The 47 Best Resources to Train Your Marketing Team

Marketing teams are constantly busy. There’s barely enough time to get on top of your projects, much less take a couple hours out of the day to do some marketing training. Here’s a thought: what if the training helped your team be more efficient at their jobs, thus saving time in the long run? Not sure where to turn to find the right training opportunities for your marketing team? No stress. This post contains a comprehensive list of the best free and paid marketing courses to help your team hone their marketing skills.

Help Your Team Develop Agile Marketing Skills

Before we dive into all the marketing training opportunities, let’s talk about a much-needed marketing skill — project management. You know the feeling; the one where you’re drowning in work, chasing endless status updates, and barely keeping a handle on all the things your team is working on. We’ve all been there, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Check out how implementing an Agile approach to your marketing can change your life.

Table of Contents

1. Content Marketing
2. SEO
3. Programming
4. Analytics
5. Social Media
6. PPC

Why Training is Important for Marketing Teams

There is arguably no department at an organization that should prioritize training more than the marketing department. Hear me out on this one… Can you think of anything within an organization that moves faster than marketing? Marketers are beholden to changing social media rules, search engine algorithm updates, email privacy regulations… The list goes on. Marketers need consistent training to stay in-the-know. Marketers are also often expected to wear multiple hats. How many times have you had to create a quick graphic for social media when you’re not even a graphic designer? OR… How many times have you had to jump into Google Analytics to check the health of your content marketing efforts, despite your limited analytics knowledge? Quite a few times, I bet. These are great examples of why marketers can, and should, take a course or two to brush up on skills outside of their expertise.

Organizational Benefits of Training and Development

Increasing employee motivation and decreasing turnover is something every company strives for. Turns out, a simple way to do this is to offer your employees a great training and development program. Here are all the statistics about the organizational benefits of training and development:

• Companies have a 218% higher income per employee than those without formalized training.
• There’s a 24% higher profit margin for companies that prioritize training than those who don’t.
• 40% of employees who don’t receive training will leave their positions within the first year.
• 87% of Millennials say that professional development is significant to them.
• 70% of individuals say training and development opportunities influence their decision to stay at a company.

Training Opportunities for Your Marketing Team

Here’s what we know… Providing staff training is important for both the profitability of the organization and employee happiness, but maybe you don’t know where to start. This post makes it easy; it breaks down all the best online training opportunities for your marketing staff. Let’s dig in.

Content Marketing Training and Development

Content marketing teams need to be both strategic and tactical. They need skills that encompass things like writing, research, creativity, and analytical thinking. Here’s a list of the best development opportunities for content marketers.

Actionable Marketing Institute

The Actionable Marketing Institute features over 25 premium, on-demand marketing courses that cover proven frameworks, techniques, and strategies found only in the Actionable Marketing Institute. There’s no filler content. No trend-chasing. No empty promises. Each course includes step-by-step video tutorials, templates, and actionable advice you can implement to improve your marketing on day 1. Get access to courses about content marketing, SEO, project management, social media, marketing strategy, and more. The courses are taught by the CoSchedule experts behind our blog. Our instructors have tons of experience from building a million subscribers email list to averaging 700k+ monthly blog readers. Over 30 million marketers trust CoSchedule for marketing education — start now and get the same, great benefits of the academy today.

American Marketing Association: Certification in Content Marketing

This AMA approved series of LinkedIn Learning courses covers relevant and in-demand skills needed by every content marketer, including strategy, planning, production, promotion, and measurement. Following participation in the course, individuals can take the AMA exam to become a Professional Certified Marketer in Content Marketing.

UC Davis: Content Marketing Course

UC Davis partnered with the awesome Copyblogger to launch their content marketing course. Every content marketer needs to write, but they also need to know how to sell through their writing. This course also covers the analytics knowledge to know if your content marketing is adding business value.

CMI University

Content marketing superstars, Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi, take a deep dive into content marketing with their course through the Content Marketing Institute. The course features industry leaders and content marketing practitioners, so you can learn for those who work with content marketing on a daily basis.

