Before you move ahead to go through the list of the best online digital marketing courses, a more pertinent question that you need to answer is —
We ask this question because there are numerous ways of learning digital marketing and no one is better than the other. It all depends on the objective. So let us first lay out the prominent ways of learning digital marketing.
Now the question arises, if there are free digital marketing courses and certifications, why should anyone go for paid online digital marketing courses at all?
The answer to that question is pretty straight forward. In a structured online digital marketing training program, not only learners will get practical experience but also the level of motivation required to complete the course isn’t that high. (Remember that only a fraction of coursera enrolments finish up their course and the biggest reason for dropout is attributed to lack of motivation)
We hope you’ve made up your mind by now about how you would want to learn the ropes of digital marketing and we bet that if you are still with us, it would be the first option. Below is a list of the 10 best online digital marketing courses and training programs that are handpicked by our pool of 20+ digital marketing experts.
10 Best Online Digital Marketing Courses & Training
- The Complete Digital Marketing Course on Udemy
- Digital Marketing Specialist by Simplilearn
- Digital Marketing Courses on LinkedIn
- Digital Marketing Professional Certificate Program by Wharton
- Digital Marketing Specialization by University of Illinois
- Digital Marketing Masterclass
- Digital Marketing Strategies by Kellogg School of Management
- Digital Marketing Nanodegree Program
- Digital Marketing Courses by DigitalMarketingInstitute
- Digital Marketing Masterclass - Get Your First 1000 Customers
Being one of the most comprehensive digital marketing courses on Udemy [and perhaps the best selling course as well], it is enrolled by more than 300 thousands students. That’s HUGE!
It comprises of neatly designed 12 modules covering different aspects of digital marketing starting from creating your own website to social media marketing, Search Engine Marketing to paid ads to mobile app marketing. Modules covered are -
- Market Research — Validate your online idea in simple steps
- Wordpress Module — Get your website up and running with this module
- Email Marketing — Learn how to set up email campaigns using various tools and get your subscribers list swell to 1000 within 30 days time
- Copywriting — Learn how to write landing pages that sell.
- Search Engine Marketing — Understand how SEO works and get insights about the tips and tricks. To take a look at the best SEO courses online, click here
- YouTube Marketing — Learn tips and tricks of driving traffic to your website from simple videos
- Social Media Marketing — How to master social media platforms like FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Quora
- LinkedIn Marketing — How to increase your connections to 10X
- App Marketing — Learn 43 ways to promote your app
- Google Adwords — How to run and optimize Google Ads
- Facebook Ads — Learn how to run ads on FB
- Google Analytics — How to integrate Google Analytics and read the reports and draw insights
Key USPs
- One of the most comprehensive online digital marketing courses catered towards making you earn money on your own either through being a freelancer or being an affiliate marketer. If you are interested in learning about the best affiliate marketing courses online, here is a curated list by the experts.
- Highly interactive course with lots of projects and quizzes and more than 250+ lectures.
- Exhaustive module on Create Your Own Website that will help you start your own affiliate business. Generally this doesn’t get covered by other digital marketing training institutes in such great depths.
- Amazing instructors in the form of Rob, Daragh and Codestars. Collectively they have taught more than 3 Million students.
- Comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee of Udemy
Reviews by student:
“
Take the time to go through the entire course, it's so worth it! An amazing course covers everything you need to enter the Digital Marketing field. I took this course as a supplement for my college classes because I felt school was going to damn slow. After completing the course I feel like I'm miles ahead of my class. Great course, totally recommend.
Edwin Castro
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Digital Marketing Specialist offering by Simplilearn is an advanced Digital Marketing Training program that is equivalent to a masters. And true to its name, it actually prepares students on advanced concepts (including the basics) that will help join any company with great confidence.
The first thing that you notice about this digital marketing training program is that it is a combination of 8 different courses and each course in itself is a complete unit that prepares learners on specific skills.
Courses covered under this super specialization are -
- Digital Marketing Certified Associate :
- This course is actually the only one you need if you want to understand only the essentials of digital marketing.
- It touches upon every marketing discipline and lays the foundation of an amazing career (digital marketing).
- Learners will get execution capabilities in Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Facebook Marketing, Twitter, and YouTube.
- HIGHLIGHT: Twitter advertising curriculum is built in collaboration with Twitter.
- Advanced Web Analytics:
- This advanced analytics course prepares learners to get comfortable with data and develop ability to draw insights from it.
- Focuses on concepts like segmentation, competitive intelligence analysis, multi-channel analytics, experimentation, social media analytics etc.
- Advanced Search Engine Optimization
- Provides in-depth knowledge about SEO and how to drive organic traffic
- All facets of SEO is taught including on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO.
- How to do effective site-audits is an important element of this advanced SEO course.
- Advanced Pay Per Click (PPC) Certification Program
- True to any PPC certification program, this one teaches 2 things
- How to run effective and ROI optimized ad campaigns
- How to create landing pages that converts
- 5 industry specific projects
- Comes with a Free Advanced Content Marketing Course and Advanced Website Conversion Rate Optimization Course
- Advanced Social Media
- Prepares learners on 3 pillars of social media marketing
- How to grow and engage audience on social media platforms organically
- How to leverage advertising options these platforms have to offer
- How to manage your online reputation
For best Instagram marketing courses, click here
Key USPs
- Industry recommended learning path i.e. the course is designed in consultation with the industry.
