[Full Guide 2021] The Comprehensive Marketing Resources for Business Owners Who Want to Self-learn
2020 surprised us all with its unexpected events. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in several aspects, and it’s still doing.
Work from home, brand yourself online, video meetings and other online stuff have become an essential part of our daily lives.
These events offered the chance for many jobs to rise and changed the whole concept of business.
Digital marketing is one of the trending jobs. Since 2020, it’s become one of the top 15 jobs in demand, according to LinkedIn.
With a few minutes of search, you’ll find out many relevant sources, and many people talking about it. You might feel lost in all these courses, videos, and articles.
However, don’t worry. In this article, we’re accompanying you through the digital marketing journey. We’ll try to answer your questions and think with you.
Ready to start? Here’s everything you need to know about digital marketing. So, let’s go!
We keep saying marketing, and you see lots of agencies searching for people who understand digital marketing to hire. At first, let’s know:
What is Digital Marketing?
The word digital refers to any electronic device and the internet. Simply, when you put them in use for your business, that’s called digital marketing. You may be practicing it without noticing at all. When you talk about your brand online, your social media accounts, or texting your friends, that’s digital marketing.
In the last three years, companies have got most of their business online. However, you don’t have to be this big to succeed. I mean, don’t worry if you’re starting from scratch.
Learning marketing fundamentals is somehow easy, the trick is how to use it.
Why Should I Learn Digital Marketing?
The world has grown to be more like an enormous marketplace; you’ve better know how to cope with it.
Even if you aren’t a business owner or not thinking about having one, learning digital marketing will help you in many ways. You’ll see how it changes your mind and how the whole process is going.
Why Study Digital Marketing?
1. Knowledge is Power:
The internet has turned the world into a tiny village. Every second comes with countless pieces of information, and we get lost in all of this.
Digital marketing makes you aware of everything happening around you. Better than that, it helps you to choose, to know what’s important, and what’s useless.
Sure, you can’t go gathering all that you find; nobody can do this.
By learning digital marketing, you’ll know how to get what you’re searching for rapidly. You will have a sort of filtering mechanism and distinguish the facts easily. In a time full of forgery, having this quality is a great thing.
You can speak with digital marketing agencies, choose the best one and not being conned by glamorous agencies with no performance.
2. Get Your Business Running:
Recently, the global marketplace has witnessed lots of changes. By the time, it has become more automatic and dependent on fintech. Step by step, the traditional jobs are disappearing and new jobs are coming to the scene. Learning what you need will make you able to know whom to hire. As mentioned before, digital marketing is classified as one of the top jobs in demand since 2020. Considering that fact, it’s a great deal!
The more you dive into this world, the more new things you’ll learn. Digital Marketing is a huge world; you can work in any part of it, and believe me, it has many of them.
For example, you can work in marketing research, sales, advertising, product development, or digital media. And there’s still more.
3. Be Determinant:
In such a rapidly changing world, you should be a quick learner with a high ability to adapt and change. Studying digital marketing will help you rapidly gather and interpret different forms of data.
Being exposed to a wide base of audiences; you have to define your target customers and grow your insights to notice the changes and know how to deal with them.
The more you practice marketing, the more you’ll become determinant. By the time, you’ll face fewer problems while making your decisions, whatever the situation is.
4. A Good Listener is a Good Talker:
Marketing lets you offer your services and show your products. You first have to understand your customers and know them; doing this will encourage them to buy your products and trust you.
Digital marketing depends on the connection between you and the audience. Studying your audiences and their interests, what they like, and what they reject is important to build a strong relation with them and gain their trust.
First, you have to be patient and quiet. Digital marketing teaches you to be a good listener and embrace different opinions. Take your time doing this, and after you finish, you’ll manage to express yourself in the best possible way.
Talking about digital marketing benefits is endless. Whatever we mention, there will always be more. We tried to show you why marketing is important; even if you’re working on something else, it can still help you.
Now is the time to learn about digital marketing; let’s discover this world.
Digital marketing has seven main components, which are well known to most marketers. Sure, there’re more, but we’ll mention those.
Digital marketing components:
- Search engine optimization (SEO).
- Web design/User experience.
- Pay per click (PPC).
- Social media marketing.
- Content marketing.
- Email marketing.
- Native advertising.
