These days, digital marketing is an in-demand field with plenty of job openings every year. And it makes sense! After all, brands are now becoming more and more aware of the need for an online presence.
Digital marketing or online marketing as a whole refers to using online and digital technologies in order to promote a brand, business, product, or service. But within digital marketing, there are many niches to get into — social media marketing, email marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), and more. And if you want to become a digital marketer, you’ll want to pick a few niches in which to become an expert.
But just how exactly can you begin to learn more about digital marketing? One of the easiest and best ways to do so is by enrolling in the best digital marketing course for your needs.
In this guide, we’ve included ten of the best online marketing courses for your consideration. We carefully curated this list to include courses at various difficulty levels, price ranges, and durations to ensure you have a wealth to choose from.
Best Digital Marketing Course: Top 10 Contenders in 2023
Best Free Beginners’ Course with Certificate
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Best for Budding Social Media Marketers
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Best for Students Who Want to Become Social Media Marketers
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Best All-in-One Course for Digital Marketers
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Best for Earning Credit for a Future MBA
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Best Bootcamp for Aspring Digital Marketers
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A Fantastic Course for Learning SEO, PPC, and Digital Marketing Analytics
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Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
It’s hard to argue with free — this course from Google Digital Garage comes to you at no cost and provides a high-quality education to help you make a career change (or boost your current career!). This interactive course covers the basics of digital marketing over 26 self-paced modules. At the end of the course, you will earn a recognized certificate that you can put on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Why We Chose This Course
We included this as it is one of the best courses on digital marketing for beginners. The fact that it’s from Google and provides a recognized certificate upon completion also adds to its already insane value as a free program!
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Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
The Professional Certificate Program in Digital Marketing is a Simplilearn Bootcamp powered by Purdue University in partnership with Meta. Joining this six-month bootcamp will gain you a certificate of completion and a voucher to take the Meta Blueprint certification exam at a later date. Passing this certification exam will gain you one of the world’s best and most popular professional certifications in the digital marketing field.
Why We Chose This Course
Not only is this intense bootcamp one of the best courses in digital marketing, but it also prepares you for the Meta Blueprint certification assessment later on. It’s a pricey investment that can pay off in dividends since it prepares you for your future career in the field.
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Why Enroll In This Course?
No matter your background, enrolling in this social media marketing-focused course can help you execute your digital marketing goals. This course is in contention for best online marketing course — especially if you’d like to learn how to market on ten different social media platforms.
Why We Chose This Course
This course is relatively easy and self-paced, allowing you to learn in your free time. You gain a certificate of completion at the end, but the most important aspect is that you’ll be able to begin implementing marketing strategies on your platforms of choice.
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4. – Best Learning Path for Beginners
Why Enroll In This Course?
This LinkedIn Learning course isn’t actually a course — it’s a learning path containing various courses to help you master digital marketing. Enrolling will help you learn the fundamentals to prepare you for success.
Why We Chose This Course
We included this learning path to help you start from the very beginning and learn the fundamentals of digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and various other digital marketing tools. You’ll even learn a bit more about marketing in augmented reality!
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5. – Best for Students Who Want to Become Social Media Marketers
Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
This beginner-level course is a premium product in Coursera’s catalog. It’s a digital marketing specialization focused on helping learners become expert social media marketers by the end of the program. Beyond learning the fundamentals of social media marketing (SMM), students must finish a capstone project to further cement what they’ve learned.
Why We Chose This Course
With how rapidly social media (and, therefore, SMM) evolves, you constantly need to stay updated to ensure your strategies remain relevant. This specialization receives quarterly updates, so you can revisit it at any time. The course is also offered by Northwestern University, ensuring quality.
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Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
This Nanodegree program covers the basics of digital marketing and allows students to choose electives for specialization. Every course in the program concludes with a project for practical experience. Students learn from the best and receive even more benefits, like career services and technical mentor support.
Why We Chose This Course
In our opinion, Udacity’s Digital Marketing Nanodegree Program is the best course for digital marketing overall. This program is intensive, but when done, students receive a certificate that’s highly recognized in the industry. Udacity is well-known for the quality of education they offer, and this program is no exception.
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7. – Best All-in-One Course for Digital Marketers
Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
If you want to dip your toes into the world of online or digital marketing, this masterclass can teach you the basics of the industry. You won’t learn much on the deeper and more complex topics, but at its price, it’s hard to argue value!
Why We Chose This Course
Courses on Udemy tend to be on the affordable side, and this masterclass is no exception. Although it presents somewhat basic information and a few of the videos contain outdated information, students can easily establish a foundation in digital marketing at an incredibly affordable price.
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8. – Best for Earning Credit for a Future MBA
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Why Enroll In This Course?
If you would like to learn more about digital marketing and data as it relates to this form of marketing, including analytics, then this specialization on Coursera is an excellent choice. This is also the best digital marketing online course if you’d like to earn credits for an MBA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign later on.
Why We Chose This Course
This course is 100% online and a bit more intensive than the other Coursera specialization listed above. However, it’s an excellent option for those who want to become digital marketers while working on their future degree.
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Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
This Simplilearn Master’s Program isn’t a master’s degree, it is an intensive bootcamp designed to prepare you for an eventual career in digital marketing. Taking this bootcamp will prepare you for everything you need to take a couple of the most popular professional digital marketing certification exams. Beyond the included courses, there are also some electives to help you better prepare for your career.
