Great Free Online Courses for Marketers

 During my furlough time last year, I took the opportunity to indulge in some personal and professional development. It can be hard – when you’re doing the day-to-day – to ensure that you devote some time solely to your own learning. But, if the last year or so has taught us anything, it’s that additional knowledge or awareness can set you apart from the competition – whether you are looking for work or are currently in work. It can be hard to know which courses and e-learning facilities to invest your time in. After all, your time is precious and you want to ensure that the time you do invest will help you pick up a new skill, refresh your knowledge or help you get ahead. It may even help you land a new role. So, I thought it would be helpful – for marketing professionals, graduates and ‘old hands’ – to pull together a list of useful resources that could help with your learning and development. If you can recommend any more, I’d love to hear about them. Google Digital Garage There is, quite simply, an enormous amount of content on the Google Digital Garage. You can take short, 30 minutes tutorials or you can invest 40 hours in the Digital Marketing Certificate. You can choose to refresh your knowledge on anything from PPC to social media; Adwords and Analytics to blog content. Whether you are at the start of your career, or are simply looking to keep your knowledge up to date, there will be a course on here for you. Hubspot Academy Similar to Google, the Hubspot Academy courses cover the entire spectrum of digital marketing. You can choose between courses and certification, longer term learning or short snippets. It can work around your schedule. It also gives you insight into how to use the Hubspot tool for better integrated email campaigns and assessing their outcome. There is a mix of videos, reading and Q and A sessions to keep you engaged. YouTube If you want to learn the basics of a design tool such as Adobe or a blogging platform such as WordPress, YouTube will be your best friend. There is literally thousands upon thousands of hours’ worth of content on there, ranging from absolute beginner to relatively expert tutorials. It’s perhaps a bit more time consuming, and you may have to make a lot of notes or get a lot of practical work done in order to bring your skills up to scratch but, as free resources go, YouTube is pretty great. Linkedin Learning This platform is free to access for the first month then requires payment of up to £24.99 per month after that. However, there is a lot to be said for what you get access to with LinkedIn Learning. There are videos and content on everything from mastering Excel to overcoming Imposter Syndrome. So, not only is it a good tool for providing access to further education in marketing, it may also help you in other aspects of your career, too. CodeClan Looking to brush up on (or learn) code? You’re not the only marketer! Plenty of my candidates are looking to add another string to their bow by learning basic coding. You can do this through CodeClan – a Scottish digital skills academy who offer online courses for free. They offer webinars and taster sessions – and even bespoke courses – to let you decide which digital and data skills you want to learn or update. If you would like to speak to me about adding marketing talent to your business or are keen to see what opportunities are out there, click here to drop me an email and get in touch. HRC Recruitment does not get paid for the links in this blog. These are simply for reference only and any purchases are made at the reader’s own risk.