How to Learn Digital Marketing Home | Become A Digital Marketing Expert | Digital Marketing Syllabus

Now when I look back, I wish I had come across at least one post that would explain where to begin my journey to learn Digital Marketing. Though there were some “Coaching centers” that offered Digital Marketing courses, I was still a student then and could not afford them.

Asking parents to fund the course fee was out of the question since I was in last year of my Engineering and I was not sure of their reaction when and if I tell them that I don’t want to be an Engineer but a Digital Marketer.

Cut to today, there are hundreds of posts, videos, Blogs, Digital Marketing Training Institutes / Coaching Centers for you to learn. Yet, I have not found a single article that has benevolently explained wither How to learn Digital Marketing at home or what is the syllabus of Digital Marketing and where is one supposed to start.

I know people who have asked me “How do I go about Digital Marketing” or “What is the Digital Marketing Syllabus exactly?”. Though I understand why the question “How to learn Digital Marketing from Home?” pops up; It took me a while to understand why people are getting confused and are asking me Digital Marketing Syllabus.

After a while I realized, the confusion is because, Digital marketing is an extensive field and with so many aspects to learn, Its obvious that people would get confused with things like what all includes Digital marketing, Is there any Digital Marketing syllabus that I should follow etc.. etc…

One fine sleepless night, it occurred to me, why not write a post about it instead of answering the same questions 100s of times. As a result of that realization is this post.

By the end of this post, you will get to know different fields within Digital Marketing, how to learn Digital Marketing at Home and about what Digital Marketing syllabus to follow to become an Expert in Digital marketing.

It’s Going to be a long post, so grab a coffee/Beer and dive into it.

We will start with different fields in Digital Marketing and How to Learn Digital Marketing at Home and then move onto Digital Marketing Syllabus.

But, let us get our basics right first. To understand various aspects of Digital Marketing and how to go about learning digital Marketing from home, you need to first understand the concept of Digital Marketing aka Internet Marketing or Online Marketing.

What is Digital Marketing?

I presume you already know the old school definition of Marketing. Well, Digital Marketing is similar to that traditional marketing; the only difference is that everything in Digital Marketing happens on Digital Platforms.

When I say Digital Platforms; I am not talking about Netflix or Amazon Prime, though even they count as Digital Marketing to some extent.

To put it in simple terms, Digital Marketing is the process of marketing using various online channels like Search Engines, Social Media Platforms, Network of Websites and Emails.

The whole point of Digital Marketing is to create an online presence for a brand. It involves various steps from creating Websites, Social Media pages to running advertisements on Search Engines.

Digital Marketing is not the whole process per se, it is the culmination of various sub fields or sub processes. When all these sub fields come together to get a Business Online, that is when we call it Digital Marketing.

You will be called a Digital Marketing expert only when you become an expert in all the Digital Marketing channels/fields.

It’s going to take a lot of hard work, patience, persistence, and most of all practice to become adept in Digital Marketing. But, trust me when I say this – It is all worth it.

Here is an article to get you started with the Fundamentals of Digital marketing.

What are Different Fields in Digital Marketing?

• SEM – Search Engine Marketing
  • SEO – Search Engine Optimization
  • Paid Search Advertisement
• Social Media Marketing
• Display Ad Marketing
• Inbound Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Email Marketing

The following diagram will give you an idea of different Digital Marketing channels.

Now that you are an expert with definition and different areas of Digital Marketing, let us move onto the part for which you are here – How to learn Digital Marketing at home for free in 2020.

How to learn Digital Marketing at Home & Become A Digital Marketing Expert:

Everything I am going to tell you about how to learn Digital Marketing from Home is from personal experience.

I learnt everything I know about Digital Marketing is from Home, No paid courses, no attending classes and definitely no spending money.

All you need to do is follow the steps mentioned in this post, go through the resources which BTW are free and Voila! You are all set to be an expert in Digital Marketing without spending a penny (may be except the money you spent on internet).

That being said, you need to have patience and should be up for some hard work to become an expert in Digital marketing. It is definitely going to take some time and practice.