- Other Metrics you should know, such as (conversion rate optimization, affiliate advertising, sponsored content, etc.).
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
In brief, SEO is used to show your website at the top of online search results. Somehow, being at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) doesn’t relate to how great your website is.
SEO is a group of rules to help you get top rankings. Following these rules will make you popular and let people find you. Not only the customers, but companies and leads will get in contact with you.
The good thing about SEO is that it lets you be top-ranked, and gives you an idea about the users’ activity on your website, so you know if things are going well.
It’s larger than being able to summarize in a few words, but here’re a few tips:
- Have a good design.
- Let your content answer the customers’ questions.
- Increase your website speed.
2. Web Design:
You’re gonna deal with digital marketing like any other work you used to do. I mean, you should make use of all the available material. And what’s your material in digital marketing? It’s your website!
See how important it is? The user experience is the key factor for your success. You better make sure they have a good impression while visiting your website. Nearly 95% of a person’s first impression relates to web design.
It’s all about keeping the users engaged and interested in your content. You have to take care of your website’s values, functions, and usability.
Good design, minimizing the number of clicks, and simplicity are examples that give your customers the best experience and boost your website.
3. Pay Per Click (PPC):
While following SEO rules allows you to be top-ranked, PPC helps you maintain your success. It’s a good marketing strategy to boost your website and drive the users to it once your ads are live.
The good thing is that PPC is affordable, you only pay when your ad is clicked. It also offers you many options while choosing your target audience. You can control many factors such as location and the device they’re using.
PPC service is available on popular channels such as google ads, Facebook paid ads, and Twitter campaigns.
4. Social Media Marketing:
Nearly billions of people use social media networks every day for different reasons. That’s what makes it a great marketing strategy.
Social media allows you to become closer to your customers, as people are usually open in their accounts. It gives you the chance to notice their potentials and learn more about their favorites.
Being available in every home, accessible at any minute, what else may you want to have strong marketing?
Each of the following social networks has its methods to achieve optimum use like hashtags, comments, photos, etc.
Social Media Marketing Includes:
● Facebook.
● Twitter.
● Instagram.
● LinkedIn.
● Snapchat.
● Pinterest.
● TikTok.
● Quora.
● Reddit.
5. Content Marketing:
In this section, we are talking about how you want to offer your service. Mostly, it depends on your choices.
You better keep these notes in your mind while choosing how to display your content. Think about the quality, depth, and duration.
It’s said that “ A bad workman always blames his tools.”. Unfortunately, this goes nearly on everything, even digital marketing.
The tools are available to help you, but they can’t think for you. I mean you better have some creativity. Choose what suits you more, and what’s better for your content.
If you like writing, talk about your brand in blog articles. You can control their length as you need.
If you want something that lasts longer, think about e-books. They work as a guide for your products, and if you put good efforts into them, they won’t fade over time.
Other options like videos and visual designs are available if you prefer visual content.
Just make it simple and precise; that’s the secret.
6. Email Marketing:
Email marketing is a good way to get engaged with the audience. When the users submit their emails to subscribe to your content and get the latest news, we can say Congrats! You’ve managed to gain their interest and win their trust.
Companies use email marketing to offer discounts and promote their brands.
With email marketing, you can keep people interested in your content for a long time. Also, it allows you to give them some teasers and keep them excited.
Here’re a few examples for email marketing:
- Subscription newsletter.
- Welcoming emails.
- Follow-up emails after downloads.
- Discounts and events emails.
7. Native Advertising:
This one is kind of a trick you can use. The idea of native advertising is you’re always giving the users a “what’s next!” feeling.
You can make it a built-in strategy within your website. For example, when they finish reading an article on your blog, put a link to another relevant article found on your website.
This way keeps them longer on your website, so you get more engagement.
We tried to mention the most important components of digital marketing, and we hope you’ll be familiar with their names whenever you read them.
After all this, you may be asking:
What can a Digital Marketer Do?
The main job of digital marketers is to drive brand awareness and lead generation through all the available channels.
They can work in any component of the previously mentioned ones, or even be responsible for them all. And don’t worry, digital marketers are well paid!
Finally, we’ve reached the most important part:
How to Self-Learn Digital Marketing?
