Do you offer consulting services or create info products?
Or do you want a new job but don’t have any digital or social media marketing certifications?
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself…
Why would anyone to hire me or learn about marketing from me?
Some customers need to see more than results…
They want to see that you have a formal education/training in your area of expertise.
Being labeled as professional certified marketer can help you get customers, sell products, and even get a new job.
What Will I Learn?
So how do you get certified in marketing space without spending four years in college or racking up a $50k in student loans?
You get certified by recognized entities in the marketing industry!
In this post, you will learn.
The following are the best content marketing certification programs you can gain to boost your credibility and reputation. There are all accessible online so no need to move on any campus locations.
DigitalMarketer is one of the top companies for marketing certifications.
With a mission to double the size of 10,000 businesses and a focus on customer success, these products can help you run effective digital marketing campaigns that drive more traffic, sales, and profit for your company.
They help take the guesswork and secrets out of digital marketing to make rapid business growth available to everyone. In other words, they help you build an efficient marketing strategy as well as marketing plans that suit your business.
From content marketing and conversion rate optimization to their newest community management course, these trainings provide the best bang for your buck when it comes to learning how to to promote your business by producing killer content marketing.
This marketing certificate is also renowned by digital marketers all around the world.
Average Course Cost & Exam: $495 USD
This course is also one of the most recognized by marketing professionals.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) offers a Certified Professional Marketer program. To be eligible to take this exam, you must have a bachelor’s degree and four years of professional marketing experience, or a master’s degree and two years of professional marketing experience.
Once you have applied for the American Marketing Association’s program, you will have 90 days to study the materials, learn best practices and pass the accreditation exam.
The costs for the certification are as follows.
Your American Marketing Association’s certification lasts for three years, during which you must acquire 40 additional hours of continued education in online marketing from online coursework, instructor-led classes, conferences, seminars, and research.
Bing offers search advertising training for Bing Ads Certification. It’s a free program for active Bing Ads users. Simply study the training material they provide and take the exam.
There aren’t any ‘eligibility requirements’. It’s free and open to anyone using Bing.
Once you are a professional certified marketer, you will receive an official badge, placement in the Bing Ads Pro directory, and a certificate.
Content Marketing Institute offers online training and certification for content marketers. Anyone can join, study the training materials, and take the exam when it is most convenient.
Thanks to the course you’ll learn how to produce high-quality content marketing that catches people’s attention.
The costs for certification are as follows.
Annual Subscription: $995 USD
Once you study the training materials and pass the exam, you will be a professional certified marketer.
The certification never expires, and you do not need to maintain your subscription unless you want to continue learning about marketing strategies & best practices.
The Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer program is a part of the Copyblogger Authority membership.
To apply for the certification program, you must comply with the eligibility requirements:
The program is only offered a few times per year.
The costs of this certification are as follows.
Annual Authority Membership: $399 USD
Certification Program: $495 USD
Once you have completed the training program, you become certified by submitting samples of your content marketing.
These samples are reviewed by Copyblogger. If approved, you will receive your certification, which never expires as long as you maintain your Authority membership.
You also get the chance to be listed in the Certified Content Marketer directory on the Copyblogger website and become eligible for master-level training on an invitation-only basis.
But it’s not all, this certification will give you a little push if you’re trying to get access to the digital media industry.
Google offers certification exams for individuals to become AdWords certified.
To become Google AdWords certified, you need to set up an Academy for Ads accounts and then, take the Google Ads Fundamentals exam plus an additional exam on search, display, shopping, or video advertising.
While Google recommends that you have hands-on experience using Google Ads, it is not required. You can review their study materials, learn the best practices and take the exams for free. If you do not pass an exam, you can re-take it again in seven days.
This Google Ads course is one of the best free courses you can find on the market to get certified in digital and social media marketing. It’s also a quite popular certificate among digital marketers.
Google offers certification exams for individuals to become Analytics certified. To become Google Analytics certified, you must take the Google Analytics Individual exam.
While Google recommends that you have hands-on experience using Google Analytics, it is not required. You can review their study materials and take the exam for free. If you do not pass, you can re-take it again in seven days.
This free course would definitely help you to define a clear and efficient marketing strategy to grow your business by showing all the tips you need to know about Google’s tool.
Moreover, Google Analytics is one of the most used tools in search engine optimization (take a look at these lists of SEO certifications or/and SEO courses). Indeed, it is essential to know how it works and how to take advantage of it – for everyone who makes money online thanks to a website.
Following this course would make you understand how to measure campaign metrics and monitor KPIs to improve and scale-out your marketing efforts.