As I mentioned earlier, to become a Digital Marketing expert, you need to become an expert in the fields of Digital Marketing. Let us go at it one by one.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing:

SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the most important amongst other areas of Digital Marketing. You master this and everything else becomes a tad easier to master. As the name itself suggests, Search Engine Marketing deals with the marketing on Search Engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc.

There are two subsets of Search Engine Marketing itself called SEO or Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search Advertising.

Don’t worry, I am going to tell you both of these.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization:

Before we get onto how, let us have a look at What.

What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization:

When you have a query, you go and search it on Google. But have you ever thought how Google decides on which websites to show first? Well, the process of SEO is used to influence that decision of Google and to convince Google to show your website first.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in the Search Engines result. To be frank, SEO is a long and recurring process. It never stops. But on the plus side, since the traffic you are getting on your side is organic, its highly relevant. It’s a long process because it takes time to build a reputation for your site and making it as user friendly as possible.

BTW that page which you get when you search for something; It’s called SERP or Search Engine Results Page.

Though there are different kinds within SEO, we won’t get into details of those. Else, it will become a really long article. But the following diagram would help you out with different kinds of SEO and what each one of those kinds do.

How to Learn SEO at Home?

The first thing you need to learn SEO is understand how Search Engine works. Because as the name itself suggests – Search Engine Optimization – that you are dealing entirely with Search Engines in this field of Digital Marketing. To optimize your website for Search Engines, you need to understand how search Engines work.

Here is a list of articles that explains How search engines work in an extensive, detailed, and easy to understand way.

1. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK: CRAWLING, INDEXING, AND RANKING – This one is an expert from a small book on SEO from Moz. I will be linking to the book later in this part.
2. How Do Search Engines Work and Why Should You Care? By AHREFs
3. How do Search Engine Works

While you are learning the concepts and the processes of SEO in theory, it’s also equally important to apply everything you are learning about SEO or else you would not know what exactly you are supposed to do once you land a job as an SEO Expert. So, I would suggest that you set up a blog, start writing about something or anything that you are passionate about and implement everything you learn along the way and see for yourself how it works.

Here is the list of resources to get started on SEO. These have both Basic and Advanced topics on Search Engine Optimization.

Learn SEO – Free SEO Learning Center [2020] – A complete SEO guide from basics to Advanced topics by Moz.

The Secret of Learning SEO – Abosolute Basics of SEO

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide – An SEO started guide by Google (Free)

You should be aware of the fact that SEO is a field that keeps changing over time and you have to constantly keep yourself updated with the ongoing of SEO industry. Most of the things that worked a couple of years ago do not work anymore. Google keeps changing its algorithms occasionally, and Hence, it’s really important that you keep yourself updated.

Here is a list of Blogs and websites that would help you monitor the ongoing in the SEO Industry

• Google Webmaster Blog
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Land

Paid Search Advertisement or PPC (Pay Per Click):

While Search Engine Optimization is a painstakingly long process, never ending and takes time to see the results you expect; Paid Search Advertisement is fast, and you get to see the results instantly. The catch though is that you will be paying the Search Engines to be able to get those instant results. Instead of getting Organic Traffic, you will be getting Paid Traffic. Each Click, Impression or Conversion to or in your website is going to cost you money.

What is Paid Search Advertisement or PPC (Pay Per Click):

You search for a query on Search Engine, you get all the results you need on the SERP. But have you ever noticed that the first 2-4 results have “ad” written below it? Well, that is the result of running Paid Search Advertising or PPC Campaigns.

What happens in PPC is that you pay Search Engines to get your website/landing page on top of the SERP when someone searches for a keyword. Though the payment option depends on you.

What makes PPC one of the best ways to reach your customers is that you don’t just get an option to choose which keywords your ads are triggered for, but you can also choose your target audience. This way you show your ads to people who you want to and not just anyone.

The audience targeting ranges from locations, salaries, the kind of device they use to age. It’s like pin-pointing a person and telling Search Engine to show your ad to that person only and no one else.

In today’s time Google Ads formerly known as Google AdWords is the biggest Ad Network there is. If you are keen on learning about PPC, Google Ads is the way to go.

Statistics say that if given an option and if they have enough money, they will just opt for Paid Ads instead of SEO.

