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Free Online Marketing Courses to Sharpen Your Skills While Staying At Home
As the world continues to stay at home while finding sustainable solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are finding opportunities to acquire more knowledge that will deepen their expertise and competence in their jobs.
For marketing professionals, If you are wondering how to fill your time while staying at home, we've got you covered!
We've curated a list of 40 free online courses that can help you level up as a marketer. The list contains a mix of courses offered by tech companies, academic institutions, and marketing professionals. We are hopeful that you’ll return to work more knowledgeable, confident, and ready to deliver impactful and measurable results.
1. Facebook Blueprint
Facebook Blueprint is an online learning platform created by Facebook to provide free, self-paced learning on how to use Facebook and Instagram to grow businesses. It has more than individual 90 eLearning courses for marketers who want to improve their competencies, advance in their careers, and position their brands for success.
2. Facebook BluePrint Certification
If you prefer to acquire credentials that attest to your new skills, Facebook Blueprint Certification is the way to go. Facebook Blueprint Certifications courses are also self-paced but are offered as curated courses to deliver a more structured learning experience. To be certified, you’ll need to sit for a paid proctored exam that tests your knowledge of Facebook and Instagram advertising.
3. Fundamentals of Digital Marketing
If you want to learn about or deepen your knowledge of Google Ads, there’s probably no better place to learn than from Google. The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course contains 26 learning modules developed by Google’s in-house trainers to provide you with a clear understanding of core concepts in online marketing. The course is free, it has a mix of practical exercises and real-world examples, and it is accredited by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. You’ll also from this course earn a free certification that you can upload directly to your LinkedIn profile.
Hubspot Academy
Hubspot Academy provides marketers with free online professional education designed to improve broad sales and marketing competences. The courses will also deepen your knowledge of Hubspot’s products and services. Irrespective of whether you are a Hubspot user or not, you can count on the mix of comprehensive certification programs, single-focus topics, and bite-sized video lessons to equip you with the knowledge that will make you a better marketer.
4. Inbound
Inbound is a free certification course designed to help you learn the fundamentals of inbound, the inbound methodology, and the marketing flywheel. You’ll also take classes on marketing, sales, and customer service.
5. Inbound Marketing
Inbound Marketing is a free certification program designed to help you develop an understanding of the core concepts of inbound marketing. You’ll learn about different inbound marketing techniques that cut across content creation, social promotion, converting leads, and nurturing leads.
6. Content Marketing
Content Is King! The Content Marketing certification program will help you become an effective content marketer. You’ll take courses on the content creation framework, how to create content that resonates with humans and search engines, and how to repurpose content for different media and platforms.
7. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most in-demand skills in digital marketing. The email marketing certification course will teach you how to create an email marketing strategy that works in both B2C and B2B markets. You’ll learn about contact management and segmentation, factors that determine email deliverability, how to improve such factors, and how to analyze and improve email marketing metrics.
EDX
EDX is one of the largest open online course platforms. It hosts more than 2000 university-level online courses from around 140 leading institutions worldwide across a wide range of disciplines. Below are four university-level courses offered for free via EDX.
8. Marketing Innovative Products and Services - from the University System of Maryland
This course provides insights on how to market innovative products in a fast-paced environment where many known and unknown variables could determine the ROI on marketing activities. The course syllabus focuses on Product Strategy, Go-To-Market Strategies, and Growth Strategies.
9. Strategic Social Media Marketing - from Boston University
This course provides insights into how brands can leverage consumer-to-consumer interactions of social media to drive growth. The course syllabus will teach you how to develop a strategic perspective on social media marketing, how to leverage online networks and communities, and how to create engaging content. You’ll also learn about social listening, and how to measure success when marketing on social media.
10. Marketing Analytics: Products, Distribution, and Sales - from the University of California, Berkeley
This course is designed to equip marketing professionals with the knowledge of analytics-based marketing and how to measure ROI. The syllabus includes lessons on product conjoint analysis and decision trees. You’ll also learn about how to optimize the distribution and the sales process across physical stores and e-commerce channels.
