The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing Course by Google Digital Garage (Review)

Go for the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course on Google Digital Garage, but do not depend on it alone!

To know what I mean, read till the end.

You are here because you are planning to learn Digital Marketing from Google or you are looking for a good digital marketing training institute online or maybe you are just looking for what exactly is Digital Marketing. For anything, I promise you will not return empty-handed.

Credits: litpac.com

I will tell you what I was looking for. I wanted to learn Digital marketing from scratch. It is my strong belief that you should choose your teacher wisely. Why? Because is learning difficult? Maybe. But unlearning surely is.

Before going for a full-fledged digital marketing certification from an institute, my cousin advised me to go for the Digital Marketing course by Google. But he did not tell me why. That’s why I am here to tell you why you should dig into this certification.

 

I would tell you what does Google say about its course and then I would tell you what I think about it.

 

What Google says about its Digital marketing certification on Google Digital garage

Google says that it is a free interactive course accredited by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The course comprises 26 modules. It has been facilitated by Google trainers and the best part of the course is that it comes with practical exercises and real-world case studies.

You would need to spend approximately 40 hours on this course including the video tutorials along with the final 40-question exam with a pass percentage of 80%, which stands out to be 32 right answers out of the 40 questions.

You can then download the certificate in your name. I have posted my certificate here for you to see. 

The 26 modules covered in the course are as follows:

• The online opportunity
• Your first steps in online success
• Build you web presence
• Plan your online business strategy
• Get started with search
• Get discovered with search
• Make search work for you
• Be noticed with search ads
• Improve your search campaigns
• Get noticed locally
• Help people nearby find you online
• Get noticed with social media
• Deep dive into social media
• Discover the possibilities of mobile
• Make mobile work for you
• Get started with content marketing
• Connect through email
• Advertise on other websites
• Deep dive into display advertising
• Make most of the video
• Get started with analytics
• Find success with analytics
• Turn data into insights
• Build your online shop
• Sell more online
• Expand internationally

 

 

What is my experience with the Digital marketing certification from Google Digital Garage?

I have successfully completed this certification with a 92% score in the final exam. So, here is what I think about it.

The course comprises video tutorials throughout by the best google trainers. They have described the entire journey of taking a business online like a story. Using the examples of some real-world businesses, they take you on the expedition of a digital marketer one step at a time.

Be it a business running a bakery shop, a hot air balloon business, or a writer helping people write the best man’s speech, this course uses examples of the businesses that exist and compete for traffic in the real sense. You can learn the practical knowledge at that root level and go on to apply those in the medium to big enterprises as well. After all, that’s what fundamentals are!

After every video tutorial, you have to answer a question to check your knowledge. And after every module completion, comprising anywhere between 2 to 7 videos, there is a short module completion exam covering questions from the module. This QnA system helps you retain the knowledge for a much longer time.

I have segregated the course modules broadly and provided with a gist of what is covered therein.

 

Basics

The course covers topics right from starting from the basics. Understanding how search engines work, why you as a business person should build your web presence, and also about creating a long-term goal along with a strategy to achieve the goal.

Building your owned media

Then it talks about building a responsive and usable website – informational or functional. Building it in a way that helps the search engine to read and understand it better and then index it where it should be, ranking it better eventually.

Making your website readable to search engines involves understanding the universe of keywords. The type of keywords used, competition among the digital marketers to rank for a keyword, and the number of times should the keyword be used; all is talked about in detail in these modules.

Social Media and the power of content

Then it teaches you to leverage the unlimited possibilities of social media and local marketing. Just like the website, a social media page/account is also an example of owned media.

And be it anywhere, Content is the key that drives everything. If available at the right time in front of the right searcher, content helps build trust and increases visibility in front of those people who are looking for products, services, or information that your business is offering.

Leveraging Advertising opportunities

Although the organic way of making your website visible by making it search engine friendly is by far the best and cheapest way you can use to achieve your long-term goal. However, if you are a newbie in your industry and the market is already overwhelmed with websites that have a presence in the market for so long, you will experience not so good time ranking your website on the first page.

