In just a few short years, digital marketing has gone from being an esoteric niche skillset and marketplace to become a major discipline now considered as being essential for business success.
Unsurprisingly, employers are therefore desperate to recruit people with certified skills in digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is essentially the business of presenting a proposition to potential customers so that it is:
- Visible to the target population segments
- Relevant and compelling.
In the past, the various channels open to marketing experts were mostly conventional, comprising things such as newspapers, journals, radio, and TV. Since the end of the twentieth century though, the explosion of digital technology and its all-pervasive role in our modern society, has presented marketing organizations with a vast array of new potential channels for showcasing their propositions.
Understanding those channels and how to best exploit them as platforms for their organization’s propositions is the domain of digital marketing.
Why Taking a Digital Marketing Course Is Beneficial
When recruiting digital marketing specialists, potential employers are not interested in resumes majoring on opinion, assumption, speculation and “I can learn-on-the-job” propositions. Instead, they want to see hard evidence that candidates already have the required knowledge and associated skillset. They know that such skills are a critical success factor for their marketing going forward and they are prepared to pay comparable salaries to get the right people.
For professionals with those certified digital marketing skills, the rewards can be highly attractive. Surveys indicate that salary and income levels can exceed $100,000 per annum.
Here are the top seven digital marketing courses that you should consider seriously if you are seeking to take advantage of this opportunity.
Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing Certified Associate Certification Training
Although there are significant numbers of courses out there, employers tend to look for people who have broad-spectrum knowledge and expertise rather than those who have knowledge of only one vertical discipline under the broad digital marketing umbrella. That means it might be a smart move to select Certification training that is equally broad-based.
This is a major advantage of Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing Course.
The course covers all aspects of this discipline, ranging from grassroots fundamental concepts up to finely-tuned expert practitioner level knowledge.
Course Overview:
- 53 hours of instructor-led training
- 40+ hours of self-paced video training
- Online project sessions with instructor mentoring
- Silicon Valley authors as instructors
- Assistance in preparing for OMCA, Google Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube, and Facebook exams
- Training in the key digital marketing tools
- Recognized as being one of the most cost-effective and highest quality certification programs
- Perfect for business professionals, entrepreneurs, students and marketers looking to broaden their skills
Coursera Digital Marketing Specialization Course
Coursera’s digital marketing course is a subset of the University of Illinois’ MBA program.
Course overview:
- 7 separate online courses, spread over 26+ weeks
- Real-life project completion is included in the above
- Covered topics include digital marketing analytics, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and 3D Printing.
Individual courses may be taken stand-alone and credit obtained can be counted towards the MBA.
Online Studies – Of Course Digital Marketing 4 in 1:
This Of Course Online Studies course covers 4 specific domains.
Course overview:
- Concentrates on Website, Google, Social Media, and YouTube
- Very useful for those seeking to drive more traffic to their site or application
- Assumes little by way of existing experience/knowledge
- Consists of 100+ pages of downloadable guide documents
- Targeted at intro-level low-cost, practical training.
Enrollment is open-ended, and durations can be tailored to individual needs.
edX Wharton Digital Marketing
Here study is based upon 4 separate courses specifically designed to assist people in developing the skills that will make their resume stand out. This is part of the University of Pennsylvania’s online tuition presence.
Course Overview:
- Requires a commitment of around 3-5 hours each week over approximately 24 weeks
- Covers concepts such as omnichannel marketing, marketing analytics, social media strategy, and analysis plus data-driven customer-centric approaches to customer retention
- New techniques in Market Research, such as Regression Analysis, Conjoint Analysis, and Social Media Analytics.
The course results in a professional certificate.
Digital Marketing Institute - Certified Digital Marketing Professional
This certification is a Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing. It introduces students to the key digital marketing specializations, ranging across the spectrum from mobile to social media and from there to email, PPC marketing, and SEO.
Course Overview:
- 30 hours of instructor-led online tuition
- Consists of entry-level tuition assuming no background knowledge
- The course breaks down into 10 separate modules covering subjects from the foundations of digital marketing through to analytics and developing a digital strategy
- 92% of those concluding the training have stated it had a positive impact on their careers.
This is the professional-level certification which is one of several on offer up to and including a Digital Marketing Master qualification.
Hyper Island Digital Market Online Course
Hyper Island’s stated objective is to “Discover how to build, test and implement to deliver real results” in a digital marketing context.
Course Overview:
- Six weeks of study comprising around 6 hours each week for most students
- Includes live sessions with experts
- Understanding, creating and executing digital marketing strategies and tactics across the entire funnel from acquisition to retention
- The design and implementation of digital marketing campaigns, selecting appropriate tools, channels, and approaches to target potential customers
- The collection, analysis, and response to data, drawing insights and making iterations that increase conversion rates.
A certificate is issued for successful completion.
Online Studies – Emerson College Certificate in Digital Marketing
This is an online study course resulting in a Digital Marketing Graduate Certificate.
Course overview:
Developing participants in a position where they will be able to:
- Develop targeted, customer-centric digital marketing campaigns across a range of digital interfaces
- Design marketing programs that account for the unique user experience needs of mobile consumers
- Implement digital storytelling and content marketing strategies that connect consumers with brands across all major social media platforms
- Use their knowledge of digital consumer behaviors and trends to design marketing programs that motivate consumers to engage and remain loyal to a brand.
This involves a typical week of around 8 hours of study.
Summary
It’s important to have a strategy for the development of your digital marketing skill set. Developing that involves understanding both where you are starting from in terms of your knowledge and career position plus what your objectives and aspirations are going forward.
It might be worth taking some advice and guidance before committing to an individual course.
