Digital marketing is essential to engage with prospects and increase sales in a cost-effective and measurable way.
Marketers continuously face challenges with securing their budget, providing ROI for their activities, generating leads and traffic, choosing the most relevant technologies, hiring and training top talent, and more.
According to the State of Digital Marketing report by Altimeter, digital marketers have complex priorities.
51% of them said that using more data to create customized content was their priority. 50% of the respondents said that they focus on investing technologies that enable personalization and real-time delivery of data.
Image via Altimeter
Beginners assume that they can start an online marketing project and succeed by sharing occasional Facebook and Instagram posts.
But that’s not enough.
Digital marketing requires a lot of learning before you get to the point of practice.
If you’re still at college or university, you have a great opportunity to master digital marketing skills. This is not a skill that only marketers need. Business owners and professionals in any niche will benefit from it.
We’ll list courses from different universities, so you can consider them if you’re about to apply to college. But we’ll also include online courses in our list. You don’t have to be a student to take them. That’s the beauty of the online learning industry: it’s open to anyone who wants to learn.
Let’s take a look at six of the best digital marketing courses for both students and marketers:
If you don’t want to take on-campus courses and you don’t want to pay to study digital marketing, this is where you should start.
Google has a great Analytics Academy, which offers several courses that can improve your marketing skills.
Google Analytics for Beginners is the starting point. This course will guide you through the main features of Google Analytics.
Even if you take another marketing course, you should still go through this one.
You’ll need Google Analytics to analyze reports on your online projects, implement tracking code, and track all steps of your campaign.
Once you go through those lessons, you can continue with the Advanced Google Analytics course. That one will teach you about collecting, processing and configuring data, and using complicated marketing and analytics tools.
EduBirdie is an online writing service for the U.S. and Australian students. “I asked to do my assignment once, and it was great!” If that’s what you’re thinking, you probably recognized this agency. But did you know that it’s also great for learning stuff that you don’t know?
Keep this in mind: You don’t need a certificate to become good at digital marketing. You only need to learn as much as possible and start with your practice.
EduBirdie can be part of that learning process. The company hires experts in various industries, including marketing. MA and Ph.D. writers will guide you through the process of developing a strategy, planning specific steps, coming up with a content marketing plan, and writing promotional pieces.
Through collaboration with experts, you’ll learn and you’ll have some work done at the same time. You can start working on your marketing campaign while you’re working with EduBirdie writers.
This program is part of the iMBA degree offered by the University of Illinois through Coursera. There’s a free trial that gives you unlimited access to all courses in the program. If you’re willing to earn a certificate, you’ll pay $79 per month to continue studying. The faster you go through the specialization program, the less you’ll pay for it.
The specialization program includes seven courses:
It’s a pretty compact program, which gives you a nice foundation in digital marketing.
The California State University, Fullerton is one of the most prominent research universities in the US. It offers a certificate program for those who want to pursue a career in digital marketing. It includes six online courses and it takes 24-36 weeks to complete. Once you complete the program, you will earn a certificate.
Throughout the course, you will learn how to develop a digital marketing plan. You will learn about different tactics and strategies for achieving the goals in that plan. You’ll learn how to implement knowledge and analytics to guide and analyze your campaigns.
Finally, you’ll also get valuable information about the laws and regulations that regulate the digital marketing industry.
You have to be aware of privacy and confidentiality issues before you can start promoting a product or a service.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers this program, which is suitable for marketers and business owners who are already in the industry. However, it’s also great for students who want to make their first steps in digital marketing.
The course is taught on campus, and it costs $4,100. Accommodation is not included in that price.
It’s a versatile program that covers several areas of digital marketing, including mobile advertising and commerce, social media marketing and analytics, content marketing, search marketing, A/B testing, randomized experimentation, viral product design, and more.