Colin Jeffries is vice president of marketing and communications at BrightView Health and host of the Rethink Marketing podcast.
Meta, Adobe, Hootsuite, HubSpot, Salesforce and many other platforms offer free certificates. These programs are intelligently designed to help professionals add more value to their employers or stand out in the job market. This begs the question: Does a marketer with a certain certification create more value and receive higher compensation than someone without one?
Continuous learning is the key to marketing success as the marketing ecosystem painfully transitions into the era of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Certifications make it easier to demonstrate learning and improve skills, but it's hard to argue that they're all good.
First, let's define our terms. There are academic certificates (the kind you'd get from Coursera or a university), and then there are certificates. Certifications are awards given by an organization to people who have demonstrated a certain level of competence in a certain way. In this article I want to focus on the latter, especially free or cheap certificates for marketers.
A look at Indeed or LinkedIn will show that very few marketing requirements state “certification in X preferred,” and almost none require platform-specific expertise. Exceptions include subject matter expert roles that only work on a specific platform (for example, Salesforce administrator or Google Ads administrator).
If the goal is to work for an external platform partner agency (like a Google Premier Partner agency), certifications can be a differentiator for certain roles. However, for marketing coordinators, managers, and day-to-day directors, Google Analytics is the only certification that appears on their wish list with any degree of regularity.
Certifications demonstrate competence and the ability to pass an exam, but hiring managers don't confuse this with work experience. It seems obvious, but a five-hour social media certification through HubSpot doesn't equate to five years of social media management experience. As a hiring manager, if someone has taken the time to add a relevant and well-known brand certification, that's probably not a bad thing, but their work and experience will set them apart. Over the past decade, marketing has focused more on “showing” than “telling.” Hiring managers want to see what you can do rather than hear what you know.
Because certifications are ubiquitous, it's hard to argue that they all have value. For example, there are only 11 Google Ads certificates! Of course, not everyone is the same. So before starting a certification program, let's ask ourselves four key questions.
1. How long is this knowledge relevant? Does today's Meta Blueprint training cover the same technical knowledge and skills as in 2019? Obviously not. Given the rapid pace of change on most platforms, forgotten knowledge doesn't matter. As a general rule, the certification probably won't be useful for more than three years. This means we need to keep listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, or expanding our knowledge in real time to stay current.
2. What benefits should I expect from this qualification? A generic answer like “get a better job” isn't specific enough. For example, if I want to get a higher-paying job as a front-end developer for WordPress, I need to decide whether certification is required. Or should I spend my time watching tutorials and getting my hands dirty creating websites? Can I join the WordPress community and learn this way? Can I use the free version of WordPress to develop my skills? If we need a certificate to move forward, we need to understand what it means and why.
3. How universal is this evidence? For example, compare Google Analytics to Sprout Social platform certifications. It's easy to imagine someone spending time getting Sprout Social certified to migrate their business to Hootsuite, or that person joining another company using Agorapulse. The good news is that many platforms are relatively similar, so a certificate from one social media management tool can be transferred to another. In general, the more precise the identification, the better.
4. Why does this organization offer free training for marketers? HubSpot has a large library of free certifications with great content for marketers. In some cases, college marketing professors even require some HubSpot certifications as teaching materials because they are very important. This is a brilliant content marketing initiative by HubSpot. Business schools produce graduates who know and trust HubSpot, and many of these young professionals will be the marketing leaders of tomorrow. HubSpot is playing the long game and it seems to be paying off. This does not mean that freely disseminated information is distorted in any way, but one must be aware of the strategy.
In many cases it makes sense to get a free or low-cost certificate. This is especially true for professional lines. If someone is already involved as a copywriter and social media coordinator, getting a Google Analytics certification can allow them to add value by delving into website analytics and SEO.
Conversely, participating in Meta's Blueprint program could allow them to move from managing content to managing paid advertising on the platform. This usually depends on how the organization or department is structured. However, certifications can come in handy when a marketer wants to take the first bite of an unfamiliar apple.
As marketers, we must never stop learning. Books, blogs, podcasts, events and more. They can be a great way to do this, as can certificates. Before considering one or more certifications, we need to answer some key questions: how long will the information be relevant, what do I expect from the qualification, to what extent is the qualification universal and why does the organization offer it? this knowledge? As with most marketing initiatives, it's always best to approach it with your eyes wide open.
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