Online Marketing Courses: 30 Resources to Become a Rockstar in Digital Marketing
Have you ever found yourself striving for new knowledge and experience in the best online marketing courses, but don’t know how to take the first step?
The web is full of different videos, courses, gurus, techniques, and hacks about everything in the world. And sometimes in all this clutter, finding a useful online course is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
In this post, you’ll find a list of courses, ebooks, and videos that will help you to get started with online marketing.
The courses are divided into a few categories, including social media, SEO and content marketing, email marketing, ads, and PPC marketing.
Whether the courses are paid or free, you need to take them seriously and do homework or any other tasks they ask you to do. And remember: Put your newly acquired knowledge to the test as soon as possible!
Best Online Marketing Courses
When you choose a course, you need to consider a few factors, such as what the course is about, who the instructor is and what he/she has achieved in the niche, the duration of the course, the online course platform, and so on and so forth.
Now that you are aware of these things, let’s start with social media!
Online Marketing Courses: Social Media Marketing
One of the superpowers of social media is to engage the audience, show off personality, and attract people’s attention.
Your Instagram profile may not only inform followers about what you had for breakfast today and give an insight into your birthday party, but it can also help you land a job, especially if you are a creative.
Yes, you heard me, 80% of job hires are happening on the informal job market, including social media.
Whatever your profession is, having attractive social media profiles can help set yourself apart from the crowd, get a new job, and increase sales.
If you want to improve your social media skills and take your business to a whole new level, you should check out these great online courses I have collected for you.
With these marketing courses online, you are going to learn how to find influencers on social media and promote your products with them, set goals for social media and achieve them, how to optimize your website for search engines, and much much more.
1. Free 24-Hour Crash Courses on Social Media by Wave
The Course: Wave Around The World
Creators: Wave.video
Level: beginner and advanced
Price: free
Duration: 24-hours split into 30-60 minutes courses
Wave.video has recently done a 24-hour live social media marketing training, where they invited more than 20 social media marketing specialists to discuss some of the hottest topics of 2021!
Through the 24-hours of video content you will learn:
- How to properly promote your content in 2021
- Building concrete marketing strategies with ready-to-use frameworks
- The power of live video and examples to get inspired
- How to leverage various social networks to increase brand awareness
2. Social Marketing Training by Hootsuite
The Course: Social Media Training
Creators: Hootsuite Academy
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 6 hours
Become a Pro at social media marketing with this cool online marketing course by Hootsuite. It is created for complete newbies.
It features only six chapters with an overall duration of 6 hours. Looking through the content, you see that you are going to learn how to optimize your profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
You will learn how to set goals and KPIs, grow your audience, engage with influencers, create a content strategy, measure ROI, and use social media advertising effectively.
3. Social Media Marketing by Coursera
The Course: Social Media Marketing Specialization
Creators: Northwestern University
Level: beginner
Price: monthly subscription for $39-79
Duration: 3 hours per week for approximately 5 months
Coursera is a known website offering online marketing courses from universities and companies around the world. It is an excellent opportunity for people who want to learn something new at home, sitting on a couch in favorite pajamas.
This online marketing course is like an interactive textbook with videos, images, and quizzes.
You can discuss the material with other students like you. And at the end, make the most out of the free online marketing courses with certificates; show off to fellow marketers! The Social media marketing course is developed for beginners.
You will get to know about engagement and nurture marketing, content and advertising, and the importance of listening.
Another great social media course to take into account on Coursera is Influencer Marketing Strategy. It tells how to find influencers on social media, engage with them and grow your business.
4. Introduction to Social Media Advertising from Buffer
The Course: Introduction to Social Media Advertising
Creators: Brian Peters
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 53 min
These lectures are created by Brian Peters, a digital marketing strategist at Buffer.
With over 6,500 students and 300 positive reviews, this course is definitely worth your attention.
Advertising on social media allows you to connect with clients from all over the globe. Such volume of reach has never been available for radio, television, and newspapers.
You will go through critical terms of social media advertising, learn to set goals and targets, create content, and more.