So this course is ideal not only for marketing professionals but also for search engine optimization professionals that want to get data insights and improve their digital sales management.
Bonus: If you’re looking a for a more general course about digital marketing, you should know that Google Digital Garage has recently launched a new course called ‘fundamentals of digital marketing’.
The main difference between the Digital Garage course and the other Google training programs is its independence from Google’s tools.
Don’t trust Google? Check out my list of Google Analytics alternatives!
HootSuite offers a certification program for their product for social media managers and strategists. Anyone can sign up for the HootSuite University, review the course materials, and take the exam.
The costs – per month – for the HootSuite marketing certifications are as follows.
HootSuite University Membership & Exam: $21 USD per month
Once you pass the exam, your certification never expires. You will receive a badge and a listing in the HootSuite Social Media Consultants directory.
In addition to their platform certification, HootSuite partners with Newhouse School at Syracuse University to offer an Advanced Social Media Strategy Certificate.
Anyone is eligible to take the course and exam to receive this certification.
The costs for the Hootsuite Social Media strategy certification are as follows.
Course Tuition: $999 USD
The course is comprised of fifteen lessons & assessments and will definitely help you increase your marketing social media knowledge and skills.
The main difference between this and the HootSuite certification is the advanced level of training and independence from the HootSuite platform.
HubSpot is a web analytics tool that offers several certifications – including the inbound marketing certification.
Everyone is eligible to take the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification course and exam for free.
This program, released by the HubSpot Academy, will help students demonstrate knowledge of sales management and inbound marketing best practices, independent of their platform.
This certification is great for any online marketer as it covers how to attract visitors, convert leads, close customers, boost marketing ROI and delight customers into promoters.
If you ever wanted to take classes from an Ivy League school – without worrying about admission requirements, money and college credits – then this is your chance.
Harvard offers a professional certificate in Marketing Management. To obtain this certificate, you must take four classes, all of which you can take online.
While you won’t be a Harvard alumni, you will have received a great certificate from a respected name in education & will be recognized in the marketing world.
The costs of this certification are as follows.
Four Courses Average Cost: $11,000 USD
You must complete the four courses for this certificate within three years. There are no admission requirements to get this certificate and become a marketing specialist.
With this digital marketing course, you’ll learn how to overcome digital marketing challenges by using different marketing tools. You’ll also become an expert in sales management (online) and in marketing management (online).
If you want to develop your skills in coding for the web, W3Schools offer several certifications that can help. These come in handy for marketers that offer website design, WordPress consultation, or similar information products or services.
W3Schools offer courses and exams for certification in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, and XML.
The costs for these certifications are as follows.
Cost Per Language: $95 USD
You can register and study for as long as you like, then take the exam up to two times per language. You can take the exams alone or have a supervisor of your choosing proctor your exam.
Once you pass an exam, you will be W3Schools Certified in the language you chose as well as receive a badge and certificate.
It would be remiss of me not to mention my own course which offers a Private Blog Network Special Certification.
Now enrolment is rarely open but if you do get lucky and take part in this course you will get access to:
Price: $497
But in the meantime you can check out these four free videos which will teach you to build high-quality backlinks using free tools.
These backlinks are the type that brings you to the top of the competition in your niche.
Many of the above-mentioned programs and courses allow you to get your digital media certification after studying their training and taking an online exam.
I have some tips on how to pass these exams.
Most online exams are timed, but no one is watching you and how you get your answers unless it is specified as a proctored exam.
While you can’t pass any online exam without some basic knowledge on the topic, you don’t have to be an expert either.
Here are the keys to passing most of the online exams in one or two tries tops.
If you follow these steps, you should be able to pass most of your certification exams, if not all of them, in one to two tries and get your certifications.
Once you gain the professional certified marketer status, you will want to make sure everyone in the marketing world knows it – especially businesses that are looking for hiring managers well trained in digital marketing.
Here are some ways to mention and use your certifications to ensure you get recognition.
Effectively, if you are a HubSpot Certified Inbound Marketer, you want the world to know it.
People looking for someone to handle their inbound marketing and boost their marketing ROI will come to you over other marketing professionals without that certification.
If you want to improve your marketing skills, get listed with other qualified professionals in your industries, and get recognized as an expert, online certification and training programs from well-known sources are your best bet.
There is a range of certifications to choose from and they really help you to stand out from the crowd.
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Thanks for creating the list! Also appreciated seeing your top-10 certification reconmendations
Glad to hear that. Cheers Joseph!
Thank you! This list really covers all the bases of digital marketing
Great list of Professional Courses,i definitely gonna check these.
Great news!