Digital Marketing for Beginners: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide for Your Success

If you’re here, chances are you’re either curious about learning digital marketing from scratch, too excited about what’s in this field, looking to restart or start a fresh career, or maybe just wondering what it’s all about.

Don’t worry; you have come to the right place.

As a digital marketing beginner, you might not be aware of this. Still, digital marketing is the hottest trend in today’s digital world and the most used tech across industries and businesses.

No single online business, big or small, is running without digital marketing. If you’re on the internet, then digital marketing is a must.

Digital marketing provides you with information, tech, and tools to find space for your business or yourself as a personal brand. 

In this blog post, we cover everything you need to know as a beginner in digital marketing, whether digital marketing basics for beginners, digital marketing tips for beginners, digital marketing courses for beginners, or freelance digital marketing for beginners.

We have curated all the information in an easy-to-understand and actionable way so that you can get enough information about digital marketing for beginners.

This blog post is beneficial for students, freelancers, housewives, graduates, career switchers, working professionals, beginners, new agency owners, and small business owners.

If you want to learn digital marketing from scratch and don’t know where to start, you can also read it to get the desired knowledge. 

So, grab your coffee or tea!

Let’s start the journey of knowing digital marketing from the basics and how you can choose an online digital marketing course for beginners to start your career in this industry.

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What is Digital Marketing For Beginners?

Traditional marketing has been a huge part of our world, but since the introduction of the internet, it has shifted online. So think of digital marketing as the online version of traditional marketing.

Instead of promoting products through TV, newspapers, radio, or billboards, you do it in different ways with the help of digital channels, such as search engines, websites, social media, emails, online ads, etc.

To understand digital marketing from the beginning, understand that most of us spend hours online every day; whether we scroll through Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, or search for a location or restaurant on Google, digital marketing is part of all this.

Digital marketing is the main connection between humans and online digital channels. 

Here are the main digital marketing channels that establish the connection.

As a digital marketing beginner, you need to understand about the digital channels used in digital marketing and in what way.

It’s also the digital marketing basics for beginners. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

SEO helps businesses or individuals to make their website appear on the first page of Google. Two types of SEO help websites: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

As a digital marketing beginner, you need to learn SEO, as it’s the core of digital marketing.

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PPC (Pay-Per-Click):

Paid ads like those you see on Google or Facebook come under PPC.

They are managed and run by a PPC expert under different campaigns according to the target audience.

You can start freelance digital marketing for beginners after learning this one particular skill as well. 

Social Media Marketing:

Promoting on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn is done with the help of social media marketing.

There are many job roles and opportunities in social media marketing, whether it’s designing the post, posting on different social media channels, or managing the data analytics coming from those channels.

Content Marketing:

Creating and managing different types of content, such as blogs, videos, and other content that attract and engage your audience, comes under content marketing.

Digital marketing beginners will also learn how to distribute each content type to gain good reach and great results.

Email Marketing:

Sending targeted emails to keep your audience informed and engaged and generating leads through email is done through email marketing.

If you are planning to learn digital marketing from scratch as a beginner, email marketing is a good way to choose as a core skill.

With all these core digital marketing skills, you can start your freelance digital marketing career as a beginner, start your business or digital marketing agency, or look for a job across the industry.

You can choose one particular skill from all of these, or if you learn digital marketing from scratch to an advanced level, you can offer all these skills as services.

It depends on how skilled and expert you are.

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Why Learn Digital Marketing?

As we discussed above, every big or small-sized online business is running with the help of different digital marketing channels.

And that has increased the demand for digital marketers or digital marketing experts in particular skills across industries.

Businesses know they need a strong online presence to stay relevant in the online market; even individuals need to maintain their personal brand.

All this is possible with the help of digital marketing or a digital marketer like you. 

So it’s the right and best time to jump into this field and leverage digital space for your business or career.

Here are a few reasons to learn digital marketing from scratch:

High demand:

Companies of all sizes need digital marketers across industries. So there is always demand and online presence is increasing day by day; the demand for digital marketing experts is increasing as well.

Every small or big business is willing to hire an expert digital marketer to build their online presence and generate more revenue with the help of different digital marketing channels such as social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, PPC, content marketing, etc.

Flexible career paths:

As a digital marketing beginner, you can choose to work as a freelancer, start an agency, start your own business, or start a well-paying job.

There are many particular career paths you can choose from according to your interests and goals.

Digital marketing provides such a flexible career path that can align with your schedule easily without being hectic.

Remote opportunities:

Digital marketing offers many remote opportunities, whether it’s business opportunities or job opportunities. You can choose according to your choice and interest.

These digital marketing jobs can be done from anywhere.

There is no particular requirement to start digital marketing from the office.

We can tell this from personal experience, as this job is also a work-from-home job.

Affordable to learn:

You don’t need a fancy degree—many free and low-cost resources are available.

You can learn with the help of digital marketing courses for beginners or choose to learn digital marketing basics for beginners.

It’s affordable and easy to learn from any online digital marketing institute that offers basic digital marketing education for beginners to advanced levels.

Must Check: Digital Marketing Course Fees in India

Step-by-Step Guide to Digital Marketing for Beginners

Now when you’re aware of why you should learn digital marketing from scratch, it’s to know what the steps to digital marketing for beginners are.

We have curated a step-by-step guide to learning digital marketing for beginners; you can start with its basics and become a digital marketing expert in no time.

Step 1: Understand the Basics

Before we start digital marketing in-depth, as a digital marketing beginner, you need to make yourself familiar with the key concepts of digital marketing.

We have already mentioned the core digital marketing skills above in this blog post, which include SEO, PPC, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and how they work.

These are the basics you need to learn if you want to learn digital marketing from scratch. 

Digital marketing for beginners includes these basics and advanced skills knowledge, including the tools knowledge and how to market your skill or become an expert in less time.

You can learn digital marketing basics for beginners by researching these core skills or choose a digital marketing course for beginners to start learning; totally depends on you.

Step 2: Learn the Tools

Every digital marketing basic skill includes some tools to learn that you can leverage or use. These tools help you to learn faster and use your skills to a particular level.

It’s essential to learn basic tools for the skill you’re interested in. 

Here are a few tools that you need to learn to start learning digital marketing from scratch.

• Google Analytics:
  Understand website performance and where your audience is spending time so that you can optimize the area to generate more leads.
  
  It also helps you understand the weak pages on your website that you need to optimize with SEO to rank them for particular keywords.

• SEMrush or Ahrefs:
  These two tools are used for SEO purposes, basically for keyword research. Both tools provide the data for the keywords that you can use on your websites.
  
  That data includes matrices, such as keyword density, the number of times keywords are searched in a particular location, etc.
  
  You get an exact idea of how and which types of keywords you should use on your website or blog.

• Canva:
  Canva is used to create beautiful graphics easily for websites and social media channels. You can start learning graphic design with the help of a free version of Canva and start offering your social media post-designing services as a freelancer.
  
  Digital marketing basics for beginners include Canva as the designing tool.
  
  It’s easier to learn and easier to operate. Many big or small-sized businesses use a free or paid version of Canva to design posts for social media and images for websites.

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Step 3: Choose Your Niche

Digital marketing offers many skills and opportunities to grab; you can choose your niche that suits your interests and natural talent.

If you love creating content, you can choose social media marketing to use your content creation skills.

After learning about the core skills, these are the digital marketing basics for beginners to choose from.

If you love and are good with numbers or data, you can choose PPC or analytics as your niche.

Choosing a niche provides you with a space to learn that particular skill, and you can choose any online marketing course for beginners for that particular skill.

Step 4: Build a Portfolio

After learning digital marketing basics for beginners, you can choose how you want to showcase your skills and experience.

Building a portfolio, a collection of your past projects is a good way to showcase your skills, work experience, and tools experience.

You can build a portfolio by starting your own blog, creating a dummy ad campaign, or managing social media for a local or friend’s business.

Showcasing real-world projects will boost your portfolio credibility, which means you can easily get noticed by companies.

So you should always look forward to building a good portfolio after learning the basics of digital marketing for beginners.

Step 5: Get Certified

Certifications are an easy way to showcase your expertise in a particular tool or skill.

You should choose a digital marketing course for beginners that offers various certifications with their course, or you can get certificates from the top recognized brands yourself. 

Here are some great beginner options for digital marketing certificates:

• Google Ads Certification
• Google Video Marketing Certificate
• HubSpot Content Marketing
• SEMrush Certificate
• Facebook Blueprint

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Top Digital Marketing Tips for Beginners

Learning digital marketing skills is not enough to scale in the field of digital marketing, as the competition is tough. So to get ahead of the competition, we are giving you digital marketing tips for beginners. 

Here are a few digital marketing tips for beginners:

• The first digital marketing tip for beginners is to start small—focus on one area (like SEO or social media) before expanding.
  
  You should always learn a skill first and learn it to advance before jumping on new skills. This way you can learn all the skills easily without making your schedule hectic.
  
  Digital marketing includes many skills that are different from each other; once you learn all the skills, you can connect those with each other.

2. The second digital marketing tip for beginners is to stay updated about the trends of digital marketing and be aware of what new technologies are being introduced in the industry.
   
   You can follow blogs like Neil Patel’s, Backlinko, and Moz for the latest industry trends and news.

3. If you’re learning digital marketing from the beginning, don’t ignore analytics—track what’s working and optimize.
   
   It’s necessary to learn things faster according to your business and market; you will become aware of your audience’s interests as well.
   
   With the help of analytics data, you can easily identify your weak and strong points.
   
   Always remember to eliminate weak points and increase the strong points of your digital marketing campaign, whether it’s coming from website analysis, ad campaign analysis, or social media channel insights.

4. The most important digital marketing tip for beginners is to keep experimenting.
   
   You should always keep experimenting and try running your own mini-campaigns to gain hands-on experience.
   
   It’s good to understand the market, the niche, and the audience’s metrics that help your overall business.

Best Online Digital Marketing Courses for Beginners

You can learn digital marketing from various free courses or invest an affordable amount in paid digital marketing courses for beginners to get mentorship about how the industry works. 

In free courses, you need to learn everything yourself, even the present ability of your skills. Paid courses come with expert trainers and mentors who have worked in the industry and guide you accordingly.

Here we have mentioned a few free and paid digital marketing courses for beginners; you can choose one that suits your budget and goals.

Free Courses:

• Google Digital Garage:
  It is offered by Google itself and includes all the fundamentals of digital marketing.
  
  It’s a good option to learn digital marketing basics for beginners, as you don’t have any idea what digital marketing is and how all the core skills work.

• HubSpot Academy:
  HubSpot offers a free digital marketing course for beginners as well, where you learn basic digital marketing skills, such as SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, etc.
  
  You can self-learn all these skills and choose which suits your goals and interests. 

These free courses come without any expert guidance, so you can only learn digital marketing skills with the help of these courses but won’t get industry insights.

For that, you can choose a paid digital marketing course for beginners.

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Paid Courses:

Aadme

AADME offers an affordable digital marketing course for beginners as well as for advanced or skilled professionals.

If you’re a beginner and want to learn digital marketing to the advanced level where you can learn about the uses of AI in digital marketing, it’s the best option for you.

AADME offers many course features such as a paid internship, lifetime mentorship, lifetime LMS access, practical projects throughout the course, AI-enabled advanced course modules, leadership modules from a business perspective, etc.

AADME has delivered quality education to 51K+ students and has helped 100+ global businesses to scale in the digital marketing industry with the help of their expert mentor, Mr. Alok Badatia.

He has helped AADME achieve the status of “The best digital marketing learning platform in India in 2023” and was awarded by the NationWide Awards.

Alok Badatia has 16+ years of digital marketing industry experience working with businesses and training students.

He is well informed about the digital marketing industry norms and insights that the curriculum provides inside the AADME’s digital marketing courses for beginners, including advanced skills such as AI integration with core digital marketing skills.

• Udemy:
  You can also learn all the digital marketing basics for beginners from the Complete Digital Marketing Guide offered by Udemy.
  
  There are many digital marketing courses for beginners that you can start with and later consider advanced courses.

Common Mistakes Beginners Make

• Ignoring analytics:
  Digital marketing beginners always ignore the analytics and insights data.
  
  This data actually helps you improve and understand the various aspects of your product, service, or website, such as audience attention, time consumption, and what’s working, and what’s not.
  
  So never ignore the analytics data.

• Skipping foundational and practical learning:
  In digital marketing, foundational knowledge, and practical learning is a must. The more you practice with tools and skills, the faster you will learn without relying on anything.

• Over-relying on paid ads:
  Organic growth is equally important. Most people and businesses ignore that.
  
  Paid ads are for faster growth, but paid ads lead the audience to your organic content; if it’s not good, you’ll get a huge bounce rate, which is not good for any type of business.

Career Opportunities After Learning Digital Marketing

There are many career opportunities after learning digital marketing from scratch. You can choose where your interest lies, whether it’s freelancing, business, or doing a part-time or full-time job.

Here are a few types of jobs after learning digital marketing for beginners:

• Entry-Level Jobs:
  Social Media Assistant, SEO Executive, Content Writer, etc. Entry-level jobs are good for someone who is just starting in the field of digital marketing.
  
  It helps you get the relevant experience and showcase it later in your portfolio or job profile.

• Freelancing:
  You can choose to offer digital marketing skill services on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. LinkedIn is also a good option to start freelancing from scratch.

• Entrepreneurship:
  You can also use your digital marketing skills to grow your own business online or start your online digital marketing agency.
  
  The opportunities are vast after learning digital marketing from scratch.

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Conclusion: Ready to Begin?

Digital marketing might seem tough at the beginning, but it’s incredibly rewarding after learning with practical projects. Practical learning or project performance is a must in the field of digital marketing. 

You just need to start with small steps and build your skills, and soon, you’ll find yourself becoming a digital marketing expert in no time, where you can start offering your skills and services to businesses.

If you’re ready to start your digital marketing journey. You can check out some of the free resources mentioned above, pick your niche, and dive in. Who knows, your first campaign might be just around the corner!

You can also learn with paid digital marketing courses, just as AADME’s 4.5-month digital marketing course which offers paid internship opportunities, placement assistance, and many more course features. 

You can check it out here and enroll for a free trial class – a 4.5-month leadership-based digital marketing course. 

Let’s get started—your digital marketing journey begins today. 

FAQs on Digital Marketing for Beginners

What is the best way to learn digital marketing?

You can start with free courses, experiment with your own projects, and practice consistently. And later, after you become aware of your interest in digital marketing skills, you can choose a particular course to groom with the help of industry experts and mentors to grab opportunities easily with the use of those skills.

Do I need coding skills for digital marketing?

Not necessarily! While coding can be helpful for SEO and website optimization, most roles don’t require it. You can learn digital marketing without any coding knowledge. Even SEO comes with training, so don’t worry about the coding part of SEO and website optimization.

Can I learn digital marketing for free?

Yes! Platforms like Google Digital Garage and HubSpot offer excellent free resources. However, we would recommend going with AADME’s digital marketing course, which is affordable and offers many course features like a paid internship opportunity, placement assistance, etc. It has a leadership skills-based course curriculum that is suitable for students who want to start their business after a while.

How long does it take to learn digital marketing?

It depends on your dedication. You can grasp the basics in a few months with consistent practice. However, 3-6 months are enough to learn digital marketing from scratch with proper training and practice with relevant tools.