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8 Courses to Take to Make a Move in Digital Marketing

Take online courses in areas covering SEO, voice, and content to prepare for your next role in digital marketing.

September 20, 2019
Business Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the fast-expanding aspect of marketing that involves anything with a digital element. That includes work in social media, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and digital advertising. If you're looking to move your marketing career forward or even get into marketing from some other field, then gaining skills in the discipline's digital elements is an excellent career move. Even better, you don't need to go back to college or business school to do it. There are plenty of quality courses in these subjects available online.

"Digital marketing encompasses any type of marketing that involves an internet-enabled device and related technology to deliver advertising, messaging, content and communications to engage new or existing audiences, with the goal of building business value," said Heidi Cohen, Chief Content Officer at the Actionable Marketing Guide.

Staying current in digital marketing can be challenging as it moves just as quickly as technology. As an example, email marketing is exploding with products such as Salesforce Pardot (Visit Site at Pardot) , which lets companies send automated messages if a newsletter recipient fails to open emails or if a consumer abandons an e-commerce cart containing products. These capabilities are being bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to help you better understand your marketing data and forge closer relationships with prospects and customers.

Online learning websites, such as Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and even YouTube, have plenty of web-only courses available that teach you what you need to know for your next digital marketing role. Here are some recommendations of some courses to take.

1. Introduction to Digital Marketing

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Introduction to Digital Marketing
For an introduction to digital marketing, try taking the course "Become a Digital Marketer." You'll learn how to integrate search, video, social media, email marketing, and display advertising into your marketing efforts. You'll also get an introduction to Google Analytics (GA) and lead generation, which is the process of attracting new prospects.

This course not only introduces you to these aspects of digital marketing, but also gives you a beginner's glimpse into how they work. This includes things like the auction process of paying for important marketing keyword mentions, how technology allows for automation in marketing, and how integrating data from marketing campaigns can help other aspects of the business.
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2. Social Media Marketing

Social Media Management & Analytics Tools

Social media management and analytics is all about steering a brand's presence across websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These websites have become key elements in many companies' marketing strategies.

John Marcinuk, Head of Marketing at Blue Fountain Media, recommends taking a course like "Social Media Marketing Mastery" on Udemy to prepare for a digital marketing role in social media.

This course gives you the knowledge about how to promote a brand on Pinterest, YouTube, and other platforms. It also teaches you how to create ads in social media and target your messaging for the right social properties. For example, according to Marcinuk, Pinterest has become something of a forgotten social brand for fields like fashion and food. "It's a great place to advertise if it's appropriate for your brand," he said.

3. Email Marketing

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Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending subscribers deals, content, and communications about product offerings and sending out scheduled blasts of marketing emails. To learn what you need to know in email marketing for your next role, Marcinuk recommends taking the class "Managing Email Marketing Lists and Campaigns" on LinkedIn Learning. It's taught by Megan Adam, a social media strategist.

"This course teaches you how to build out your subscriber base, keep yourself focused, and manage email for the long term," Marcinuk said. It's ideal for users who need intermediate training beyond simply understanding the basic features of a product like Mailchimp.

The course helps you decide which email marketing platform to use, how to build an email list, and how to optimize your email campaigns. It also covers email marketing automation and how to conduct A/B testing, which lets you send out two versions of an email to see which one is more effective for a particular audience. This can translate into more responses or opened messages.

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4. Integrated Marketing

Customer Analytics

An area of marketing called "integrated marketing" melds multiple areas, including advertising, public relations (PR), and direct marketing—both from a strategic as well as technological perspective. To prepare for this aspect of digital marketing, Marcinuk recommends the course "Integrated Marketing Communications: Advertising, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, and More" on Coursera.

The course is taught by Marketing Professor Eda Sayin of the IE Business School, which comprises three educational institutions: the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; and Singapore Management University. The course covers how to combine multiple areas like PR, SEO, and social media into your marketing plans.

Integrated marketing communications is part of a holistic marketing strategy, according to Marcinuk. "Just performing advertising or just doing PR, without them talking to each other, without a greater goal in mind, or [without] aligning your business goals, won't get the same results without an integrated mindset," Marcinuk said.

5. SEO Skills

SEO Marketing Analytics

SEO is a key way to build links and increase your traffic for your websites. To gain more knowledge in SEO, we recommend taking the course "Become an SEO Expert" on LinkedIn Learning. You'll learn about SEO foundations, keyword strategy, and the difference in SEO locally versus internationally.

In addition to its relationship to email marketing, a key thing to study regarding SEO is search intent. "It's all good to be ranking for keywords you should be ranking for, but we need to ask why? Is it a vanity metric to satisfy people in the C-suite?" Marcinuk asked.

6. Content Marketing

4.5
Editors' Choice
ebooks

A growing area of digital marketing is the field of content marketing, in which brands become publishers of articles, infographics, podcasts, and videos. You can choose key courses to take in this area as part of LinkedIn Learning's "Become a Content Marketer" program. The "learning path," or course series, includes an introductory course called "Content Marketing Foundations." There are also introductions to blogging, newsletters, and podcasting.

In addition to this course, Marcinuk recommends the "Content Marketing and Certification Course" from HubSpot Academy. HubSpot also offers a marketing automation and email marketing platform. The course addresses how to build a content creation framework, generate content ideas, and measure your content. Marcinuk says companies need to know when to invest in a piece of content, how to frame it, and how to build it in a scalable way.

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7. Voice Marketing

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A growing part of digital involves voice, in which you try to attract the attention of your audience using a voice-based device, Cohen noted. Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri are part of this growing space, and these products will play a role in voice search marketing, according to Cohen. To learn more about this topic, take the course "Voice Search Marketing" on LinkedIn Learning.

John Jantsch, a marketing consultant and author of "Duct Tape Marketing," teaches the class. You'll learn how searching for products on computers, phones, and TVs helps marketers find customers. It also covers the background of how voice search is used.

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About Brian T. Horowitz

Senior Analyst, Business

Brian T. Horowitz is Senior Analyst, Business for PCMag. Brian has covered technology for more than 20 years. His tech journalism career began at Computer Shopper magazine in 1996. Since then he has written extensively about enterprise IT, innovation, and the convergence of technology and health. His work has appeared in more than 30 publications, including eWEEK, Fast Company, Men’s Fitness, Scientific American, and USA Weekend. Brian is a graduate of Hofstra University in New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @bthorowitz or email him at [email protected].

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