Top 10 Digital Marketing Certifications for Advancement in Your Career
There are many options available to enhance your digital marketing skills, whether you are changing careers or looking to increase your industry knowledge.
Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to go back in school or take fancy online courses to gain this knowledge. There are many free resources and certifications that you can pursue. We’ve listed our top picks below.
Certificates & Courses
Google is the leader in learning and free resources. You can search the Google Digital Garage for courses in digital marketing, data and tech or career development.
Google Digital Garage categorizes its course offerings according to the time it takes to complete. This means that you can choose whether you are looking for a short time investment or something that can be completed in a day.
The fundamentals digital marketing course has 26 modules and takes approximately 40 hours to complete. However, the understand basic course should take just one hour to complete.
These courses are not just for beginners! Many courses can be used at any stage in your career, and many of them are intermediate or advanced.
Google’s training center for Google Ads specifically describes itself as “Growing your skills using Google Ads, to advertise your company online, and become Google Ads Certified.”
Learn about advertising: search, display and shopping. After choosing a category, you will be able to filter the courses available based on difficulty level and duration. You can also check if you earn an award for completing the course.
The Analytics Academy offers several courses that will help you to understand Google’s measurement tools so you can make better business decisions by using analytics-informed approaches.
The Analytics Academy is the ideal place to learn if you want to improve and increase your KPIs.
Google Skillshop offers Waze Ads certification – a driving and navigation app that focuses on community involvement. Waze Ads is great to local businesses. This certification may be right for you if you want to literally get on the maps.
You don’t have to take the certification exam straight away. Google provides some basic lessons that can be completed in 20 minutes. You’ll have a new skill set in no time and a certification within 35 minutes.
Code Academy is an excellent resource for learning programming languages such as HTML, Javascript and Python. The introductory courses in HTML and CSS will teach you the fundamental tools of front-end web development so that you can create, edit, and understand web pages.
Flight School, Twitter’s online learning platform, offers courses that will help you master Twitter advertising. These courses are bite-sized, so you can learn quickly and get new skills without having to spend a lot of time. Flight School’s course selection is similar to Google’s. It offers beginner, intermediate and advanced courses so that everyone, from interns to senior managers, can learn something new.
Microsoft offers free training courses and a free exam for those who are interested in becoming Microsoft Advertising Certified Professionals. You can take their courses and pass the exam.
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Microsoft Advertising skills can be improved
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Optimize your ad campaigns
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Enjoy member benefits
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Maximize your reporting and tools knowledge
Hubspot is a great place to start learning about Inbound Marketing principles. The course will teach you the basics of Inbound marketing (such as the flywheel) and how to use this knowledge in all areas of your business. The course is less than two hours long and includes a badge icon that you can use on your LinkedIn profile as well as a certificate.
Although it is not difficult to learn how to run ads on Facebook, the Blueprint Modules make it much simpler. These modules will help you get more out of Facebook advertising and marketing. You can take over 90 online courses, and you can also pass certification exams.
One-month free at LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda).
LinkedIn Learning offers several “Learning Paths”, which are bundles of courses that can be used to dive into specific industries. You can choose to go deep or broaden your knowledge by choosing from one of 12 digital marketing paths.
Other great resources
Moz is the best place to learn SEO without having to take quizzes or follow a specific course. The Beginner’s Guide to SEO contains a great collection of articles that covers all aspects of SEO. It is a good idea to bookmark it as it will help you to refresh your knowledge every now and again.
Yoast’s SEO plugin is well-known. Their slogan, “SEO For Everyone,” might also be familiar to you. However, they also offer a free SEO Basics class through Yoast Academy. You will also find tons of resources in their blog archives, including keyword research, site structure and anchor text.
Neil Patel’s free SEO suite, “HTMOBILE_ Ubersuggest “, allows you to perform keyword research on your competitors, by basically reverse engineering their SEO strategy. You can also enter the domain of a competitor directly into Google’s search bar. You can only do 3 searches per day without a paid plan.
Backlinko was founded by Brian Dean, an important player in the SEO industry. The blog offers a lot of information but the real gem is the newsletter which delivers SEO tips and content directly to your inbox every week. Dean has a wealth of industry knowledge and is able to make it easy for beginners.
Hubspot offers a free Marketing Hub version, which consolidates many marketing tools and metrics in one place. Hubspot also offers a large archive of Ebooks and guides that can be used as templates. There are many other courses and certifications available.
This list of resources will be helpful for you in your marketing efforts. However, we recognize that it can be overwhelming to dive into the world of marketing, especially if there aren’t many industry terms and concepts. Blackhawk will be happy to assist you if this seems overwhelming. Blackhawk will take the initiative and create specific strategies for your business so that you can concentrate on what is most important to you growth and success.
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