This post is about the free Digital Marketing Certification Programs that are available online. It also covers what all steps you need to follow to get certified in this rapidly growing career field.
Digital Marketing got introduced in the 1990’s and day-by-day Digital Marketing is taking loops and has become the next Big Thing on the Internet. As traditional marketing went digital, it has improved the prospects of businesses and individual brands. Moreover, digital marketing is helping businesses grow from local markets to global markets. Surprisingly, with digital marketing, almost all online business earnings have doubled, tripled and also gone to ten folds in the past years.
However, digital marketing has not only helped Entrepreneurs with their businesses but also helped professionals in getting good jobs.
Learning digital marketing and getting certified will open up various options for individuals. Be it work from home individuals, Businessmen, Students or Job seekers, almost everyone can be benefited with digital marketing certification.
Since businesses have gone digital, education has also gone a level up. E-learning helps individuals learn anything, from anywhere and at any time. There are various paid and free digital marketing certifications online.
To begin with, we will look at the list of 10 Free Digital Marketing Certification Courses
Digital Marketing Certification by Google
Google, the Search Engine Giant is widespread and has added a great value to Digital Marketing. Google has helped Marketers with various courses related to digital marketing. The course covers from basics which are needed for a digital marketer to advanced level. A beginner can very easily learn digital marketing terms and tools from the courses. A proper format is maintained to teach topic step by step.
#1. Digital Marketing Unlocked
Digital Marketing Unlocked by Google is a free Digital Marketing certification that you can get by pursuing their online course. This course focuses on Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. In order to access the course only a signup with email id is required.
The library covers 26 topics and then sub-topics which help you learn digital marketing.
Video Learning is the base of digital marketing unlocked course. After watching videos you need to test your knowledge on each subtopic. You have to appear to a assessment quiz after completion of each main topic.
Each Topic gives you a Badge which appears on your Dashboard. Prior to final assessment test, you need to complete 26 topics. As soon as you complete the final assessment test you will get “Digital Unlocked Course Certificate “.
Digital unlocked course also comes with an Offline mode of learning. You can download Primer App and you can watch tutorials without having an internet connection. This app has many 5 min videos. These videos can be accessed anytime.
You get to learn about business and digital marketing skills like how to create a website, email marketing, plan for startup or business, run online ads, do SEO etc. These lessons are available in both English and Hindi language.
Until now, Google has helped individuals, businesses, students and home-makers learn digital skills without investing a single penny. Without delay, go ahead and upgrade yourself digitally With Google’s free digital unlocked course.
#2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics course helps you understand Analytics, how to use the tool and analyze the data.
You get to learn how to create and set up an analytics account, how to analyze basic data, reports related to the behaviour of the audience, track campaigns and much more.
In fact, a beginner can learn from the basic level and then upgrade to a higher level with each course. Meanwhile, you need to score 80% or above to get the Google Analytics Course Certificate.
Google Analytics Academy comes with 4 Courses of Video Tutorials.
- Google Analytics for Beginners
- Advanced Google Analytics
- E-commerce Data Analytics
- Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
Google analytics course has made a Demo Account for individuals, it helps access real-time data and actual data. You can add filters and view data from Search ads / Search Console. To point out, there are various options available to learn with Demo Account.
Step 1: Login to Google analytics course:
Basically, log in with your email id, after this you need to complete a two-step process.
- First, to log in to Google analytics academy you need to answer questions describing your job.
- The second step includes a pre-course survey, this survey includes questions which help you know about your analytics knowledge stage.
- Immediately after these two steps, you get an access to Analytics Academy Course.
Step 2: Access Demo Account :
Firstly, you have to create a Google analytics account. Furthermore, you can add demo account to your existing Google analytics account. It becomes easy to learn analytics with Google analytics certification course and demo account at the same time.
Google analytics Community on Youtube has many videos uploaded related to analytics which are of tremendous help.
#3. Academy for ads
Academy for Ads comes with various courses. This free certification course includes setting up a Google Adwords account, learning AdWords in different formats like Search, Display, Video, Mobile etc.
Remember that you can reach your target audience easily with Adwords. While learning about bidding and pricing, you can customize and build your ad campaigns with the help of Adwords free certification courses. Importantly, Academy of ads focuses on different adword mediums and their attributes to help create, manage and optimize ad campaigns.
In particular, these courses are made of pictorial and text format tutorials.
In short, the different AdWords free certification courses are as follows:
- Adwords Fundamentals
- Mobile Certifications
- Search Certifications
- Video Certifications
- Display Certifications
- Google Shopping Certifications
After completion of each course, you need to take an assessment. This assessment is time and score bound. For instance, you have to complete an assessment of 65 questions in 1.5 hours with a score of 80% or higher. There is a prerequisite, you need to complete courses in the given order to get access to the next course.
Certifications by Hubspot
Hubspot is an Inbound Sales and Marketing focused company founded in 2006. Hubspot provides tools for Social Media Marketing, Content Management, Web Analytics, Landing pages and Search Engine Optimization.
With being developer and marketer of sales and marketing products, the company came up with free certificate courses for Sales and Marketing. These courses are focused on Inbound Sales and Marketing taught by market experts.
By enrolling to these courses, an individual can learn required skills. Being up-to-date with new trends and techniques will help you grow in your field.
These are 2 Digital Marketing Certification Courses for Marketing by Hubspot
#4. Content Marketing Certificate
Content Marketing course helps learn in depth about content, i.e developing, promoting and analysing content. Creating content marketing strategies helps to build scalable and repeatable process. These strategies are useful for creating and promoting content.
Creating a Content Strategy is the base of this Course. In addition, with Video Tutorials it becomes easier to learn these Skills.
