10 Best Online Digital Marketing Courses [Free & Paid]

The Indian digital advertising industry grew to 21,353 crore rupees in 2021, up from 15,782 crores in 2020. The massive 35.3% CAGR can be ascribed to the consumer shift towards digital in recent times.

But more interestingly, the Indian digital media industry is projected to grow at 29.5% CAGR and be valued at 35,809 crores by 2023.

The unprecedented growth in the industry brings with it a tremendous demand for trained digital marketing professionals. But here’s the best part:

Unlike in other industries, having a degree is not a prerequisite to getting hired as a digital marketer and earning a comfortable living. If you have the skills, businesses don’t hesitate to hire you.

The big question is, how do you acquire the skills that pay the bills?

One of the best ways to learn digital marketing is to take one of the top digital marketing courses in India. A simple Google search will bring up all the courses you could ever need to become a digital marketing professional. 

But not every course you find online is worth the time and money. 

Not to worry! We did the legwork for you and have reviewed some of the best online courses to learn digital marketing below.

Best Online Courses to Learn Digital Marketing

Here’s the ultimate shortlist of top digital marketing courses in India derived after reviewing dozens of top-rated digital marketing courses:

1. Digital Scholar (Free & Paid with Certification)

Digital Scholar is a leading digital marketing training institute that provides high-quality digital marketing courses in India. Led by Sorav Jain, a renowned digital marketer in India and CEO of echoVME Digital, the institute offers top-level education to its students.

Their team of experienced instructors ensures that students receive comprehensive instruction on various topics in digital marketing, including SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and more. Their courses are tailored to meet the needs of individuals and can be taken by anyone looking to enter the digital marketing field.

Are you serious about learning Digital Marketing?

Upgrade yourself with unparalleled AI-powered curriculum taught by leading industry experts

View Course

Digital Scholar provides flexible learning options, with online, offline, and pre-recorded courses available to suit your schedule and preferences. They have tie-ups with leading brands and offer 100% placement assistance to their students, with more than 3000 students successfully placed in top companies and working on real-time projects.

Digital Scholar’s courses are designed to equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to stay ahead of the competition and become a successful digital marketer.

Check the upcoming batch details below!

2. Google Digital Garage: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing (Free; with Certification)

Digital Garage is a free Google-owned learning platform offering courses on various topics. The courses are created by Google’s professional trainers and picked up from other online learning platforms. 

The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course is the go-to course for learning digital marketing basics for students and entrepreneurs alike.

The free course has 26 modules exploring everything from eCommerce and business strategy to SEM and social media marketing. Demanding 40 hours of your time, it is the only digital marketing course on Digital Garage that is paired with a certification. 

Registering for the course takes only a few minutes, and the material is broken down into small videos that are easy to digest. Each of the 26 modules has between two and six lessons. The lengthiest module has a 70-minute duration, but most modules are between 20 and 30 minutes long. 

The nice thing about the course is that it asks you questions to test your understanding and retention. Some modules also have action items to help you apply what you learned. There’s an interactive quiz at the end of every module. 

Since the site uses the YouTube player, you can speed up playback if you’re comfortable or slow it down and take notes. Not every course and platform offers this convenience.

When you finish the modules, you must pass the 40-question exam to access the shareable Google Digital Marketing Certificate. 

The certificate course is accredited by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe and The Open University. Putting this globally recognized certificate on your resume will undoubtedly make getting hired easier, making it one of the best online courses to learn digital marketing.

3. HubSpot Academy: Digital Marketing Course (Free; with Certification) 

The free digital marketing course offered by HubSpot isn’t as detailed as the one offered by Google. However, the four-and-a-half-hour course will teach you how to create organic marketing strategies to grow a following and develop an ads strategy to reach the target audience. It also comprises the foundations of SEO.

The course is split into 9 lessons and 37 videos, and a different HubSpot Academy Professor teaches every lesson. 

