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' 27 ( : How to learn digital marketing - 99+ resources and 8+ learning … Guide marketing Join
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' Posted by u/malchik23 Professional 2 years ago 2 ) About Community *

27
How to learn digital marketing - 99+ resources and 8+ learning paths
( Guide
r/marketing
Hey guys! With the whole self-isolation thing going on, it’s an awesome time to learn a new skill (or
ten). Me and my bud (Nick) basically self-taught ourselves digital marketing over the past 6 years, and For marketing communications +
have been hoarding a bunch of cool guides and resources. advertising industry professionals to
discuss and ask questions related to
We recently decided to turn all of it into a giant resource package on how to learn digital marketing. marketing strategy, media planning,
Thought you guys would appreciate it! digital, social, search, campaigns, data
science, email, user experience, content,
So, here we go...
copywriting, segmentation, attribution,
data visualization, testing, optimization,
Before we begin, here’s how to learn digital marketing and martech. Get advice, ask questions, or
discuss any marketing-related topics. Our
Before we dive deep into the guide and start teaching you individual digital marketing channels, let’s diverse /r/marketing community includes
cover some basics. brands, businesses, agencies, vendors, and
students.
First things first - you need to decide which channel to start with.
387k 135
If you have a knack for writing, we’d recommend going with Content Marketing or Copywriting. On Members Online

the other hand, if you’re more analytics-oriented, go for Search Ads or PPC.

As a given, you DON’T have to learn all the channels. You can just pick one that you like, and specialize + Created Mar 23, 2008

in it! Join

Once you’ve decided on which channel to roll with, you should also establish a learning methodology.
Create Post
As with most things in life, reading on digital marketing won’t take you far. You need to also put
everything into practice.
USER FLAIR PREVIEW
-
We usually recommend going with one of these 4 options:
Culcarny
1. Create a test learning environment. Basically, you create a website for a basic product or
service (heck, even a blog would do!), and start applying whatever you learned about digital
marketing to get leads and customers. Even if you have ZERO budget, this can be an interesting
learning experience. And yes - it’s possible to start w/ a zero budget.
COMMUNITY OPTIONS
,
2. Get an internship. This can be a bit painful if you’re in the middle of your current career, but hey,
swallow the pride. If you do your best, you’ll be doing some real work 6 months after the
r/marketing Rules
internship.
3. Offer a local business to help them with marketing for free. Find a business you think you can
help in your area and reach out to them! 1. Advertising & Self-Promotion ,
4. Create an affiliate blog. Pick a niche, create an affiliate blog, and start pumping out some
2. Blog spam ,
content. This is mainly relevant if you want to learn SEO or content marketing.
3. Interviewee Assistance ,
And here’s what you SHOULD NOT DO:

Read a guide or two, buy a course, whip out your own website, repurpose the course and start pretending to 4. Surveys and/or ,
homework/assignment help
be a marketing expert to potential clients.
5. URL Shorteners ,
There are way too many people doing this as-is. Please stop! You’re setting yourself up for failure.

You’d be surprised how many people we see on Facebook Ads groups asking, “Hey guys, I closed my first 6. Website/Product Reviews ,
client, now how the heck do I deliver on my promises?”
7. Low quality ,
...Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to learning some digital marketing!
8. Non-specific resource request ,
The ones we’re going to cover in this guide are:

Content marketing
Other Links
SEO
Search ads
Chat with us on Discord
PPC
Social media marketing
Pinned Content
Copywriting
Marketing Jobs
Email marketing Marketing News
Web analytics Marketing Books
Marketing Podcasts
Quick Note
Marketing Courses

We took some liberties with splitting up some channels. For example, search ads fall under PPC, but Marketing Tools

since they require different skills/knowledge than most PPC channels, we split them up. Marketing Events
Marketing Terminology
Finally, Copywriting is also NOT a digital marketing channel. However, it’s an essential skill that helps Social Media Scheduling Tools: The Complete
with literally any other channel, so we decided to include it to the list. List
I'm a college student, what do I need to
Sue us.
learn besides what they are teaching me?
The Big Marketing FAQ You Didn't Know You

