Google digital garage fundamentals of digital marketing

This blog is a review of the “Fundamentals of Digital Marketing” course from Google Digital Garage. I have reviewed the course based on a beginner’s first impression, the value of learning, and the overall usefulness of the knowledge.  

About the Fundamental of Digital Marketing course

The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing course has an estimated participation time of 40 hours. It is divided into 26 modules. On completion you are awarded a certificate by The Open University upon completion.

Google Digital Garage emphasises the importance of building the foundations for your business before making a site. It offers a guided introduction to the world of ecommerce, which sounds much more intimidating than it actually is!

Initial expectations

In order to familiarise myself with the big bold world of digital marketing, I participated in an online course. I went into this course as a complete beginner to the world of digital marketing, expecting the work to feel isolating and overwhelming.

Thankfully, the course provides you with a glossary of the essential digital marketing terms. In my case, I was only able to find this halfway through the course – by then, I had already familiarised myself with the terms. Although, it is important to note that the most relevant terms will be taught to you in each video. 

Value of learning

After the first module, I felt that I had an idea of how the structure of the course worked, and therefore felt more comfortable with the process.

Each section came with an informative video with learning objectives that made the knowledge feel easy to absorb. There is a quiz at the end of each topic, which also explains why your answers are correct – very handy! I found it fascinating to learn how keywords can drastically change your ranking within search engines. 

Course assessment

• The end of topic questions can be very technical and precise – both an advantage and a disadvantage.
•  Particularly at the beginning, it is important to make sure that you know exactly what the key phrases they are teaching you mean.

Positives

• I really like that each unit is broken down into smaller parts.
• The animated educational world that this course contains certainly makes things feel friendlier. This way, the information doesn’t get overwhelming to learn. 
• Another benefit of this is that you feel more productive, with each unit being ticked off once you complete it. Personally, I love progress markers like this as it boosts my morale and keeps me focused.

Drawbacks and limitations

• With heavy emphasis on using analytics to understand performance, I found that this course tended to steer away from real world scenarios. 
• As a result, the questions would often stray from feeling human. 
• You will find yourself wrapped up in analytics, and at times, lacking realistic examples to work with.

Final exam

To pass the Fundamental of Digital Marketing course, you need at least 80% in the final exam. I did not pass the examination upon my first attempt. This highly frustrated me. 

Some of the questions felt very unrealistic to me. Frequently I would pick the most real world answer that made sense, but Google is looking for you to regurgitate the particular phrases used in specific modules.

 Needless to say, it is only making sure that you know what they have taught you, and getting questions wrong means that you can find the knowledge you weren’t too sure on before.

Fundamentals of Digital Marketing in a nutshell

Overall, I would recommend this course to any beginner looking for a free qualification (always something handy to have under your belt!).

In my view, this course is definitely worth checking out to understand the base knowledge of analytics and search engine optimization. The knowledge taught is very useful, and offers a comfortable starting point for digital marketing.

However, it is a bold claim to say that this course will teach you everything you need to know.

 If the world of analytics and search engines are daunting, “Fundamentals of Digital Marketing” will undoubtedly make you feel confident in this topic matter.

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