Beginner Digital Marketing Courses

As the popularity and diversity of online channels continues to grow, digital marketing has expanded into many subsets. The primary types of digital marketing are content marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, and digital advertising. Content marketing includes the creation and promotion of any digital branded content, such as blog posts, infographics, e-books, videos, and website content. Content marketers share content through channels like email, social media, and digital advertising. SEM includes search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to help a brand’s website and content appear in relevant search engine results. Social media marketing includes a brand’s presence on any social media platform. Social media marketers strategize images, posts, and interactions with consumers on social channels. Digital advertising can include paid social media tactics and other digital ad placements that help get a brand’s online content in front of more eyes.

Digital marketing is a great career path for anyone who enjoys communicating strategically, analyzing behavior and metrics, and continually learning on the job. Businesses are often seeking digital marketing skills in content creation, social media, analytics, and marketing automation and technology. This makes digital marketing skills sought-after and translatable to a variety of roles. Because digital marketing encompasses many elements, it can appeal to people across a wide range of skills and interests. Those with technical skills may enjoy search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), website development, or paid social media marketing. Those with writing and creative skills may enjoy content creation, organic social media marketing, and digital branding. Those who like problem-solving and big picture business strategy may enjoy a career in digital marketing strategy or campaign management.

Digital marketing represents an evolution of traditional marketing, taking the “4 P’s” of marketing (Product, Pricing, Promotion, Placement) and executing them online. A digital marketing strategy is exactly as the name suggests. It is a game plan for how online resources will drive customer traffic and achieve established marketing goals. The basic concepts and marketing goals remain the same, but the tools and resources get tailored for our modern world, where much of the sales cycle happens online.

Inbound marketing involves purposefully creating a situation where the customer seeks out the sale compared to the marketer aggressively approaching the potential customer. It is comparable to baiting a fishing rod so that fish are attracted to it instead of chasing the fish down. It may involve tools like SEO (search engine optimization) or targeted advertising to catch the target customers' attention and tailoring the marketing to meet their current, specific needs. Digital marketing may include inbound marketing strategies, but it references the marketing process adapted to a digital world relative to one form of targeted marketing intended to bring customers to the marketer.

Digital marketing is a natural progression of the marketing process to adapt to an online audience. As people and companies shop differently, those marketing to these stakeholders naturally must do so differently. The online world has created a new landscape for marketing that allows for connections to be made more on an individual level and at virtually any time or place. Shopping can now occur online through any number of devices; once a marketer has caught the attention of a potential customer, that customer can follow up almost immediately before the sale is lost. That helps to reduce valuable closing time exponentially. Digital marketing can also be cost-effective as messages can be tailored to specific demographics and adjusted in real-time. It also allows marketers to be wherever the customer is at any given time.