The course first delves into the fundamentals of digital marketing and building a content creation framework. It then discusses how search engines rank websites, how to gauge the SEO of a website, and how to find the right SEO approach for any business in the third lesson. 

The videos in the third lesson are paired with a workbook that aids in evaluating a website’s SEO and identifying areas that need improvement.  

The fourth lesson, Improving Website Performance, delineates the importance of website performance and the many methods of improving loading speed. The lesson also covers techniques to reduce the server workload.  

The course circles back to content creation and canvasses the importance of a blog post’s structure and the steps to take to give a post the right structure. Writing tips and methods to pick the right topics and titles are also discussed in the lesson. 

The final four lessons will teach you about video marketing strategy, social media strategy, paid search advertising, and effective email writing for email marketing, respectively.

Although short, the HubSpot Academy course packs a lot of knowledge and will familiarize you with the kind of work you can expect to do every day as a digital marketer. It stands among the best digital marketing course online in India.

4. EdX: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing (Free; Paid Certification)

EdX’s free Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course is as formal and detailed as courses come. In the four weeks of instruction, you will spend between three and five hours weekly getting a holistic understanding of digital marketing. 

The course is a part of the University of Maryland’s Digital Marketing Professional Certificate, which means you will be taught this course by some of the university’s esteemed professors. This course isn’t anything like some of the cookie-cutter courses that some unknown “professionals” put up on MOOC platforms.

Like most courses on EdX, this course is self-paced and video-based and offers an in-depth look at marketing principles, concepts, and strategies. 

The course explores marketing concepts relevant to current times, such as mobile marketing, omnichannel marketing, attribution, and multi-sided platforms. 

Suppose you have minimal marketing knowledge and are looking for the perfect academic foundation for your marketing career that doesn’t involve a diploma or degree. In that case, this EdX course might be just what you’re looking for. It’s certainly one of the best digital marketing courses online in India.

Bear in mind that while you can audit the course for free, you will only have access to the course for four weeks. You will need to pay for the course if you want lifelong access to the material and the accompanying certificate.

5. WordStream: PPC University (Free)

PPC University is unlike any of the other courses on this list. It is an illustrated guide to PPC marketing that has no video content. But as far as the quality is concerned, it is one of the best PPC marketing courses anywhere on the internet. You can access it free – you don’t even have to sign up for some silly newsletter.

Pay-per-click marketing or paid search marketing is perhaps the most complicated aspect of digital marketing. 

The internet is filled to the brim with conflicting information and outdated PPC marketing courses, making starting a career as a PPC marketer feel like steering a boat without a rudder straight into the ocean.

PPC University tackles everything from the basics to advanced PPC marketing strategies, teaching you how to optimally advertise on social media and search engines. 

In the PPC 101 section, you will learn the basics of PPC marketing, the terms you need to know, how Google AdWords works, and the importance of Google’s Quality Score. The section also teaches how to find relevant keywords, optimize ad copy, group keywords, and design landing pages to drive more traffic. 

The PPC 102 section is where the course starts to get into the nitty-gritty of PPC marketing. You will learn campaign management best practices, new AdWords tactics, A/B testing, and conversion tracking. The section also details how to use extensions, negative keywords, and other free tools to optimize campaigns.

The Advanced PPC section is a goldmine of advanced strategies, measurement tactics, and PPC marketing tips. You will also find discussions of concepts like geotargeting, dayparting, mobile PPC, and remarketing that will help you maximize outcomes.

Though not as easy to learn from as the video courses on this list, the immense PPC marketing knowledge imparted in the course makes it one of the top digital marketing courses in India.

6. Udemy: The Complete Digital Marketing Course – 12 Courses in 1 (Paid)

The Complete Digital Marketing Course on Udemy is one of the top-rated courses on the topic on the platform. Boasting over 20 hours of training, it’s one of the most comprehensive online digital marketing courses on a MOOC platform. 