How to Learn Paid Search Advertisement or PPC (Pay Per Click) at Home?

Learning Paid Search Advertisement is not as difficult as learning Search Engine Optimization. To master PSA (Paid Search Advertisement), all you need to learn is to how to create PPC campaigns and how to optimize those campaigns. Along with that, you will have to learn how to define your Audience. Because if you go wrong in defining your audience, you will still get results, but those results are as good as having nothing plus all your money is down the drain for nothing.

Best part about learning PPC is that all the material has been given by Google itself and Google has certification courses for Google Ads; that too free of cost. But, as I said before, just learning or reading through the course material is not enough. You can only become a PPC expert with practice and nothing else.

While you are learning PPC, use that knowledge to promote your website which you created to learn SEO. Google and Bing – Two of the biggest Search Engines even give you 2000 Rs credit on each which you can use to put your learnings to use and practice with it.

Here is the link from where you can get certification from Google & Bing – bear in mind that you need to give an exam first to get the certificate.

• Google Academy for Ads  – A free online course by Google on Google Ads, You can get a free certification by Google at the end of course. You have to pass the exam first though,
• Google Digital Garage  – Online marketing courses by Google (Free)
• Google Ads Guide  – How to get started with Google Ads (Free)
• Bing Ads Guide  – How to get started Bings Ads (Free)

Here is a list of some more resources you might find useful in your journey of becoming a PPC expert.

• SEMRUSH PPC Academy – PPC Courses by SEMRUSH (Free)
• Learn The Basics of PPC – Learn the absolute basics of PPC from WordStream – A Keyword research tool.
• How to Launch a Successful PPC Campaign for the first time by Niel Patel

Social Media Marketing:

What is Social Media Marketing:

Social Media Marketing is not much different than Paid Search Advertisement; They are not completely similar either. The difference between the two is that in Social Media Marketing your main focus is Display Ads and not text Ads. Display Ads is where you create a banner or a video with the whatever you are offering and putting that out in front of your target audience as Ads.

There was a time when Social Media Marketing was the culmination of two processes called Social Media Optimization and Social Media Ads just like Search Engine Marketing.

Now a days, People don’t talk much about Social media optimization; the reason being the changes in Social Media Algorithms where the organic reach was reduced drastically over time.

Social media marketing is all about paid social media campaigns in today’s time. That does not mean you can let go of Social Media Optimization. You still need to optimize your Social Media pages as much as you can.

Every Social Media Network has their own way of setting up campaigns, but if you become an expert in any one of these, the others will be almost similar, and you will be able to learn about them faster.

How to Learn Social Media Marketing at Home?

Similar to Paid Search Advertisements, you create a campaign and define your target audience based on Locations, Demographics etc… in Social media marketing. The best part about Social media marketing is that the audience targeting is relatively better than that of Search Engine Marketing. You also have to keep in mind what are the results you are expecting and who your target audience is in-order to decide which are all the platforms that would be relevant enough to run your ads on.

Facebook is one of the widely used Social Media networks there is followed by Twitter, LinkedIn and others. So, the best way for you to Learn Social media marketing is starting out with Facebook ads and once you are confidence enough that you know what you are doing, you can move onto other Social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc..

All the above Social Media platforms provide you with free material which you can use to learn Social Media Marketing from home.

Here is the list of materials from Social Media Platforms themselves.

• Facebook Online Courses  – Courses to learn digital marketing on Facebook (Free)
• Twitter Marketing Guide  – learn digital marketing on Twitter (Free)
• Pinterest Marketing  – a guide on how to do marketing on Pinterest (Free)
• LinkedIn Marketing – a guide on how to do marketing on LinkedIn (Free)

And here are some more resources you can make use of to advance your learning of Social media marketing.

Content Marketing:

Finally, we have reached my favorite part of Digital Marketing – The Content Marketing. But before we understand what is Content Marketing and How to learn Content Marketing from Home; We first need to understand what is content?

Oh My God! I can almost hear you screaming – Duh!! We know what content is. We are not dumb.

Well, when it comes to content there are lots of misconceptions. I just want to make sure that I those misconceptions are cleared. So, bear with me. If you already know what is content, you can skip onto the how to learn content writing from home part.

