Knowing how to market is more relevant today than ever before, most jobs involve some form of marketing, because most jobs are built around helping people get something done. As in solving a problem for them. Marketing is all about understanding your customers. Which is why being able to learn marketing online is so important. But how can one learn marketing online? Quickly? Thoroughly? What’s the curriculum? What’s the need to know topics you have to cover?
In this post we’ll cover:
- Why learning marketing is important
- Where to start
- How to learn marketing quickly
- The core marketing curriculum
- How to learn marketing online
Why learning marketing is important in today’s workforce
Even if you’ve learned marketing at university, you still probably have a lot to make up. You might have been able to get through your marketing degree without ever having to learn topics like:
- Digital marketing
- Conjoint analysis or
- The difference between marketing a service and a product.
You’ve also probably found that those things matter in the workforce, and that what you learned in university needs to be refreshed for a project you’ve been assigned to at work.
It’s undeniable that the ability to learn new skills quickly and independently will make you a huge asset to any company you find yourself in. That’s as true for learning marketing as for anything else.
But It might actually be crucial in some professions.
As automation improves and grows, AI is increasingly replacing jobs that were once done by people. According to ,a 2015 study done in Australia, 60% of young people were “were studying or training for occupations where at least two-thirds of jobs will be automated.” This change was predicted to take place in the next ten years. So, if your job is to research and write blog posts, chances are that NLP technology will eventually be able to do a lot of that work faster than you can. So, it’s in your best interests to make sure that you are learning new skills as well, things that will keep you relevant. No matter how impressive machine learning becomes. Knowing marketing will help you stay relevant even as the work landscape shifts and changes.
Another reason why learning marketing is a powerful skill to have is because the field of marketing itself is constantly changing. So being able to stay abreast of changes and new theories is important and being able to keep up with the new information is built on having strong marketing fundamentals. So brushing up on your marketing fundamentals, quickly and efficiently is a great way to stay relevant even if you’re already working a marketing job. When you’re constantly looking for new avenues for how to learn marketing online, you can stay on top of new trends and techniques as they come out. How can you do that?
How can you learn marketing quickly, efficiently and conveniently?
Learning marketing online is a great way.
Even if your job doesn’t directly demand that you know the first thing about marketing, chances are that knowing the fundamentals of marketing is more relevant to your job than you think. And that’s because marketing is related to most aspects of what we do at work.
Most companies make money when people buy their products. And these companies understand that their chance of selling anything depends on their ability to convince people that they need the product in question. Or want it. Or believe in it enough to justify paying for it. And marketing does just that. And that’s what most of us relate marketing to.
But even if you’re not involved in the ‘selling’ part of the business you need to know proper marketing – convincing someone to join your team? That’s marketing. Pitching your boss about an idea? That’s marketing. Getting your team onboard to help you? Yup. Marketing. Marketing is all about communicating with people so knowing the fundamentals of marketing, and more importantly how to learn marketing online will show you how that important process works.
So even if you never thought you would do any marketing, chances are that either:
- You’ll be asked to do it at some point
- You won’t be directly asked, but learning these skills will enhance the success of a project in some way.
In addition, I can speak from experience and say that since learning marketing I’ve noticed an improvement in all areas of my life. Not just work ones.
I’ve seen marketing improve my life when it comes to my social life, volunteering, and even teaching. For more on that, feel free to check out my blog post ,How a Humanities Student Learned to Apply Marketing Principles to her Life.
So there are lots of benefits to knowing how to learn marketing online. But the internet is a big place. So, how do you know where to start?
How to learn marketing online: Where to start
So, as you may know, there are almost countless aspects to marketing: SEO, content marketing, PR, digital marketing, brand management…the list goes on.
So, where do you begin if you want to know how to learn marketing online?
While there are countless resources for learning marketing online according to the specific subject you want to know – and we’ll get into those soon – I think that it’s important to first talk about how to structure your learning.
When embarking on your journey of how to learn marketing online, it’s important to start with a mentor or a guide. Someone who curates a curriculum for you, makes sure you learn the fundamentals you need. Otherwise, there is just too much information out there. And no real way to know what’s important and what’s not.
That’s one of the perks of learning marketing with Alpe Audio. We’ve built our learning tracks and courses with the help of experts to emphasize what’s important and what’s extra.
This is even more meaningful when you have an instructor whose voice you can hear as he stresses the most important points – someone you can trust from their experience.