5. Flight School by Twitter
The Course: Flight School
Creators: Twitter
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: modules for 10-15 minutes
In this course, you will learn how to create an advertisement on Twitter, effectively share your content, and create, launch, optimize Twitter Ads. Twitter Flight School features two digital online courses with 5 and 6 modules which go for 10-15 minutes.
So, the whole course won’t take a long time to complete, but you will gain brilliant knowledge allowing you to create Twitter marketing campaigns for your business.
6. How to Use Instagram Stories for Business
The Course: How To Use Instagram Stories for Business
Creators: Later
Level: beginner, intermediate
Price: free
Duration: about an hour
Social media stories are growing in popularity, and you can’t lose a chance to use live video to increase your brand awareness. These days you can not only spy on your ex-boyfriend on Instagram but also drive traffic to your website and sell more products.
The course answers the following questions:
- Why do you need to use Instagram Stories?
- How to develop an Instagram strategy?
- How to create fantastic Instagram Stories?
- How to drive traffic with Stories?
- How to measure Instagram Stories’ analytics?
- How to create unique Instagram Stories with Canva?
The course has 11 videos for from 3 to 9 minutes. The whole class will take less than an hour.
You can use this hour to watch a Netflix series, or watch these useful videos and grow your Instagram.
Online Marketing Courses: SEO & Content Marketing
You might have been new to search engine optimization, or you have workers who need to be trained up on SEO.
Before you go and spend your dollars on a training consult, consider looking through these online courses, both free and paid.
In this section, you are going to find the best online courses on SEO from the leaders in the industry, such as Ahrefs, Backlinko, Hubspot, and Udemy.
7. SEO That Works by Backlinko
The Course: SEO That Works
Creators: Backlinko
Level: beginner, intermediate
Price: free
Duration: about an hour
SEO That Works is an online course created by Brian Dean, an owner of Backlinko. And that’s entirely true. He owns a one-person blog about SEO with over 1M visitors per month!
As you see, Brian is a rockstar in the SEO world. His online marketing course is going to teach you how to drive people on your website even if you are new to search engine optimization.
There are four modules with information in the course. Each module includes a high-quality video, worksheets, and slideshows.
You need to learn these lessons one by one not to miss anything.
8. Ahrefs Academy
The Course: Blogging for Business
Creators: Tim Soulo, Kathryn Aragon
Level: beginner, intermediate, advanced
Price: $799
Duration: 4 hours 56 min
The online marketing course ‘Blogging for Business’ looks a little too pricey at first, however, check out the testimonials! Brian Dean from Backlinko says it’s “very well-done,” and Fernando Gomez thinks it’s “very up-to-date and actionable.”
There are ten lessons with the last bonus lecture. Check the table of contents here. You can see the full contents here. Besides, it offers you a teaser and some parts of experience 1, 2, 4, 5, and six are open to watching right now!
The course covers the essential aspects of content marketing, such as link building, keyword research, link acquisition, competitive research, and more. Every lesson includes not only a detailed explanation of terms with graphs and bullet points but also great examples and case studies that show you how these techniques work in real life.
9. SEO Training Course: Building Sustainable Traffic for Business Growth
The Course: Building Sustainable Traffic for Business Growth
Creators: Matthew Howells-Barby
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 63 min
Here is an actionable, brief yet effective SEO course by Hubspot. Even if you search, you won’t find anything similar to this in-depth SEO course for free on the web.
The instructor and creator of this online marketing course are Matthew Howells-Barby, who is a Director of Acquisition on HubSpot.
Not only is he an online marketing and SEO expert but also a columnist for Moz and Marketing land.
In this course, you are going to learn how to find an SEO strategy for your business, build links for SEO, and how to use blogging to rank on the first page of Google.
More Courses from Hubspot:
10. SEO Training Course by Moz
The Course: Whiteboard SEO
Creators: Rand Fishkin
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 3,5 hours videos
If you think it’s another online marketing course from another SEO guru, you are wrong.
