7 Best Online Courses on Digital Marketing (Free + Paid)
If you are looking for ways to jumpstart your marketing career or give it a skill upgrade boost, then one of the most reliable ways is to learn digital marketing by enrolling in an online digital marketing training course.
Wondering how that will help?
A well rounded digital marketing course can help you upgrade your marketing skills and easily become an efficient and well rounded digital marketer.
This blog is for anyone that is trying to either figure out if they should take up an online course for digital marketing and if yes, what digital marketing course will best navigate their career.
I will be talking about several paid as well as free online courses on digital marketing from renowned establishments.
Who should learn digital marketing?
It is a myth that learning digital marketing skills will only be useful if you want to make a career in online marketing.
The ability to market your products and services online can help any business with an online presence.
That means you need to learn digital marketing if you are an entrepreneur, you are managing the marketing team at your workplace, you are aiming to become a marketing specialist, you are running an SME business and more.
Why are these online courses on digital marketing considered the best in the industry?
I am sure you must have searched for ‘online courses on digital marketing’ or a variation of it on Google, only to find millions of results that confuse you.
The problem with most of these digital marketing courses is that they are focused only on one aspect of digital marketing like SEO or Social media.
These types of ‘one-subject’ mastery courses give you insights only to one or two digital marketing channels and not the complete overview of the industry.
In this guide, I have collated a list of Top 7 online courses on digital marketing. These courses are considered the best in the industry and train you in all the aspects of digital marketing that you need to promote your business.
Let’s get started with our Top 7 online digital marketing courses
- Google digital marketing courses (Free with Certificate)
- Hubspot Digital Marketing Courses (Free with Certificate)
- SEMrush Digital Marketing Courses (Free with Certificate)
- Udemy Digital Marketing Course (Paid with Certificate)
- DigitalDeepak Digital Marketing Mastery Course (Paid with Certificate)
- Optinmonster Digital Marketing Course (Free)
- Neil Patel Digital Marketing Training (Free)
Google Digital Marketing Courses (Free with Certification)
Google’s Digital Garage is yet another successful venture by Google. It is an online education platform that offers several free online courses that can boost your career and help your business development efforts.
The Google course that I recommend is the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing that also provides you with a globally recognized certification.
The course has a well-balanced approach towards all aspects of online marketing including content marketing, email marketing, SEO, social media marketing, paid marketing, and many more.
The course is designed for beginners and people who are still discovering their way around the digital marketing landscape.
It is a free digital marketing course, and all you have to invest is your time.
The course has 26 modules that are covered in 40 hours of video lessons. To receive the Google Digital Marketing Certificate, you must finish all the modules and pass an online test of 40 questions.
HubSpot Online Marketing Courses (Free with Certification)
At the top of their game, Hubspot Digital Academy is one of the most reliable sources to learn online marketing and get certified.
Their specialized digital marketing courses include various aspects of online marketing from Inbound marketing, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and more.
Once again, all online marketing certificate courses can be taken free of cost.
You can also take various courses by Hubspot that are without certifications including one for Search engine optimization, blogging, Facebook ads, and other more.
All of Hubspot Academy courses are updated regularly, designed by industry experts, and are quite informative.
Check the library of online marketing courses by Hubspot and start with the ones you like. I suggest starting with the Inbound Marketing course, followed by content marketing, and work your way around it.
SEMrush Academy (Free with Certification)
SEMRush is responsible for creating one of the best keyword research tools out there. It is my personal favorite, and as is the case of many other SEO experts I have had the pleasure to work with.
To help their users and people just entering the world of digital marketing, the company created the online SEMRush Academy and filled it with several free digital marketing courses that covered various disciplines of digital marketing including SEO, content marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), affiliate marketing, and social media marketing.
On completing the free digital marketing course and the exams, they also award a certification that is recognized globally.
One of the best parts of the SEMRush Academy is that all course material contains video and text study materials and taught by well known digital marketing experts.
The different flavors of the course include courses that cover in-depth details on how to use SEMRush software which will help run better digital marketing campaigns, while other courses cover online marketing subjects like SEO fundamentals, PPC fundamentals, technical SEO, and social media marketing.
Udemy Digital Marketing Course (Paid with Certification)
Anyone who has ever tried to learn any new skills online has probably heard of Udemy. It is one of the biggest platforms to learn digital marketing online or any other digital skill for that matter.