Take for example ,Dr. Marcel Cohen. Dr. Cohen teaches three marketing courses on Alpe Audio: Mastering Marketing, Product Marketing, and Pricing Strategy. And in each course, he combines practical knowledge with the broader, more theoretical knowledge that comes from working in the field for many years. This is something most of us looking for how to learn marketing online can’t get without a bit of mentorship.
I’ve learned many things from Marcel’s material. Conjoint analysis, product differentiation, the difference between marketing services and products, and so on. But, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve truly learned from him was his insistence that a true marketer must view his product from the perspective of the customer. From the outside- in, as he calls it. And his insistence on reiterating this throughout the course really helped it stick in my head.
This is a concept that is intuitive enough. If I read it online, I would probably move on without thinking too much about it. However, Marcel’s insistence on stressing it at every point really impressed on me the fact that it was important. Simple as the concept might seem, he didn’t let me forget. And as I’m starting to see marketing in different contexts, I’m realizing more and more that he’s right. The key in almost any marketing situation is to view the product from the customers perspective. Sure, the other details – the technical details of SEO, how to calculate ROI, etc. – are all important. But you need a mentor who will emphasize the more general theoretical aspects of marketing in addition to the details.
Another theoretical concept I learned from Marcel that comes up surprisingly often is the Diffusion of Innovation. You can read my blog post on how it actually helped me support a business in my neighborhood during the Covid-19 lockdown ,here. This is another example of a marketing concept that has been very relevant in my life and work, but which I wold never have thought to search on Google if I had been trying to figure out how to learn marketing online.
And that’s the reason that sometimes you need a guide. Yes, there’s lots of information online. But what is important and what isn’t?
How to learn marketing: online
Before diving into what to learn, let’s briefly discuss why learning online makes sense, and specifically what you’re looking for when learning marketing online.
Traditionally, you’d be learning marketing courses in a university. In fact, many Alpe Audio courses are taught at leading universities! ,Mastering Marketing, ,Pricing Strategy and ,Mastering Product Marketing were all part of Imperial College’s distance learning MBA.
But in today’s environment, going to university isn’t always feasible: time, cost and convenience all play a large role. Most of us don’t learn full time, and so we need to learn in a flexible place and time – so online works best.
Additionally, most of us who are learning marketing are doing it for practical reasons – to apply something on the job. Not necessarily to get a degree and so while we might want credentials for what we’ve achieved and learned, jumping through all the hoops of a full university degree and learn many topics that might not be relevant for what needs to be applied on the job. So online offers convenience and flexibility as well as customization.
You choose where to learn, you choose what to learn and you choose when to learn.
How to learn marketing online: How to be quick about it
Another reason is all about speed. Often, we need to learn something for a project we’re working on NOW. Not in the future and so we need to learn things quickly. Online learning, and specifically audio based learning really shines here: being able to focus exactly on what’s needed to learn, being able to skip through irrelevant topics really help, but so does learning during time we have: when we’re commuting, running errands or similar activities.
In our post on ,How to Learn Marketing Quickly, we identify to major challenges with how to learn marketing online quickly:
- Finding the right resources
- Finding the time
We’ve already touched on the challenge of finding the right resources (and more on this to come) but the best way to overcome these challenges and really figure out how to learn marketing online quickly is through audio courses. Because you can listen to audio courses on-the-go, you can save time by listening while driving to work, exercising, and cleaning your house. This can be a huge bonus as you figure out how to learn marketing online.
And as an added benefit – listening to podcast and audio courses is one of the trademark habits of lifelong learning habits. This habit is so powerful because it allows you learn without taking up too much time, so it’s very easy to incorporate into your schedule.
“The point here is that you can mentally focus on the audio learning while being physically and visually occupied with the other task. But with video, both tasks will be competing for your visual, physical, and mental attention.” (,https://www.alpeaudio.com/post/how-to-learn-marketing-quickly)
So a key requirement in today’s world isn’t only learning marketing, but it’s being able to learn marketing quickly which means learning marketing online. This is why we wanted to focus this entire post on how to learn marketing online. Because it’s the best way to achieve your goals of staying relevant in the workforce in the time that you have.
Now that we’ve convinced you of why you should be learning marketing online, let’s move on to what exactly you should be learning.
How to learn marketing online: Curriculum
So what are the must have topics when you’re brushing up on your marketing? What should your curriculum look like? This is probably the first thing people wonder about when they think about how to learn marketing online: What do I want to learn? What should I learn?
