Perfect your digital marketing skills with these online courses

You probably have a LinkedIn page, but you might not know that the careers tool offers training courses too. Its Online Marketing Foundations course is designed to help self-starters promote a business effectively online and build a successful marketing campaign across digital channels including social media. Topics include SEO, email marketing, web analytics, content marketing, social media and influencer marketing, and insights into what makes an email marketing campaign successful. Students are also guided through measuring and interpreting website analytics and other more technical tasks, across around four hours of video split into 13 lessons, with quizzes and an online notebook available. For marketing professionals and those aspiring to join the profession, there’s a certificate of completion and continuing education units available. The course is part of a Learning Path approved by the American Marketing Association.

HubSpot’s co-founder is largely responsible for coming up with the concept of "Inbound Marketing," which is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. Designed for business owners and professional marketers, this intermediate course includes 10 lessons and tons of videos, broken down into easily-digestible topics. These include creative topics such as creating blog posts, to understanding lead generation. There’s a downloadable study guide and quizzes to test your new-found knowledge, plus an optional exam.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is something most of us have heard of, but always seems dauntingly technical to learn. However, SEMrush’s SEO Fundamentals course does a great job of breaking down the complicated stuff into tiny chunks. 

There are 31 lessons in the course and it covers all the SEO basics in a mere four hours. Each section is broken down into video lessons of just three to five minutes, making this ideal for those with busy lives who might want to make the most of a quick bus journey, or five minutes peace in the evening. At the end of each section, there’s a quick quiz to test knowledge and because the videos are so short, it’s easy to recap the trickier bits. The course is free, which also makes it easier for people to grasp SEO at their own pace without worrying about investing in their education.

"I was shocked at how much information was packed into this 45-minute course. I've got notes for days and tons of different recommendations to try out."

This is one of Skillshare's most popular classes in online digital marketing, and is designed to help newbies harness the real power of Facebook and more in just 45 minutes. The course comprises nine video lessons led by Brian Peters from Shopify and teaches users to develop brand awareness, increase website traffic, or drive sales, as well as absorb creative tips such as cultivating an authentic voice and curating effective visual content. It also guides viewers through a five-step Facebook ad strategy. As with most of these courses, lessons are delivered by video, but there's also a community area and 'projects and resources' space on the site to share social media strategies and swap tips, as well as downloadable worksheets.

User review: Ethan Jacobs: 

If you’ve got a brilliant business idea or want to monetize a hobby, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to attracting attention and customers. But Udemy’s The Complete Digital Marketing Course is designed with pre-launch business owners in mind as well as website owners struggling to drive traffic and sales. It costs more than many courses, but is comprehensive, offering 23.5 hours of video, 35 accompanying articles and four downloadable resources, as well as lifetime access so users can dip in and out to build expertise over time. Popular with 200,000 students, the course covers SEO, YouTube marketing, Facebook marketing, Adwords, analytics and more. For users who want to get an idea off the ground, there’s even a guide to building a WordPress website in an hour without any coding, while other more daunting areas like Google Adwords are also broken down, so users can avoid making common mistakes. While some other courses predominantly offer video content, Udemy’s is designed for users to learn by doing, and there are interactive projects and checklists in every section. And if the price tag scares you, keep in mind that Udemy courses are often on sale at extreme discounts.

EDX’s MicroMasters Program in Marketing in a Digital World is delivered in conjunction with Australia’s Curtin University, allowing learners to potentially gain credits for a professional qualification such as a Master’s degree. They can also learn key concepts and practical skills to build or advance a career in digital marketing as they go, with topics including: Creating and sustaining a brand, marketing through digital channels such as social media, marketing metrics, digital brand engagement, digital brand reputation management and consumption behavior across buying contexts, the latter of which is fairly unusual across online digital marketing courses. It takes on average 4-12 weeks for a learner to complete a course and there are five in the program, meaning this is an investment of time, but also an in-depth course. Each course includes a mixture of video lectures, interactive assignments, and of course, an exam at the end of each course, with a certificate of achievement available upon completion, as well the all-important credits.

Coursera is the world’s largest platform of its kind, with 43 million learners. Its Marketing in a Digital World course from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign is the most popular in the digital marketing category. The course focuses on how digital tools, including phones and 3D printing, are revolutionizing the world of marketing by shifting the balance of power from firms to consumers, making it more top-down than others. The course is designed to be completed in four weeks and combines videos, reading, practice projects and peer-graded assessments, with about 10 hours of work doled out in the first week, meaning it’s not for the fainthearted.