TheMarketingblog

5 awesome (and free) marketing courses to take this summer

Whether you want to advance your career, grow your business, it pays to learn the latest techniques in digital marketing.

By equipping yourself with a fresh set of digital marketing skills, you’re able to devise more ways through which you can reach your target audience in a more cost-effective and measurable way.

Essentially, aficionados in the digital marketing space power small business owners to make smart marketing tactics even with a smaller advertising budget.

As a starter, how can you sharpen your marketing skills without spending a lot? If you already consider yourself a professional in the field, how do you brush up on your skills for free?

In this article, we explore five different marketing courses you can enroll in during your summer break for free! Yes, it’s no myth that you and your team can now earn valuable credentials through free online courses. Enhance your skillset with the different course categories we’ve outlined below, plus a peek on the different websites where a free certification for each course is offered:

Let’s begin learning!

 

Inbound Marketing Certification Course at HubSpot Academy

Sign up here: https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/inbound-marketing

 

What It’s About

Winning clients in the digital space takes more than just sending the usual sales pitch. To convince clients that you are worthy of their time and attention, you need to communicate valuable and relevant content for them.

The strategies involved in this method of attracting prospects or potential customers are generally referred to as Inbound Marketing.

In contrast to Outbound Marketing, this technique puts emphasis on establishing customer awareness of certain products and services through content via social media, blog posts, and keyword optimization, among others.

From this stage, you are able to convert prospects to actual customers, engage and delight them even after the sales process to establish long-term client relationships.

 

What This Course Offers

Discover how you can apply the principles of Inbound Marketing from a free online training at HubSpot Academy. Equipped with 7 lessons, 25 teaching videos and 6 quizzes, this course will help you learn techniques that will guide you from content creation, promotion to conversion. Here’s an outline of some of the key concepts you should learn once you end the course:

  • Understand the Fundamentals

Learn how you can develop marketing tactics that can adapt to the evolving buying behaviours of consumers in the digital world.

  • Understand Social Media Promotion

Learn how you can capitalize on the power of social media in engaging potential customers. Take a step towards managing online conversations about your business and milk it to your advantage.

  • Develop a Conversational Growth Strategy

Understand how you can leverage conversations into a channel through which you can build meaningful relationships with your customers and, eventually, grow your business significantly.

  • Understand Conversion Strategy

Assess the effectivity of your Inbound Marketing Strategy through insights.

  • Understanding Lead Nurturing

Learn how you can utilize the right content to nurture meaningful relationships with your customers at any stage in  their buyer’s journey.

  • Align Your Marketing With Sales

Take time in aligning your marketing strategies to actual results through an effective sales enablement strategies.

  • Apply a Customer Marketing Approach

Keep existing customers by listening to their needs, serving it right when they need it, and to make necessary follow-ups to ensure customer satisfaction.

 

PPC University  at Wordstream

Sign up here: https://www.wordstream.com/learn

 

What It’s About

With the massive amount of data being circulated on the web everyday, getting in front of your potential customers when they search for products and services like yours is crucial in growing your business.

 

Through the advertising model known as Pay-Per-Click Marketing or Paid Search Marketing, you are given the chance to get ahead of the search results by placing an ad on an ad platform such as Google, and paying for it only when your customers click on it.

What This Course Offers

Learn how you can better manage, optimize, and set up your paid ad campaigns to help you maximize your returns with your PPC budget in Google Ads.

Whether you’re a beginner or an expert in digital marketing, there’s always so much to learn at Wordstream’s PPC University, where you can access an organized education resource material with a downloadable ebook for free! Inclusive in this three-part course are the following key modules:

  • PPC 101

Here, you can learn the fundamentals of PPC marketing and key terms that you need to be familiar with. It also introduces you to the basics of Google Ads auction process, quality scoring or the estimates of the quality of your ads and landing pages that trigger them.

This module also trains you in identifying the right keywords that will bring in relevant and useful traffic to your website.

  • PPC 102

Explore the different practices for ad budget management and optimization plus AdWord techniques used by leading marketers to tap a target audience. This module also runs you through topics on keyword research, landing page optimization, conversion tracking, and many more.

  • Advanced PPC

Once you’ve ticked off the first two modules of PPC University, it’s time to bring your PPC training to the next level. Here, you get to understand more advanced strategies in achieving specific campaign goals such as lead generation, how you can cut budget costs through PPC tactics like dayparting and geotargeting.

 

Google Digital Garage

Sign up here: https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/courses

 

What It’s About

In line with Google’s “Grow with Google” program, individuals and community organizations can now access free digital learning tools at Google Digital Garage to help jump-start your career and grow your business. Regardless of your skill level, or background, the learning you will be able to harness from their digital training is limitless!

What This Course Offers

Discover a range of free learning content from different  individual modules to an entire course from the experts at Digital Garage. Here’s a peek of the different categories of free online lessons that you can access today:

  • Online Courses

The three main course categories under online courses: Data and Tech, Digital Marketing, and Career Development.

  • Certification

Google Digital Garage also gives you the opportunity to get certified in the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. This course is accredited by the Interactive Advertising Europe and The Open University.

  • This course is packed with 26 free modules and practical exercises

  • Learn new skills through bite-sized video tutorials and knowledge tests

  • Self-paced learning

  • Unlimited access

  • Free

Once you complete all modules, you are then asked to take a 40-item final exam and download your certificate.

  • Free Face-to-face Coaching

If you wish to sign up to an actual workshop to develop new digital skills, you can easily book different  face-to-face coaching classes.

HTML & CSS Fundamentals at Codecademy

Sign up here: https://www.codecademy.com/learn/make-a-website

What It’s About

Another set of staple skills that you can learn is website building. To start off, you need to learn the basic building blocks that make up a website⁠: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Think of HTML as the structure or the skeletal part of a website. On the other hand, the CSS modifies the design and display of a website.

What This Course Offers

Codecademy offers an introductory course to web development wherein you get to learn to understand and modify the structure and design of your webpage. Here’s an outline of their course curriculum:

  • Site Structure – Build structure with HTML.

  • A Closer Look at CSS – Style a site with CSS.

  • Space and Boundaries – Learn how CSS can organize boundaries and spaces when styling a webpage.

  • Building with Bootstrap – Work with a popular CSS framework in designing websites fast and easy.

 

At the end of the course, you should be able to build four websites using the fundamentals you’ve learned in the modules.

All About Social Media at Quicksprout University

Sign up here: https://www.quicksprout.com/social-media/

What It’s About

Social media is becoming an indispensable channel in generating more leads for many businesses. Thus, it’s imperative for many entrepreneurs and digital marketers to learn more about how it can be maximized to its full advantage.

Founded by top Digital Marketing expert, Neil Patel, Quicksprout is one of today’s leading online marketing websites where you can access tips and hacks to grow your business. There are tons of topics packed with rich insights on everything digital. In this article, we will take a quick look at one of the key lessons under the Digital Marketing umbrella⁠—social media.

What This Website Offers

Unlike other websites mentioned earlier, Quicksprout banks on guides and how-to articles to get you started with your Digital Marketing journey. For social media, here are some of the key guides they offer:

  • When To Incorporate Social Media Into Your Marketing Strategy

  • How To Build A Social Media Marketing Funnel

  • How To Optimize Your Business For Local Search And Social Marketing

  • Best Social Media Management Tools

In a Nutshell

The digital space is a  fast-evolving landscape that leaves little room for businesses that refuse to adapt to ever-changing consumer behaviors. How do you stay ahead of the competition? Learn and relearn.

…………………………………………………………………….