So here are the core topics you’ll want to cover. These are the topics that you’ll have to cover when you set out to learn marketing in an institution since they’re the basics of everything:
- Market research
- Market segmentation
- Understanding your customers
- How to conduct user interviews
- The marketing mix: product, price, promotion & place
- Pricing strategy: cost based pricing, value based pricing
- Behavioral psychology
Once you’ve covered these topics, you can start branching off into specific niches depending on your job to be done:
- Content marketing: Just read Content inc. Thank us later!
- SEO: Here’s our primer on SEO, great place to start.
- Direct marketing: Cold emailing is part of the game. This is a great blog on cold email marketing.
- Social media marketing: Check out the lesson on this from The Entrepreneur’s Growth Playbook
- Digital marketing
- Building a marketing plan
- Branding
Naturally what you need to know varies depending on what job you’re applying for or working at. Larger companies will require more in depth knowledge of specific topics. They’ll have someone who does social media, someone who writes content and someone who manages their website. Perhaps they’ll have departments for each of those.
Startups on the other hand usually need someone who’s a jack of all trades and can try their hand at all of these. Here’s an example from Scott Langdon’s article ,5 Skills Every Marketer Should Have on Their Resume When Applying to Startups.
- Knowledge of SEO and content creation
- Basic coding analysis
- Data analysis skills
- Social media marketing
- Design skills
This is why at Alpe we divide our content and mastering tracks into fundamentals that everyone needs to know and deeper knowledge that you might want to apply to specific projects.
Once you know what topic you’re interested in you’ll need to know where to start researching those topics. Where should you start when figuring out how to learn marketing online?
How to learn marketing online: Best resources
To get you started on the right foot on your learning marketing online journey, we’ve put together a few courses and resources we recommend.
- Marketing fundamentals courses: Mastering Marketing, Mastering Product Marketing, Pricing Strategy and ,Applied Market Research. These courses make up the core of a marketing degree that you’d get in any B.A or even M.BA program. They’re probably the best place to start when you want to learn marketing online quickly and efficiently with a great teacher, Dr. ,Marcel Cohen. These audio courses will help you master the fundamental concepts of marketing:
- Market research
- Market segmentation
- Understanding your customers
- How to conduct user interviews
- The marketing mix: product, price, promotion & place
- Pricing strategy: cost based pricing, value based pricing
- Behavioral psychology
- ,What is Content Marketing– This is your go-to for how to learn marketing online in everything regarding content marketing specifically. And the writers at copyblogger have it all packaged by topic into practical and easy to read articles that can serve anyone looking for how to learn marketing online.
- ,The Beginner’s Guide to SEO – these seven chapters are an excellent resource for anyone looking for how to learn marketing online. In a world where online visibility is key, learning SEO is a vital part of how to learn marketing online.
- ,Creating Social Media Strategy from MOZ – this article is a great place to start if you’re looking for how to learn marketing online by starting with social media marketing. And when you’re done
- ,Email Marketing Field Guide from Mailchimp walks you through some best practices for a successful email marketing plan. If you’re for how to learn marketing online and think email marketing might be a good fit for your needs, then I would definitely recommend you check this out.
- ,7 Week Action Plan to Kickstart your Digital Marketing – if you already have a website and are looking for how to learn marketing online in order to bring traffic to your website then Neil Patel’s action plans can be super helpful. Click on the link to take his quick quiz and receive a free customized digital marketing plan to help start increasing traffic today.
- ,Distributing Content Marketing – if you’ve already got great content and are looking how to distribute it, then this is a great resource for you. From Reddit to Wikipedia and beyond, this article tells you what you need about how to learn marketing online when it comes to content distribution.
How can you learn marketing online? Bringing it all together.
Learning marketing is a critical skill in the workforce today. Learning marketing online, quickly and efficiently, with a curated curriculum and a teacher who guides you through what you need to know is important – otherwise you’ll get lost in the world of online marketing blogs and gurus.
Marketing touches on many different aspects of a company so knowing marketing and more importantly how to learn marketing online to upskill yourself is a great way to be an asset to any workplace.
The best way to learn marketing online quickly, which is what’s needed for most, is through audio courses, which you can fit into your workday and daily lifestyle. The core topics revolve around understanding your customers, market segmentation and pricing strategy. Once you’ve got the fundamentals covered, you can dive into more niche topics like content marketing, SEO and digital marketing.
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