How can B2B marketers strengthen their long-term strategy and hone existing marketing skills while learning new ones? 2021 offers the greatest wealth of online marketing-related courses the world has ever seen, thanks in part to the pandemic’s effects on how we learn. With more than
70 percent of companies recognizing online learning as essential to long-term strategy (Digital Marketing Institute), now is the ideal time to explore the vast array of online courses available to B2B marketers, covering subjects from modern marketing writing and digital marketing strategy to marketing research and social media marketing. No matter how much we already know, in 2021’s
always-on B2B marketing landscape there’s always plenty more to learn. Online courses are a powerful way to enhance your career through, and by offering a
work-at-your-own-pace cadence, it’s easy to fit in as much or as little instruction as your time allows, whenever and wherever you want. Let’s continue our exploration of today’s latest online learning options for B2B marketers, expanding on our popular previous guides — make sure to take a look if you haven’t yet seen them:
5 Free Online Courses to Sharpen Your B2B Marketing Skills, featuring:
- Harvard University
- edX
- BerkeleyX
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Colorado
10 Free Online Courses to Optimize Your Marketing Skills, featuring:
- Stukent
- BuzzSumo Academy
- HubSpot Academy
- Google Analytics Academy
- SEMrush Academy
- Traackr Academy of Influencer Marketing
- Hootsuite Academy
- Jeff Sauer’s PPC Mastery Course
- Lynda.com
- Udemy
Our CEO and co-founder
Lee Odden recently selected
online learning hubs as a
top trend for 2021, highlighting the increasing importance of online learning for today’s B2B marketers. "Learning Hubs for Leads – While not exactly new, the attraction to cross-train and advance skills is greater than ever. To meet that need,
B2B brands are increasingly investing in learning hubs where audiences can exchange their contact information for access to rich educational resources. Examples include HubSpot Academy, SEMRush and many more,” Lee explained. Here are five organizations offering a wide variety of online courses for boosting your marketing skills — each either free, available as a free trial to try out content, or for purchase.
1 — MarketingProfs Everybody Writes: Modern Marketing Writing
MarketingProfs offers a six-lesson online course dedicated to the timeless art and science of writing, with “
Everybody Writes: Modern Marketing Writing,” featuring top marketing writer
Ann Handley, author of “Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content.” Even the best B2B marketing writers can learn plenty from Ann’s writing insights, which in this course include 15 unique approaches to frame your writing, a 12-step process for writing longer content works, along with six helpful “empathy hacks.”
2 — MIT OpenCourseWare
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
MIT OpenCourseWare online learning offerings provide many courses to help digital marketers “never stop learning,” as noted on the service’s Twitter page with over 200,000 followers. Recent courses such as “
FinTech: Shaping the Financial World,” offering a look at artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, blockchain technology and open APIs — and “Exploring Fairness in Machine Learning for International Development,” digging into bias and fairness in machine learning (ML), offer marketers a great way to expand their knowledge.
3 — Coursera
The popular
Coursera online learning platform collaborates with over 200 universities and organizations to offer more than 5,000 digital courses, including its Coursera for Business branch. Among the digital marketing courses on tap through Coursera is a look at
Influencer Marketing Strategy by industry veteran
Greg Jarboe, featuring a variety of videos, readings and quizzes relating to influencer marketing, while numerous other Coursera offerings explore everything from brand management to neuromarketing.
4 — Canvas
While tailored for educators,
Canvas’ online learning courses include a number of subjects that digital marketers can benefit from. Classes range from those about writing and statistics to research data management, each offered in partnership with universities including Dartmouth, Colorado State University, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Excelsior College and others.
5 — WordStream's Growth Academy
WordStream has expanded its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to also offer its free
WordStream Growth Academy series of online courses, which explore a variety of marketing-related topics including lead generation, pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising, and more. Brush up on a broad range of digital marketing skills with WordStream’s Growth Academy, with courses designed to be taken in any order, each culminating in a skills assessment test.
6 — Alison
With more than 2,000 online courses available,
Alison is one of the bigger free learning platforms, and it provides numerous classes of interest to digital marketers. From explorations of
change management and corporate strategic management to marketing on YouTube, Alison’s online courses provide a learn-at-your-own-pace way to gain new skills.
Perpetual Marketing Education Makes For Stronger Content
via GIPHY When B2B marketers focus on making learning a perpetual and lifelong endeavor, we gain many advantages to help us future-proof the work we’re doing today and inspire what we’ll do in the future. By growing our skills and widening our marketing repertoire with new knowledge, whether we’re a global CMO or just starting out in the industry, we’re bound to achieve newfound success through continuing online learning. We hope the insight you gain from taking any or all of these online course offerings — or others offered by these organizations — will help to make your 2021 a stellar year for your B2B marketing and content marketing campaigns. Creating award-winning B2B marketing takes considerable time and effort, which is why many firms choose to work with a top digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing.
Contact us today and let us know how we can help, as we've done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.
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YouTube is testing clips on live streams and VODs Google's YouTube has begun a test that allows users to create 5 to 60-second clips of live-stream or video content, which is then featured at separate new unique URLs, as the video giant begins offering the feature that is increasingly popular on other social video platforms, YouTube recently announced. 
A lighthearted look at “playing it safe” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — 
In this episode of the 
In this episode of the 
The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today.
"The work that we’re doing with influencers is not centered around campaigns, it’s centered around relationships." Garnor Morantes, Group Marketing Manager at LinkedIn 
"Working with the right influencers, you build credibility with the audience you are trying to reach. Influencers can help you deliver content that solves problems, educates and inspires your intended audience. The biggest benefit is the engagement, how you can work with your influencers to create meaningful engagement that leads to the right outcomes for your brand." Amisha Gandhi, SVP of Marketing at Tipalti (Previously VP Influencer Marketing and Communications at SAP) 
"Influencers' industry expertise lends credibility that results in convincing and converting your target audience." Rani Mani, Head of Employee Advocacy at Adobe 