What is Content:

The biggest misconception among people about content is this. Content is nothing but long form articles like News articles, like the article you are reading right now and so on.

You cannot be more wrong. The actual definition of content is anything that you use to communicate with user. It does not matter whether it’s a long form article, an answer on Quora, One Liners on ads/Ad Copies, a video, a banner or even a meme; they are all some form of content. Anything and everything that you use to put across your message is what you call content.

Every Digital Marketing campaign from SEO to Email Marketing to Social media, everything requires content. Without content, how will you reach your audience and communicate your message/offer with them.

What is Content Marketing:

Now that you have understood what is content, you might have assumed what Content marketing is and I think whatever you are thinking might just be right. Content marketing is the process of putting across your content in front of your audience.

How to learn Content Marketing at Home:

The process involves figuring out your audience, identifying what kind of content would they consume and what platforms would be optimal to target them etc… and then promoting your content based on the findings.

If you think of it, every kind of Digital Marketing area we have discussed so far and which we will be discussing next is content marketing.

You don’t have to be a content writer to be a content marketer, but you still need to have an understanding content so that you can differentiate between good and bad quality content. If you can develop content writing skills, that will help you go a long way though. Along with Content writing skills, you need to learn how to copy-write and SEO as well.

Here are some resources to help you get started on Content Marketing as well as Content Writing.

• How to Become A Content Writer
• Content Marketing Made Simple  – Introduction to Content Marketing (Free)
• Content Marketing Guide  – A complete guide on everything related to content marketing (Free)
• Best Content Marketing Courses – A list of the best courses to learn content marketing
• Content Marketing – The material by Team Moz.
• Learn What Content Marketing is & How to do it – Free certification course by HubSpot

Email Marketing:

What is Email Marketing?

I am sure, you know the definition of this one. But, Still, let me put it out for my satisfaction. Email Marketing is the process of promoting your content via Emails.

Email marketing serves both ways i.e. acquiring a new customer as well as close a deal.

I know a good number of people who would argue that Email Marketing is dead. I just say ok and mover on; There is no point in arguing with Idiots, is there?

Email Marketing works like charm even in today’s time. As a matter of fact, if you do it right; Email Marketing can fetch you results that no other kind of marketing can get you.

“Email Marketing is as alive as it gets.”

How to Learn Email marketing at Home:

The process is fairly simple on paper, though it’s a lot of hard work when you actually start doing it. The first part of the process is procuring the database of emails. How you procure is up to you – You can either build it using your website or just buy it, Though I would not recommend the latter one.

One of the biggest challenges of Email Marketing is avoiding your emails from landing in Spam folders. The Spam folder is like the black hole of Emails. To achieve this, you have to understand your audience first, learn the algorithms of different Email providers, learn to create content that does not look or sound spammy and the most important of all, choose the right tool to shoot your Email campaign.

Content and the right tool are the most important aspects of Email Marketing campaign. Go wrong with either one and you will either end up in Spam folder or you will lose your subscriber; Both are as bad as they can get.

Here is a list of resources to get you started on the process of learning Email Marketing from Home.

A Beginners Guide to Successful Email Marketing by Neil Patel

Getting Started with Email Marketing – Beginners guide to Email Marketing

Email Marketing tutorial – A Complete tutorial on Email Marketing

Email Marketing – Free Certification Course by HubSpot

Inbound Marketing:

Inbound Marketing is nothing more than mixing up every aspect & all the techniques of Digital Marketing you have learned and using them to get more customer or whatever your end goal is. Inbound Marketing runs on three of the most important things – Attracting, Engaging and Delighting a customer.

When you acquire a new customer using all your Digital marketing expertise, that is not where your job is done. You still have to figure out ways to engage with that new customer and delight him/her so that the customer keeps taking your services. All of this put together is what you call Inbound Marketing.

How to learn Inbound Marketing at Home:

It might seem fairly simpler when I put it here that to be an expert in Inbound Marketing, you first have to become expert at Digital Marketing. So, go back to those sections, learn Digital Marketing at home and come back to this one.

Here are some of the resources to help you get started with learning Inbound Marketing from home.

• Inbound Marketing Course  – Free course on inbound marketing

Digital Marketing Analytics:

Analytics is one of the most important factors of Digital Marketing and also one of the most overlooked aspect of Digital Marketing. What makes digital marketing better than traditional marketing is measurement. If you are running a campaign in traditional ways like TV Ads, Newspaper, Banners etc… it’s really hard to analyse where the lead or a customer came from. But in Digital Marketing that is not the case, You possess the power to analyse the hell out of your campaign, that is how extensive the data you can get while you run from Digital Marketing campaigns.

Analysis is a skill you have to acquire over time. To be expert at Digital Marketing analytics, there are various tools you need to be expert at like Google Analytics, Microsoft Excel or any spread sheet software and myriad of other analytics tools.

You might ask why Analytics is so important, we will know how the campaigns are running based on the leads and clicks itself. But you have to remember that Digital Marketing is not just about setting up and running campaigns, its more about optimizing campaigns no matter what kind they are – from SEO, PPC to Social Media campaigns. Optimizations is only possible when you understand what is going on in the campaign and when you learn to figure out where is the opportunity form improvement and how you can make the campaign more efficient.

Here are some of the resources to get you started with learning Digital Marketing analytics from home.

• Google Analytics Academy Courses – a list of free courses by Google to learn Google Analytics
• Getting Started with Google Data Studio – a free guide on how to use data studio for reporting
• The Ultimate Guide to Google Search Console by HubSpot
• A Beginners Guide to Google Search Console by Angela Petteys
• Free Analytics Resources from HubSpot

Now that you know different aspects of Digital Marketing and how to learn Digital Marketing at home, here are some tips to optimize your learning process. I wish someone had given me these when I was starting out & I don’t want you to feel the same. Hence here we go.

Online Marketing learning tips / Digital Marketing learning tips:

• Start with SEO:

Search Engine Optimization is the best way to start your journey of becoming a Digital Marketing expert and learning Digital Marketing at home.

The field of SEO is like the fundamental of Digital Marketing. Every other field like Paid Search, content marketing and everything else mostly works on the basic principals of Search Engine Optimization.

Hence, once you become an expert in SEO, everything else becomes relatively easier for you to understand.

• Start your own Digital Marketing Blog:

Having your own blog will help you apply and test out everything you have learnt. The reason why I suggest you starting your own Digital Marketing Blog is because it serves in more ways than you think. You get to hone your content writing skills, you get to write about the stuff you have learnt which will make you understand the concepts even better and if you have not understood a topic or concept; this is how you will know, You can show your work when you start looking out for a job and once you know how to drive traffic to your blog/website; you can make some money out of the blog as well.

• Be Patient:

Skills are not acquired in just a day or a month. You need to be patient and persistent about it. Specially the SEO part of it. It takes time to see results of your work in SEO and you really need to have patience to see the fruits of your learning.

• Practice:

Digital Marketing is a proper practical field, as soon as you learn something in theory, start applying it and practice as much as you can. If you know just the theory and if you never put that theory to work or practiced, it is surely going to come back to bite you when you start working.

• Get certified:

Though this one is not necessary, I would still recommend that you get certified while you are learning. You will have something to show to prove your expertise and it would not hurt to have some certificates handy.

• Never stop learning – Be as nerdy as you can:

The field of Digital Marketing is like becoming a doctor. You never stop learning. There will always be a new research, new strategy out there which has just come up or about which you did not know. You can never say you know it all when it comes to Digital marketing.

• Keep yourself updated:

This goes good with the previous point I made. There is always an opportunity to learn something new. That being said, Digital Marketing is a field that changes almost every day. With changes in Algorithms being rolled out too often you need to adapt to those changes. Whatever worked yesterday might not work today. Hence, it is your job as a Digital Marketing expert to keep yourself updated on the on goings of Digital marketing field.

Now that you know how to learn Digital Marketing at home, how to become a Digital Marketing expert; I am hoping you would have some favourite websites or may be questions. Shoot them in the comments below and if I have missed out on anything, let me know that in comments as well and I will add it.

You can get in touch with me through following social Media Handles if you need someone to help you out with Digital Marketing courses or in case you hit a hurdle or have any kinds of doubts. Happy Learning and All the best.