The internet is full of many resources. Many options are available in different languages, and suitable for different levels from beginner to master. You don’t have to pay for learning, free resources are available as well.
1. Google Digital Garage:
Nowadays, the traditional answer to any question is: ask google!
You wanna start learning marketing? Ask google!
It isn’t a joke. Google digital garage offers a full free digital marketing course for beginners. You’ll learn and get certified!
Google offers other online free courses to learn more skills about digital marketing. They also offer summer training with the chances to get hired, so keep updated with their news.
If you’re super interested in google, you can learn how to use their tools and get full optimization. Follow this link to know about google tools:
2. Constant Contact:
Social media marketing can be a good way to start with. Constant Contact offers a free course for social media marketing, where you can learn and apply what you learned.
3. HubSpot Academy:
If you’re looking for online courses with free and reach content, HubSpot is good for you. No matter what your level is, there’ll be a course for you. You’ll learn, get certified, and build your resume.
Here’s the link to their website, follow it, explore their courses and choose what you like.
4. SEMRUSH Academy:
With SEMRUSH you will learn about search engine marketing and other marketing features. They offer many free courses and exams to help you master digital marketing.
- Keyword Research Course With Greg Gifford
- SEO made easy! Audit your site, discover backlink opportunities and ways to grow. Click Here!
- PPC Made Easy! Keyword research, competitor analysis, ad copy ideas. Click here to discover the number 1 PPC tool!
- Want an SEO Audit? Click here to have 100 pages of your site audited online in just 5 minutes and FREE!
5. Facebook Blueprint:
This one helps you to start your business on Facebook and Instagram. Fortunately, it’s for free and it allows you to track your progress all the way.
6. YouTube:
Youtube is the first choice for lots of people. Whatever you’re searching for, you’ll find a video for it.
Simplilearn is a youtube channel that offers multiple digital marketing tutorials. They’re funny, short, and simple to start with.
Podcasts:
Podcasts are a good option if you don’t like courses. You can listen to the episodes while driving or doing anything else. They’ll give you a good idea about marketing.
Here’re a few popular podcasts that will help you learn digital marketing:
1. Duct Tape Marketing:
This one consists of interviews with pros and thought leaders in the marketing field.
2. Social Trigger Insider:
This one teaches you how to apply human psychology in marketing and keep people attracted to your content.
3. Marketing Over Coffee:
Listen to this short weekly episode to follow the updates of marketing and know what’s new.
Arabic Resources to Learn Digital Marketing:
1. Google:
Google offers the same course for digital marketing fundamentals in Arabic. The course is fully free, suitable for beginners, and certified.
You’ll find other courses related to digital marketing, once you open this link for google skills.
2. Edraak:
It’s one of the most popular websites that offer different courses in Arabic.
Fortunately, Edraak offers many courses to learn digital marketing and its features such as analytics, advertising, and SEO.
3. M3aarf:
You will learn and get certified. M3aarf is one of the trusted Arabic resources to learn digital marketing. Also, it’s an easy way to start.
4. Coursera:
Coursera helps you learn anything you want. You’ll find Arabic and English courses to learn digital marketing. Some of them are free, others are paid.
The best thing about Coursera is being trusted. It’s one of the leading websites in self-learning. It also offers many courses with certified degrees. You can apply for financial aid if you can’t afford them.
Here’s one course in Arabic to help you learn digital marketing.
5. Egyptfwd initiative:
In cooperation with Udacity, Egypt has launched 3 main programs to encourage freelancing and help the youth get hired in the most demanded jobs such as programming, data analysis, and digital marketing.
Follow this link to start with the digital marketing course
The world of digital marketing is so wide, and we’ve just knocked its doors in this article. Your journey has just begun!
6. Udemy
We are proud to say that we have our own Facebook ads course on Udemy, and you get 50% on it via this link as a Digiutm reader.
or apply the copoun code: Digiutm50 (If you add the copoun and it is expired, please contact our team to create a new one for you, as Udemy’s duration for any copoun is limited)
7. Private Tutor
Perfect if you’re a busy person running your business and you don’t have time for going through a lot of resources and training, contact us to arrange an intensive course to help you understand what to run yourself in digital marketing or help you choose the right digital marketing agency. You can book a session directly here or 4 sessions with price of 3 here.
Still got doubts? Need a consultation? contact us!
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