Why We Chose This Course
For us, this bootcamp is seriously in contention for best online digital marketing course for those who want to be career ready when they finish. You earn a certificate recognized by employers in the industry when you finish.
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10. – A Fantastic Course for Learning SEO, PPC, and Digital Marketing Analytics
Key Information
Why Enroll In This Course?
This course will teach students how to leverage the leading tools of the trade, including the various approaches to the analysis of digital marketing data. Joining this course will prepare you to learn search engine optimization strategies and paid search (pay-per-click or PPC) strategies for success.
Why We Chose This Course
We included this self-paced course as it’s a fantastic option for those who want to learn more about SEO and PPC strategies. Another thing that many learners don’t realize is that digital marketing often involves a ton of data, which will then require analytics — which you can learn more about here.
This course is available via the verified track, which will earn you a certificate of completion. However, you can also learn everything in the program for free via the audit track, although that means you will no longer earn a certificate or be able to participate in graded exams and assignments. Another thing to remember is that the audit track limits the amount of time you have available to learn this course, so you’ll need to go fast!
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How We Selected the Best Digital Marketing Courses Online
We considered a variety of factors as we began putting together this list of online digital marketing classes. One of the first and most important considerations is that each course must be clear and easy to follow. They should be able to present information in a concise way, going straight to the point instead of going around a series of convoluted points that confuse the whole experience.
We looked at the platform each course is on to ensure quality. Not all course platforms are created equally, which is why we only included courses from respected platforms. The course authors were also considered to ensure that the digital marketing course you enroll in was made by an authority on the subject.
We also looked for courses that would offer certificates of completion or professional certificates. Although employers likely won’t recognize all of the certificates equally, you can still include them in your resume.
Some other factors we looked at were cost, difficulty level, duration, and a few other things like the presence of exercises or quizzes to test and cement knowledge.
Tips for Succeeding in an Online Marketing Course
Taking online classes for digital marketing can be a great way to set yourself up for a future career in the industry. Courses are usually created in a way that presents lessons and information in a clear flowing manner. The best online digital marketing courses have planned syllabuses that have the lectures and activities laid out in the way that makes the most sense, helping learners pick everything up chronologically.
There are a few things you can do that can improve your chances of getting the most value possible out of your courses. Here are just a few of them.
Consider Course Costs
Online digital marketing courses come in a variety of price ranges, many of them cheaper than the others. For example, you might be able to find courses for less than a $20 one-time purchase on platforms like Udemy or even LinkedIn Learning. However, depending on the platform, you may end up paying upwards of $500.
If you seek digital marketing training online, one of the best things you can do is to narrow your choices down to courses that fit into your budget. You might also be able to reach a little further and extend your budget by trying to secure a few of the financial aid opportunities available on some platforms like Coursera.
Also ask yourself — could your current employer pay for your online courses? This option won’t always make sense for everyone, but if you have an employer that provides certain educational benefits, you might consider taking advantage!
Make Sure You Have All the Requirements Ready
If there’s one good thing about digital marketing classes, it’s that you won’t need any crazy technological specifications to enroll. Unlike programming or design courses, courses on digital marketing will typically only require you to have an adequately powerful computer, access to the internet, and likely a mobile device (like a phone) that will allow you to install and use some of the popular social media apps of today.
Do Some Extra Learning on the Side
Following your course is usually enough to teach you what you need to know to get started as a digital marketer. However, it may also benefit you to do a bit of extra learning on the side. You can do a few things to supplement your learning:
Take Notes
While you take your digital marketing courses online, you might want to take notes just as you would in a classroom setting lecture. Taking notes can be a great way to have a reference for when you need to recall something quickly. Making digital notes is great on its own, but you may benefit more from manually writing on paper — as some studies show, the act of writing on paper can lead to stronger brain activity and improved information retention.
If your course has them, it’s a good idea to do the exercises available to ensure you cement your learning further. However, you may also want to practice what you can on your own. You can also accept smaller jobs or lower paying positions to garner experience early on.
Enrolling in the best digital marketing course can help fast-track your learning and put you on a quick path to starting a new career. Whether you have some experience in the past or are starting from scratch, there is a perfect course or class for you to take.
We hope that our list of recommendations has helped you find the perfect course for your needs. Think we missed one that should be on this list? Let us know in the comments!
Do you feel ready to start looking for work in the field? Check out some of the to help you prepare for your job search!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Which Digital Marketing Is Best for Beginners?
There are several types of digital marketing, some of them more beginner-friendly than others. If you’ve never done any digital marketing before, some of the less challenging ones to begin learning are content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. SEO or search engine optimization can also be somewhat on the easier side to grasp.
2. Which Is the Best Course in Digital Marketing?
With so many fantastic courses available, it’s challenging to pinpoint just one that stands out as the best. Our curated list above contains ten of the best available. Choose a course that suits your budget and learning level for best results.
3. Which Digital Marketing Has the Highest Salary?
You can get a lucrative salary depending on which field of digital marketing you go into and your seniority. Chief growth officers and VPs of marketing can earn upwards of $300,000 per year.
4. Are There Free Online Marketing Courses?
There are many free online marketing courses online. Check platforms like Udemy or audit courses for free on Coursera. You won’t gain a certificate, but you’ll at least learn! Be wary of “gurus” who are trying to sell you courses, often their free content is just a way to funnel you into a future purchase.
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