Udemy: Create Content That Sells

This Content Marketing Masterclass offers a complete guide to growing your business with the power of digital content. This course teaches you how to plan and execute a content marketing strategy that drives your business forward.

Northwestern University: Content Strategy for Professionals

Northwestern University brings us a content marketing specialization, which focuses on teaching you how to create content that adds real value to potential customers. The course includes a capstone project where participants can apply the skills learned to help solve a real challenge facing companies today.

New York Times: Content Marketing Certificate

https://vimeo.com/177116734 This Content Marketing Certificate offered by The School of The New York Times covers strategies, approaches, and methods used to create high-quality native advertising. The courses range in topic from content strategy to audience development, editorial, design, and video.

Google: Promote a Business with Content

Google’s course teaches you how to promote your business by using the power of content. It explores how tools like social media, video, and content marketing can help businesses connect with more customers online.

Udemy: Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises

Looking for a content marketing course designed for B2B companies? This course covers how to do great content marketing, even if you’re in a “boring” industry.

SEO Training and Development

Organic search is likely your largest traffic source. This is the case for A LOT of businesses. SEO courses cover things like off-page strategy, which explains things, like link building, social media strategy, influencer marketing, on-page strategy (e.g. formatting, internal linking, etc.), and keyword strategy. SEO courses can be relevant for content marketers, website managers, digital marketers and more, or anyone hoping to make sure their business can be found on search engines. Here’s a list of some great SEO courses.

UC Davis: SEO Specialization Certification

This course covers how to optimize website content for search engines. From search engine algorithms to practical, real-world skills, this course covers everything a beginner needs to know. Once completed, participants will have knowledge in both on-page and off-page optimization, as well as optimizing for local and international audiences.

Yoast: SEO Training for Beginners

Yoast knows SEO, so it’s not surprising they offer a complete introductory course on SEO. The course gives a thorough introduction to SEO elements, like SEO for content creation, how search engines work, and technical SEO strategy.

MOZ: SEO Bootcamp

This SEO Essentials Certification Series from SEO software company, MOZ, covers all the things you need to get started with SEO. This series aims to give participants a full understanding of how search engines work, how to develop an SEO strategy, and skills related to page optimization and link building.

Distilled U: Learn SEO

This is online university offers 133 hours of interactive modules to master the art of search marketing. This full course plan teaches participants topics like on-page optimization, technical SEO, keyword research, information architecture, competitor research, link analysis, and more.

Udemy: SEO for Business

Udemy offers basic SEO training to teach participants how to uncover and target customer search terms and how to create online content that will rank high on search engines. People search when they're ready to buy. This course helps companies stop searching for customers and start helping customers find you, instead.

Quick Sprout University: How to Determine the Commercial Intent of Keywords

This video course, from Quick Sprout, walks you through the process of how to determine the commercial intent of a keyword. The course talks about how to identify and target valuable commercial intent keywords. Quick Sprout University has a whole range of courses that cover in-depth and specialized topics in SEO.

Google: Make Sure Customers Find You Online

This course from Google is a must watch for any business looking to make sure their customers can locate their offering online. The training shows businesses how they can reach and connect with more customers online. Topics also covered SEO tactics and how to use search engine marketing to boost sales and awareness.

Serpstat: SEO Academy

Serpstat Academy teaches participants about keywords research, search analytics, and other important topics related to SEO and PPC. Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO tool, making them a perfect instructor to lead an SEO focused training course.

SEMRush Academy

SEMRush offers a wide array of free courses that cover just about everything you need to gain a high-level understanding of SEO. From technical SEO to SEO tools, these courses are a good place for beginners to start.

Programming Training and Development

You might not automatically think of programming as a marketing skill, but your website is one of the most important marketing assets you have. Marketers everywhere are keen to learn some web development skills to add to their toolbox.

W3C: HTML5 and CSS Fundamentals

Learn the basics of web design with this course, taught by the Microsoft team and experts from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The course guides you through a step-by-step process to create a site in which you'll be proud.

Techdegree by Treehouse

The Treehouse Techdegree teaches individuals how to build websites — everything from HTML, CSS, and Javascript to elements of user experience design. The company also offers courses in Python, iOS development, and more.

