15 Best + Free Digital Marketing Certifications [2020]

Digital Defynd
MarketingDefynd
Published in
9 min readDec 17, 2019

Our team of 50+ global digital marketing experts has done in-depth research to come up with this list of 15 Best Free Digital Marketing Certifications available online for 2020. More than 55,000 students have already benefited from these free courses, training, and classes. In case you are looking at courses beyond digital marketing, do check out our compilation of Best Free Online Courses.

15 Best Digital Marketing Certifications Online [2020] [UPDATED]

1. Free Digital Marketing University Certification Courses (edX)

There are over 30 high quality internationally reputed digital marketing courses available on edX, most of which are absolutely free to audit. That means you can get international quality education online by universities like Wharton, Delft, Galileo, Curtin, University of Washington and other institutions at practically no cost on e learning platform edX. Take courses on Facebook ads, social selling, digital transformation, digital strategy, marketing in a digital world and a host of other subjects on the platform. You may also be interested in checking out the Best Digital Marketing Courses Online.

Duration : Variable

You can Sign up Here

2. Free Digital Marketing Certification (LinkedIn Learning — Lynda)

While you may choose any of the digital marketing certifications from reputed organisations, this course is ideally meant for those who want to learn from the practical experience of practitioners over the years. A dedicated learning path has been created which includes courses around SEO, Google Analytics, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Growth Hacking and much more. Being available on LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) means that the entire content is free to consume for 1 month, practically making the course free for you. You may want to check out some of the best Social Media Courses online.

Duration: 14 hours

You can Sign up Here

3. Digital Marketing Strategies (Kellogg School of Management)

This Executive Education program by the Kellog School of Management is meant specifically for managers and other professionals who want to hone their skills in the digital marketing domain while leading marketing teams and growing in their organization. Among other things, you will learn how to attract and influence customers, understand the expectations and requirements of customers, and optimize your business tactics accordingly.

Key USPs-

– Learn all about the customer journey and content strategy

– Understand how to engage in brand storytelling in a digital world

– Comes with industry examples of companies like AT&T, FedEx and Google

– Get taught by globally renowned industry experts and trainers

– Put the theoretical classes to practice by working in a marketing transformation challenge.

– Earn a verified certificate at the completion of program

Duration: 2 months, 4 to 6 hours per week

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

You can Sign up Here

Review: This program has changed and evolved my perspectives about Digital Marketing. I learned that it goes beyond creating or managing content, ads or campaigns through digital and social channels. The best part of the program is when it integrated the knowledge about modern digital marketing with the trends in automation and technology. This will definitely ignite the curiosity to identify what and how our current practices can be enhanced, optimized and become innovative. — Ahmed Al Madi, Operations Development Manager

4. Product Strategy (Kellogg School of Management)

One of the fastest-growing subsets of digital marketing is Product Marketing and Management. Companies are increasingly looking at hiring managers with a specialization in product marketing and this program from Northwestern | Kellog School of Management does justice in preparing you for those roles. Some of the topics covered in the program include strategizing, analyzing opportunities, defining requirements, designing business models, managing growth and partner ecosystem to name a few.

Key USPs-

– Learn all about the 360-degree product mindset

– Learn from the real-life experience of the instructor and avoid commonly made mistakes.

– Explore industry examples of different companies such as Apple, Uber, Microsoft and Cisco and more.

– Get trained from renowned industry experts who are well renowned globally

– Complete the program with over 80% marks to pass and earn the certification

– Your batchmates will include stalwarts from the domains of e-commerce, software, banking, consulting and more

Duration: 2 months, 4 to 6 hours per week

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

You can Sign up Here

5. Google Digital Marketing Course

This is the introductory course to Digital Marketing and is relevant for beginners who may want to understand the basics of the Digital Marketing eco-system before deep diving into each topic. Offered in bite-sized modules, the person needs to unlock 23 badges to win a certificate. Each badge pertains to 1 topic (among SEO, SEM, display, search, email, etc.) and covers the entire gamut of online marketing. The ones who already know about these terminologies or are taking the other courses mentioned in this list can choose to skip this course. For Product Managers out there, do have a look at some of the best Product Management Certification.

Duration: 6.5 hrs

You can Sign up Here

6. Web/eCommerce/Mobile Analytics with Google’s Analytics Academy

Working on a lot of content but not sure whether it is reaching your desired audience? Have a ecommerce website/mobile app and you want to optimize your operations for a greater ROI? This certification from Google will give you that Eureka moment! This video-format course is structured across 4 different modules: Digital Analytics Fundamentals, Google Analytics Platform Principles, Ecommerce Analytics and Mobile App Analytics Fundamentals. My only suggestion — Practice as you learn.

Duration: 4.5 hrs

You can Sign up Here

7. Google Adwords Certification

Take up this globally recognized certification from Google — Google Adwords Fundamentals. Covered across 7 different modules, you need to clear the Adwords Fundamentals exam and one of other 6 (Search, Display, Video, Shopping and Mobile Advertising) to get certified. There are also separate exams and certifications for latter 6 in case you want to clear all. Unfortunately, unlike the Google Analytics course, this is not a video format based course and so it calls for a stronger will power to ensure completion! You may also be interested in checking out Best Google Adwords Courses.