- Prepares learners for more than 12+ certifications
- Get hands-on experience with 40+ digital marketing tools like Hubspot, SEMrush, Spyfu, Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, Hootsuite, Google Data Studio among others. Here is the list of the best Facebook Ads courses online.
- More than 240+ hours of digital marketing training videos
- Exclusive access to industry experts
- Advisory board comprises of big names like Matt Bailey, Lilach Bullock, Danny Dover among others.
- Get OMCP exam vouchers worth $395 at the end of the course completion
- 4 elective courses to choose from - Advanced Content Marketing, Advanced Website Conversion Optimization, Advanced Mobile Optimization and Advanced Email Marketing
Reviews by student:
“
Simplilearn has been an integral part of my learning for the past 1 year. I owe it greatly to Simplilearn to impart in me the knowledge and skills in Sales and Marketing. I have recommended this program to my friends and am considering enrolling my kids in the coding program during the summer.
Shilpi Singh
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If you click on the above link, you will notice that there is not one course that we are recommending but the entire bouquet of online digital marketing courses that LinkedIn (Lynda earlier) has to offer. And it is done on purpose for one can choose what he/she wants to learn.
If one sift through the options, not only one would find courses on major topics like SEO, Paid Ads but also on smaller ones like Online Video Content Strategy, Digital Marketing Trends or GDPR for Marketers.
Key USPs
- Large number of options for each level of digital proficiency.
- Most of the courses are of short duration thereby making the learning byte sized. However the flip side is that it might not result in practical real world experience. So choose wisely.
- First Month is FREE to start with.
Note:
Since most of the courses are of short duration, completion might not result into skill building.
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If there is an online course (and that too in marketing) from Wharton, then one can expect that something would be different and this digital marketing professional certificate program doesn’t disappoint on that by any measure.
While other online digital marketing courses focus more on actual execution and trains you for executional roles, this program takes a more business oriented approach which is reflected in its curriculum as well.
Divided across 4 different courses, the certificate program is a good match for those who are at CXO level (or upper management) and wants to look at digital to further the business growth. 4 courses are -
- Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Social Media and E-Commerce
Students will learn about how to leverage new business models to increase profitability by deploying digital marketing and social media techniques. Learners get introduced to concepts like GRAVITY (Geography, Resistance, Adjacency, Vicinity, Isolation, Topography and You), Network effects, how to navigate in multi-channel world.
- Marketing Analytics: Data Tools & Techniques
A bit heavy on statistical concepts, this course under digital marketing professional certificate program trains learners on how to become friends with data and draw actionable and meaningful insights. Therefore don’t fret when you come across concepts like conjoint analysis, regression etc.
- Managing the Value of Customer Relationships
This module talks about how to increase the customer life cycle value by being customer centric rather than product centric. It will teach techniques about how to increase the LTV.
- Selling Ideas: How to Influence Others, and Get Your Message to Catch On
When they say that the best form of marketing is word of mouth, they are right. And this module does exactly that, it delves deeper into how to make your communication sticky thereby increasing the word of mouth.
Key USPs
- Each course under the certificate program is for 6 weeks with 2-4 hours of weekly effort.
- The course is designed to be more from the perspective of upper management thereby executional skills would be less developed.
- Comes with a Wharton brand name
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The best part about digital marketing specialization by University of Illinois is that it forms a part of its online MBA program i.e. if you get admitted to the MBA program then the courses under this specialization count towards the MBA degree.
But not many would be interested in the MBA degree program so let’s evaluate the specialization based on its own merit. And the biggest point going for this specialization is that one of its courses (Marketing in a Digital World) was rated as one of the top 50 MOOCs of all time.
Divided across 7 different courses, the specialization starts off with how marketing in the digital world is changing and provides tools to navigate through this change; then moves on to digital analytics (theoretical base along with practical exercises) and digital marketing strategies. The specialization finally takes the learners to the realization that though digital has taken over but we as the human race still live in an analog world and any marketer needs to marry analog with digital. Capstone project rounds up the specialization. 7 different courses are —-
- Marketing in a Digital World
- Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals: Marketing Analytics in Theory
- Digital Analytics for Marketing Professionals: Marketing Analytics in Practice
- Digital Media and Marketing Principles
- Digital Media and Strategies
- Marketing in an Analog World
- Digital Marketing Capstone
Key USPs
- One of the most enrolled online digital marketing courses on Coursera
- Free to Enrol
- Hand on Capstone digital marketing project
- Part of the online MBA at the University of Illinois
Reviews by student:
“
Gaining new knowledge and skills through Coursera helped me break out of the mold I'd been in for over a decade. Coursera helped open doors for me.
Loreelei G.
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Though Udemy courses tend to be short in duration, this
Digital Marketing Masterclass is an exception to that rule. And that’s what makes it one of the most comprehensive digital marketing courses one would find online.
