How to train in digital marketing: complete guide to options

Getting a degree in digital marketing today is easier than ever. And, at the same time, more confusing than ever: there are university degrees, master's degrees, vocational training, bootcamps, online courses, specialized schools... But not all options are worth the same or serve the same purpose. It will also be very important to choose the most appropriate one for each moment of your career.

If you really want to work in digital marketing, you need to understand two things: what type of training exists and what path makes sense according to your professional goal.

Let's go in parts. But before continuing reading, a warning: if you want to be a good digital marketing professional, none of the training you do will be the definitive one: we need to constantly catch up if we don't want to become a dinosaur or a beautiful ficus.

Regulated training: the necessary foundation to build a career in digital marketing

Formal training is not a complement, it is the basis. It is where the fundamentals are acquired: how a company works, how a strategy is structured, how a market is analyzed or how decisions are made with criteria. Without this basis, everything else becomes improvisation.

From here, the usual route goes from less to more, and will depend on when you left secondary education:

Middle grades

Intermediate marketing degrees are a good option for young people who do not want to go the high school route and are interested in marketing topics.

They serve as a starting point for:

• acquire work habits
• understand basic business dynamics
• to subsequently access a higher degree

Once you have finished this study, our recommendation here is to continue studying with studies that allow you to follow an itinerary

Graus superiors (FP)

This is where we get into relevant territory. Whether you're coming from middle school or high school, this step is the best if you're not sure about your path to university, but you want to be a good professional.

The marketing and advertising training courses offer:

• a much more practical approach
• initial contact with digital tools
• a visionapplied marketing

In many cases, they are another alternative to university to start in the sector, and are especially recommended if you are looking to join the job market earlier. And a practice of learning by doing, not just studying. These programs also always involve an internship program in companies, which allows you to have a first contact with the world of work, and validate if this is what you like and what you want to dedicate yourself to. From there, decide whether you join the world of work, or continue studying.

Usually, higher education students who come to digital marketing agencies come from Marketing and Advertising. In my opinion, it is a good starting point, but too general and not very oriented towards digital marketing. Recently, the Spanish Government has promoted a GS in SEO, SEM and social networks, more info here. We have high hopes for this program, but it is in the process of being implemented and it is too early to know if it will be useful to both students and companies.

University degrees

Call me classic, but whenever possible I have to recommend doing a university degree. The type of degree and the center is up to you. But what it will give you academically and in life has no comparison.Courses such as Marketing, ADE, Advertising or Communication provide a strategic and methodological layer to dedicate yourself to digital marketing. There are some centers such as Tecnocampus in Catalonia that have university degrees in Digital Marketing and are very interesting programs, and the proof is that we have an agreement with them that brings a student every year to our agency, and many have later been able to join the normality of La Teva Web.

Here we work with a global vision of business, studying consumer behavior in depth, working on planning and strategy.

Their value is the context and mental structure they provide. Not so much in the technical execution of current digital marketing, which tends to take precedence over the agenda.

They make sense if you are looking for: a solid long-term foundation and a broader view of marketing and the company.

University masters

The last step in formal training. This is where specialization in digital marketing should occur: analytics, online advertising... A master's degree in digital marketing may also be a good idea if the basic degree is not in the field, although it will continue to be generic.

But not all master's degrees fulfill this promise. The difference lies in the approach, since if it is practical and connected to the sector, it adds a lot. On the other hand, if it is theoretical and that's it, it provides little more than the degree (which is important, depending on where you want to go).

Before choosing, you should look at aspects such as active teaching staff, the use of real tools or the project-oriented approach. When well planned, a master's degree can be the bridge between academic foundation and real work.

With great respect for these universities and the professors who participate: often the syllabus, the teachers and the dynamics are very far from the reality of the workplace. In our applied case: a person who has studied high school, a marketing degree and a university master's degree in digital marketing, and has done nothing else in parallel, will not contribute much to us in the short term, since they will not have the necessary knowledge, skills and experience. However, it is an excellent basis for having a long-term career with a strategic or management focus.

Non-regulated training: where the practical begins

This is where digital marketing becomes really fast-paced, fluid, unstructured if you will, but you learn a lot.