One of the best things about the course is that you can follow along and learn to market a business online. By pushing course takers to learn by doing, the course effectively equips learners with skills they need on the job.

The twelve topics covered in the course include:

1. App Marketing: It discusses 43 ways to promote an app.
2. Copywriting: Learn everything you need to know about writing enticing sales copy. 
3. Email Marketing: Build a mailing list of 1000 people in a month. 
4. Facebook Ads: Making money with ads on Facebook without spending much. 
5. Google AdWords: Setting up profitable campaigns and avoiding common pitfalls. 
6. Google Analytics: Use Google Analytics data to improve marketing outcomes.
7. Linkedin Marketing: Build your network by going viral on LinkedIn.
8. Market Research: Validate a business idea by asking three simple questions. 
9. Search Engine Optimization: Drive traffic for free with SEO.
10. Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, Twitter).
11. WordPress: Build an attractive website on par with global standards in an hour. 
12. YouTube Marketing: Increase traffic and sales with simple how-to videos.

While some courses require paid tools, this course uses free tools so you won’t miss out on any learning. Furthermore, you will be able to begin your digital marketing career without investing money in anything other than the course. 

The Udemy Certification of Completion and a 30-day money-back guarantee make the course one of the best digital marketing courses online in India. 

7. IIM Skills: Master Digital Marketing Course (Paid; with Certification)

With over 60 hours of live training and over 120 hours of assignments spread out over three months, the Master Digital Marketing Course by IIM Skills is one of the top digital marketing courses in India. 

A two-month paid online internship is offered to everyone enrolling in the course. The stipend is equal to about a third of the price of the course. 

You may also be approached to work as a freelance content writer or SEO marketer during training, making this course a good option for students that want to open the floodgates to their earning potential. 

Offered by one of the top digital marketing institutes in India, the course involves over 15 live projects and 10 case studies. Access to premium marketing tools worth over ₹79,000 is provided, and budding marketers are trained to use these tools so they can use them in a professional setting.

The course explores eight essential digital marketing topics, starting with WordPress site development in week one. By the end of the week, you will have set up a domain name and hosting and designed a WordPress website as the first week’s assignment submission.

The following week, you will learn to build social media presence for businesses on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Next in the course is video marketing, and besides learning to make video content, you will learn to create and manage a video marketing campaign on YouTube Studio.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most reliable ways of earning money online. The course offers ten hours of training, teaching you about affiliate programs and integrating PayPal on websites. You could earn your first $100 as a marketer before the course ends!

You will learn to design Google Ads campaigns and run paid ads on the Google ecosystem before you move on to learning about email marketing. The course offers 15 hours of training on using Mailchimp and Mailgun to develop email marketing campaigns.

SEO and content writing are the two most comprehensive sections of the course, with 25 and 30 hours of instruction, respectively. You’ll be ready to take the Facebook, Google, and HubSpot digital marketing exams when the course ends.

8. Digital Vidya: Certified Digital Marketing Course (Paid; with Certification)

Digital Vidya’s certified digital marketing course can be completed in either four or seven months. If you’re unsure whether digital marketing is right for you, you can join their free demo class to see how you like it.

The course has a total of 44 modules that cover all aspects of contemporary digital marketing. There are four modules on SEO detailing the functioning of search engines, the differences between organic and paid search, and how to carry out excellent keyword research.

The on-page SEO module delineates the basics of HTML, the many elements of on-page SEO, technical SEO, mobile SEO, and schema markup. In the off-page SEO module, you will learn about link building, social SEO, local SEO, and how to carry out backlink audits.

In the final SEO module, the instructors discuss SEO audits, the history and significance of algorithm updates, and using Google Analytics to gauge a site’s SEO. 

What’s interesting is that towards the end of the course, five modules dedicated to web analytics go into further detail about measuring marketing metrics.

The instructors will teach you how to use an array of social media marketing tools and provide a framework with which you can create a successful social media strategy.

