It’s a good time to be skilling up and there are loads of great courses out there online and many of them are free, and the ones that are paid aren’t that expensive (around £30 say – check out Udemy, Coursera etc).
Google Digital Garage has lots of free courses and the one that caught my eye was the only one that came with a certificate. Of course, that made it more attractive. That course was Fundamentals of Digital Marketing.
It’s listed at taking around 40 hours to complete and it has 26 modules. These encompass Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media, Local Advertising, Display Ads, Retargeting and Email Marketing. To get a certificate, you had to pass an exam at the end with 80% or more.
What did I like about the course?
It’s very well organised in terms of curriculum, and the videos were informative and clearly presented. Each module took around 40mins to finish and it was fun to get the dopamine hit when completing each one. It kept me coming back.
Mostly, I like the fact that I feel like I learned something!
Here’s an example of the video lessons:
Key learnings
It’s aimed at small business owners eg. hairdressers, bakeries, craft beer shops etc.
- Have a clear Goal for your online marketing efforts
- Have a mission statement and know your USP with crystal clear clarity
- Start small and iteratively – you don’t need to spend lots on a digital marketing agency
- Start with the basics – eg get listed locally
- SEO – learn what gets you higher rankings in search engine results
- SEM – learn how to pick longer-tail, less competitive keywords to target, and focus on the bid amount as well as the relevance of your ad to your business
- Content marketing – focus on answering the questions that your customer really wants answered
- Social media – focus on engaging with your customers to let them know more about your business and how you could improve your product or service
- Use analytics to assess, test, and then improve your online marketing efforts. Get familiar with Google Analytics
What would I improve about the course?
I’d probably make it slightly harder to pass each module’s quiz, with more questions, tougher questions and reduced ability to go back immediately and change your answers until you got the right one.
Would I recommend it?
Yes definitely especially if you have no grounding in the topic, or it’s not part of your day job. It’s always good to add strings to your bow and this gives you a solid overview of the subject as well as giving you a certificate at the end.
I’d also recommend this course if you’re a small business owner. There’s lots of content in the course which shows how small business owners such as online cake makers use digital marketing to grow their businesses.
Check out Google Digital Garage here.