Non-official training is, in many cases, more up-to-date, more direct and more connected to the market. All the foundation you have from before will be useful to you, but doing this type of training throughout your career is essential in the sector we operate in.

Digital marketing bootcamps

Intensive, short programs with a strong focus on employability. It can be a good lever if you need a boost for a digital marketing challenge and need to catch up, or if you want to make a turn in a professional career that was already advanced in another direction

Advantages:

• fast learning
• practical approach
• orientation to junior profiles

Disadvantages:

• they don't always go into depth
• very variable quality depending on the center

They work well if you need a quick change or a first entry into the sector. In any case, pay close attention to the programs and centers, there is a little bit of everything. A good option in this sense would be the Digital Marketing Bootcamp of Neoland.

Business schools

They offer more structured programs, usually with more resources and networking, and there are always synergies with the labor market, both in approach and landing (their agreements with large companies are a common feature).

They usually combine strategy with real cases, and some theoretical basis, but this is not the center of the thing.

They are useful if you are looking for a more global profile, come from another sector or have an entrepreneurial idea with a digital marketing base or orientation. In case you join an agency like ours, it would probably be a good base but you will need a more technical background, to complete until you have the ideal profile.

Schools specializing in marketing

There are some academies specializing in digital marketing studies that have powerful programs. There are even agencies similar to ours that have much of their structure and resources geared towards their academies.This is where the most focused training in specific areas of digital marketing such as SEO, Paid Media, Analytics, Growth or now AI is usually found.

The key is that they are closer to the day-to-day life of the professional. For me, they are a very interesting option to specialize in something, or to solidify the path. Let me explain: many digital marketing professionals have arrived at this through their own projects or life coincidences, and it turns out that we have been implementing digital marketing actions for years, but we do not have a solid academic base. In these cases, a program from these schools can help you get the degree you do not have (in case you do not need it to prove what you already know), but above all it will help you compare ways of working and acquire methodologies that you can implement in your day to day life.

Online courses and capsules

In this case we refer to short courses on a specific topic:Google, Meta, Coursera, specialized platforms... they have programs that are very good

They are useful for getting started, complementing other training, updating knowledge or exploring new paths. But they are only a superficial and often impractical view, which, when well complemented, can help.

Specialization is not optional

This is where many people stop halfway and it's a shame.

Studying marketing doesn't make you a digital marketing professional. It gives you context and basic knowledge. But the market doesn't look for contexts, it looks for profiles that know how to do specific things. And I also think that while a 360 vision is very interesting to have in order to understand situations and support them, the complexity of what we have in hand requires specialists.

Digital marketing is too broad to cover everything. And sooner or later, you have to choose.

The main areas are the SEO, SEM / Paid Media, Digital Analytics, Social Media, CRO or Automation and artificial intelligence.

At first it makes sense to touch on several areas. Understand the ecosystem. See what fits you. But the professional leap comes when you specialize. Because that's where you bring real value, you can demonstrate results, you become more than employable, you are very useful.

Training without key qualifications

Here's the part that almost no one explains: in digital marketing, much of the learning doesn't happen in classrooms. It happens outside.

Informal training (but essential)

If you're not here, you're left behind:

• LinkedIn: professionals sharing real experience
• YouTube: tutorials, tools, cases
• Newsletters: trends, algorithm changes, new strategies
• Specialized blogs
• Websites with training programs, often freemium, on different aspects of digital marketing

This has a clear advantage: it goes much faster than official training. It's where you see what works now, not two years ago. You can test, implement, comment, refute, make mistakes, get it right, improve day by day.

Real experience: the differentiating factor

You can have degrees. You can have courses. But if you haven't done anything, you don't have a desirable professional profile.

There are no shortcuts here: you have to touch real projects as soon as possible and the more the better, no matter what formative stage you are in.

I give you some ideas:

• in all courses, do as many internships as you can: curricular, extracurricular, paid or unpaid
• create your own website
• launch your own SEO project
• run SEM campaigns with a small budget
• experiment with AI
• analyze data from own projects
• you talk to your friends, family and acquaintances and offer them your digital marketing services for their SME

This is what makes the difference in an interview. Because in digital marketing, what counts is not only what you know, but what you can do. And you often learn by doing (and making mistakes). So get to the mess!