Learn Content Marketing Needed

This one’s our bread and butter. The Reddit Marketing Community
Most traditional advertising channels are focused on directly selling a product. If you turn on the TV, r/socialmedia
r/advertising
you’ll see a TON of ads for this product, or that product or service.
r/digital_marketing
Content marketing is a form of indirect advertisement. r/analytics
r/DigitalMarketing
The idea here is, instead of directly pitching your product to your target audience, you create content r/webmarketing
r/AskMarketing
(article, video, infographic, etc.) around the problem your product solves, and pitch that instead.
r/content_marketing
r/SocialMediaMarketing
To make this a LOT clearer, here’s a practical example.
r/GoogleAnalytics
r/GoogleTagManager
Let’s say you’re a marketing agency that specializes in helping SaaS companies with their digital
r/GoogleAdwords
marketing (meta, right?).
r/GoogleDataStudio

Instead of directly running ads yelling “We help SaaS companies!” you create a mega-guide on the
topic and advertise that.
Moderators
...Which is what we did.

We created a mega-guide to SaaS marketing and promoted the hell out of it all over the web. This . Message the mods
netted us around ~10,000+ traffic and 15+ leads in the first week, and we STILL get traffic to the piece,
u/dpatrick86
2 months later.
u/v022450781 @valters
We even posted it on r/Entrepreneur and got around 600 upboats.
u/r0nin
Sweet, right?
u/Gustomaximus Professional
Now, you’re probably wondering, is this option better than just running ads to your service/product?
u/JonODonovan Marketing is fun

Yes, yes it is. Here’s why:

u/AutoModerator
1. It’s free (ish). The only resources it took was our time to write the post, edit it, and promote it.
u/AptSeagull
Ads, on the other hand, can be super expensive.
VIEW ALL MODERATORS
2. It builds your brand authority. Who’d you trust with your marketing? A random guy that
popped up on your Facebook newsfeed, or the guys that wrote the most comprehensive guide to
SaaS marketing you’ve ever read? Exactly!

Content Marketing Learning Path

Looking for the top resources to learn content marketing? Here is a mini-roadmap to get you going:

1. First, learn the basics. You can find a ton of online courses or articles on this. Here are some of
our favorites:
a. HubSpot’s Academy content marketing course
b. Neil Patel’s guide to content marketing basics
c. Content Blogger’s guide to content marketing
2. Learn how to create and promote authority content
a. Hubspot’s guide to content creation
TOP POSTS MARCH 20TH 2020
b. Copy Blogger’s guide to creating epic content
c. How to promote your content
TOP POSTS OF MARCH, 2020
d. Another guide on content promotion
3. Learn how to create SEO content (more on this in the next section)
TOP POSTS 2020
a. How to use the skyscraper technique, guide #1 and guide #2
b. Our own guide to creating SEO content
c. How to create top content with the Wiki Strategy
Help About
4. Learn how to do content marketing for a local business with Google’s course
Reddit Coins Careers
5. Read some case studies. Some of our favorites include: Reddit Premium Press
a. How Chris Von Wilpert made $100,000 by creating and promoting a single blog post Reddit Gifts Advertise

b. How Mint grew to 1.5 million users (a big chunk of the credit goes to content marketing) Blog
Terms
Content Policy
Learn SEO
Privacy Policy
Mod Policy
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another super popular digital marketing channel.

In a nutshell, SEO is the act of optimizing your web pages and content for Google so that your website Reddit Inc © 2021 . All rights reserved
pops up when people look up certain terms.

For example, let’s say you’re a project management software. Would it benefit you if you popped up #1 Back to Top
when people Google for your keyword?

Yes, yes it would. You’d be getting highly qualified leads for your software every day, for free, with
ZERO ad spend.

Cool, right?

Here’s what an SEO specialist does on a daily basis:

Content Creation - Create SEO content (or work with freelance writers)
On-page SEO - Make sure that all content on the blog is optimized for Google and interlinked to
each other
Technical SEO - Make sure that the web dev team is following SEO best practices when working
on the website
SEO Strategy - Doing keyword research and finding new web pages and content to create
Link-building - Conducting link-building (or supervising outreach specialists).

