02 Mar How to learn digital marketing for free?

The most general description of Digital Marketing is that it’s the promotion of brands to connect with potential customers using the internet or other forms of digital communications like social media, email campaigns, and the ads you usually see on websites, and even the ads on youtube are a form of digital marketing.

And if you want to learn about Digital Marketing and how to employ the practices, to can be a little confusing!

Here, we have listed for you the ways of how to learn digital marketing for free, with special courses that you can access with no extra charge.

Why should you learn about digital marketing?

Well, in 2016 for the first time ever, digital ads surpassed Tv ads with a revenue of 72.5 billion while Tv ads generated 71.3 billion.

With these numbers in mind, I guess we can all agree on the direction the world of advertising is heading in, no matter what your plans are it’s a good idea to learn a bit about digital marketing because it will help you set up your business online if you decide to open one or already have one with no digital presence.

And if you decide that you like digital marketing you can always invest more time and resources and become a digital marketing specialist.

How do I start?

Starting anything new can be a bit overwhelming so first of all, we’re going to break down the essentials of digital marketing into its main categories :

• Content marketing
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing ) also known as pay per click advertising
• Social Media Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Marketing analytics

I know this seems like a lot to grasp but you don’t need all of this to start setting up your business online and with mastering a few of these you can be a digital marketing expert.

All of these categories are connected and intertwined so once you start with one all the others become slightly easier to get a handle on.

Where should I start?

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Certificate From Google

This free 40-hour course offered by Google covers almost all categories of digital marketing and gives you the knowledge you need to start your journey.

This course introduces you to how to build your online presence and plan your business strategy, get your business discovered easier on the web, be noticed in search ads, get noticed locally and helps you dive into the world of social media, and optimise for mobile use, advertising on others websites and the importance of display advertising and most importantly Google Analytics and how to turn data into useful insights.

I can keep going but you get my point.

In my own opinion, this course is the gateway to starting with digital marketing.

A lot of useful materials are found in Google’s Digital Garage so make sure to check them out

Free Digital Marketing Basics Course

This is a free tutorial created by Sorav Jain at Udemy that covers the basics of digital marketing. It doesn’t cover wide areas like the Google Course but since it’s free you might as well check it out.

This 6-hour course introduces you to digital marketing and the skills required to become a digital marketer and gives a few reasons why you should become a digital marketer.

After being introduced to digital marketing and instructor, there’s an introduction to various models in digital marketing including search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), affiliate marketing, email marketing and gives you a glimpse into behind the scenes of a blog.

Lastly, practical digital marketing techniques like what is ” Google Analytics “and ” generating leads ” on different platforms and using WhatsApp for business.

Read more: What Is The Role Of SEO In Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing 101

This 3-hour beginner-level course helps you gain a digital marketing advantage by teaching you the basics of digital marketing and insights on efficient marketing techniques.

It covers the management of the lifecycle of a customer, mobile marketing, analytics, IoT marketing, and helps you understand the history of digital marketing and the direction it’s headed in and its global impact.

This course was designed to help you with the basics of digital marketing and how everything became the way it is today in a simplified way.

Digital marketing specialization

This free series of courses offered by Coursera and the University of Illinois at Urbana-champaign is a part of the master of business administrations (iMBA).

The 6 courses cover:

• The digital marketing revolution
• Marketing in a digital world
• Digital marketing analytics in theory
• Digital marketing analytics in practice
• Digital media and marketing principles
• Digital media and marketing strategies

And a four-week capstone designed to help you apply the principles you learned in the previous courses and give you hands-on experience.

This course is very useful if you want to be a digital marketing specialist but it’s not necessary if you just want enough information to help you in your online business.

Final thoughts

I would advise you to start with the Fundamentals of digital marketing by Google because it gives you a little bit of everything after that you can decide if the information was enough for your goals and if not you can now take specified courses that fit your and your business needs.

And even if you want to start a digital marketing career, this course will help you find out what part of digital marketing is the most suitable for you or help you discover a passion for a certain part in digital marketing.