Five search engine marketing modules cover everything from the basics of SEM and SEM auctions to creating search network campaigns, Google Display Networks, mobile ad campaigns, and shopping campaigns. 

The final module is an introduction to YouTube marketing. It covers all the basics needed to get started as a YouTube marketer.

The two most interesting topics covered in the course are email marketing and inbound marketing. At the end of the course, the instructors discuss freelancing, resume writing, and lead sourcing.

Digital Vidya has a dedicated placement cell and helps course takers apply for jobs and prepare for interviews. It guarantees three interviews and two internships, so if you’re looking for the best digital marketing course online in India that also helps you get hired, this is the right course to take.

9. Henry Harvin: Digital Marketing Course (Paid; with Certification)

For a 40-hour course, the Henry Harvin digital marketing course is impressively comprehensive, offering detailed instruction on webpage design, SEM, SEO, video marketing, and social media marketing. 

While Henry Harvin may not stand among the top digital marketing institutes in India, it is a respected EdTech company, and this shows in its offering.

Taking the course guarantees an internship, and the institute posts over ten job offers every week. You also get one-year access to the Henry Harvin Digital Marketing Academy, allowing you to access recorded videos, projects, case studies, and other useful files. 

The course’s SEM and SEO sections are much more detailed than the other sections. 

The SEM section will walk you through the fundamentals, such as the consumer journey and using a Google Ads account, and teach you everything you need to know about advanced concepts like remarketing and running mobile ad campaigns.

In the SEO section, you will learn how search engines work, the many steps involved in keyword research, aspects of technical SEO, and how marketers need to implement mobile SEO. There are also detailed explanations of local SEO and SEO audit tools towards the end of the section. 

The Henry Harvin course comes with two additional modules, Soft Skills Development, and Resume Writing, to help budding digital marketers get hired.

10. AIMA: Digital Marketing Course (Paid; with Certification)

Offering 70 hours of online instructions and 12 hours of online projects in various areas of digital marketing, the digital marketing course by AIMA is one of the best digital marketing courses online in India. 

You will need to commit to the course for five months to finish it. Since AIMA is one of the top digital marketing institutes in India, you can expect to enter the job market as a trained professional or be ready to take on well-paying clients by the end of the course.

The course begins with a two-hour introduction to digital marketing, after which the instructors get straight into search engine optimization. After you learn to get a website ranked on page one of the SERPs, you will learn to run search engine ads for maximum engagement.

Logically, the next step would be to evaluate and grow the traffic with the aid of web analytics, and this is the next section of the course. The instructors then teach you the ins and outs of email marketing, explaining how to build email lists, communicate with the audience creatively, and generate clicks.

The final three sections of the course discuss social media marketing, content marketing, and mobile marketing. The instructors painstakingly discuss all the nuances you need to know before you start earning as a freelancer or an employee.

Conclusion

As far as reliability and value for money, the courses on this list are the best of the best. You only have to think about which of the courses you can afford the time and money for. 

If you prefer having career support and internships, pick from the courses offered by some of the top digital marketing institutes in India on this list. If you don’t mind kickstarting your career as a freelancer or applying for positions on your own, take any course on this list that appeals to you the most.

FAQs

1. Is digital marketing a difficult career?

No, digital marketing is not a difficult career. Anyone can master digital marketing if they find the right source to learn from. The best way is by enrolling in a digital marketing course or attending workshops and webinars.

2. What is the eligibility for digital marketing?

There is no certain eligibility limit to start learning digital marketing. You just need basic knowledge to understand the digital world.

3. Is digital marketing a stressful job?

No. In fact, digital marketing is the most relaxing career you will get into. But it really depends on the individual and their interest they have towards digital marketing.

4. How do I start learning digital marketing?

You can start learning digital marketing by enrolling in a digital marketing course by Digital Scholar online or offline depending on your convenience. Or you can watch YouTube videos or research on the internet to start out.