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What does a conversion optimization professional need to know?  Talia Wolf, Founder and Chief Optimizer at GetUplift discusses thank you pages, AB testing, persona mapping, and how to understand what makes our customers take the next step in the buying journey. 

The OMCP Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support. Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to get new episodes.

Michael Stebbins:

All right. Welcome back to the OMCP Podcast and with us today is Talia Wolf, founder and chief optimizer at GetUplift, author, speaker, and thought leader in conversion optimization. Talia, welcome to the OMCP Best Practices Podcast.

Talia Wolf:

Hello, hello. Thank you for having me.

Michael Stebbins:

Now, Talia, We know your agency is GetUplift. We know you speak on and teach conversion optimization in some of the most prestigious stages in the world. We know you’re a skydiver with over 1000 jumps, for those of you who haven’t read your blog, followed you on Twitter, or heard you speak, tell our audience something we don’t know about you, and what it is you’ve been working on lately.

Talia Wolf:

Oh, my God, there’s nothing no one knows about me. I’m like an open book. What don’t people know about me? I love Harry Potter, but I think people know that. And other than that, I have two kids under three, which I was just confessing to that I’m basically sleep deprived. And what am I working on right now? I’m actually working on some super cool client work and opening enrollment for my new course, The Income Engine.

Michael Stebbins:

Yes. And we’re going to include a link for that here in the podcast and make sure listeners have a chance to get training from you. Talia, I mean, obviously it’s impressive that you’ve jumped out of perfectly good planes for awhile. 

A few other questions for you just to find out more about you, dogs or cats?

Talia Wolf:

Dogs, a hundred percent.

Michael Stebbins:

SEO or paid?

Talia Wolf:

Hmm, SEO.

Michael Stebbins:

Bitcoin or Ethereum?

Talia Wolf:

I actually have a terrible story about that, about Bitcoin. So about, I think it was six years ago. My husband said that, “we should buy one of the mining machines and we should do it. And it was like nothing. And we should spend like $5,000 and buy this whole thing.” And I said, “Are you crazy? $5000, we’re not doing that.” So, here we are.

Michael Stebbins:

What you want to know is how they do the work itself and that it actually has depth to it.

And now Elon is an endorser, we’re seeing it go through the ceiling, but who knows people listening to this podcast a year from now may be laughing and saying, “You did the right thing.” So who knows, right? 

All right. So, Talia you’ve helped some of the world’s largest businesses improve their landing pages, their funnels, their e-commerce. You’re considered an authority on conversion optimization, we certainly follow you. It makes sense that in this conversation, we’re going to cover how marketers can understand the essentials in developing that skill in conversion and apply it to a project.

So, our first question for you, let’s say that you are hiring a conversion optimization specialist for your agency GetUplift, or for a project. What are some interview questions that you would use to determine their skills in conversion?

Talia Wolf:

That’s a great question. I think that the first question I would ask is, “What is your process? What process do you go through in order to come up with hypotheses for testing?” And I’ll explain, because many times I get clients, or potential clients, reaching out to me saying, “I got a proposal from someone and they’re promising a 20% uplift.” Or, “They’re promising an X amount of uplift.” And the first thing that I say is “Never, ever trust an agency or a company that says that they’re going to deliver a certain amount of uplift.” What you want to see is the process. What you want to know is how they do the work itself and that it actually has depth to it.

Michael Stebbins:

Understood. So, “What’s your process?” And you want them to describe this to you. That’s quite telling in their skillset and their history. What would be another question you’d ask a candidate to assess their skill?

Talia Wolf:

How much do they know about human behavior and human decision-making? Because that is key to understanding how people buy. I know that most people think that when it comes to conversion optimization, you’re supposed to be focused on changing a call to action button or a headline on a page, but what conversion optimization is really about is understanding how people make decisions, whether if it’s to buy something, or if it’s to sign up for a free trial, or book a demo, you have to understand what is the decision-making process people go through in order to create an experience and an entire customer journey that helps that person make a decision. So, while it is important for your CRO agency, or your consultant, or freelancer to understand stuff like Google Analytics or Mixpanel, or Heatmaps. It’s so much more important for them to understand people, emotion, psychology, and decision-making.

Michael Stebbins:

And what are some ways that we, as conversion practitioners can get to know our customers and understand some of their motivations for taking the next step in the process?