Codecademy

Codecademy is one of the best online resources for learning to code. This course gets you building polished websites and web applications, in no time. This training begins with the basics of HTML, through CSS, JavaScript, and React. The course moves at your pace, so you can learn to code on the side of your other gig.

Duke University: Programming Foundations

Learn foundational programming concepts and basic web development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This course from Duke University teaches you how to create a working web page with interactive JavaScript elements.

University of Michigan: Programming for Everybody

This course aims to teach everyone the basics of programming computers using Python. This course requires no prerequisites, so it is truly a course for the masses. Don’t think you can learn to code? This course is a good place to start. You will learn about variables, conditional execution, repeated execution, and how to use functions.

FreeCodeCamp

If you’re looking for a BUNCH of free coding classes, look no further. FreeCodeCamp offers thousands of coding lessons to help you get starting with computer programming. You’ll even have a chance to earn a certification by completing all five final projects.

Khan Academy: Computer Programming

The Khan Academy has a wide variety of comprehensive courses in computer programming. You can learn everything from HTML, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, and more. These courses are professionally done, in-depth, and free. What more could you ask for?

Google: Understanding the Basics of Code

Are you a total newbie to coding? Maybe you’re not even really sure what you can do with a little bit of coding knowledge or what language to start learning. This is a good starter course to better understand the basics of coding.

Analytics Training and Development

Marketers are always trying to prove that what they do adds value to the organization. Analytics is where this becomes a reality. Some teams are lucky enough to have a dedicated analytics expert… others, well, not so much. The analytics duties fall on marketing managers or another member of the marketing team. Taking a course in analytics will help you better understand how you can quantify all the amazing marketing activities you’re doing.

BerkeleyX: Marketing Measurement Strategy

In this analytics course, you will learn how to use analytics to measure marketing activities, how to identify market trends, as well as how to predict future conditions.

General Assembly: Data Analytics

General Assembly is a well known online training provider that focuses on digital skills. Their analytics training covers three different modules — Excel, SQL, and Tableau. As one of the more expensive options on this list, this course is probably best suited for those who are looking to make a career change, or if you need to know how to use large amounts of data to make business decisions.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Analytics for Marketing Professionals

Here’s a pretty awesome analytics course designed especially for marketers. The lessons in this course focus on the theory and strategy behind marketing analytics. Analytics is a powerful way marketers can solve real-world challenges they confront regularly. Need more convincing? It’s taught by the Head of Analytics at Google. Pretty neat.

Association of National Advertisers: Marketing Analytics Certificate

This course covers data collection, analysis, assessment, and how to gain value from your marketing data. The program takes a deeper dive into marketing analytics, how it can help you achieve your marketing goals, advance your career, and empower you to make more strategic decisions.

Online Marketing Institute: Analytics Course

The Online Marketing Institute’s course on analytics covers things like data collection, core modeling approaches in forecasting, mix modeling, and cross-channel attribution; how to use the sales funnel as a framework for optimizing your marketing campaigns across paid, owned, earned channels, and more.

MIT: Digital Marketing Analytics

This program, from MIT, provides participants with an overview of the best practices in digital marketing analytics and analysis. It offers an understanding of how these tools can be integrated to inform strategic direction and improve the ROI of your marketing activities and campaigns.

Google Analytics Academy

The gold standard in marketing analytics. This course gives participants practical knowledge to navigate all of Google's measurement tools. Google Analytics is the backbone of every marketer's tool stack, so it’s vitally important for all marketers to know their way around the tool. The course helps attendees grow their business through intelligent data collection and analysis.

Social Media Training and Development

In less than ten years, social media has completely disrupted marketing as we know it. Social media is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy, as it helps promote brand awareness, build trust, and increase sales. The platforms are constantly changing; courses in social media strategy help you stay up-to-date with the latest features and regulations.

Digital Marketing Institute: Certified Digital Social Media Specialist

Upon completing this course, you will be a Certified Social Media Marketing professional. The course aims to give you an in-depth understanding of how to strategize and implement effective social media campaigns. This course is relatively expensive in comparison to some others on the list, so it’s likely best suited for individuals who are changing careers or looking to break into the social media marketing industry.