Here a founder of Moz Rand Fishkin teaches you the basics of SEO. Rand is known for his Whiteboard Friday videos and this course is a combination of those.
With over 169k students and a 4.2 rating, this course is definitely worth your attention.
But as reviews say, it is more about theory than action. So that, it will be more suitable for complete beginners.
For those of you who want to get more ideas and real-life examples, consider the Hubspot course above.
Udemy offers some of the best online marketing courses, both free and paid.
The course I mentioned above is free, however, if you don’t mind spending some money on your education, you need to check the following courses on Udemy:
- Moz Advanced SEO: Tactics & Strategy. It’s one-hour videos for advanced users about coming up with SEO strategies for your business.
- Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises. Earn to drive leads and sales with powerful content marketing with 37 minutes video.
- SEO 2019: Complete SEO Training + SEO for WordPress Websites. A huge course about SEO for beginners and WordPress users with 9,5 hours videos and downloadable resources.
11. SEO training to 10x your traffic from Google
The Course: 10x Your Traffic from Google
Creators: Tommy Griffith
Level: beginner
Price: $497
Duration: n/a
You can read numerous blog posts about SEO on the web but still found yourself thinking that you don’t know what you are doing.
Here is a fantastic online marketing course that will tell you about the search and keyword framework, link building, technical SEO for non-technical people, and the best SEO tools.
Tommy Griffith has done SEO for over ten years, and he was doing search engine optimization for PayPal and Airbnb.
Their lectures go in a fun and comprehensive way, and you won’t notice when you find yourself an SEO guru.
Moreover, in the bonus section, you are going to find local SEO, enterprise link building, and SEO for Pinterest, Youtube, and Amazon.
Bonus Free SEO Course:
The Ultimate Step by Step Guide to SEO
The Course: Step-by-step SEO Guide
Creators: Eric Melillo
Level: beginner
Price: Free
Duration: n/a
If you are looking for the best blog to read around SEO that has step-by-step instructions this is the right article to get started.
It will answer all the questions you have around SEO and give you strong fundamentals to continue your endeavor into becoming an SEO Expert.
Online Marketing Courses: Email Marketing
Email marketing has been a powerful tool for years that helped drive traffic to a website, generate leads, and increase sales.
However, times have changed. We live in a world where tons of emails drop into our inboxes every hour. We feel overwhelmed with information. Most emails stay unopened and ignored.
But there is also positive statistics, which says email’s return on investments is huge! For each $1 you spend on email marketing you would get $38 back. If you want to reach your audience and drive revenue with email marketing, here are the most suitable online courses for you.
12. Internet Marketing for Smart People by Copyblogger
The Course: Internet Marketing Marketing
Creators: Brian Clark
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 16 ebooks and 20 emails
This online marketing course by Copyblogger will give you an in-depth insight into email marketing, content marketing, SEO, keyword research, and more.
It has only 16 ebooks and 20 emails which will be sent to you periodically so that you won’t get bogged down by too much info given you at once.
This course is an organized guide is ‘best of the best tips on online marketing that ever appeared on Copyblogger.
13. Free Email Marketing Certification by Hubspot
The Course: Free Email Marketing Certification
Creators: Courtney Sembler
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: 3 hours 38 min
You don’t need to be a genius to master your email marketing skills. You need to… be smarter than others.
If you are not looking for a magic button that will make you smart overnight, then check out this excellent email marketing course by Hubspot.
In 10 short lessons from 15 to 30 minutes, you are going to learn:
- email marketing basics,
- how to create a segmentation strategy, send the right high-performing emails,
- how to design attractive emails,
- analyze and test your email marketing results, and more.
At the end of the course, you are going to get one of the most renowned free online marketing courses with certificates, which can be attached to your LinkedIn profile or resume.
Online Marketing Courses: Ads, PPC & Affiliate Marketing
If you want to try yourself as a PPC marketer or want to sell goods on your website with a small affiliate commission, then these courses may come in handy for you. They are useful for beginners and advanced users.