The Udemy course that I recommend for learning digital marketing online is their The Complete Digital Marketing Course that includes 12 mini-courses including
Market Research, WordPress Setup, SEO, SEO Writing
YouTube Marketing, Google Ads, LinkedIn Marketing, App Marketing, Email Marketing, Google Analytics, Social Media Marketing, and Facebook Ads
This in-depth digital marketing by Udemy course comes with a certification for which you need to pay. While the actual course costs up to $199, however, you can get it for $19 with special discounts.
If I had to describe the course in one word, I would use the word Average.
While it seems that the course will cover every aspect of digital marketing and it is a good point to begin, the truth is Udemy fails to deliver on the promise of teaching every aspect of digital marketing.
DigitalDeepak Digital Marketing Mastery Course (Paid with Certificate)
Digital Marketing Mastery academy by Digital Deepak has one of the best online courses on digital marketing in India. I learned a lot of things about digital marketing from DigitalDeepak.
These courses help you reach the top 1% of digital marketers and become a digital marketing expert in no time.
The courses offered by Digital Deepak include SEO Mastery, Google Ads Mastery, Facebook Ads Mastery, Email Marketing Mastery, Social Media Mastery, Analytics Mastery, Affiliate Marketing Mastery, Content Marketing Mastery, and more.
The courses are all certified and are reasonably priced that go up to $25 and are absolutely worth every penny. I can’t recommend this course enough for anybody who wants to actually learn digital marketing.
One of the best things about taking up a course with DigitalDeepak is his incentive-based Internship program with a money-back guarantee.
So basically, whatever money you invest in learning to course, you can earn it back with each completed course(many times more than you invested). That’s a completely new concept in the digital marketing industry.
Learn more about the DigitalDeepak courses
Optinmonster Digital Marketing Training (Free)
Another entry by a company that offers some of the most successful digital marketing tools, Optimmonster has created many valuable free courses to empower its users.
Staying true to their core competencies, their free courses teach everything you need to know about email marketing and conversion optimization.
The point to note with Optinmonster’s digital academy is that their courses don’t cover all the topics of digital marketing but their conversion optimization courses are very useful to learn a thing or two on how to convert a visitor once they land on your website.
Similar to the popular theory, these great courses are completely free, are quite simple to follow, and are ideal for beginners as well as intermediate students of digital marketing.
Neil Patel Digital Marketing Training (Free)
The name Neil Patel goes hand in hand with crème de la crème of the digital marketing industry. If you have ever searched for anything related to online marketing & SEO, there is a high probability that you’ve come across the works of Neil Patel on his site neilpatel.com.
Neil Patel’s Digital Marketing Training course covers everything you should know as an online marketing professional including email marketing, SEO, Instagram marketing, content marketing, eCommerce marketing, and more.
Learn more about Neil Patel’s Digital Marketing Training Programs
What is the best digital marketing course online?
There are no single best digital marketing courses online, each online course comes with its own pros and cons. What you need to do is understand what you aim to get out of these courses.
If you are looking for a free course then I would recommend the courses offered by SEMrush and Fundamentals of Digital Marketing by Google.
If you have a budget and want to instead opt for a paid certification with more value add than a free course, I would recommend giving DigitalDeepak a try.
Is it worth taking a digital marketing course online?
The short answer for that is yes and no.
Taking up online courses in digital marketing is a great way to learn the skills you need to enter the world of digital marketing as well as improve your existing knowledge about different elements of online marketing.
However, that knowledge is of no use if you don’t apply that knowledge to practical use and get results even if it takes some amount of trial and error.
Here are some points to remember to evaluate if the course you want to pursue is worth your time, effort, and money.
- The cost of an online digital marketing course or certification doesn’t always reflect the value it will offer you. Just because a course is provided by a well-known company does not mean their paid courses will give you any value in terms of knowledge, skills, or a boost to your career.
- If you are selecting a paid certificate program, then select the one with clear money-back policies. In case, you realize the course is not something like and want to opt-out after a few days. Or consider opting for a free course before you enrol for paid digital marketing course.
- As I discussed before, the best digital marketing courses are the ones that cover all aspects of digital marketing and not just one but all aspects of digital marketing in a detailed manner.
- Choose a course with reputed industry professionals as teachers. It should also have a detailed structure with text, and video lessons that you refer later on as well.
Conclusion
To recap, we have covered the top 7 online digital marketing certificate programs available online.
These courses are considered to be the best in the industry because they teach you everything you need to know about digital marketing.
A certificate from any of these programs surely adds value to your skills and gives your career the boost you want.
What paid or Free online courses on digital marketing will try first? Share your reviews in the comment section below.
Also, let me know in the comments if there are any other great digital marketing courses that I have not covered in the list.
Originally published at https://vikenpatel.com on September 29, 2020.