11. Marketing Analytics: Competitive Analysis and Market Segmentation - from the University of California, Berkeley
This course leans heavily on the concepts of computer science to help marketers predict the next move of their competitors and to proactively build winning strategies. The course syllabus focuses on competitive analysis, market segmentation, and how to analyze and structure markets. You’ll also learn about the application of programming languages towards market segmentation.
12. Marketing Fundamentals: Who Is Your Customer? - from Babson College
This course is designed to teach marketing professionals how to identify the right customers for their brands, and how to implement customer acquisition strategies. The course syllabus has lessons on market segmentation, targeting, and positioning methods. You’ll also learn about the marketing mix of product, price, place, and promotion. It also has lessons on how to relate the marketing mix to consumer behavior.
Alison
Alison a social enterprise and one of the largest online learning platforms globally. It provides opportunities for its users to take lessons on various subjects across different levels at their own pace. The following are some of the free marketing courses offered on Alison across different professional levels.
13. Growth Strategies for Business - offered by Connexions
The Growth Strategies course is designed to introduce marketers to the concepts of business growth and industry growth trends. You’ll acquire knowledge of international marketing and how to unlock cross-border business growth. The course modules include lessons on the four-phase growth model. You’ll also learn how to leverage the elements of economic globalization to promote your brand across borders. On completing the course, you should be able to identify problems and opportunities in international marketing.
14. Introduction to Marketing - offered by the Global Text Project
The Introduction to Marketing course is designed to help you understand how marketing functions across different businesses and industries. The course modules contain lessons on the justifications for marketing, the characteristics of a marketing organization, and the strategic components of marketing.
15. YouTube Marketing: The Five Essential Steps - offered by TheoMcArthur
This course provides an introduction to how YouTube marketing works and how marketers can leverage YouTube’s algorithm to create engaging content. The course modules include lessons on setting up a YouTube Channel, optimizing videos, joining the YouTube Partner Program, and monetizing your videos through the Partner Program.
16. Public Relations: Best Practices and Ethics - offered by Saylor Foundation
PR management is a tangential part of marketing and this course provides marketers with a firm grasp of public relations. The course modules contain lessons on strategic planning, communication implementation, and results evaluation. Students will also learn about RACE in the context of the public relations process.
17. Copywriting for Conversions: How to Write Persuasive Content - offered by Theo McArthur
This course will help marketers improve their competence in leveraging the power of words to capture attention, generate interest in their brands, and to get people to take desired actions. The course modules have lessons on how to write irresistible headlines, how to create copy that sells, and how to craft persuasive messages.
18. Diploma in Web Business Development and Marketing - offered by Advanced Learning
This is a basic web development course that teaches the basics of web design and development. The course modules include lessons on HTML coding, how to style web pages with CSS, and how to index a website on Google Webmaster. You’ll learn how to attract traffic to a website using different content marketing techniques. You’ll also learn about email marketing and affiliate marketing.
Future Learn
Future Learn works with universities, cultural institutions, and professional bodies to provide its users with a platform for finding and taking online courses, building professional skills, and connecting with experts. Below are some of the free online courses on marketing available on Future Learn.
19. Marketing Analytics - offered by Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia
This course is designed to introduce marketing professionals to the basics of marketing analytics. The course will also help you gain an understanding of the importance of data-backed decisions in marketing campaigns. The course lessons will introduce you to tools for measuring the effectiveness of brand assets, calculating customer lifetime value, interpreting regression analysis, and designing experiments to evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns.
20. Create a Social Media Marketing Campaign - offered by the Institute of CODING
This course will teach you how to plan and launch successful social media campaigns for effective two-way communications with your audience. The topics include how to identify the pros and cons of different social media platforms and how to choose the one that works best for your brand. The course also includes lessons on the difference between paid and organic social media marketing. You will also learn how to use personas for more effective targeting.
