We live in a wondrous age my friends. Knowledge and learning can be obtained with a few clicks of the mouse, opening education and intellectual stimulation to anyone with a scholarly spirit.
Whether you want to start with the marketing basics or you’re more advanced, there’s something for everyone here. Below is a list of our favorite online marketing courses, most of which are free or very nearly free. Let the learning begin!
WordStream’s PPC University
PPC University is a collection of our best articles, tips, tutorials, and guides on online advertising. It’s a one-stop shop for learning all the ins and outs of PPC, with easy-to-browse lessons for beginners to advanced. You’ll find five different segments:
- PPC 101: Learn all the basics for search advertising, including keywords, metrics, Quality Score, account setup and structure.
- PPC 102: Go a little deeper by learning about bidding strategies, negative keywords, ad copy, and budget management.
- Advanced PPC: Maximize your performance with remarketing, audience targeting, optimizing for lead quality, and more.
- Social Ads 101: Understand how social advertising works and browse through cheat sheets for each platform.
- Facebook Ads: Use our step-by-step guide to set up your first campaign, then discover how to optimize your copy and creative, which campaign types to use, how to retarget, and more.
LocaliQ’s Marketing Lab
Looking to learn all things local marketing? Put your white coat and goggles on and step into LocaliQ’s Marketing Lab—a series of easy-to-follow courses on digital marketing geared for local business owners and beginners. Courses include:
Google’s Digital Garage
Is there a better source to learn about online marketing than the big G itself? Google Digital Garage offers a number of digital marketing courses on PPC, SEO, coding, careers, and more. If you’re not sure which course to pick, we recommend starting with the Fundamentals course.
Constant Contact’s Social Media Quickstarter
Constant Contact’s Social Media Quickstarter is a collection of online marketing guides that will help you master social media marketing in no time. Featuring quick, easy-to-read guides, social media novices can browse this extensive knowledge base at their leisure.
CopyBlogger’s Internet Marketing for Smart People course
CopyBlogger’s Internet Marketing for Smart People Course is a 20-installment course that will give you the low down on content marketing, copywriting, SEO, keyword research, and more! Best of all, it’s dished out to you via email so you won’t get bogged down with too much educational info sent all at once.
Coursera’s digital marketing courses
As one of the most popular sites for online education, Coursera has many offerings, including free online marketing courses. Check ‘em out. Even if you don’t see anything you like, check back every now and then – new classes are always being added. Examples of courses include:
- Google Digital Marketing & Ecommerce: Gain the skills to get an entry-level job in digital marketing and ecommerce, such as analytics, search marketing, and email.
- Meta Social Media Marketing: Learn how to set up and manage social media accounts, create engaging social media posts, and measure your performance.
- The Strategy of Content Marketing: This course is brought to you by UC Davis and Copyblogger to help you develop, organize, and implement a measurable content marketing strategy so you can buid your personal brand.
HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Training
HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Training Program and Certification is one of many free marketing classes and reading materials from HubSpot to help you master inbound marketing. Learn about blogging, SEO, keyword strategy, social media, email marketing, calls to action, and more! Finish up with an exam to prove your worth.
WordStream’s On-Page SEO Crash Course
Want to rank higher on Google? Get more traffic to your site? Get the feeling of supreme authority when you see your blog post as the featured snippet on the SERP? Then head on over to our On-Page SEO Course. It’s complete with everything you need to know to optimize your content for Google, including:
- The differences between on-page, off-page, and technical SEO
- A walk-through of the 11 most important on-page optimizations
- A spreadsheet checklist for the above optimizations
- SEO-optimized blog post templates
- This video:
RELATED: New employee? Make sure to add training courses to your 30/60/90-day plan for long-term success.
Alison’s digital marketing courses
Alison offers a large number of free online business courses and free virtual diplomas for learning junkies. Browse and filter by course subjects, duration, learning level, and more.
A few notables:
- Essentials of Digital Marketing and Lead Generation: Learn how to build your presence with SEO, with a particular focus on WordPress.
- Introduction to Online Marketing Strategies: A primer on different ways to promote your business with search, social, email, and more.
edX’s digital marketing courses
edX is another popular website for attending free online classes. Your online classroom, without the mysterious school lunches.
Some recent archived classes that might interest marketers include:
- Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. Class sessions focus on the different aspects of marketing including mobile, omnichannel, marketing mix modeling, and creating a strategy.
- Digital Marketing Analytics. Discover the power of data and learn about SEO, PPC, web analytics, online testing, machine learning, and more.
Simplilearn’s Google Ads course
Simplilearn’s Google Ads course is a five-hour YouTube video course where you’ll learn what Google Ads is, how Display vs Search works, and how to use Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager.
You can find more courses like this one in our roundup of the best free Google Ads training courses.
Facebook Blueprint’s social media marketing courses
Well, now called Meta Blueprint, this series of free online courses will help you get familiar with marketing strategies across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. You can learn about both organic and paid methods of social media marketing, and lessons are mixed and matched into tracks depending on what you’re trying to achieve. For example:
- Prepare to Bring Your Business Online: Decide who you want to reach, understand the customer journey, and set marketing goals.
