There has never been a better or more critical time to improve your digital marketing skills than right now. Have you been looking for online classes but aren’t sure what to do?
We’ve compiled a list of the most significant courses you should be aware of so you don’t have to. Some are free, while others are not. They’re all well worth the effort and money you put into them.
Skillshop And Grow With Google: The Google Essentials
Google Skillshop provides the critical tools that many digital marketers require to learn the fundamentals.
PPC experts should familiarize themselves with Google Ads, Google Ad Manager, and Google AdMob, while Analytics Academy can assist with analytics, tagging, reporting, and data visualization.
Google My Business has become a must-have for all businesses, not just small and medium-sized ones. It’s a good, free tool to help you generate data on your customer’s journey without investing a cent, with continued enhancements and features that allow you to promote events, special deals, and make social media postings.
Skillshop is a beginner’s programme, whereas Grow With Google is a more advanced one. Google offers a Google Career Certificates Program, in collaboration with Coursera, that focuses on Project Management, User Experience (UX), Data Science, IT infrastructure, and security.
Courses are available in English, German, Spanish, and Russian, and are part of Coursera Plus, a premium curriculum that can be paid monthly or yearly.
Hubspot, Ahrefs, SemRush, and Moz are examples of marketing platforms.
Several marketing platforms provide digital marketing certificates for free in order to encourage users to sign up for their software. Even if you don’t buy a subscription to enjoy all of the features, these courses are still absolutely free.
Furthermore, many recruiters looking for candidates check for these branded certificates directly, which can help you land a job.
Hubspot Academy is completely free and completely online, with certificates valid for up to two years (so you are encouraged to update your credentials). It offers sales and marketing professionals courses and certificates. SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, advertising, and analytics, as well as different parts of sales and marketing strategy, may all be improved.
Semrush Academy competes directly with Hubspot, offering a variety of courses that may be finished in as little as a few hours or less than half a day. They provide free courses on a variety of digital marketing topics, as well as advice on competitor research and how to utilize what you’ve learned to help you grow your digital business.
The Ahrefs Academy is divided into two sections: SEO and Content Marketing. They show how to create SEO reports, examine backlinks, and assign a health score to your entire website. Many SEOs prefer Ahrefs’ online courses on their website and YouTube because they are incredibly clear and instructional; they are the go-to for acquiring the basics. They’ve also created a popular SEO plugin for WordPress that competes with Yoast’s, as well as a free SEO toolbar for Chrome.
Moz Academy is another option for SEO professionals that want to improve their expertise. For US$149, Moz offers a Starter Pack that covers SEO Fundamentals, Local SEO, and Keyword Research, followed by a Sequel Pack that includes Page Optimization, Backlinking Fundamentals, and SEO Reporting for US$289.
These courses are beneficial and will help you get the most out of their platforms. Even if you don’t upgrade to a paid account, their course content can still help you grasp basic and advanced concepts. With growing online presence from numerous firms and a surge in e-commerce business formation, SEO courses from these platforms are in higher demand than ever.
Major Open Online Courses (MOOCs) (MOOCs)
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been around for a while, but during the epidemic, they really took off, providing free access to numerous courses for university students and laid-off individuals looking to upskill while looking for work. Coursera and edX are two MOOC providers that have been around for a long time. Both provide taster courses with the opportunity of earning a paid certificate; both also offer more in-depth courses that grant “micro-qualifications” that may be used to boost your résumé.
Coursera is the most well-known and oldest brand in this category. They were also among the first to offer an eight-month digital marketing concentration from the University of Illinois; originally known as a single course named “Marketing in a Digital World,” this programme is now part of a recently announced online iMBA.
Coursera currently has specialties in Social Media Marketing (Northwestern), SEO (University of California Davis), and general marketing (University of California Davis) (University of Pennsylvania). Facebook has also partnered with Coursera to offer social media, social advertising, and campaign optimization courses and specializations.
You can pay for specific courses or specialties on Coursera, and many of them can be paid monthly. Their Coursera Plus subscription option, which costs $399 per year and gives you access to many – but not all – of their certified courses while also saving you money.
edX, which is managed by an Ivy League consortium led by Harvard and MIT, also provides marketing courses and specialties from institutions all around the world, not just in English or in the United States. The University of Maryland, Curtin University, Galileo University, University of Mexico, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Babson College, and others all offer digital marketing courses. Some are bundled as MicroMasters programmes that last several months and culminate with a certificate.
Udacity, the third-largest MOOC brand, operates a crowdsourced e-learning platform rather than university-based online learning. Udacity organizes their learning paths by programmes and professional specialities, including their own nanodegrees, and provides private and public sector-sponsored training possibilities. Google, Hootsuite, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Moz, and Facebook all contributed to the development of their Digital Marketing nanodegree programme.
Udacity, like edX and Coursera, informs you of the time and financial commitment. While you’ll need to do a little more digging to uncover the best-rated professionals in a variety of digital marketing fields, many of their courses are already acknowledged by multinational businesses and organizations.
Additional E-Learning Platforms
Let’s look at a couple other online education platforms that provide quality digital marketing courses.
Emeritus is a newcomer to the executive education field. Are you familiar with Zoom classes for learning? Emeritus uses the Canvas learning management system and Zoom to enable students to keep track of lessons, submit homework, and attend weekly live classes with top digital marketing academics. They currently offer Online Digital Marketing courses in collaboration with Columbia University, London Business School, Cornell University, Kellogg University, and the National University of Singapore, among others. Emeritus caters to mid- and senior-level executives, thus joining them provides an opportunity to network professionally.
If you’re seeking certification classes closer to home, you have two options, both of which are led by famous marketing industry executives from the Philippines – and both of which have moved to online training.
Digital Marketers HQ, the Philippines’ learning arm of the Digital Marketing Institute in the Philippines (DMI), offers international-level certificates in e-commerce, user experience (UX), and analytics across all digital marketing strands.
Masterclasses, track learning, and certification from the Certified Digital Marketer Program (CDMP), which offers training for people and businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines, are also options.
Stridec Managing Partner, as well as numerous of our Stridec webinar guests, teach at one or both of these events, which bring you face to face with industry luminaries from throughout the country. This provides you with several opportunities for practical learning and insights, both from the perspective of the brand and the agency.
Enrichment And Training
So far, we’ve looked at general and digital marketing, as well as SEO training.
We’ll discuss training opportunities in other areas of digital marketing in the future installment of this blog series. We’ll recommend similar specialized courses that can help you improve your online marketing skills.