Spread across 320+ lectures covering all the facets of digital marketing, this one goes quite in depth and enables learners to get practical experience. The good part is that each module intends to build an individual skill for example Website module will enable to create your own wordpress website.
Topics Covered: Website creation, Email marketing, Social Media Marketing (different modules for each social media platform), SEO, Paid Ads, Quora, LinkedIn, Analytics
Key USPs
- Practical digital marketing course (with lots of assignments) thus enabling you to get your hands dirty with the real stuff.
- Neatly crafted modules to address each skill
- 32.5 hours of On-demand video + 28 downloadable resources
Reviews by student:
“
I have been through most of the course. There is some great information in here. Some of it is really helpful. Because it is a long course there are going to be bits you might not need. But overall a really big help especially for the cost. Many thanks
Phillip Pilkington
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As the name suggests, this digital marketing course from Kellogg School of Management focuses more on the strategies rather than the execution. In-fact if one goes through the course page, it is clearly written that the course is intended for someone who manages a marketing team and hence provides a strategic perspective on digital marketing.
Taught by acclaimed Prof. Mohanbir Sawhney, the course is neatly broken down into 5 learning steps -
- Discovering Customer Insights: Learners will understand ways to discover customer insights using social mining, AI applications etc
- Understanding Customers: Participants would understand segmentation techniques and behavioral marketing
- Engaging Customers: Learners would understand how to map customer journey and how to design content according to that.
- Execution: Finally whatever is learnt theoretically put to practice
- Optimization: Attribution, Experimentation and Automation marks this learning step
Key USPs
- One of the best digital marketing courses for experienced marketing professionals.
- Certificate of completion from Kellogg School of Management
- Impressive Industry examples from companies like At&T, Google and FedEx
- Duration: 2 Months with 4-6 hours of effort on weekly basis
Reviews by student:
“
I thought the course videos were fantastic. I'm impressed by the availability via office hours of
the program leaders. The course gave me a great foundation for further learning and research,
and also gave me very valuable insights regarding the organizing principles necessary to
execute better marketing at scale.
Brooke Muhlhauser
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After reviewing so many online courses if there is one thing we have come to realize is that no list is complete without a Udacity offering. So how could the list of
the best online digital marketing courses be?
Designed in collaboration with big names like Google,
Facebook Blueprint, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Hootsuite and Moz, the nanodegree program is 3 months long with 10 hours/week effort required. The program is very well structured in 9 modules and has an element of application built into the curriculum. Modules are -
- Marketing Fundamentals
- Content Strategy
- Social Media Marketing
- Social Media Advertising with Facebook Blueprint
- Search Engine Optimization
- Search Engine Optimization with Google Ads
- Display Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Measure and Optimize with Google Analytics
Key USPs
- 1-on-1 mentor
- Real world projects to help you cement the learning
- Career services along with a career advisor
- Resume gets shared with 100+ recruiters
- Great community support
Reviews by student:
“
Going well. Very thorough lessons. Only suggestion is a QA process for the lesson plan videos and images. The Udacit content doesn't always match the (ever-changing) UX/UI of the platforms we use to complete our projects.
Misti C.
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When it comes to reliable independent players in digital marketing training, they are far and few. In-fact one would be able to count all of them on one hand only. But
DigitalMarketingInstitute will be one of them.
Armed with an impressive Global Industry Advisory Council, who oversees the content, DMI has multiple courses on digital marketing catering to different needs. Their shortest one called Specialist is 5 hours long whereas their most extensive one runs for 2 years and is titled Certified Digital Marketing Masters.
Key USPs
- Many online digital marketing courses to choose from
- Micro courses available to learn very specific skills like Specialist Diploma in Search Marketing etc.
- Impressive advisory council that ensures that content is relevant and up-to-date.
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One would wonder what this so called digital marketing masterclass has to offer that others don’t and yet makes the list of the best online digital marketing courses. So the answer is that this course is geared towards generating traffic and hence getting your first 1000 customers.
Therefore if you are a small website owner or a blogger and want to learn digital marketing to grow traffic, wouldn’t you want to take a course that addresses that specific pain point while still teaching all the nuances of digital marketing?
Created by Evan Kimbrell, who has been an ex-VC and ex-start-up founder, the course has more than 200 lectures and dives straight into the essentials building digital strategy and then getting down to bringing your first 10, 100, 500 and then 1000 customers.
Key USPs
- Laser focused on bringing customers. The entire course is designed around that so if you are looking for theoretical knowledge, it might not be a good choice. However if you are concerned with generating traffic and getting customers, this is the best digital marketing course for you.
- Instructor is an ex-founder who brings his own personal experience
- More than 26 hours of On-demand videos + 154 downloadable resources
Reviews by student:
“
Fantastic course and an amazing value! After having completed the course I feel much more confident about understanding tools and approaches for digital marketing. The explanations were very clear and examples very helpful. Excellent work!
John Lauderdale
That rounds up our list of the best online digital marketing courses. There is something for everyone. All you have to do is now choose as per your work experience and objectives. In case you are looking to do only SEO, then we've covered the
best SEO courses online as well. Happy learning!
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