Now, here’s how to learn SEO...

SEO Learning Path

1. First off, learn the basics.
a. Beginner’s Guide to SEO by Moz
b. SEO Basics by Backlinko
c. SEO in 2020 by Backlinko
d. Awesome SEO tutorial on Reddit
e. What’s DA/PA
2. Then, learn how to do technical SEO, set up tracking, and optimize your website
a. Create a sitemap
b. Create a robots.txt
c. Setup Google Analytics and Search Console
d. Improve load speed. Check out this article by Moz and another by Crazy Egg
e. Learn about technical SEO and how that works
f. Optimize your web pages for SEO. For this, you can use Yoast or RankMath if you’re using
WordPress, and Content Analysis Tool if you’re not
g. Losslessly compress all your images. This should save ~75% of space for your images and
drastically increase site load speed (which improves SEO). If you’re using WordPress, you
can use Smush to automatically compress all images on your site. If you’re NOT using WP,
you can use Compressor.io.
3. Learn how to do keyword research
a. Top guide on How to do keyword research
b. [Freebie] Use our template for keyword research
4. Learn how to create SEO landing pages
5. Learn how to create SEO content
a. Our own guide to creating SEO content
b. Backlinko’s skyscraper strategy
c. How to create top content with the Wiki Strategy
6. Learn how to do link-building
a. Learn link-building basics
b. Learn how to do outreach
c. Discover ALL the link-building strategies out there
7. Learn the importance of proper interlinking (and how to do it)
8. Learn how to optimize article headlines
9. Read some case studies
a. How Nat grew a website to 10k+ visitors per month
b. How Pipedrive ranked on a high-volume keyword

If you’re learning digital marketing because you own a local business, then the game is a bit different.
While 90% of the principles above still apply, you should also read about local SEO and how it works.

Other SEO Resources

Looking for additional resources? Here are some of our favorite SEO blogs:

Backlinko
Moz
Ahrefs
Gotch SEO
QuickSprout
Diggity Marketing

Finally, a big part of SEO is using the right tools. Here are the ones we use every day (and love):

All-in-one SEO tool. Usually, that’s either SEMrush or Ahrefs. You’re going to use this tool for
literally anything - keyword research, content audit, technical audit, backlink analysis, etc.
Scraping tool. That could be URL Profiler or Screaming Frog, the best tool out there for
content/technical audits.
Rank checker tool. We use the MozBar extension, a super nifty tool for checking DA/PA.
Content gap analysis tool. For us, that’s Surfer SEO. This is mainly used for performing a gap
analysis between your content and that of the competition. You can get a top-down view of what
all the top-ranking articles have in common for any given keyword, and whether your content is
up to par.
Keyword research tool. UberSuggest is our #1 favorite here (and it’s free-ish!).

Learn Search Ads

Search ads are basically paid SEO.

Instead of waiting for months or years to rank on your keyword, you can start bidding on it
instantaneously.

Seen the “Sponsored” results on top of your organic searches on Google?

Those are search ads.

Of course, unlike SEO, they’re not free. You have to pay for each click you get.

The way search ads work is as follows. Each time someone Googles any keyword, Google holds a small
auction.

Each advertiser on the keyword has a specific bid indicated on their account.

The one that bids the highest, gets the highest ranking.

Now given, this is a gross oversimplification, but that’s the general idea behind it.

Usually, you’d use search ads if you are any type of business with inbound demand. For example…

Are you a bar in London, UK? You can advertise on “bars sofia,” “best bars sofia,” and “sofia
nightlife.”
Are you a legal firm in New York? You’d advertise on “law firm new york,” “immigration law firm
new york”, “immigration lawyer new york”, and so on.
Are you an online resume builder? You can advertise on “resume template,” “resume builder”, “
how to make a resume”, and so on.

Want to learn how to do search ads? Here are some of the best resources out there:

Search Ads Learning Path

The #1 free resource on learning search ads is the Google Academy, and a close second is Ad
Espresso’s guide.
If you’re more of a fan of video content, there’s Surfside’s PPC tutorials or Isaac Rudansky’s
Youtube channel.