Bing will help you to set ads for their search engine, while Facebook has over 75 online courses to choose from, and all of them are connected to Facebook marketing
14. PPC University by WordStream
The Course: PPC University
Creators: Larry Kim
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: n/a
This online marketing course offers you to learn ins and outs of PPC marketing. It has easy-to-understand lessons about PPC for beginners and advanced users.
This guide was written for those of you who have heard of PPC marketing before but don’t know where to start and how to implement it in your business.
It will tell you what is PPC, CTA, keywords, text ads, cost per click, and cost per action, and advise you how to set up an AdSense account.
15. Bing Ads Accreditation study guide
The Course: Bing Ads Accreditation
Creators: Bing
Level: beginner
Price: free
Duration: n/a
I know Google is almost a synonym of the search engine. However, there are other players on the market, such as Bing.
Bing uses about 30% of US users (which is huge). And if you are thinking about starting your ads campaign, you certainly need to consider Bing.
This training course will help you to create your first search engine advertising, as well as manage and optimize your budget for it.
Also, you’ll get to know what PPC is, how to choose keywords, write copy for an ad, and find the target audience.
16. Facebook Learn
The Course: Facebook Learn
Creators: Facebook
Level: beginner, intermediate, advanced
Price: free
Duration: n/a
On this page, you are going to find over 75 online courses from Facebook.
The best part about this course is that you can select your business goals, and Facebook will suggest you the most suitable options for you.
Among the goals to get started with Facebook is to target the right audience, build brand awareness, generate leads, promote an app, manage ads, increase online sales, and more.
With over 2 million participants, this online marketing course can come in handy if you are going to create an advertisement for Facebook users.
Free Online Marketing Ebooks
Online courses are not the only way to learn marketing these days. You can also learn online marketing with ebooks, videos, books, movies, and other convenient ways for you.
Below, I’d like to share ten free ebooks about digital marketing you can consider for learning social media, content marketing, SEO, or email marketing.
17. Top 25 Social Media Strategies by Buffer
The eBook: Actionable Social Media Strategies
In this ebook, Kevan Lee and the Buffer team reveal 25 useful social media strategies.
Social media is not only about posting pictures, but it’s also about writing meaningful content, setting goals and achieving them.
Among the tips, you are going to find advice on how to choose from 1 to 3 areas of expertise and try to stick to them.
This way followers can quickly identify your niche and follow you.
You will also get to know how often you need to publish a post, engage your followers, and even convince your manager that social media is worth time and effort.
18. The Conversion Marketer’s Guide to Landing Page Copywriting
The eBook: Landing Page Copywritting
A landing page is much more than putting your headline and offer together. Are you able to drive traffic to your landing page? Is your copy engaging enough?
In this ebook, Joanna Wiebe shares her tips on how to create attractive copy for a landing page, increase conversions, call-to-action, and other landing page must-haves
19. Data-Driven Content Marketing by Uberflip
Having a perfect marketing strategy means you need to understand different data. It is essential to measure your online marketing results and know if your efforts work for you or against you.
Here is Uberflip ebook about data-driven content marketing which will teach you three main things:
- how to use data to get new content ideas
- how to analyze the effectiveness of content distribution
- master skills to read data properly and use it to grow your business
20. How to Use Data Visualization to Win Over Your Audience [Free Ebook]
The eBook: Data Visualisation to Win your Audience
How many times have you seen the annual report or business presentation packed with different data which you can hardly understand?
Yes, data can be very inventive when it comes to ideas and messages you try to convey.
However, it’s quite hard to present data in a way everyone realizes it.
This guide will help you to make any complex data look easy-to-understand and straightforward.
There are the best practices for visualization any information in the free ebook
21. The Optimization Survival Guide
The eBook: The Optimization Survival Guide
With the help of optimization and split testing marketers can understand if their efforts pay off.
Read this useful guide with over 30 optimization tips from different experts.
After reading this ebook, you will get to know what works for your customer and what doesn’t, improve your testing process, and develop an optimization strategy for any business.
22. Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz
The course: The Beginners Guide to SEO
I have already mentioned Moz in the section about SEO courses.
It’s a leading resource when it comes to search engine optimization and online marketing.
If you are entirely new to SEO, you can start your path with SEO course in the above paragraphs, or directly download this free ebook.
It explains in simple words what is SEO, why people use search engines, how to find proper keywords, and make your website more usable.
Besides, this guide was downloaded more than 3 million times, does not it means many people found it useful
23. 26 Actionable Email Marketing Tips & Best Practices To SKYROCKET Your Growth
The Resouce: Email Marketing Best Practices
Here at Moosend, we try our best to treat you with sweet bonuses every time our blog posts are coming.
In this blog post, you can get a bonus with 26 actionable email marketing tips which will help to grow your business.
Get a PDF right into your email, save it, and read whenever you want, even if you have no internet connection.
Here you’ll get to know what is the best time to send emails to your subscribers, how to give subscribers what they want, and plan your schedule in advance.
Moreover, if you are into email marketing, you need to know if email blasts still work?
Another great and convenient PDF file can be delivered right into your email box.
24. The Ultimate Influencer Marketing Playbook of 2021
The eBook: Influencer Marketing Playbook
This is a free ebook by Jon Ferrara that will help you to get to know the world of influencer marketing.
These days, influencers have the power to make or break your business with one Story on Instagram.
People tend to believe bloggers they follow on social media or the web, and this ebook will tell you how to apply influencer marketing to your business.
25. Conversations Not Campaigns
The eBook: Conversion Not Campaigns
This ebook will come in handy for email marketers and those who are going to make their first email campaign.
Some popular email marketing stuff is not working anymore. For example, “Batch and blast”.
Who are email blasts and do they actually work in 2021, read in our guide here.
It is way better to use personalization and address emails to your subscriber.
Besides, personalization is one of the digital marketing trends in 2021, thus you need to grow a relationship-oriented mindset.
The ebook tells about trigger messages and behavior filters.
Best Youtube Channels for Online Marketing and SEO
We tend to see Youtube as an entertaining network, where we can find Justin Bieber songs or how to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. But, believe me, there are tons of useful educational videos on Youtube you can watch.
You simply need to know how to find them. Let’s start with thought-leaders in online marketing, such as Moz, Ahrefs, Brian Dean, Neil Patel, and others.
26. Ahrefs
The Youtube Channel: Ahrefs
While most of their videos are about using the Ahrefs tool, along with that you get to know many interesting things about SEO, content marketing, organic search, website audit, competitive research, and finding keywords.
These videos will be useful for both SEO newbies and advanced users.
27. Backlinko
The Youtube Channel: Backlinko
Brian Dean is the owner of the one-man blog, Backlinko, about SEO. It is a perfect example of how a blog with one post a month and only one man can become successful. On his channel, you’ll get actionable tips on SEO, content marketing, and link building.
28. Moz
The Youtube Channel: Moz
Moz is a website about search engine optimization and inbound marketing, as well as their Youtube channel.
While Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin doesn’t work at Moz anymore, you still can find his series of videos called Whiteboard Friday.
He tells about white SEO, killer content, link building, and more.
29. Hubspot
The Youtube Channel: HubSpot
I mentioned Hubspot in this list already, it’s a well-known resource for inbound marketing techniques.
After watching their Youtube videos you are going to learn chatbots, artificial intelligence, social media, and design.
30. Neil Patel
The Youtube Channel: Neil Patel
Neil Patel is a popular digital marketer, New York Times bestselling author and the one in top 100 entrepreneurs under 30 age by President Obama.
On Neil’s Youtube channel you will find videos about SEO, growth hacks, social media marketing, and content marketing.
Over to You
I hope this amazing list of online marketing courses, ebooks, and Youtube channels will become a part of your marketing arsenal in the future.
Feel free to bookmark this collection and get back to it when you need a source of high-quality knowledge in digital marketing.
What online marketing courses, ebooks, or videos do you like the most and why? What resources do you use to learn something new?
Please, share with us in the comment section below.