21. Global Marketing: A Definition - offered by Coventry University
This course provides you with an introduction to concepts in global marketing and how globalization is changing the marketing focus of organizations. The course provides insights into marketing technologies, discovering and entering new markets, and how to apply the EPRG framework to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your global marketing efforts.
22. Online Business: Digital Marketing for Success - offered by RMIT University
This course is designed for marketing professionals working with startups - you’ll learn how to help startups survive and thrive in a rapidly evolving market. The course includes lessons on customer journeys, digital marketing strategies, content development, and marketing measurements and analytics. You will also be introduced to an overview of paid marketing across search, content, email, and social media.
23. Social Media Analytics: Using Data to Understand Public Conversations - offered by the Queensland University of Technology
This course provides marketers with a fundamental understanding of social listening, how to understand the role and structure of social conversations, and how to identify trends in social data. The course includes lessons on how to use tools such as TAGS, Tableau, and Gephi to analyze data and identify trends and patterns. You’ll also acquire an understanding of how to create and interpret data visualizations on social media conversations data and trends.
24. Digital Marketing: Challenges and Insights - offered by the University of Southampton
This course introduces people interested in marketing to some of the emerging trends in digital culture, data analytics, data privacy, and online consumer behavior. You’ll learn about the developments in online and offline marketing relative to consumer behavior. The course also includes interactive exercises and games to improve your competence in evaluating marketing challenges and opportunities.
25. Digital Skills: Digital Marketing - offered by Accenture
This course provides an introduction to the different types of digital marketing solutions available to brands. You’ll learn how and when to use display ads or pay per click ads. The course also includes lessons on search engine optimization, email marketing, and how to leverage data to target customers in your digital marketing campaign
Coursera Courses
Coursera is an online education platform with courses offered by universities and companies. Coursera is on a mission to provide access to the world’s best online learning experience. The marketing courses provided here are free to audit, but you might be required to pay if you want to earn a course or specialization certificate. Also, Coursera provides financial aid to people who can’t afford to pay for full course access.
26. The Strategy of Content Marketing - offered by the University of California, Davis
The course will introduce you to how to use the core strategies of content marketing to drive interest in your brand and ensure customer retention. This course will provide you with insights on how to write compelling copy, how to build a brand persona with content, and how to analyze and measure the effectiveness of the content you create. You’ll also learn about the strategic types of content, and how to map your customer journey and create content for every milestone.
27. Creating High Impact Campaigns That Tell Brand Stories - offered by IE Business School
This course focuses on how marketers can create compelling brand stories through creatives or images used in their marketing campaigns. The course will introduce you to concepts on how your choice of images can influence the “look and feel” of how your brand is perceived. You will also be introduced to creative advertising concepts as well as how to develop a creative pitch and a production plan.
28. Influencer Marketing Strategy - offered by the State University of New Jersey
If you are interested in leveraging the networks of influencers in your industry to promote your brand, you'll most likely be interested in this course. The course provides you with information for building effective influencer marketing strategies. You’ll learn how to identify the right influencers and how you can get them to work with you. The course will also teach you how to draft influencer marketing campaigns and how to measure the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns.
29. Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content - offered by The University of Pennsylvania
If you have some experience in creating marketing campaigns, you would have observed that it is hard to predict what campaigns will go viral. This course synthesizes insights from the deconstruction of previously-viral content to help you understand the factors that improve the odds of viral marketing. You’ll also learn about social influence and how they determine what goes viral on social networks.
30. Communication Strategies for a Virtual Age - offered by University of Toronto
In a world of social media, teleconferencing, and virtual reality, the traditional rules of communication are evolving, and marketers must be able to leverage a science-based approach to drive their marketing communications. This course will teach you how to leverage influence, power, and questioning strategies to convince and persuade your audience over virtual media.
