Today's digital landscape is volatile, as platform algorithms, consumer behaviors, and best practices constantly change. Business owners and marketers must continuously keep up with new updates and trends, and now more than ever, continuous skill development is essential.
Thankfully, free digital marketing courses are abundant online, offering a way to bridge skill gaps without breaking the bank. Not all courses are equal, however, so careful research is crucial to find reputable ones that deliver actionable knowledge and insights.
Free Digital Marketing Courses Worth Your Time
Whether you're a business owner who wants to learn the ins and outs of digital marketing or an experienced marketer who wants to stay ahead of the curve, these free digital courses are worth trying.
1. TikTok Course by Influencer Marketing Hub
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, social media marketing
Duration: Unidentified
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Marketing managers, social media content creators, influencers
This free online course teaches you how to build your personal brand on TikTok. With over a billion active monthly users, TikTok has the potential to become your income-generating machine. The course is facilitated by two social influencers with personal success stories using TikTok and other social media platforms. It is divided into ten easy-to-digest modules covering TikTok 101 and the complexities of the platform. You also get bonuses with the course resources (outreach templates, case studies), production worksheets (storyboard templates, cue sheets), and a stash bundle (scheduling tools, editing apps).
2. Grow With Google by Google
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: SEO, eCommerce, email marketing, display marketing, marketing
Duration: 1 to 3 hours
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Students, business owners, digital marketers
Grow With Google provides tools and training sessions to help people learn new skills, advance their careers, or grow their businesses. It specializes in managing digital marketing campaigns, attracting new leads, retaining old customers, and selling products online. They have partnered with over 8,000 organizations, including schools, nonprofits, and libraries, so more people can reach their full potential.
Grow With Google currently offers numerous courses, ranging from the fundamentals of digital marketing to understanding the basics of machine learning. Its courses provide valuable resources like online certification (upon course completion) and coaching sessions. No previous knowledge or experience is required to enroll.
3. PPC Town Hall by Optmyzr
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Pay-per-click ads, digital marketing
Duration: 50 to 60 minutes per video podcast
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate
Target Audience: Digital marketers, business owners
PPC Town Hall is a video podcast offered by Optmzyr, an advanced PPC management software company. The town hall specializes in PPC topics, and the company CEO and a rotating panel of PPC experts discuss trends, benchmarks, insights, and more. Optmzyr has released 91 video podcasts that are easily accessible on their YouTube and Spotify channels.
The digital marketing topics on the shows vary widely, from PPC tips to building a winning strategy to using AI to analyze PPC campaigns. The expert speakers are from major digital platforms like Google, Microsoft Advertising, and Paid Media Pros.
4. EdinburghX: Digital Marketing Strategy by edX
Pricing: Free/Freemium
Course Overview: Digital marketing, strategic planning
Duration: 2 months; 4 to 6 hours per week
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate
Target Audience: Digital marketers, business owners
EdinburghX is a MOOC-based free online course that is part of the extensive digital marketing free courses by MOOC.org, an extension of edX.org. The University of Edinburgh developed the course and has over 105 thousand students. It tackles the digital marketing landscape and how digital technologies can grow and scale businesses of all sizes. It also covers how to create innovative content and how to use consumer persona. The two instructors (a lecturer and a teaching assistant) use case studies to demonstrate how digital strategies support business goals.
5. Meta Social Media Management by Coursera
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, social media marketing, content development, content management, content marketing
Duration: 1 to 4 hours per module
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Digital marketer, social media content creator
This four-module free digital marketing course focuses on social media marketing. It covers establishing and managing a solid social media presence, managing a content calendar for various social media platforms, creating a brand tone and voice, and measuring social media content performance. For assessment, the course includes four quizzes and four assignments. Finishing the course as part of the Meta SMM Professional Certificate means earning a sharable career certificate from the company.
6. Digital Marketing Course: Get Certified in Digital Marketing by HubSpot Academy
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, inbound marketing, SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, lead generation
Duration: 5:25 hours
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate
Target Audience: Small business owners, marketing managers, students
Digital Marketing Certification Course focuses on a human-centered marketing strategy, while HubSpot Academy emphasizes an inbound-first strategy. The 9-lesson course teaches how to optimize websites for humans and search engines. With 37 videos, you can create a solid digital marketing strategy to grow a healthy following for your business. The course is available in five languages: English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and German.
7. Meta Blueprint by Meta
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, content strategy
Duration: Unidentified
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Small business owners, social media content creators
Meta Blueprint is a collection of free courses, programs, and certifications designed to help small businesses learn the best marketing practices for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The topics range from preparing your business online, establishing your presence, attracting your target audience, and building customer relationships to improving and optimizing your creative strategy. Each topic has subcategories with a wealth of reading resources to learn. Once you've completed a beginner-level course, you can take its corresponding certification exam. If you pass, you can place the shareable certification on your resume or LinkedIn profile.
8. Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners by Udemy
Pricing: Free/Freemium
Course Overview: Digital marketing, affiliate marketing
Duration: 2:18 hours of video content
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Affiliate marketers
This free course—facilitated by an expert affiliate marketer—provides a step-by-step guide on turning affiliate marketing into a full-time income. It covers affiliate marketing 101, how to set up your website to optimize your affiliate work, how to attract the right visitors, and how to choose the right niche. The course has been taken by over 119 thousand students, with an average rating of 4.5 stars.
