What is the best way to learn digital marketing for free and in the comfort of your own home? Fortunately, several free and paid online resources can help you build the skills needed to become a modern digital marketing professional.
In this guide, you will find the best resources to teach yourself digital marketing in the fastest possible way.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services on the Internet using one or more marketing channels like search engines, social media platforms, and PPC advertising.
With digital marketing, you can find audiences interested in your brand, interact with them, and nurture them until they become customers.
The most important digital marketing types are search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, PPC advertising, social media marketing, affiliate marketing, video marketing, website marketing, and email marketing.
How to Learn Digital Marketing For Free
To become a successful digital marketing consultant, you must develop the skills to work with all online marketing technologies. In addition, you need to acquire the necessary knowledge so that you can combine them together to achieve the best possible outcome.
It's hard work that requires a lot of patience and perseverance, but the good news is that you don't have to attend college or a classroom course to become a digital marketing expert.
You don't even have to spend your time searching Google for learning resources.
We did our research and created a list of the best resources (almost all free) you can follow and build your skills from the comfort of your home.
To learn digital marketing, you need to become an expert in the following areas:
- Search Engine Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Inbound Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
- Video Marketing
- Digital Marketing Tools
1. Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing is a major component of digital marketing.
SEM has to do with marketing on the various search engines using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Paid Search Advertising (Google Ads or Bing Ads).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks higher in the search engine's organic results.
SEO is important in online marketing because it can drive highly targeted traffic to your website. It’s a slower process compared to Paid Ads, but it can generate better results in the long term.
If you are a beginner in digital marketing, it’s necessary to understand that SEO is not a static discipline but changes constantly. Google is reportedly making more than 255 changes to its ranking algorithm yearly.
This means that if you want to pursue an SEO Career, you need to monitor the SEO industry for changes and adjust your digital marketing campaigns accordingly.
SEO is not hard to learn but requires a structured learning approach. To make things easier, the SEO process can be broken down into three main areas:
Technical SEO - these are rules related to the technical side of SEO. It deals with crawling and indexing issues, page speed, the use of structured data, XML sitemaps, and other settings that don't have to do with a website's content but with the overall site infrastructure.
On-Page SEO - involves techniques you can apply to your content to make it friendlier to users and search engine crawlers. It has to do with using keywords within your content, page headings and formatting, using the proper ALT text for images, and other on-site factors.
Off-Page SEO - these are techniques you can use to improve the credibility of your website. The most popular is getting links from other websites to increase your domain authority and rank higher in the Google SERPS.
For beginners, it may sound like a lot to consume, but don't worry, the following guides will help you get started with SEO and teach you everything you need to know to succeed in this space.
- The Complete SEO Course - Everything you need to know about SEO (Paid).
- SEO Certification Guide - A list of free and paid SEO certifications (Free and Paid).
- Free SEO Courses - A list of the best SEO courses to learn SEO (Free).
- Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide - An SEO-started guide by Google (Free).
PPC Marketing
Pay-per-click marketing or paid search advertising (PSA) is the other component of search engine marketing.
With Pay-Per-Click ads, you can reach your target customers faster than SEO, but you pay every time someone clicks on your ads.
Currently, the biggest PPC network is Google Ads, which allows you to show your ads in Google Search Results, on Google properties (like Google Discover, Gmail, and YouTube), and on websites participating in Google AdSense.
Learning PPC is not difficult. You can go through the various online courses (see below) and become a PPC Certified expert in a few months.
Getting a certification alone does not make you a good digital marketing specialist. You must work with PPC campaign management and gain practical experience.
Things you need to master as a PPC specialist include:
- Setting up paid campaigns on Google and Bing
- Identifying your target audience
- Creating engaging ads
- Monitoring and optimizing campaigns
- Performing competitor analysis
At the end of the day, your role as a digital marketing professional is to combine the results of PPC with other channels (like SEO or Social Media Marketing) and deliver the best possible outcome for your clients.
The following resources will teach you everything you need to know about PPC:
- Google Ads Courses - A list of the best courses to learn Google Adwords (Free and Paid).
- Google Ads Specialist - How to become a PPC specialist fast (Free).
- Best PPC Marketing Certifications - The best certifications to pursue to learn PPC marketing (Free and Paid).
2. Content Marketing
Every digital marketing campaign is based on content. Whether it’s SEO, social media marketing, or email marketing, you need content to reach and engage your target audience through different channels.
