Why an Inbound Marketing Certification Is Important for Your Team
Marketing trends, and even some best practices, can change every day. This is because the field is dynamic. It relies on factors like human behavior, which aren’t 100% predictable. The best way to stay up-to-date and even ahead of the next brilliant marketing move is by sharpening your skills and paying attention to what the experts have to say. One way to do that is by earning an inbound marketing certification or designation to prove you’re always learning and growing in the field. In this article, we discuss topics like:
- What Is Inbound Marketing?
- Why Get an Inbound Marketing Certification?
- Who Can Earn an Inbound Marketing Certification?
- What Can You Learn from an Inbound Marketing Certification?
- Are Inbound Marketing Certifications Free?
- How Can Someone Earn an Inbound Marketing Certification?
- 7 Inbound Marketing Certifications To Earn and Courses To Take
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is a business methodology used for lead generation and customer attraction. It involves creating valuable, tailored content for your audience. Rather than interrupting the lives of your leads like outbound marketing, inbound forms bonds and connections with people to help solve problems they have or to become a resource for their needs. Inbound marketing incorporates concepts and techniques like:
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Calls-to-action (CTAs)
- Guest blogging
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
To learn more about the types of content that go into an inbound marketing strategy, download our Content Marketing Pyramid eBook. Learn how the different types of content work together to develop your customer buying cycles and how content can increase your sales.
“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”
Kevin Doory
Director of SEO at Auto Revo
Why Get an Inbound Marketing Certification?
According to Indeed, 95% of people who took an inbound marketing certification course would recommend it to a friend or family member in the field because of its value to their career. You or your team can experience the benefits of earning one, such as:
Learning or Reviewing the Fundamentals
Whether you or your team members are new to inbound marketing or you’ve been doing it for years, digital marketing certifications often cover the basics of the niche in their introductory modules. They can teach you or reinforce what you already know about content creation, email marketing, social media, SEO, and content distribution. It’s important to ensure you create or maintain a firm foundation in your industry to build on solid advice and best practices. An inbound marketing certification can help with that.
Working at Your Own Pace
Most inbound marketing certifications are pre-recorded and allow the learner to work on their own schedule. This can be helpful for anyone trying to learn new skills or incorporate continuing education into their daily duties around other work and life responsibilities. Asynchronous flexibility allows team members to work during business hours, on lunch breaks, at home, or anywhere and anytime they have a free moment and an internet connection.
Displaying Your Credentials
Inbound marketing certification programs often include tangible proof that you’ve completed the courses and gained all the knowledge they provide. This may be a PDF certificate, a LinkedIn badge, or a credential number you can share on your profile on the company website. Having a tangible or linkable reference helps back up your knowledge and expertise on a topic.
Team members certified in inbound marketing have an extra level of clout when talking to clients and leads. They can do more than just say they know what they’re talking about. They can prove it. These people put in extra time and effort to get that designation and take a test on it. This can help instill confidence and trust in your company from potential customers and clients, and make them more likely to want to work with you.
Streamlining Continuing Education
Some companies require their team members to complete a certain amount of continuing education each year or within a certain period to prove that they’re staying current with the latest trends and best practices in the industry. Asking your team members to take an inbound marketing certification can streamline this process.
Choose a course track that helps them reach their required hours and offer time per week or per month for them to complete the material during business hours. Since many programs come with certificates or credentials, it’s easier for managers to collect proof of completion and add it to employee records.
Learning More About Targeting Your Audience
If you want to know how to best target your leads and reach your audience, you have to know who they are, what they like, and how they best respond to information and messaging. The courses you take to earn an inbound marketing certification can teach you how to identify your ideal customers and create buyer personas. Knowing this information can help you segment your audience and find the right techniques to nurture them from leads into paying customers.
Discovering More About Marketing Automation
There are many digital marketing tools available to help streamline your strategy and take advantage of all the opportunities available to your company. Good, up-to-date inbound marketing certification programs can teach you more about these tools and how to incorporate them into your strategies and frameworks. Engaging in marketing automation can give your human team more time to focus on strategy and processes that computers can’t, like lead nurturing.
Convincing the Skeptics
Whether you’re a team member trying to get your boss to engage in using inbound marketing, a manager talking up its value to the C-suite, or an account representative trying to persuade a client to use it, taking a certification course can help you collect the information you need to create a convincing argument.
The more you know about a topic, the easier it is to convince someone of its benefits and perks. You may even use materials, projects, or presentations from the course in your arguments to prove to any skeptics in your professional circle why inbound marketing is the right choice for the client or company.
Bettering Your Understanding of Metrics
All segments of marketing rely heavily on metrics to help you understand what’s working and what isn’t with your strategies. Inbound marketing certification courses can help you identify the right metrics to track and explain their purpose in the context of a larger strategy. Determining which metrics are most important and which ones can have the biggest impact on your outcomes helps you plan strategies and adjust plans if things don’t go as you expect.
Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Departments
Sales and marketing both have a hand in lead generation and nurturing, but sometimes the two sides don’t communicate as well as they could. Having representatives from both departments take inbound marketing certifications can help each group understand what the other does and how it integrates with their daily activities. This can create more open lines of communication and encourage collaboration among teams to attract, nurture, and convert leads into paying customers.
Who Can Earn an Inbound Marketing Certification?
Image via Unsplash by @johnschno
Any marketer can benefit from earning an inbound marketing certification. It can be especially helpful for anyone who wants to specialize in an area like content or email marketing because those are subsections of inbound marketing. Sales professionals may also benefit from earning this type of certification to understand how the practices help with their side of lead generation and conversion.
Some C-suite level executives, like the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Sales Officer (CSO), or Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of an organization, may benefit from taking the course along with their employees so that everyone is aware of the same information. This can also promote a company-wide culture of learning and continuing education.
