Digital marketing skills are critical, not only to those actually working in the field, but also to entrepreneurs.
Even if you’re past your very early startup days, and have a defined marketing team, the most successful founders have a working knowledge of each aspect of the business, and can provide knowledgeable oversight of digital marketing campaigns.
Check out these five top free online courses to build your digital marketing skills:
Over the past 8 years, more than 100,000 people from over 100 countries have participated in Google’s Online Marketing Challenge.
The Marketing Challenge is an online course, with modules covering introductory digital marketing, search engine marketing, search advertising, display advertising, mobile, social, analytics, and video, making it one of the more comprehensive courses for beginners. However, it’s also unique in that Google gives learners a $250 AdWords budget to use over a three-week period, to run an online advertising campaign for a business or not-for-profit. The most successful learners can even win prizes from Google.
If you’re looking for a free online digital marketing course with a competitive angle, and a real-world experience element, this is a great option.
PPC University is a totally free online learning resource created by my own former company, WordStream, to help build your PPC and digital marketing skills.
Wordstream has access to thousands of accounts, spending billions of dollars on PPC advertising, and over the years, they’ve consistently found that small to medium-size businesses struggle to manage their accounts in a way that’s cost-effective, and generates strong results. Three streams offer lessons for beginning to advanced users, with additional modules for social advertising.
You can also access a number of webinars and white papers to enhance your digital marketing education – and best of all, everything’s mobile-friendly so you can learn on the go, whenever you have time.
Constant Contact’s Social Media Quickstarter emphasizes opportunities to integrate email with social media marketing, in order to maximize the impact of both channels.
In a series of step-by-step lessons, learners can study digital marketing tactics for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, blogging, and online listings and reviews sites. The way the courses are structured makes them perfect for beginner-level marketers, with components such as glossaries and how-to guides, combined with practical examples of the lessons at hand in action.
HubSpot Academy offers an incredibly comprehensive digital marketing course that currently has more than 3,000 students participating at Udemy. Over 4.5 hours of instruction in 38 lectures are included in the low, low course price of completely free.
Participants will learn the basics of inbound marketing, SEO, landing pages, blogging, conversion optimization, lead nurturing, and email marketing, as well as how they all work together for a cohesive and more effective inbound marketing strategy.
After the certification exam, graduates receive a badge for their résumé or LinkedIn profile to show that they’ve expanded their marketing skills with HubSpot Academy.
Alison is a massive online learning community of more than six million registered users, with standards-based and certified courses offered absolutely free of charge.
Developed by free online courses pioneer Mike Feerick, Alison was founded in 2007 and was the first MOOC (massive online open course) provider. Today, you can take the free digital marketing course Diploma in E-Business to build skills in search optimization, Google Analytics and AdWords, campaign tracking and integration, revenue metrics analysis, digital measurement, and more.
And, of course, if you want to make yourself truly invaluable to any organization (including your own startup), you need to learn how to code.
These five courses will each give you a heap of pointers on how to improve your digital marketing knowledge and performance, putting you on track to maximize your results.
A version of this post was first published on Inc.com.
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