Content marketing is the process of identifying, creating, and promoting the right type of content to the right audience.
To become a good content marketer, you must have excellent writing, SEO copywriting, and analytical skills.
You need to learn:
- How to create user personas and define your target audience
- The different content types and how to use them
- How to identify keywords for your content marketing campaigns
- How to create content to satisfy the searcher's intent
- How to create people-first content
- How to perform content audits
- How to perform competitor analysis to spot opportunities
- How to promote your content
- How to measure the performance of your content campaigns
Learning content marketing is an ongoing process and requires a lot of practice. Creating content, whether it's text or video, is an art that can be mastered with practice and trial and error.
Like other disciplines, you cannot become a content marketer overnight. You need to build your skills gradually, and the resources below are a great starting point.
- Content Marketing Specialist - A free guide on how to become a content marketing professional.
- Best Content Marketing Courses - A list of the best courses to learn content marketing (Free).
- SEO Copywriting Courses - A list of free and premium courses on SEO Copywriting.
3. Inbound Marketing
At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that a good digital marketer should be able to use different online marketing techniques together for the best possible outcome.
That’s exactly what inbound marketing is all about. The role of Inbound marketing is to coordinate the activities of all other digital marketing campaigns to provide a remarkable user experience.
The overall goal is to have a solid process for attracting new customers, engaging with them, gaining their trust, and earning their satisfaction.
Inbound marketing has four steps:
- Attract - using different mediums like blog posts, social media postings, and influencer marketing, your goal is to get the attention of users.
- Convert - once you get visits, the next step is to get them to execute a desired action, i.e., convert.
- Engage - use email marketing and other techniques to engage with them and keep them aware of your brand,
- Delight - offer them great products and excellent customer service to delight them in becoming loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
Companies that can do this successfully are more likely to grow their customer base faster than companies that run isolated campaigns.
Your job as a digital marketing manager is to ensure that all digital marketing campaigns share the same goals and work towards the same targets.
To learn more about inbound marketing, visit the resources below:
- Digital Marketing Courses - A list of the best free and paid courses on all topics related to digital marketing.
- Digital Marketing Certifications - Premium resources to learn digital marketing and get certified.
4. Social Media Marketing
Everybody agrees that imagining a world without Facebook or Twitter is hard nowadays. Social media networks have dominated our lives and our approach to digital marketing.
Since the goal of digital marketing is to connect with your potential customers in their favorite channels, a new form of marketing was born, and this is social media marketing.
Social media marketing is what the name implies, i.e., marketing on various social networks to find and engage with your customers.
Facebook is the most widely used network, with over 3 billion active monthly users, followed by Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
A great place to start learning social media marketing is to learn how Facebook Ads work. Facebook Ads Courses will teach you everything you need about Facebook Paid Campaigns.
Once you feel comfortable running social media campaigns on Facebook, you can enhance your skills by learning more about Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter marketing.
Besides the paid advertising aspect of social media marketing, as an aspiring social media marketer, you also need to master the following skills:
- Create engaging content for social media networks
- Setting social media goals and creating strategies
- Performing market research and analysis of your competitor's social media campaigns
- Reporting on the results of your social media campaigns
- Learn how to use social media listening and management tools
- How to find and work with influencers
Use the following resources to get started with social media marketing:
- How to Learn Social Media Marketing- a step-by-step guide for beginners (Free).
- Social Media Marketing Courses - the best courses to learn social media marketing (Free and Paid).
- 10 Best Social Media Certifications - learn social media marketing and get certified (Free and Paid).
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is not dead. Despite what you might think, email is still one of the most effective ways to turn visitors into customers and existing customers into repeat customers.
To run successful email marketing campaigns, you must know your audience first. Otherwise, your emails will end up in the spam folder of your users.
You can think of email marketing as the last piece of the digital marketing puzzle. While all other marketing techniques concentrate on finding new customers, email marketing is about closing the deal.
To get started with email marketing, you should build the following skills:
- Learn how email marketing automation works
- Understand how digital sales funnel work
- Get practical experience with email marketing tools
- Learn how to build an email list
- Understand the factors affecting email deliverability
There are many learning options to learn the ins and outs of email marketing. I recommend starting with the following resources:
- Email Marketing Courses - The best courses to learn email marketing (Free and Paid)
- Email Marketing Expert - How to learn email marketing and get certified (Free)
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing, where you make a commission by selling other company's products. It's a popular method marketers use to make money online and can be used in two ways.