...And that’s it.

You’re probably wondering:

“Wtf Nick, you mention 934 resources on SEO, but just 3 for search ads?”

Yep. The thing w/ search ads is, it’s easy to learn, hard to master. Going through Google’s course on its
own is enough to give you everything you need to know about search ads.

From then on, you need to apply what you learned into practice, and learn from there (and Google any
problems/questions you might have).

Learn PPC

PPC stands for “pay-per-click” and is an umbrella term for pretty much ALL online advertising types -
Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Reddit ads, and all other social media ads.

In this case, we decided to focus on Facebook Ads, mainly for 2 reasons:

1. It’s the most popular advertising channel out there. There’s a lot more demand for Facebook
ad specialists, and you can get a lot more done with it
2. If you learn how to do Facebook ads, all other channels follow the same principles

So, let’s get right into it!

The way PPC works, in a nutshell, is as follows:

1. You need to figure out the right targeting

2. And you need to come up with the right ad creatives (both ad image and the ad copy)

Given, this is a LOT more complex than you’d think. The main responsibility for a PPC specialist is to
test dozens of targeting options, mixed with dozens of ad creatives, and find what gets them the best
results.

Want to learn how to do PPC? Here’s how…

PPC Learning Path

1. First, learn the basics.
a. You can use Facebook Blueprint, Facebook’s very own PPC course
b. Or, this Facebook Basics guide by AdEspresso
c. Or, read one of our favorite FB ad guides by Miles Becker
d. Remarketing basics
e. How to use lookalike audiences
2. To learn how to do Facebook ads for a local business, check out Channel Zero Marketing on
Youtube and watch ALL of his videos.
3. Learn how Facebook ad bidding works.
4. Learn how to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns.
5. Get inspired by some of the best Facebook ad examples.
6. Learn how to scale your Facebook ads.
7. Top 10 Facebook ad hacks from a 10-year expert
8. Top lessons from some guy on Reddit who spent $100,000+ on FB and LinkedIn ads
9. Some other good tips from Reddit.
10. ...And one more!
11. Read some case-studies
12. Case study on spending $1,000,000 on e-commerce ads
13. Connectio’s list of FB ad case studies
14. Indiegogo campaign FB ad case study

And here are some free web resources we recommend:

/r/marketing best posts of all time. Not 100% about Facebook ads, but you can find some
awesome posts here.
/r/entrepreneur. Same concept here. Generally about business, but people sometimes share
some awesome resources on PPC (as well as business and marketing in general).
Ad Espresso Blog
Buffer Blog
HootSuite Blog
Perpetual Traffic

Learn Social Media Marketing

“Wait, isn’t social media marketing the same as PPC?”

Technically, yes. For the purpose of this guide? Nope.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) as a whole is anything that has to do with marketing on social media (as
the name suggests).

Yes, that includes PPC.

However, “Social Media Manager” and “Facebook Ad Expert” are 2 completely different things that
require different skill-sets. Hence, we decided to split up PPC and SMM.

SMM, as defined for the purpose of this guide, includes:

1. Creating engaging content on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn

2. Managing social media profiles of companies and replying to comments
3. Organizing giveaways on social media
4. Promoting company news or content on social media

If you’ve seen Wendy’s social media account, that’s a top-tier SMM marketing right there.

Now, how do you learn Social Media Marketing? Unlike most of the other guides we’ve mentioned, it’s
not nearly as step-by-step.

The general idea is:

1. Master how specific social media platforms work. Follow people that are actively posting and
have a dynamic followers group. Borrow what works best.
2. Learn how to create engaging content (both written and visual).
3. Post frequently and monitor the company’s social media presence

So, accordingly, 90% of the work here is learning about each individual social media. Here are some of
our favorite guides for that:

Buffer’s (general) guide to SMM

Facebook marketing
Twitter marketing
Reddit marketing
Pinterest marketing
How to use Canva to create awesome social media content

Learn Copywriting

Yes, yes, copywriting is NOT exactly digital marketing.

