Columbia, USC, and Vanderbilt charge annual tuition fees of $50,000 to $60,000. Unless you're lucky enough to have your company sponsor your time in school, you're likely to be set back financially.

Online programs are increasingly accepted by students, employers, and schools as legitimate and cost-effective alternatives to traditional academic programs. The Marketing Analytics MicroMasters Program, offered by UC Berkeley through leading online learning platform edX, is one popular, well-received example.

The program is comprised of a series of four courses, each of which takes about five to seven hours per week and four weeks to complete. Completion of all four courses grants two useful benefits:

• A verified certificate that can be shown to future employers and educational programs.
• 75 credits towards a Master's of Marketing degree at Curtin University, a globally-ranked Western Australian university.

As its name suggests, the MicroMasters Program is a mini precursor to a full master's degree. It provides a more affordable and convenient pathway to postgraduate education. If you apply to the university that accepts the MicroMasters certificate for credit and are accepted, the certificate will bring you closer to your degree, and you don't have to spend as many thousands of dollars to do it. EdX offers MicroMasters in a variety of other highly relevant, in-demand fields, including Supply Chain Management (MIT) and Design Thinking (RIT).

1. Marketing Measurement Strategy: Best approaches and practices for marketing measurement, including how to use metrics to measure success.
2. Price and Promotion Analytics: How to use price and promotion analytics to effectively allocate your marketing budget to maximize profits.
3. Competitive Analysis and Market Segmentation: How to analyze your competition and effectively segment your market to improve overall customer satisfaction and company profits.
4. Products, Distribution, and Sales: How to identify what your consumers want in a product and the best distribution and sales channels to engage with your chosen markets.

The instructor, Stephan Sorger, guides you through it all and has taught for over a decade at UC Berkeley Extension. He previously led product management and strategy at Oracle and SAP and is the author of two marketing textbooks.

Right now, the full program costs $896.40, or $224.10 per course, a significant discount from traditional grad school marketing programs, which can cost at least $1,000 per credit taken. As with any edX course, you can also audit the courses for free, though you would not receive official recognition or credits for doing so.

According to past students, the program gives back everything you put into it, and then some:

A common complaint about academia is its lack of real-world application. However, the Marketing Analytics MicroMasters Program clearly offers real value for professionals looking to make a measurable impact in their company.

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