The 30 Best Resources to Learn Marketing for Free
By: Lauren Holliday
Tags: Content Marketing, Startup, Marketing, Learning, Digital Marketing

Pre-PS: I launched a Full Stack Marketer course. Check it out here.

Between January 2011 and January 2015, the number of job listings on Indeed containing “content marketing” or “content strategy” grew by about 350 percent; therefore, I think it’s safe to assume some of you startup founders are hiring a marketer or two.

But how many of you actually know anything about digital marketing, specifically social media marketing and/or content marketing? I’m guessing not many of you.

You’re probably thinking: Well, duh — that’s why I’m hiring someone to do it. Which makes me remember something my father told me a long, long time ago:

“Lauren, before you ever hire someone for a job, you better know how to do the job yourself.”

There’s a plethora of reasons why my father is right about this, but instead of boring you with all my arguments, I figure my time would be better spent telling you where you can quickly pick up these digital marketing skills.

Here’s a comprehensive (but not overwhelming) list of the best places to learn digital marketing online. Enjoy!

By: Moz, Cost: Free

The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media is a beautifully laid out and interactive guide that makes it easy to learn what you want when you want.

By: Twenty20, Cost: Free

According to Micah Cohen, Twenty20 Product Manager, Twenty20 interviewed hundreds of social media managers to come up with the best social media content calendar, which gives you seven days notice on all major events/holidays accompanied with popular hashtags.

Curated By: Nicolas Nemni, Cost: Free

The Content Marketing Stack is a curated directory of content marketing resources and tutorials.

By: Ben Tossell, Mubashar Iqbal, Daniel Kempe Cost: Free

Marketing Stack, which inspired the above Content Marketing Stack, is a curated directory of marketing resources and tools. It was inspired by StartUp Stash.

By: Dan Norris, Cost: Free

Free on Kindle, Norris provides nine proven frameworks for content marketing to scale a content marketing machine.

By: Social Media Examiner, Cost: Free

If you are new to social media or you’re not sure you’re doing the right thing, this page is for you. It contains a number of resources to help bring you up to speed.

By: Marketo, Cost: Free

Discover how to drive new business and revenue through various social media channels with the Marketo Social Marketing Success Kit.

By: HubSpot, Cost: Free

Learn about the latest news and updates on social media via HubSpot, which breaks the marketing news before anyone else.

By: Moz, Cost: Free

The Moz Local Learning Center will teach you: what local search is; whether local search is the best marketing option for your business; and how to implement local search best practices to drive the maximum number of customers to you.

By: Moz, Cost: Free

The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an in-depth tutorial on how search engines work. This guide covers the fundamental strategies that make your websites search engine–friendly.

By: Moz, Cost: Free

Whether you’re brand new to link building or have been doing it for a while, we’re sure you’ll find something useful in this guide.

By: Adam Connell, Cost: Free

Connell shares a powerhouse of epic content marketing tools with you that will help you do everything from planning to promoting and improving your content.

By: Adam Connell, Cost: Free

You’ll find a collection of guides, templates and checklists that you can use to grow your traffic, email subscribers, social following and more.

By: Copyblogger, Cost: Free

This guide will fill in the gaps to your content marketing knowledge, and it will help you become a content marketing expert in your industry or company.

By: Curata, Cost: Free

All the words (and influencers) you need to know to kill content marketing.

By: Digital Marketer, Cost: Free

This article is divided into 8 sections, each representing a goal you might be trying to reach with your blog. You can also download a mind map of this post here.

By: Lauren Holliday (me), Cost: Free

This is a mindmap I created to help content marketers come up with effective blog content ideas.

By: HubSpot, Cost: Free

This free and open-to-anyone certification created by HubSpot is a comprehensive marketing course that covers the core elements of the Inbound methodology.

By: HubSpot, Cost: Free

A free and open-to-anyone library of anything and everything inbound marketing related, from ebooks to templates and more goodies for you to download.

By: iDoneThis, Cost: Free

A free, interactive content marketing guide based on the framework iDoneThis used to grow its startup from nothing to a million-dollar business.

By: Kapost, Cost: Free

Explore Kapost’s entire catalog of free marketing resources.

By: Neil Patel, Kathryn Aragon, Cost: Free

The most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques available today, according to guide authors.

By: Ryan Gum, Cost: Free

Ryan Gum put together a list of the essentials you need to know to acquire customers for your startup.

By: Iris Shoor, Cost: Free

So you created great content, now what? Distribute it!

By: WPCurve, Cost: Free

In this post you’ll learn how to create content that converts (i.e. content that drives opt ins, leads and revenue to your business).

By: Google, Cost: Free

Primer is an experimental mobile app we created to make navigating the digital world easier for you.

By: Neil Patel, Ritika Puri, Cost: Free

According to authors, this is the most extensive and comprehensive introduction to online marketing that you’ll find anywhere.

By: Zana.io, Cost: Free

Learn how research-driven and experience-driven marketing can help your product or vision succeed.

By: Process.st, Cost: Free

Process.st created this checklist you can use to promote the content you work so hard to create.

By: Process.st, Cost: Free

Process.st created this handy checklist for you use on your next website launch or redesign.