It is, however, an ESSENTIAL skill for, well, just about any digital marketing channel we’ve mentioned so
far.

Doing content marketing? You need to be able to write good copy.

SEO? Same thing. The more engaging your content, the more likely it is to rank.
Search ads & other PPC channels? Same. After all, no one’s going to click your ad if the headline
isn’t compelling.

So, we decided to include copywriting in the guide.

For those of you that are new to digital marketing, copywriting means writing copy that sells. For
example:

Landing page content

Sales pages
Email marketing copy
Ad copies (for all things PPC)
Direct response sales letters

Unlike most of the other digital marketing channels we’ve covered, learning copywriting isn’t as
straightforward.

There’s no step-by-step, read this, skim that, then read that, and BAM you’re a copywriter!

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of reading, time, and practice. To get started, however, we recommend
reading a handful of the following guides:

Copywriting Learning Path

Copywriting 101 by QuickSprout. While nothing too exceptional, it’s a good start.
This Reddit post on how to become a copywriter
Some guy on Reddit created/posted one of the best copywriting video guides we’ve seen on the
web. Tl;dr, the guy created a course to teach his sister copywriting and shared it with the world
on r/entrepreneur
Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy. One of the most popular copywriting classics.
21 top copywriting formulas you can use for plug-and-play.
How to land copywriting clients w/ no experience

As for top blogs/resources, here’s what we recommend:

CopyBlogger
CopyHackers
The Gary Halbert Letter

Learn Email Marketing

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending emails to prospects or existing
customers.

The goal of every email marketing campaign is usually one of the following:

Turn email readers into customers

Upsell new products or services to existing customer base
Retain your reader base with interesting/informative content

And the To-Dos of an email marketer usually include:

Sending a weekly newsletter to blog readers

Notifying users/newsletter subscribers about new products or services
Figuring out how to increase blog reader-to-email subscriber conversions
Analyzing campaign performance and making adjustments as needed
A/B testing different emails/subject lines

If you want to learn how to do email marketing, here’s what we recommend:

Email Marketing Learning Path

As usual, learn the basics.
OptIn monster has an awesome beginner’s guide to email marketing
Learn some copywriting. Yeah, you can’t get away from this one. If you want to be a good email
marketer, you need to know how to write well-converting emails. Check the previous section
(“Learn Copywriting”) for more info on how.
Learn how to grow an email list
How to write clickable subject lines
What are lead magnets / how they work
Learn how to set up email sequences

Learn Web Analytics

While analytics isn’t exactly a channel, it’s essential to know how to track your marketing campaigns.

Here is some basic stuff you HAVE TO know:

Learn Google Analytics (GA). W/ digital marketing, GA is your primary data hub. This is where you
keep track of traffic, conversions, user flow, and whatever else. To learn how to use it, check out:
Google Analytics for Beginners
Advanced Google Analytics
Google Analytics for Power Users
If you want to take your analytics game to the next level, you should also learn how to use
Google Tag Manager (GTM). You can use GTM to set up conversion tracking by channel, and a ton
of other stuff.
Google Tag Manager Course
Planning on learning Analytics for SEO? Make sure to learn how to use the Search Console. That’s
your central hub to keep track of all your organic traffic.
Ultimate Guide to Search Console
Beginner’s Guide to Search Console
Working with clients? You’ll need to know how to use Google Data Studio. It allows you to pull
whatever data you need from GA and Search console to create super easy to use reports.
How to Use Data Studio
At some point, you’ll need to track all of your marketing campaigns. You can do that with UTM
tags.
Buffer’s Guide to UTM Codes
UTM Builder

TL;DR

Hope you guys found this useful. This isn’t 100% comprehensive since we haven’t read literally
everything ever, but most of the guides/content we’ve covered are the stuff we’ve personally used and
think are awesome.

If you guys have any other top stuff you think we should add to the list, let us know :)

You can check out the full blog post on our blog.

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SebastianJoh · 2 yr. ago

This really has lot of information embedded !!

To anyone who would like to launch new product through digital marketing, I would be glad to
suggest them taking look upon next level ninjas for their product launches & safe verified reviews !!

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