Do not be persuaded by the “Certification” promises that free courses offer. There are no legitimate qualifications to be gained from free marketing courses. When free courses say that a course is certified, or that you will be certified, they do not mean you will get a genuine qualification. Their certificate of completion is not something you can add to your resume, although, you could probably give it a try with the hope your future employer doesn’t know your certification is for the completion of a free course.
1 – PPC University
This course offers actionable advice, and also helps you understand why the advice is relevant and useful. In that way, you are able to craft your own Pay Per Click campaigns based on your own needs, and still have a degree of success. This course gives you the fundamentals upon which you may build and grow your own PPC campaign. However, the advice from this article and from the marketing experts at Resumeble.com is to start very small, as small as spending two dollars per day. Affiliate advertising can soak up your marketing budget like a sponge, so it is important that you hone your campaign so that every penny is put to good use. Only then should you consider scaling up your operation.
2 – Analytics Academy
This course is Google’s answer to the criticism that its analytics are like a BMW car with triangular wheels. There are many other paid and free analytic programs on the internet that beat Google Analytics, including the free widgets you can get with WordPress and Magento. In answer to this, some of Google’s partners have put out a free online course on how to use their Google Analytics tool.
At its core, Google Analytics has a lot of GUI and usability issues to the point where you have to learn an excessive amount in order to use the tool correctly, whereas other more user-friendly tools do not require so much learning. Take this Analytics Academy course, and you learn enough to start using Google Analytics correctly, though that is not really the biggest benefit of this course.
The biggest benefit is the part where it teaches you how to use the custom tools correctly. One of the most powerful and confusing parts of Google Analytics is the customizable parts. This course teaches you how to use said parts, which then turns Google Analytics into a very powerful data collection tool for people who are testing their marketing campaigns.
3 – Mastering Email Marketing
This course is written like a blog post, which means there is a lot of filler. But, the information it gives away for free is rather good. You just have to learn to differentiate between the good information and the filler. Plus, do not skip to the end for the key takeaways because it is almost as if they were written by somebody else. The key takeaways in this course are laid out like some sort of essay conclusion, and they completely misrepresent the course content.
Skim your way through this course, narrow in and focus on the good stuff, and learn as much as you can about mastering email marketing. Again, there is a lot of filler, but the nuggets of information it partakes are worth your time and effort (plus it was published for free).
4 – Quick Sprout University
The Quick Sprout University has heavy input from Neil Patel, which is a brand name that often imparts SEO (Search Engine Optimization) information that is at least two to five years behind the times. Yet, there is so much information in the Quick Sprout University course that it is still worth your while looking it over.
Put in the effort based on the advice of Tony Robbins, who said, “Listen to all advice, read every book, watch every video because sometimes even terrible sources of information will yield something useful. Even if the information is awful, at the very least you will learn what Not to do.”
The information given by Quick Sprout is hit and miss, mostly because the information it imparts often becomes stale or outdated within 12 months. Yet, there is so much information that you are bound to find a fair amount of content that is useful to your specific situation.
5 – How to Master Instagram
The great thing about Instagram is that the big corporations are still unable to penetrate it on a serious level. Big money may dominate all the other platforms, thereby pushing out the little guy, but Instagram is seemingly impenetrable because you cannot buy your way to the top.
The course was originally a very long page-by-page course, which was then shortened into a comprehensive e-book. The book was then transcribed for free onto a website so that anybody can read it without having to sign up or log in. This course covers every aspect of Instagram, from the pros and cons of stories, to themes, content creation, and linking.
The only thing it doesn’t cover is Instagram follower buying since buying followers and likes doesn’t have the impact it does on Facebook and YouTube. There is a lot of information to take in on the course, but it is never too esoteric. Plus, the course has plenty of examples from real-life Instagrammers.
Conclusion – How Do You Choose The Best?
The problem with most free courses is that they are leading up to a paid course. Most of them are thinly veiled adverts for paid services. They figure that if they give you a big taste, then you will become hooked and start paying. Yet, if you go on YouTube, you can find hundreds and hundreds of free videos on marketing that will not cost you a penny.
What’s more, there are many online marketing courses that are simply terrible, and you sort-of have out disassociate what you are being shown with what you are being told. For example, if the marketing course was “That” brilliant, then why are they giving it away for free? Surely, if they are the best marketers, then they should be able to sell their course to everybody who drifts onto their website.
Choosing is a tricky decision, but luckily the courses are free. Once they start trying to harvest your information or get you to pay, then dump them for another. Over time, you can test what you are taught and figure out for yourself which course is good and which is not.