Here, ads come for your rescue. Ads are the sure-shot way to steal the show in the fastest way. But needless to say, they are paid. For example, if you sell shoes online, then you can use search engine ads to show your ad when someone searches for, say, 'Buy Casual shoes'. 

These modules teach you about the keywords used in the ads and the process through which a search engine goes through to show your ads for the keywords you bid on. You heard that right! The search engines use a bidding model with a combination of Quality scores it gives to the web pages. 

The types of keywords are different from the keyword types concepts taught during the SEO modules.

Advertisements can be run on search engines, websites, OTT platforms, social media websites/apps.

Email Marketing

Next on the list is email. Connecting with customers using their email is a good way to communicate with the customers who already know you. They have either used your product before or have provided their email credentials because they are interested in your product and want to hear from you in the future.

You could use email to update your existing customers regarding a festive sale at your showroom, with a unique discount code. Another example for this could be, supposedly, you are a veterinarian, and you could send the new article you wrote on your blog, "10 Foods that you should not feed your dog". 

The trainers share best practices and tools that you can use for your email marketing campaigns.

Analytics

Here comes the most important part of your digital game. This is probably the biggest aspect that differentiates digital marketing from the traditional ways of marketing.

Every platform in the digital marketing game involves analytics that runs 24*7. The course talks about Search engine analytics (Mostly, Google Analytics) which analyzes the traffic on your website. Where the user comes from, how much time they spend on your website, how many pages they visit on your website, or something like, during which part of their scrolling process they leave the website.

Knowing your customers’ behavior is both powerful and insightful. You can do alterations to your website accordingly. For example, if you see that 90% of your customers leave your website on the payment page, then maybe they are not happy with the payment methods or delivery charges. So, you can perhaps reduce the delivery charges or include more payment methods.

Just like search engines, social media companies also provide the respective social media analytics tools to help you engage with your audience in the most effective way possible.

 

Conclusion

Now let’s move back to the statement I made before.

“Go for the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course on Google Digital Garage, but do not depend on it alone!”

It is a great course for beginners, and beginners alone. Google itself says that it is a beginner’s course. It tells you about the most famous tools to do everything that is said above. Most of the tools are the ones provided by Google itself. Perhaps, I see the course as the best funnel example. Anyone that does this course is bound to use the tools as recommended. If you are reading this, you are reading a blog made on Google Blogger which has been submitted to Google Search Console for crawling purposes (Don't worry, you will learn what crawling means in this course) and I am using Google Analytics to analyze the number and behavior of readers.

Also, as I said before, the trainers take you through all the steps of a digital marketing campaign one by one like a story. LIKE A STORY!

Like a story means you know all of it theoretically. You are not taught how to do digitally market your business practically. There is a great amount of detail in everything that is in Digital marketing and probably in everything in life, isn’t it?

So, if you are a complete beginner, I recommend you do this certification by Google Digital Garage: Digital Unlocked. It will give you a much-needed push to enter the domain. After all, who does not like to be certified, especially when it is by Google? But you would need to do much more beyond this certification to be a digital marketer. Be it learning online or studying from a good digital marketing institute.

Learning Digital marketing online for free

If you want to learn digital marketing online, there are a plethora of websites that teach digital marketing! 

• Hubspot Academy: If you are in marketing already, you might know Hubspot Academy by Hubspot. Hubspot is a pioneer in the business. Hubspot academy offers great quality courses. They offer courses on Search Engine Optimization, Digital marketing, content marketing, Digital Advertising, Inbound marketing, Social media, and so on. And you know what is the best part of these courses. They are absolutely free!

• Semrush Academy: Another big player in the Digital Marketing game is Semrush. Semrush also offers its SEO tools for businesses. Semrush offers free courses through Semrush Academy. You just need to have an account on Semrush. 

Just remember that Digital marketing is all about practice and you will have to do everything you learn by doing. Watching the course videos alone will not do any good. 
Happy learning!

Click to know how Digital marketing is different from Traditional ways of marketing!

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I am Pawan! Thank you for reading!