With over 5 billion internet users globally, businesses have to have an online presence in order to succeed. Digital marketing, therefore, is becoming an absolute necessity for companies in order for them to get their business in front of the right people so they can gain more customers.
Years ago, online marketing was considered an elite skill that very few professionals had. Today, almost anyone can learn this specialized and super-important skill so that they can start growing businesses online.
You can easily learn and hone in on your digital marketing skills by taking a certified course or attending a bootcamp if you’re relatively new to the field.
Find a reliable course digital marketing below so you can get your marketing career off the ground today!
Top Beginner Digital Marketing Courses
Regardless of if you’re brand new to marketing, a marketing manager, or some type of marketing specialist, anyone who is trying to help a company grow must know the basics of digital marketing. Your goal needs to be to have an understanding of how all of the digital marketing works (Social Media, Email, PPC, and SEO) as opposed to just understanding 1 area as all areas of digital marketing need to work together in order to truly be effective.
Online courses offer a hassle-free way to learn digital marketing on the go. You do not need to follow a strict schedule or leave your home to learn about digital marketing. Instead, the flexible hours allow you to study from the comfort of your home which makes it possible for anyone.
We’ve rounded up some of the best courses in internet marketing (aka digital marketing) to make this search easier for you. The below are in no specific order as they each offer something different depending on what you’re looking for.
Udacity Digital Marketing Course
Udacity provides a nano digital marketing degree program. The program offers coursework to help you put into practice some of the training.
Highlights
- The program covers 9 modules that teach how to use social media, make content discoverable in search engines, run ads on Facebook, and use Google Analytics for optimization.
- The course duration is around 3 months and 10 hours a week
- It offers Q&A sessions if you’re lost on what the teacher went over
- Udacity lets you choose from two payment methods. You can either pay $399 monthly for the course or pay $1077 upfront. The latter option saves you 10%.
JobPrepped’s Digital Marketing Training + Get You Hired Program
JobPrepped’s program is beginner friendly and is great for those that want more of a hands-on step-by-step training when it comes to digital marketing as opposed to just learning overall basics and marketing theory. You’ll get 7 Digital Marketing certifications as part of this program.
Highlights
- This self-paced program covers all core Digital Marketing topics: Social Media, Email Marketing, PPC, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Lead Generation, Data Analytics, Automation Tools, Digital Marketing Strategy, and more.
- All students get to work 1-on-1 with a former Fortune 500 Top-Level Marketing Exec. and this is the only program that gives students immediate real-world work experience that they can put on their resumes.
- This training program is designed to show you how to actually do all aspects of a digital marketer’s job, including which software to use, how to optimize, and provides step-by-step detailed strategies on how to execute campaigns effectively.
- JobPrepped’s program also helps you get a job faster by providing help with your Resume, Cover Letter, LinkedIn and Indeed Profile, and with your Interviews
- You can pay a one-time fee of $549 or you can choose their payment plan which allows you to spread out the cost of the program over several months.
Course for Digital Marketing by the University of Illinois
As the name suggests, this course is given by the University of Illinois.
Although it’s on the pricier side of courses, one advantage is that you get a University’s name on your certification if that matters to you. The program itself is similar to what you’d learn in college, as many of the teachers are college professors who could be good or bad, depending on what you’re looking for. College professors tend to focus a lot more on marketing theory rather than on training and how to actually execute campaigns, so that’s something to be mindful of.
Highlights
- The training involves 7 courses, the last being a project in partnership with Grainger industries.
- You’ll learn from case studies, interviews, video content, and assignments.
- You’ll get some assignments in data analytics to make intriguing data visualizations and presentations.
Google Digital Marketing Program
The Digital Marketing Program by Google caters to newbies by allowing everyone without prior experience and knowledge to enroll in the course. The program comes with a certificate of completion. Expect more of a digital marketing overview with a program like this as opposed to one where you are going to get into the nitty-gritty of things with hands-on experience.
Highlights
- The program includes 7 courses and over 190 hours of instruction, including assessments to test learner knowledge.
- Learners can use several tools and software like Mailchimp, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Constant Contact, Twitter, etc.
- The course covers a wide range of topics, including email marketing, social media marketing, e-commerce store management, customer experience practices, building customer loyalty, marketing funnel and its role in the customer journey, etc.
Udemy Digital Marketing Course
Udemy Digital Marketing Course is another program you can check out to get an overview of digital marketing for beginners. Each course entails 12 modules that cover different digital marketing aspects.
Highlights
- It covers several topics: Facebook marketing, App marketing, LinkedIn marketing, YouTube marketing, SEO, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and more.
- This course comes with 24-hour on-demand video content, which includes checklists and quizzes.
- You do not need prior digital marketing experience to enroll in the course.
Skillshare Course Digital Marketing
Skillshare offers several short skill-based courses. For instance, it covers different digital marketing disciplines, from Google Analytics to blogging and email marketing to search engine optimization.
These allow you to learn a specific topic if you don’t want to learn digital marketing as a whole.
Highlights
- Skillshare lets learners set their learning duration
- You can access all the classes for free for up to 2 months. However, you’d have to upgrade to the paid version once the time frame passes.
- It offers an online community to exchange ideas.
- There are plenty of downloadable resources and worksheets to make learning seamless.
HubSpot Online Marketing Course
HubSpot is a marketing platform company that also has a digital marketing course on the side covering several topics, from content marketing to inbound marketing and email marketing to contextual marketing.
You can register for the course for free and get certified on completion.
Highlights
- The course includes 9 lessons, 11 quizzes, and 37 videos to teach you a broad range of digital marketing concepts
- The learning environment is flexible as it’s self-paced
- This is a good course for those looking to get a general understanding of how digital marketing works
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a fast-growing industry since customers are spending more and more of their time online. It’s a great profession to get into as the importance of digital marketers is only becoming more and more valuable each year and if you ever want to start your own company or help companies grow, you have to know digital marketing.
Thankfully, you don’t have to go to college and spend $40,000+ on education to enter this industry as you can learn a lot of this stuff online via the courses I mentioned above. Many of these courses will give you an overview of what digital marketing entails so you can have an idea of how it works.
If you’re looking at more than just learning Digital Marketing theory and concepts and want to actually get hired as a digital marketer or grow a company through digital marketing, consider a bootcamp or a training like JobPrepped so that you can receive the step-by-step training on how to actually implement successful marketing campaigns and gain the exact work experience that companies want as work experience, not certifications, is the #1 thing hiring managers look at when determining who to hire.
Good luck out there and keep on learning as education is always the key to success!