Going into details, this Course covers 11 sections related to Content Marketing:
- Understanding Content Marketing.
- Generating Content Ideas.
- Creating a Blog.
- Planning and Building a Content Strategy.
- Becoming an effective writer.
- Promoting, Measuring and Analysing Content.
Beside the videos, a study guide is also available, which helps us prepare for the content marketing certification exam. This exam needs to be completed within 90 minutes. In fact, this digital marketing certification program will help you a good “Content Marketer”.
#5. Email Marketing
Email Marketing is trending and most favored technique among digital marketers, businesses and associated professionals. Email marketing is an essential element of digital marketing plans. It should be implemented for growing sales and stay in touch with customers.
Hubspot Academy’s Email Marketing Certification Course helps learn with series of videos. They also offer free additional resources and downloadable transcript which is a textual script of the video.
This course covers 9 sections related to email marketing.
- Lifecycle Marketing.
- Contact Management and Segmentation.
- Email Contents, Design and Functionality.
- Measuring Success with Analytics.
- Managing a sustainable email marketing strategy.
After this certification you will be good at using Email Marketing as an effective tool for your business and career.
#6. Bing ads Training course
Though Google has been the most used search engine, Bing also tries its best to come up in the list.
When we plan for SEO, we should consider all major search engines. Hence, you need to consider Bing while planning for Adwords. Because it will help you increase your search rankings.
Bing ads training course comes with a study guide which needs to be downloaded. This study guide focuses on
- Getting Started with Bings Ads.
- Bing ads Features and various ways to use them
- Campaign Optimisation
- How-tos of Bing Editor
This Guide helps you learn Bing Ads in details. After going through it you can take an exam and get Bing certified as well.
#7. Beginners Guide to SEO By MOZ
MOZ company was founded in 2004, since then it focuses on Search Engine Optimisation. MOZ Beginners’ Guide to SEO helps an individual learn SEO.
To summarize, this course consists of 10 Chapters, which are available for download in a PDF format. Contents of the course include
- How Search engines operate, myths and misconceptions about SEO
- Search engine friendly design and how it affects content rankings
- Keyword research and search engine tools
- Measuring and tracking success
In addition, MOZ has also updated a free digital marketing certification course on Udemy.com. This course is 3.5 hrs video on demand. It focuses on on-page, off-page Seo and other tips and tricks for SEO.
Undoubtedly, learning Search Engine Optimisation with MOZ will help us know basics of SEO and how to implement them.
Digital Marketing Certification by Social Media Platforms
In the long run, Social Media Marketing is an important part of digital marketing. It should be on the top of the to-do list. Learning social media marketing will help you know about all internal features of platforms.
Most of all the well-known Social Media Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin have come up with free courses. So, we can learn about these platforms from scratch and then implement in our strategies.
Let’s look into the contents of these courses.
#8. Facebook Blueprint
You can learn a lot fo things about Facebook by attempting the Facebook Blueprint course. Similar to Google Unlocked and Hubspot Academy courses, this course is a series of videos tutorials.
This course helps learn each and everything about Facebook and Instagram like:
- Learn about Facebook, Instagram and Messenger
- Target Audience with different Ad formats
- Build Awareness and Generate Leads
- Increase Online and In-store Sales
- Create and Manage Ads
You need to complete the videos one by one and after that, you can see your certifications on the dashboard.
#9. Twitter Flight School
Twitter Flight school helps us learn how to engage using Twitter. There are 2 Courses which Twitter Flight school offers
- Marketing Leadership
- Executive Leadership.
Specifically, Marketing Leadership focuses on Twitter for business. It covers basics of Twitter, content planning, campaign objectives and marketing to reach the target audience.
Another course, Executive Leadership focuses on Twitter for executives and helps to build a personal brand.
To start with, you can enrol for only one course at a time. Also, you need to complete the course in a given time. To summarize, the videos of topics are usually 15 minutes long and even some are shorter than that.
#10. LinkedIn
LinkedIn doesn’t provide a formatted course till now. Rather a how-to text guide helps you learn relevant things starting from creating company pages to how-to create ads. You can create an account and learn simultaneously.
This guide will help you get familiar with LinkedIn. At the same time it will help you learn managing account and ads.
On the other hand, Lynda.com offers LinkedIn Learning course. LinkedIn has Instructors on Lynda.com who teach LinkedIn. You get a free 1-month trial from your account to learn on Lynda.com. Here you can take courses and complete them to get certificates. LinkedIn adds certificates directly to your LinkedIn Profile.
In addition to the free digital marketing certification programs available, there are many paid certifications available online. I am listing a few well-known digital marketing certification courses below:
Digital Marketing Certification Course By Vskills
Vskills Certifications are provided by a Government Body (ICSIL). ICSIL is a joint venture of Govt of NCT Delhi and Govt of India. The course focuses on the topics like Mailers, Social Media, Search Engine, and Inbound techniques.
After you enroll, you need to attempt tests on
- Search engine optimization
- Search engine marketing
- Email marketing
- Inbound marketing
- Affiliate marketing.
Manipal Prolearn
Manipal Prolearn has partnered with Google, Sandbox, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and PEOPLECERT.
This course offers a complete digital marketing module consisting of SEO, Social Media Marketing, SEM and Online Reputation Management.
I have tried to jot down almost all of the various online free digital marketing certification courses. But, if I have missed any, feel free to list them in the comment box below.
I am sure that the above digital marketing certification programs will add a value to your digital marketing knowledge. Also, they would help you to flourish in your digital marketing career or take your business online.
So, I would suggest you start with your Digital Marketing Certification Course today. And put one by one to your completed list.
