You could have heard a lot about digital marketing, how “sexy” it is, how fast growing it is, how easy or difficult it is, how powerful it is etc. Digital Marketing has been growing rapidly and it will continue to change or disrupt the ways to do marketing in business world.
Due to the shift of habits of publics from traditional media to digital media such as social media and search engine, more and more business, advertiser, marketer, agents found difficult to get satisfying outcome from advertising in the traditional media. As a result, they turned to digital media.
Nevertheless, things not always work towards our favours. For the past decade since digital marketing emerged, many have tried and disappointed with the results after spending times and money to execute digital marketing campaign themselves, or engaging an agency to do digital marketing on behalf of them.
Some have realised that they need some education about how to do digital marketing the right way to bring the results they want. They tried to sign up courses online, attending seminars that telling you how easy digital marketing can help you to achieve passive income and live the lifestyle you never dream off etc. and etc.
Many still get disappointed. 🙁
Question now arise from many marketing professionals, brand managers, business development managers, managements, SME owner, agents, and entrepreneurs.
How To Choose The Right Digital Marketing Course?
There is no one size fits all answer to this question. One should examine their own needs and literacy on digital to find out the needs and what courses suit them. If they are beginners, a basic digital marketing course is necessary to explain the concepts, strategy, available channels, fundamentals, dos and do nots, setting up digital profiles, build up digital assets such as a website, a store and so on.
Whereas someone who already possessed some information (sorry, not knowledge yet) about digital marketing should opt for courses that provide more structured information and knowledge to get enlightened.
Those who have spent some marketing dollars online, either through Facebook advertising, Google Ads or other channel should go for specific courses that help them improve their campaign performance via various strategies or improve on efficiency.
For more advanced marketers, who wish to increase the Return of Investment (ROI) of their campaign, can opt for courses related to landing page creation, sales funnel creation, conversion optimisations, analytics & tracking and so on.
There is one thing to take note, no matter what courses you have chosen, focus on acquire the skills, rather than chasing some ideas of making quick income online that sell you dream, instead of skills.
Yes, you still can rely on digital marketing to achieve your business objectives, but first acquire the skill and get things done right first.
If I still have your interest by now, then these are the things you should consider before choosing a Digital Marketing Course that suits you.
1. What sort of feedbacks had the past participants given to the course?
If you are fortunate to have a trusted friend who attended the course you wish to attend, ask!
Trusted means he/she is someone know what he/she is talking in their track record and knowing what he/she wants.
Many times, we encounter people who attended a poorly designed course with thin contents and barely providing any value, a.k.a. got scammed, and yet telling others that is a great course, just because they never attend a better course OR they do not want to looked stupid that they paid to get scammed.
And this bad cycle could propagate to more people. That is the reason why sometime we heard many people got scammed by some gurus and we wonder why at the very beginning so many people went for so many years.
If you do not have friends who ever attend the course you with to go, try to find out who attended in the training provider website, and try to connect them via LinkedIn and request personal opinion. Take a few opinion as a reference.
2. Who are those participants who given feedbacks on the digital marketing course?
The second thing you need to take note when asking for opinion is who are these people giving you opinion, what are their background.
You wouldn’t ask opinion from an engineer for questions on painting, right?
Understand the person professional background, their job functions, the reason they went for the course and what outcome they achieve after attended the course.
Let say you are a marketing manager wanted to know more about how to improve your website traffics via social media, paid search and organic traffics, but at the same time improve the branding of your organization, within the budget given.
Are you going to seek opinion of those sole proprietor who have no constraints on their website or branding (if they ever have) and never have experience or ever strike in their mind that they will spend 10 grands a month in marketing?
By the way, nothing wrong with sole proprietors, just your marketing concerns are different from them and may need a different type of course to address your issues.
3. Are the digital marketing course focus on practical or theory?
Understanding the theory is important in every topics in our life for better understanding. Fortunately, there are many free resources available online for you to learn the theories. There are Youtube videos, Wikipedia, or for instance, just Google whatever questions that you like to know.
While there are so many online free resources for learning digital marketing, you should look for the courses that provide knowledge or skills that you can’t get for free online.
Never pay for a course to learn things that you can find online for free. Attend course that teach you things that are not easy to get online such as real life case studies, application of digital marketing strategy, practical hands on, local audience customisation etc.
4. Are the trainers connected to the industry CURRENTLY?
We all know that digital marketing industry are evolving rapidly. Big boys like Facebook and Google are adjusting their algorithm every few months to provide better user experience.
Hence, digital marketing knowledge is unlike mathematics formula that will not change for thousands of years. While years of experience is important, staying up to date is even more crucial.
Look for trainers that have both great experience and up to date. A used to be digital marketing guru 3 years ago who never practice might not perform better than you.
5. Are the trainers also teaching digital marketing in other recognised institutions?
Digital marketing is one of the industry with the most self-claimed gurus with a few screen shots of monthly revenue (and probably making huge loss due to high ads cost) to trick beginners who might not able to differentiate between revenue and profits.
Do your due diligence on the trainers LinkedIn profiles and see if they are also currently teaching digital marketing in other well recognised institution. As well-known institutions have much stringent criteria in selecting their trainers and lecturers, you can have a safer bet on their course.
6. Which organisations had already sent their participants to the course?
It is an indicator of relevance if your competitors or company that in the similar niche as you already joined the course you intend to join.
Find out which organization already sent their participants to that course. And if you found out certain company that known to only attend quality training courses, that could giving you a clear signals that you should attend as well.
7. The Duration of The Course?
Unless you are a complete beginner and don’t even understand the basic theories and never bother to search online what is digital marketing, avoid attending course that stretch too long.
Generally, it took 2 – 5 days to complete a topic in digital marketing. The crucial part is the real-life practice after you learn a skill. You do not want to have information over loading and going no where after complete the course.
Take one course, practice what you have learn, apply it to your work or your own projects thoroughly. You will find it much easier to learn the next topic few months later after you have already mastered a topic. You may also find more opportunities because you can see more synergies with existing digital marketing skills you have.
In conclusion, what you want from your course is a useful knowledge and skills that will bring success to your digital marketing journey.
As for certificate, it does not really help in your digital marketing campaign results. For beginners who wish to look for a job in digital marketing, it might help to get in to the job, that’s provided your certificate is Google Ads Professional or Facebook Blueprint. Other than that, certificate in digital marketing doesn’t really carry much weightage in the industry.
Good luck in hunting digital marketing course that helps.
