With the rise of SaaS, or Software as a Service, businesses now have access to cheap and effective online marketing platforms.

But the floodgates have opened. With businesses moving to the cloud, the amount of content generated online has increased exponentially. And being effective online doesn’t necessarily mean attending a traditional marketing course. For those looking for an alternative, here are 10 free marketing courses online.

HubSpot Academy

If you’ve ever shopped at Amazon, then you’ll have a good idea of what HubSpot is. HubSpot is the gold standard among marketing SaaS platforms. And it’s free. What makes HubSpot particularly special is that it incorporates email marketing, blogging, and social media into one platform.

You can use HubSpot to create blogs, manage social media accounts, send out email marketing campaigns, and more. Basically, it’s the easiest SaaS platform to use, and that’s exactly why it’s one of the most popular courses of its kind.

Marketing Essie 

Essie is an award-winning marketing platform used by some of the world’s largest brands. It is most well-known for its “beauty checklist” feature. After you log in, you’ll see a list of your top-rated products, which you can then compare against a customer’s list of desired products. If you sell skincare products, for example, you can use this tool to find out which products your customers are most interested in purchasing.

Essie is also home to AWeber, which is one of the most popular email marketing solutions in existence. Essentially, Essie provides you with everything you need to effectively market your products online.

Matter 

Matter is a web-based marketing platform designed for multichannel marketers. It’s owned by Future Incubator, a company that invests in emerging businesses.

You can use Matter to create accounts for your various marketing channels (e.g., social media, email, etc.), gather customer data, and track marketing performance. What sets Matter apart from other SaaS platforms is that it also provides you with lead nurturing tools. These tools allow marketers to follow up with leads, close sales, and track performance over time.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is one of the most popular content discovery platforms used by marketers across the globe. It was originally designed for journalists looking for topics to write about. However, content marketers now use BuzzSumo to discover topics, blog posts, and news articles relevant to their industry.

Why is BuzzSumo important? It’s one of the few content discovery platforms that don’t just give you a list of articles relevant to your niche. Instead, BuzzSumo tries to predict which pieces you’ll find most interesting, based on the content that’s most popular in your niche. And because it’s free, it’s one of the most popular courses among marketers.

OneOpinion

OneOpinion is a review platform that was built for internet shoppers. However, marketers now use this tool to find product reviews and verify their accuracy online. Once you create an account, you’ll see a library of products and brands that you can research and compare.

You can use OneOpinion to find reviews of all kinds, including those of fitness equipment, cell phones, and much more. What makes this tool so valuable is that you can actually research and find legitimate reviews, as opposed to fake reviews that often appear on other platforms.

MartechStack

MartechStack is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses. It was originally built for internet marketing teams who need to keep track of their marketing campaigns, reports, and performance.

Using MartechStack, you can automate the entry of visitor data, email marketing campaigns, and more. What makes MartechStack stand out is that it not only provides you with the information and tools you need to grow your business, but it also makes the process easy. This is important because it removes the need for constant monitoring and manual data entry. Which brings us to the next point.

The best part of MartechStack is how well it integrates with other SaaS platforms, such as Hootsuite, Salesforce, and MailChimp. This means that you can use the same login to access all of your marketing tools, as opposed to having to create separate logins for each channel.

MarketingCharts

What do Google Analytics, HubSpot, and MartechStack all have in common? They’re SaaS platforms, which provide businesses with everything they need to effectively market their products online.

MarketingCharts is another SaaS platform that provides marketing analytics. However, rather than using cookie-based user identification, MarketingCharts uses inbound marketing analytics. This means that, rather than relying on cookie-based user identification, MarketingCharts uses server-side caching, relying on random generators to assign users to specific groups. This allows for a more unique identifier (e.g., UUIDs) to be used as a user id. 

Why is server-side caching important? It provides consistency, security, and flexibility. First, the caching server stays in sync with the database, which prevents the need for a refreshed copy. This avoids the potential for transaction errors. Second, the caching server removes the need for a password. Finally, since the caching server removes the need to authenticate a user, it increases flexibility. In other words, instead of requiring a login and password, a marketing team can assign a group of users to a specific marketing campaign, and track the results with a group of customers. Or they can assign a single user to a group and track the results for that particular consumer. What makes MarketingCharts unique is that it also provides you with a standalone website, branded blog, and social media pages, all of which are fully mobile-responsive.

MarketingCharts: Bonus Offer

MarketingCharts has an additional feature that’s worth checking out. It’s called “MarketingCharts Gold”, and, as the name suggests, it’s a paid version of the platform. However, if you’re looking for a tool that provides all of the features listed above, the free version is more than sufficient.

The Ultimate Marketing Course

The only course that we couldn’t fit into the above list is The Ultimate Marketing Course. This is because it isn’t exactly free, but it comes with a free trial. What is The Ultimate Marketing Course? It’s a 5-day “battleground” course that teaches you everything you need to know about marketing, including theory, case studies, and best practices. The course has a reputation for being challenging, and that’s probably because Italki teaches you things that no other course teaches you. So, no matter which one of the above courses you tried Or even if you haven’t tried any of them, it’s time to step up your game.