What Can You Learn from an Inbound Marketing Certification?
While each inbound marketing courses may be slightly different and share unique information, many cover similar topics like:
- Developing content that guides lead prospects through the marketing and sales funnel
- Creating relevant content that adds to the lead-nurturing experience
- Optimizing your marketing processes with artificial intelligence (AI) and automation strategies
- Discovering how to find your ideal customers and create content for all their needs
- Defining each stage of the buyer’s journey to learn how to create CTAs that motivate people to engage with your content
- Evaluating content distribution strategies to find which ones work best for your organization
- Understanding behavioral marketing and customer segmentation to best target your audience
- Exploring content marketing channels to better understand how distribution choices affect your return on investment (ROI)
- Learning how the flywheel, rather than a funnel sometimes, is a helpful tool for your inbound marketing growth and strategy sustainability
- Understanding the primary goals and aims of your company to incorporate into your inbound strategy to make it easier for people to find your organization
- Developing business goals that align with your larger company mission and how they lead your marketing plan
Are Inbound Marketing Certifications Free?
Some inbound marketing certifications are free and you have to pay to access others. Many free courses require some kind of sign-up or login to the service. This allows you to save your progress, return to it, and download your certificate and credentials at the end of the course.
Paid courses can range in price based on the number of resources you receive and how much it costs to pay for the educators who make the materials and appear in the videos. Other services, like Coursera, may allow you to pay a fee to access their catalogs, and then you can choose from a host of courses on a variety of topics.
How Can Someone Earn an Inbound Marketing Certification?
Most options for earning an inbound marketing certification are online. They’re usually pre-recorded and pre-uploaded, or asynchronous. People can access them at any time and complete them on their own schedules. Many include a variety of materials for people of different learning styles, such as:
- Videos
- Worksheets
- Transcripts
- Study guides
- Workbooks
- Quizzes
- Tests
- Discussion boards
Many of the courses and certification tracks give an estimate of how much time it takes either in total for the entire course or per day to complete the work. This number is an estimate. Some people may complete the course in more or less time, depending on how fast they read or how much they already know about the topic.
7 Inbound Marketing Certifications To Earn and Courses To Take
Consider pursuing one of these inbound marketing certifications to earn your credentials:
1. HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification
HubSpot’s inbound marketing certification may be one of the premier courses you can take. It’s surely one of the most popular and most talked-about ones on the internet. This is because it’s one of the few courses to focus specifically on inbound marketing as its own topic rather than a footnote in a larger digital marketing course.
This program can help you understand how to attract visitors, gain customers, and convert leads while developing them to be your brand advocates. The course takes roughly three and a half hours to complete its seven lessons. It has 24 videos and seven in-course quizzes to prepare you for the final certification exam. This course is free to start any time.
2. HubSpot Inbound Methodology Certification
This additional inbound marketing course from HubSpot is more specialized or advanced than the first. While the other is perfect for beginners, this one could be suitable for inbound marketing professionals looking to advance their skills. This certification course teaches about the flywheel concept as part of an inbound business. The framework of this track is shorter than the other. It takes just about two hours to complete. It has six lessons, 15 videos, and four quizzes to prepare you for the certification exam. This course track is free for participants.
3. HubSpot Inbound Sales Certification
In the same way sales professionals can learn from taking inbound marketing courses, marketers can learn from taking inbound sales certifications. Though created for sales managers and representatives, this course can help you understand how to find the best-qualified leads, create sales presentations that get results, and capture the attention of your target audience. This certification takes just over two hours to complete its five lessons of 22 videos and five quizzes. Like other HubSpot options, this certification culminates with a final test before you can receive credentials. Registration for this program is free.
4. HubSpot Content Marketing Certification
Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing, and you can earn a certification from HubSpot in this niche, too. Learn about the content creation framework and how to produce high-quality pieces consistently. You can also learn how to repurpose content for both readers and SEO alike. This course is longer, taking just over six hours to complete. It’s packed with 12 lessons, 54 videos, and 11 quizzes to prepare you for the certification exam. Like other HubSpot tracks, this certification is free.
5. MarketMotive Advanced Content Marketing Certification Training
This content marketing course from Market Motive is a web-based training program that allows you to learn from some top industry experts. It combines the art of writing content with the science of developing a marketing strategy. It includes over 25 hours of e-learning content over 18 lessons. The downloadable workbooks and progress quizzes help you prepare for the assessment test at the end of the course. This program is for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) professionals alike.
To earn the certificate, you must complete 85% of the course and finish three projects and one simulation test, and pass with a score of 60% or more. You can take this course as an individual marketer, or managers can offer it as training for the entire company or team. The course costs $299 for 180 days of access for an individual. To discuss business pricing, you must contact the company.
6. IMPACT+ Inbound Lead Generation & Conversion Optimization Course
In this course, you learn about converting your website visitors into leads and optimizing your channels and content to provide sales opportunities at all the top conversion points. It includes six lessons with just over an hour of video content, and full, free, lifetime access to the content. You do need to create an account with IMPACT+ to access the full course materials.
7. IMPACT+ Inbounder’s Guide to Email Marketing Course
This course covers the inbound marketing niche topic of email marketing. It can teach you how to leverage your strategy in an inbound rather than outbound marketing framework. It can also help grow your email contact database, and develop content your subscribers love. This course is free, with four lessons to complete. It requires about an hour and a half of your time but comes with lifetime access to the content.
Even if you pursue an inbound marketing certification to impress your leads, customers, or clients, you can still leave the hard work to us. Contact CopyPress to learn how we can help you create great content and share it on various channels to make sure you’ve got the most solid and successful inbound marketing strategy to help you attract leads and get conversions.
CopyPress writer
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