8. Bing Ads Accreditation Exam

It is without doubt that Google is the most popular search engines in the world. However, with Bing now being bundled with Microsoft products like Office and Xbox, and also being the search engine for Apple’s Siri and Amazon assistant devices, Bing’s share is expected to grow. Those of you who are considering optimizing your future campaigns according to Bing’s ranking factors, can take up this Bing Ads exam. Study guide for this also not a video format but a 109 pager study guide.

9. Free SEO Certification

Who wouldn’t want to reach out to their audience when the audience are indeed looking out for them and that too for ‘free’? This is where optimizing the website to search engines is important. Unlike the Google Analytics and Adwords certification, Google does not offer any certification for SEO (may be because of the volatility of SEO algorithms).

10. Facebook Blueprint Certification

Offered in 86 modules, this course covers best practices for campaign planning and optimization using Facebook’s family of apps and services including Instagram. Note that while all the courses can be accessed for free, you need to pay and schedule an exam if you want to get an officially recognized certificate from Facebook. You may also be interested in checking out the best Facebook Advertising Course.

11. Video Marketing with You Tube Certification

Video is becoming a preferred content medium and so it is important to have a well-defined video content strategy. This certification from You Tube, across 29 modules, incorporates channel growth best practices, platform strategies, and channel development techniques to help find success on YouTube and beyond. Do check out the eligibility and the relevant certification track to make the most out of this course.

12. Hubspot Inbound Sales Certification

Another important paradigm shift that is being observed is the shift from outbound sales methodologies like Cold Calling, to Inbound Methodologies. Imagine, leads coming to you! This Hubspot’s course will helps you identify potential buyers, develop outreach strategies and build personalized presentations so that you can better advise today’s empowered buyer.

13. Free Digital Marketing Courses (Skillshare)

Skillshare is an e-learning website that works on an interesting model where it offers you to access all its 15,000+ courses at almost zero cost. This means that at just $1, you could be learning SEO and Adwords and Affiliate Marketing and various aspects of Digital Marketing within a month at $1. Sounds too good to be true? We say you check it out once and see if it suits you 🙂 After a month you may cancel your subscription so you are not charged any further.

14. Best Content Marketing Certifications

Content Marketing is gaining prominence because a lot of people are simply getting tired of traditional formats of advertising. An important skill to add for a content writer, these courses are worth checking out. Specially recommended for those who have a flair for writing and want to figure out ways to do a work from home job by writing for clients all over the world.

15. Best Instagram Marketing Certification

Has Instagram taken the world by storm or what? What was a small niche little app until sometime back has today practically left Snapchat behind and is considered next only to facebook in terms of popularity. These courses are tailor made for social media marketers. While facebook ruled the scene for a long while, Instagram is where the focus is shifting now.

16. Best Affiliate Marketing Courses

Earn Money Online. These courses really help you do that. Check them out to know what we are talking about. Choosing any of these courses will help you figure out how you can use the power of the internet to target consumers and customers all over the world by selling products listed on various sites all over the web. Believe it or not, people are presently earning up to 6 figure and 7 figure incomes by just investing their time and resource in Affiliate Marketing.

17. Free SEO Training by Backlinko

There must be thousands of resources to learn SEO out there. That is a dilemma we also faced. So we conducted a poll on a forum to understand which are best free resources to decipher SEO. Sharing the results so you can make an informed choice and become better at SEO.

The one blog most SEO professionals recommended in our survey was Backlinko by Brian Dean. Considered as one of the best SEO experts in the industry, Brian sure has created a reputation of sorts, which he lives up to. Articles, researches, hidden secrets and a lot more can be found on his blog Backlinko. Now he used to offer a course as well, but presently it shows that enrollments are closed. You can still join the waiting list here (or maybe the registrations are open again by the time you read this).

The reason he makes it to this list without having a ‘free course’ as such is because the kind of knowledge he shares through his articles and case studies is top notch, and many professionals will swear by it. SEO is such a vast subject that it can be learnt in various ways. What works for someone may not work for you, what works for you may not work for others. But if you need to start getting a feel and flavor of how SEO works and get regular updates about it, then starting reading Backlinko might be a great idea.

Recommended from our side :

Backlinko Blog

18. SEO Tutorial for Beginners by Daragh Walsh

Daragh Walsh is a Google Certified Marketer & Best Selling Udemy Instructor who has taught 200,000 students. He can help you grow your income, start your own digital business, sell affiliate products or most importantly help you land that dream job. Having worked with companies across 40 countries, he comes with rich experience and has shared a lot of it in this free seo tutorial. Specifically, he will help you learn the basics of SEO, help you understand how to optimize a site, get to page on on Google and increase sales.

He will also be teaching authority building techniques to make sure Google ranks you higher than competitors for industry keywords, in addition to telling you about best methods to do keyword research online. This one hour free course is packed with information and has been taken up by more than 80,000 students globally.

You can Sign up Here

So that is our take on Best Digital Marketing Certifications and Courses available Online. Hope you enjoyed this piece of information. We have also lined up some more relevant information and courses for you, hope you find them useful too. Wish you Happy Learning!

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Digital Defynd
MarketingDefynd

100s of global experts recommend the best courses and certifications online. 2 Million+ Learners, 75000+ Courses and counting. https://digitaldefynd.com