9. Copywriting for Beginners by Skillshare
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, copywriting,
Duration: 1:02 hours of video content
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Marketing managers, copywriters, students
This free online course comprises 17 lessons that focus on copywriting. It tackles the difference between copywriting and content writing, ways to understand your audience, and writing headlines that catch attention. It also provides tips for overcoming writer's block and building trust using visual aids. Over 43 thousand students have attended the course, which has been used in over 280 projects.
10. Digital Marketing Framework by Great Learning
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing
Duration: 1.5 hours of video content
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Digital marketers, marketing managers
This course centers around the framework of digital marketing, starting with its evolution to where it stands today. It highlights the new consumer journey, brand purpose, and digital marketing funnel. Completing the course includes a shareable certificate you can share on your professional networks. You also have lifetime access to the course, so you can retake it anytime.
11. 30 Days of SEO: Free SEO Course by MOZ Academy
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, SEO
Duration: 104 minutes of video content in 30 days
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate
Target Audience: Digital marketers, small business owners
This is a vendor-specific free online course. The course itself is free, but you need a Moz Pro paid account to apply any of the learnings. Moz subscribers will primarily benefit from this instructor-led course. However, even those only interested in advancing their SEO skills can learn a lot, starting with effectively strategizing an SEO game plan. The course also tackles keyword research and how doing it right can impact your SEO techniques.
12. Create Videos for YouTube by Google Digital Garage
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, video marketing, video content
Duration: 60 minutes
Learning Mode: Live
Skill Level: Beginner to intermediate
Target Audience: Marketing managers, YouTube content creators, YouTube vloggers
This is all about learning how to create YouTube content that can make your brand stand out. During the session, the lecturer will cover ways to identify your niche and understand your brand and, subsequently, your target audience. The course also tackles tips on writing and storyboarding your video content to ensure relevancy. It also provides strategies to increase your video's discoverability value. The online course requires registration (free).
13. What Is Social? by Coursera
Pricing: Free/Freemium
Course Overview: Digital marketing, social media marketing
Duration: 7 hours of video content
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Marketing managers, executives, business owners
This course, offered by Northwestern University, is designed for marketing professionals and business owners who want to significantly maximize their social media abilities. The hands-on how-to program is the first of a six-part SMM Specialization course. It tackles social overview, social trends, and the business of social media viewed as holistic, global, and integrated.
14. Presentations to Impress: From the Experts by Canva
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing, content creation, video marketing
Duration: 15 minutes of video content
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Beginner
Target Audience: Students, small business owners, digital marketers
This short course discusses planning, simplifying, and presenting your presentation. The experts include Melanie Perkins, CEO and founder of Canva, Guy Kawasaki, chief brand evangelist of Canva, and Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia. They provide expertise in researching your audience, considering their POV, and solving their solutions. They also offer tips on defining your topic in a single sentence and writing a memorable presentation.
15. Marketing Communications in the Digital Age by OpenLearn
Pricing: Free
Course Overview: Digital marketing
Duration: 12 hours
Learning Mode: Self-paced
Skill Level: Intermediate
Target Audience: Marketing managers, business owners
This course utilizes theories and models to explain practical marketing communications skills. It provides examples and case studies of correctly managing communications in the digital world where human nuances are obscured. The course has seven modules, starting with the role of marketing communications and concluding with ethical issues in the field.
Features of a High-Quality Free Digital Marketing Course
Free digital marketing courses are a goldmine of knowledge. But with thousands of online courses, choosing the best one for your business goals can be challenging. Not every course is created equal, but these are the benchmarks of a high-quality course:
Well-Structured Module
A high-quality free course has an organized structure; the lessons are fluent and built upon each other. This logical progression makes the lessons easy to understand, leading to an in-depth knowledge of the subject.
Practical Focus
Theoretical knowledge is essential in learning something new. A practical or hands-on focus is more critical, especially if you need to measure or analyze the results. Look for digital courses that offer real-world case studies, examples, and exercises. This way, you'll have tangible proof of what works and what doesn't.
Industry-Recognized Sources
Anyone can create a free online course, and the accessibility of AI tools makes this very easy. To gain knowledge and advanced skills from a free course, ensure it’s developed or facilitated by industry-recognized resources and instructors. These platforms and people have industry knowledge and credibility that no AI-generated content can replicate.
There's no shortage of free (and paid) digital marketing courses online. But to be the best in your field, you need to take classes from reputable resources, such as:
- Coursera
- HubSpot Academy
- Udemy
- Meta Blueprint
- edX
- Simplilearn
- Semrush Academy
- Google Digital Garage.
Updated Content
One of the main reasons for the thousands of free online courses right now is the constant change in the digital world. Ensure the course you enroll in has the most recent trends, algorithm changes, and best practices. Outdated information has little to no value in this evolving landscape.
Final Thoughts
Free digital marketing courses offer many opportunities to expand your knowledge. They also provide a flexible and affordable way to upskill and learn advanced marketing strategies to build and grow your business. Enroll in one and start building your professional expertise now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which digital marketing course is best?
The best digital marketing course is subjective to your business's needs and goals. A good starting point for beginners is an introduction to digital marketing and its key concepts.
Is it worth doing a digital marketing course?
Yes. Any course, training, or session that can expand your knowledge is worth doing. Digital marketing courses are a goldmine of industry insights to help grow your business.
How long does it take to learn digital marketing?
There's no standard timeframe for learning digital marketing. Factors like time commitment, skill level, depth of understanding, and learning method can influence your learning timeline.