Northwestern University: Social Media Marketing Certificate

Organizations need profitable social marketing strategies. In this specialization, you’ll learn to design social media campaigns to grow and position your brand. You’ll also develop targeted content to spark dialogue in social communities and create a comprehensive social marketing strategy.

Boston University: Strategic Social Media Marketing

This course from Boston University teaches everything you need to know about how to develop a social media marketing strategy. From developing engaging content to social media measurement and management, this is an all-in-one course that covers everything social media.

Udemy: The Complete Social Media Marketing Certificate

Udemy’s social media course teaches participants the ins and outs of social media marketing using a proactive and practical approach. Udemy claims that it is one of the most comprehensive online courses in social media — giving learners a great grounding and skill set to enter the world of social.

BerkeleyX: Writing for Social Media

Effective writing practices are vital for successful social media strategies. This course from UC Berkeley focuses on how to structure and write engaging social media content. Create the right brand voice, and tell your company’s story via social media with this course.

Blueprint by Facebook

Learn social media from the largest social media platform. Facebook offers exclusive courses in managing Facebook and Instagram advertising, analytics, Instagram stories, audience building, and more.

Alison: Social Media Marketing

Online learning platform, Alison, teaches individuals how to use social media platforms to promote growth through social media. You will learn tactics for using social media platforms to drive customer awareness of your brand and increase sales and how to implement a successful social media marketing strategy.

PPC Training and Development

Search advertising is one of the best ways to ensure that potential customers are exposed to your product offers. It even has a better return on investment than most other forms of advertising. Why? Individuals have proven they’re already in need of your products by seeking them out on Google. Now, all you have to do is master your SEM strategy and get your brand in front of them.

Udemy: Certificate in Search Engine Marketing

The course aims to give learners an in-depth understanding of everything PPC and SEM. Learn how to optimize content, define KPIs, and set up high-performing paid search campaigns.

Lynda: Essential Adwords Training

Learn the foundations of PPC advertising with the industry’s leading search platform, Google Adwords. This course explores how Google Adwords works, from setting up a new campaign, choosing keywords, and beyond. It’s a practical introduction to navigating the often complex environment of PPC optimization.

Google Academy for Ads

If you’re looking to learn about Google Ads, who better to learn from than Google themselves? You can even become Google certified by taking an exam at the end of your learning path. #action=share

Graphic Design Training and Development

Scrappy marketing teams often have to dabble in things outside of what they learned in business school; graphic design is one of them. With an all-hands-on-deck mentality, marketers often have to whip up a quick social graphic, flyer, or ppt at the drop of a hat. That said, a little graphic design training can go a long way.

Udemy: Learn Photoshop from Scratch

This course gives individuals a basic design introduction in Photoshop using items like selection tools, manipulation tools, and creation tools. It’s a practical course focusing on the most important techniques, which is great for beginners and intermediate learners alike.

PluralSight: Illustrator CC

Looking to master Illustrator and build practical examples? This course aims to give learners working knowledge to be a confident Illustrator practitioner.

Creative Live: Building Infographics in Illustrator

Infographics are some of the best performing pieces of marketing content. The course teaches individuals how to create various types of charts and visual elements using Illustrator, in order to compile successful infographics.

Canva Design School: Intro to Graphic Design

Canva opened the doors to graphic design and made it accessible to all. Their open-learning course teaches graphic design principles, like color combinations, image placement, font theories, layouts, and how to apply them in Canva.

Train your Team and Get More Productive

There you have it, the 47 best ways to train your marketing team. Having the right skills can save your team members a lot of time in their roles, making them more motivated and decrease your company’s attrition rate. If you're interested in finding training that covers content marketing, analytics, project management, and social media with one subscription, check out the Actionable Marketing Institute. Actionable Marketing Institute Pro unlocks 25 courses that cover all of these topics and so much more. View the course catalog to see all of the courses available in the Actionable Marketing Institute Pro. This post was originally created on February 25, 2019. It was updated and republished on July 27, 2020.