The first way is to promote other products on your website and social channels and earn a commission for each sale. That's what the diagram above describes in detail.
The second way is to set up your own affiliate program and pay other creators commissions for promoting and selling your products or services.
To learn affiliate marketing, you have to go through a number of steps. The most important are:
- Understand how affiliate marketing works
- Join affiliate marketing networks
- Find products to promote
- Learn what type of content works for affiliate marketing
- Learn how to write great product reviews
- Understand Google rules regarding affiliate links
When you start with affiliate marketing, you'll soon realize that success depends on how well other marketing channels (SEO, content marketing, social media marketing) perform. So, learning digital marketing will help you also excel as an affiliate marketer.
Use the following guides to start your affiliate marketing journey.
- How Does Affiliate Marketing Work - A step-by-step guide to learn affiliate marketing for beginners.
- How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing - Proven and tested ways to make money with affiliate marketing.
- Best Affiliate Marketing Courses - The best online resources to become a certified affiliate marketer.
7. Video Marketing
Although video content can be used as part of content marketing and social media marketing campaigns, it's also a digital marketing process of its own.
Video marketing is the term used to describe the process of using video content to reach and engage with online users. The most popular video platforms are YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
What you need to learn about video marketing are the following:
- How to use different tools to create video content.
- How to run paid ads to promote your videos.
- What type of videos your audience likes to consume?
- How to use YouTube SEO to gain organic exposure for your videos.
The most widely used medium for video content is YouTube, and mastering organic and paid YouTube methods will help you build skills to work with other platforms too. So, as a beginner, you should focus on becoming an expert in YouTube marketing.
You can get started by visiting the following resources.
- Best YouTube Courses - courses to learn how YouTube works.
- YouTube SEO Guide for Beginners - a beginner-friendly guide to YouTube SEO
8. Digital Marketing Tools
One of the skills every digital marketing professional should develop is using different digital marketing tools for research, analysis, and reporting.
Remember that the role of a digital marketing manager is not to learn how to run SEO or social media campaigns (that’s the job of the SEO Expert or Social Media Manager) but to know how to orchestrate all processes so that they work toward the same goals.
To be able to do that, you need to learn how to use various data analysis tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Data reporting tools like Google Looker Studio and digital marketing tools like Semrush and Ahrefs.
When learning a tool, concentrate on the functions that will help you do your job better and faster. Try to automate tasks whenever possible, but don't rely on tools to tell you what to do. Use tools to get insights and data and your expertise to make marketing decisions.
If you're starting now, the two tools you need to master are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Google Analytics Courses - a list of courses to learn Google Analytics (Free)
- Getting Started with Google Looker Studio - a guide on how to use Looker Studio for reporting (Free)
Online Marketing Learning Tips
I’m sure you’ve realized by now that learning digital marketing is not easy.
It requires a lot of reading and hours of practice to learn how each technique works individually and how you can combine them for maximum results. On average, it takes 3-5 months to learn digital marketing for complete beginners.
The good news is that you can use the resources above to learn digital marketing at home and for Free. All you need is a willingness to learn and a lot of patience.
To make the process easier for you, follow the tips below:
- Start with SEO. Many of the concepts used by PPC, content marketing, and social media marketing are based on SEO principles. Building your SEO skills first will make it easier to learn the rest.
- Practice, Practice, Practice. Internet marketing is not a theoretical concept, but it’s mainly practical. Once you understand the theory behind a strategy, try to execute it in practice. Monitor the results, optimize your campaigns, and learn from your mistakes.
- Get Certified. As you progress through your learning, try to get certified. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise.
- Work with experienced Digital Marketers. Aim to work under the supervision of experienced digital marketers. They can make the transition from theory to practice easier, and you can learn a few tips and tricks not written in any books or courses.
- Start your own digital marketing blog. Having your own marketing blog will help you practice what you have learned and prove your expertise. Also, when you start writing about digital marketing, you can assess how well you know a topic or not.
- Never stop learning. Digital marketing is an industry that constantly changes, and learning never stops. As a digital marketing professional, it's your job to stay in sync with the latest developments and keep your clients informed.
What are your favorite websites for learning Digital Marketing for free? Let me know in the comments if I missed any useful resources.