31. Marketing Analytics - offered by the University of Virginia
Digital marketing turns up tons of data about marketing touchpoints, consumer behavior, and the ROI of marketing efforts. However, the data won’t automatically make you a better marketer unless you know how to interpret it. This course provides marketers with the knowledge of the tools for measuring the performance of brand and customer assets. You’ll also get an introduction to regression analysis and learn how to design experiments to evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns.
32. Leadership Through Marketing - offered by Northwestern University
Businesses can only thrive by attracting and retaining customers. This course provides business leaders with an understanding of the marketing concepts necessary to create value, deepen competitive advantages, and allocate resources more effectively. You’ll also learn how to unlock growth by building a customer-focused culture and learn how to lead marketing teams from a customer-centric perspective.
Coursera Specializations
33. Digital Marketing Specialization - offered by the University of Illinois
This six-course specialization will help marketing professionals master the strategic tools and concepts necessary for promoting their brands effectively. The courses in the specialization include Marketing in a Digital World, Marketing Analytics for Marketing Professionals, Digital Media and Marketing Principles, and Marketing in an Analog World. You’ll also be required to apply the skills you have acquired in a Digital Marketing Capstone project involving a real-world business problem.
34. Foundations of Marketing Analytics Specialization - offered by Emory University
This six-course specialization will equip digital marketers with knowledge on how to find, extract, organize, and describe data to support their business decisions. You’ll learn how to identify and quantify the relationships between different marketing variables.
The courses in the specialization include Meaningful Marketing Insights, Managing Uncertainty in Marketing Analytics, Forecasting Models of Marketing Decisions, and an Introduction to Social Media Analytics.
35. Marketing Strategy Specialization - offered by IE Business School
This 5-course specialization will introduce you to the concepts and tools you need to develop marketing strategies for brands, products, and services. The course will take you deeper into the four Ps of marketing and you’ll also learn about market research and consumer behavior. At the end of the specialization, you’ll be required to undertake a Marketing Strategy Capstone project to apply the knowledge that you have gained to create a marketing plan for a business.
36. Marketing Mix Implementation Specialization - offered by IE Business School
This specialization provides people interested in marketing with the skills needed to create and execute high-impact marketing strategies. The courses in this specialization include Pricing Strategy, Brand and Product Management, Channel Management and Retailing, and Integrated Marketing Communications. You’ll also be required to undertake a Marketing Mix Implementation Capstone project. The capstone project will require you to put into practice what you learned in the specialization by taking a real-world product through the marketing mix.
The Open University
The Open University provides flexible, innovative teaching, and worldwide leading research education to students in the UK, and in more than 150 other countries through its open learning programs. The courses offered by The Open University are produced by multi-disciplinary teams of specialists, academics, and external examiners.
Below are two marketing courses currently available for free at The Open University.
37. Marketing in the 21st Century
This course provides students with advanced-level lessons on how to deliver effective marketing solutions from a managerial perspective. The course offers a rich variety of instruction medium including videos, practical activities, group discussions, and case studies. The lessons will help you think creatively about marketing and you’ll also get insights on how the idea of marketing is evolving across different markets and industries. Also, students will earn a Statement of Participation certificate at the end of the course.
38. Marketing Communications as a Strategic Function
This course provides marketing professionals with a deeper understanding of the autonomy and unpredictability of customer behavior in response to marketing communications. The course lesson will equip you with the skills necessary to approach marketing communications strategically. The course will also teach you how to leverage marketing communications to define your brand’s relationship with prospects and customers.
Independent Courses
39. Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises
This course provides marketers with lessons on the fundamentals of developing content marketing plans for B2B businesses. You’ll learn how to create content that converts, find industry influencers, and identify promotional opportunities for your brand. The course also includes a section on how to leverage data to identify touchpoints that you can optimize and improve for better results.
40. Quantitative Marketing Research offered by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
This course is designed for marketing managers who are interested in leveraging data to solve business problems. Participants will learn how to design, implement, and interpret quantitative market research projects. The course modules include lessons on Elements of Value and Willingness to Pay, Indirect Measurements of Value, Survey Design, Constructs and Scales, Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning.