Ready to take your digital marketing career to the next level? Look no further!
In this 5-minute 'So' video, we're diving deep into the world of digital marketing certifications to help you discover the absolute best ones to turbocharge your skillset and boost your professional credibility.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer looking to stay up-to-date or a newbie eager to kickstart your journey, these certifications offer a range of topics to suit your needs.
If you have any questions you would like answered as part of our 'So' series, please get in touch and let us know.
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Transcription:
So what is the best digital marketing certification?
First of all, we need to talk about the difference in certification and accreditation, and then we need to caveat that we do a digital marketing certification as well. So we'll talk about that. So first of all, anyone can create a certificate.
It's just that you've done certain things, right? So, I could go onto the Target Internet website, create things, get a certificate. I go to Google website, get a certificate, or anywhere else. But the difference of that is that anyone can create that certificate. It doesn't accredit it in any kind of way.
For accreditation, you need an awarding body. So, for example, in the UK, for the marketing stuff, the Chartered Institute of Marketing is generally the way you're going to go with these kind of things. That means an industry body has recognised it, standardised it and so on as well. So, you might want an accredited certificate prove the kind of things that you've actually done.
So who can give a certification then?
Anyone, that's the key thing. It's like a sticker from the dentist, isn't it? Yeah. That's it. I've been a good marketer. And I think that if you get a Google one, people know who Google are, they can see it. Whereas if you get one from a completely unknown company, there's probably less value in that.
Although you might have learned a huge amount, no one's heard of the company, so the certificate isn't valued. So that's. what you've gotta think about next. So I guess the best certification all really comes down to why you're doing it in the first place.
Are you doing this because you need to learn something? Then just go for the certification that's got the relevant content. But if you're doing it because you want recognition, and it's something you want to put in your CV so you can get that next job, or you get the pay rise, whatever it might be, you then need to think about a well known brand, or you want to go through with accreditation from that point of view as well.
So do you have any recommendations?
Yes, we do, but we'll caveat the first one because we give certifications, but the way we've gone down it is to have a Chartered Institute of Marketing accredited certification. So kind of hopefully the best of both worlds, where you've got that, that really up to date content, but you've got that accreditation against it as well.
So at targetinternet.com, you can get that. The Chartered Institute of Marketing themselves have lots of different levels of qualifications that they do as well. The level six Digital Marketing qualification they do has 18 month commitments. It's a big commitment, but that's a kind of gold standard kind of level with these kind of things as well.
Open University are doing more and more stuff in this space as well. We've worked with them building some some elearnings. We've done stuff around digital marketing, digital transformation on some as well. So it's really worth looking at what they've done. And then you've got the universities and a lot of the universities will give you a good level of accreditation with these things as well.
We work with Imperial College and they do a lot of different certifications around anything from digital marketing through to leadership and all those kind of things. So I think you're looking for, an awarding body, a recognised university, you've got to think about, is the content up to date?
And it's a combination of those factors. It is. Years ago I did a thing called Google Squared, which was a Google certificate. It was accredited by Google. And I learnt a tonne of really useful practical things on it. Has it ever helped me get a job? No, I don't think so. You know, the information that I gained from it and the learning and the hoops that I jumped in and the way they got me to think about things differently, massively, massively helpful.
I think, yeah, if you could find something like that, that, you know, it's got accreditation by a recognized brand within the industry that, that carries some weight, but you know, something like that, which was an intensive three month course, it's nothing in comparison to, you know, something by an actual university or something, you know, accredited by the CIM.
You know, there's just, it gives it a whole new kind of meaning, a level of seriousness. And it becomes a common or an understood currency that any employer would, would, would recognize because they know, yeah, actually, that's a tough one. That's quite impressive. And I think that's it. You've got to decide how this is going to fit into your life as well.
Is it just, you know, study when you fancy it and over any period of time, whereas something like a CIM qualification, there's costs associated with it. You have to go through and do it over a given period of time. You have to do assignments at certain dates. There are exams.
That's right. And I think you also get to a point in your career as well. Where you're not doing it because you need the recognition. You're doing it to learn, and then you're making different decisions. So that's what you've got to really focus on is what do you want to get out of it? And then you, you select accordingly.