How to become a Self-made Digital Marketing Expert in 2018?

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Digital Marketing is an umbrella term broadly comprising the following:

• Content marketing: This is the King. The growth driver.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The backbone of your digital Strategy.
• Keyword Research & Adwords (Paid Search): Your ticket to quick show in SERP.
• Email marketing: Gold mine among all your marketing outreach channels.
• Social Media Marketing: Black sheep of online marketing. Can make you or can break you.
• Web Analytics and Monitoring: Your performance assessment and strategy layout guide.
• Mobile Marketing: The new focus of the market.
• Online Reputation Management: Keep it a happy ending. Online Brand building is an ongoing process.

Exploring the Learning Path – Resources

Digital marketing activities are primarily driven by Google and Social Networking Sites. Most of your activities revolves around Search Engine Optimization, Adwords & Adsense, Social Media Branding.

Google is generous enough to inundate us with high quality tutorials and support. Afterall, earlier you learn a technology, quicker you adopt, faster you boost the spread and usage. So basically, Digital Marketing is anOpen Source Learning. Sorry for those who has already spent fat money on coaching institutes. Here is a comprehensive list of learning resources.

The sequence of the courses are arranged as per their content coverage and level of explanation. Go by the sequence, you will have a smooth transition to the learning process.

1. Google Digital Garage

This is my personal favourite. Start from this free course by Google. You learn the nity grities of internet, its potential and the opportunity for businesses. The training modules also gives a basic overview of all the pillars of digital marketing outreach. From online ads to analytics and social media, You get a comprehensive overview.

The best part, you earn a Google certification universally recognised in completing the course.

1. Inbound Methodology

This courses from Hubspot Academy is one of the best video tutorials on online sales, marketing and growth driven design I have ever come across. It will give you a broad understanding of the indound marketing process. Its very essential to understand the digital marketing framework before delving into practice.

Best part, these video classes comes with a FREE certification too.

1. Google Online Marketing Challenge

This is a little advanced. But after Google Digital Garage and Hubspot Inbound Methodology course, it’s an easy go to start with. So you start practicing from this course onwards. Follow the sequence of modules it offers and practice side by side.

1.  Google Analytics Academy

Excellent source. Step by step video guide to using the Web Analytics dashboard, infering the various data metrics and dimensions and making decisions out of the Web traffic data.

These 4 courses are the blockbusters of digital marketing tutorials. Trust me, if you have done these courses sincerely, You are already a wise Digital Marketer with globally recognized certifications.

This are free courses and better than any other paid course on web, I can vouch. However I have also listed the several other good quality digital marketing learning resources for you to compare. Scroll.

Time to Practice.

But, as always, Theory and practice often possess a threat of mismatch. Same goes for Digital Marketing. Your execution strategy of different digital marketing principles will differ from industry to industry. Digital strategy for an ecommerce and for an automobile company will drastically differ in nature and outlook.

Well, here is your feed. To stay updated with the industry follow the listed resources.

List of excellent blogs and resources to follow:

Marketing Land | Search Engine Land | Search Engine Roundtable | Moz | Moz Academy | Distilled |  Econsultancy | Neil Patel | Portent | Copyblogger | SEO By the Sea | Backlinko | NicheHacks

Certifications

Ironically, all this globally recognised certifications form Google and Hubspot Academy are FREE. Go grab your certificates.

• Get Certified by Google Digital Garage    
• About the AdWords certification
• About Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ)
• Inbound Marketing Certification
• Email marketing Certification
• Inbound Sales Certification
• Content Marketing Certification Growth Driven Design Certification
• There are even MBA programs with specialization in digital marketing such as this one: NYU Stern MBA Digital Marketing,  AIMA, Univ of Phoenix, Duke Univ
• Digital Marketing Courses in Coursera and edx

How to learn Digital Marketing by Practice?

1. Go through the Video lessons on Google Garage, Hubspot Academy.
2. Use Google keyword Planner, Google Trends, NichHacks website to find a suitable niche. Pick a topic you are passionate about, on which you want to build your first blog.
3. Now plan a business model around your chosen idea. Define your offerings/services. Why shall I visit your website. How will you attract me to your website ? Plan and lay a blueprint.
4. Time to build a website. Message me with your plan. I will personally guide you on how to start your first blog. If you are new to web design, I will set it up for you and show you how to handle blog posting. Without a bit of technical know-how, you won't be able to implement SEO. No worry, I will show you how to for free.
5. So now you have your blog/website up and running. Time to delve fulltime into applying your digital marketing ideas. Layout a 360 degree integrated marketing plan. It means a plan comprising all the marketing channels. List out in Excel how you are going to use Email, SMS, Whatsapp, Social media, SEO, PPC for your marketing outreach. 
6. Try out every marketing channel. Most importantly, monitor the web analytics data and assess the ROI or performance indicators.
7. A great Digital Marketer is one who understands every marketing channel by nooks & corner and knows when to use which channel. Its all about identifying, aiding and leveraging the right channel.
8. Once you have got some hands on experience, got an idea of all the marketing channels, start investing in paid ads. As you invest small amounts in PPC(Adwords) and social media sponsored postings, you will have an idea of the marketing ROI. 
9. Woosh. You are a big bod now. Time to apply for a real internship. Show your work with the first blog, explain how you experimented with the different channels. Hope you get shartlisted sooner. 
10. Apply to Digital Marketing Agencies. They will have multiple projects from varied industries. So as a newbie, you have a great deal of learning. You get exposure to multiple industry. Marketing activities are industry specific and not something standardized all across.
11. Share your growth story with me. Let me know how you ventured into a digital marketing career. 

Best wishes for your online success. Happy learning. Impactful Practicing.