- Establish Your Presence: Stay connected to customers online, get familiar with Instagram, and connect with customers on WhatsApp.
- Attract an Audience: Plan what to post on Instagram and learn how to make your posts stand out.
- Sell Your Products Online: Learn how to use Facebook and Instagram Shops
- Start Advertising from Your Page: Media publishers and creators can learn how to create campaigns.
- Enhance Your Ads in Ads Manager: Learn how to advertise on Facebook.
For more courses like this, head to our round-up of the best free social media marketing courses.
WordStream’s Facebook Ads tutorial
How to Advertise on Facebook in 10 Steps: The Visual Guide is our complete course on creating your first Facebook advertising campaign using the conversions objective. It’s a written guide with screenshots, side notes, and pro tips to help you succeed.
You’ll also find in the guide a 25-minute video tutorial where we create a Facebook ad campaign from start to finish. In the process, you’ll gain an understanding of how to structure your Facebook ad account, what each of the campaign objectives are, and how to navigate all the settings, bells, and whistles.
- For even more resources, head to our round-up of the best free Facebook advertising courses.
- For more tips, download our free guide: 7 Fundamentals of Facebook Advertising
Udemy’s digital marketing courses
Udemy offers a huge selection (10,000+) of online courses on everything from parenting and cooking to app building and, of course, marketing!
The internet marketing courses we’ve listed below are 100% free, but Udemy has other paid offerings as well if you feel like dishing out dough for more advanced, extensive courses.
- Advanced SEO: Tactics & Strategy. Created by the Moz team, these 7 video lectures offer SEO expertise for beginners and experts alike. 5 star rating.
- Zero Cost Marketing Strategies: Official Primer Course. While seemingly a bit hokey, the 4.5 stars and 25,000+ enrolled students prove that there’s plenty of solid info in this course to make it worth your while.
- Google AdWords 101: Get More Customers with Search Marketing. This free 5 star course will walk you through how to set up your first Google Adwords campaign.
- Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises. A solid, recommended guide for those looking to learn about content marketing for B2B lead generation.
- Social Media Online Marketing Courses. Want to learn about social media marketing? Check out Three Sixty Academy on Udemy. They offer free social media marketing courses for Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Google+ (perfect if you’re in a creative industry like craft marketing!).
WordStream’s Google Ads tutorial
How to Run Google Ads is our complete, step-by-step guide to creating a search campaign in Google Ads—recipe-style. You’ll get a complete list of all the ingredients you need (including an appetite for success), detailed instructions, and plenty of food puns. And we have a super fun video to accompany it.
You can also check out these Google Ads crash courses:
- How to Use Google Ads: A Crash Course: You will get an overview of each of the Google Ads channels, including Search, Display, Shopping, and YouTube.
- How Does Google Ads Work? Understand the Google Ads auction so you can know exactly how to improve your Quality Score, lower your costs, and rank higher.
More (free) learning fun stuff
Maybe the free online marketing courses we’ve mentioned above aren’t for you. Too dry and dull? Too long? Well there’s plenty of other ways to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest marketing practices. Try…
Marketing podcasts
Podcasts are fantastic because they are so mobile and multi-tasking friendly. You can listen to podcasts while riding your bike to work, eating your lunch, or, if you’re discreet enough, during your staff meeting (although we don’t advocate trying it).
These marketing podcasts are a few fan favorites. Give them a listen!
- Marketing Over Coffee. A weekly discussion of the latest happenings in marketing with John Wall and Christopher Penn.
- I Love Marketing. Hosted by Dean Jackson and Joe Polish, this podcast discusses all things marketing, from lead gen to emails.
- Duct Tape Marketing. This podcast, hosted by John Jantsch, provides listeners with expert interviews and a variety of marketing techniques and strategies.
- Entrepreneur on Fire. Entrepreneur guests share their wisdom and experience with host John Lee Dumas. Also awarded “Best of iTunes” in 2013.
Freakonomics podcast
Another podcast, but Freakonomics deals specifically with – you guessed it – economics. No, no, I promise it’s not boring. It deals with the hidden economic situations you’ll encounter in everyday scenarios.
OK, that doesn’t sound thrilling either, but I swear you’ll love it. While the episodes won’t always relate to marketing, there’s often a larger lesson that businesses can take away from this popular podcast.
Ted Talks
There is a great collection of fascinating Ted Talks specifically about marketing. Give them a whirl.
Do you have any favorite free online marketing courses, classes, or resources you want to share? Let us know in the comments!
Meet The Author
Megan Marrs
Megan Marrs is a veteran content marketer who harbors a love for writing, watercolors, oxford commas, and dogs of all shapes and sizes. When she’s not typing out blog posts or crafting killer social media campaigns, you can find her lounging in a hammock with an epic fantasy novel.
Comments
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.