Talia Wolf:

…things you can definitely uncover when you’re doing interviews or surveys are hesitations, roadblocks, things that are stopping people from converting…

Well, one of my favorite parts of doing this is basically doing customer surveys, but there are many different ways because it really does depend on where you are as a company. Customer surveys, visitor surveys, review mining, social listening, interviews, so many different ways that you can speak to people, listen to what people are saying and reflect that back to them within your journeys.

Michael Stebbins:

And one example that shows up in the exam for conversion optimization is to understand how to use quantitative or survey data versus some of the anecdotal or interview data that we can get actually talking to customers. If I’m in a conversation with a customer, maybe one thing I’m looking for is the way that they described the problem they’re trying to solve–the words that they use. And then put that back into the advertising or into the words on the landing pages. 

Are there some other things that we can pick up when we’re really in a deep conversation with a customer?

Talia Wolf:

Yeah, a hundred percent. So, that is definitely one of the most important things, but other things you can definitely uncover when you’re doing interviews or surveys are hesitations, roadblocks, things that are stopping people from converting, things that may be stopping people and sending them to your competitor. So, understanding the pains, the hesitations, those concerns and roadblocks is actually a great way for you to know what you need to address on your landing pages or on your website to convince people to convert.

Michael Stebbins:

You’re a big fan of “thank you” pages. You talk about it often or it seems like somebody brings it up.  And specifically you put them out there as a method to enhance trust. What are some practices that we should all be using when it comes to thank you pages?

Talia Wolf:

You see, the thank you page is actually really, really helpful because of a psychological trigger called, “foot in the door technique.”

You know, the go-to [problem] with thank you pages is that they [often] don’t exist. So, I love that you have categorized me as an advocate for them, because I really am. Most landing pages or websites you get people to convert and it kind of simply ends with this note saying, “Go check your email.” But thank you pages can be leveraged, as you mentioned, to build a relationship with people or to even increase your conversions. So, one way of leveraging thank-you pages is actually placing a survey on the thank you page.

You see, the thank you page is actually really, really helpful because of a psychological trigger called, “foot in the door technique.” So essentially, once someone has already taken an action with you, they’re far more prone to actually take another action with you. So, to go back to your question about, “Hey, how can I learn more about my customers?” You can do that on your thank you page. You can ask them questions on the thank you page. You could ask them to share something. You could ask them to review the process they just went through. You can ask them to tell you more about themselves, what they’re looking for and what their goals are. You could do all of that on a thank-you page.

Michael Stebbins:

And this has got to enhance the trust and the relationship through interaction. They’ve taken one step, let’s say they’ve gone out on a date now it’s okay to ask for a second one, or just get that trusted feedback from them in a survey.

Talia Wolf:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And also what’s very helpful is that using the data is going to help you to then customize and personalize emails for them, so then you can send better information to them, more valuable content to them and that in turn, builds the relationship.

Michael Stebbins:

Okay. Let’s move on to what we call low dispute practices. Things that any conversion practitioner should know cold. Now, these are things that end up on the exams or in the competency standards. Our universities and training partners must teach them. 

Talia, I handpicked a few and you can say, “Pass.” If you don’t like them, and we can move on. But let’s start with, “How should a practitioner establish company goals related to conversion?” In other words, let’s map them back to something that’s important to the business. What’s the process for doing that that you’ve seen work?

Talia Wolf:

You know what? My go-to here is actually establishing a North star goal, and what that means is that when you’re looking at that goal, that is the one goal of the business. Maybe it’s sales, maybe it’s signups, maybe it’s free accounts, whatever it is, but more importantly than setting that goal is actually taking it apart and thinking about how this goal serves your customers. So, great it serves you, you want to get more sales, but how does that serve your customer? And that’s why whenever I’m setting up goals with my clients, I’m always thinking about the middle goals and the goals along the way that are serving my customers. So, how am I actually delivering value, achieving their goals, my clients, my customer’s goals, so that ultimately I achieved my North star goal.

Michael Stebbins:

Insightful and something that we can bolster the standard with as well. Thank you for that. In terms of buy cycle stages and mapping those to persona, can you give us some practices that you’ve seen work or the ones that you’ve seen not work?

Talia Wolf:

I’m going to need you to unpack that for me? What do you mean?

Michael Stebbins:

So, if we’re looking at buy cycle stages, in other words, some people might have Interest, Attention, Desire… there’s several different ways to map those. And in some cases, we know that we need to map those particular buying stages to distinct persona that we’ve developed for our customers. And oftentimes a persona who’s late in the stage may have some different needs and interactions, whereas somebody who’s in the interest stage may have a completely different set of needs.

Talia Wolf:

Right. So, I actually really like dividing people according to stage of awareness, so the different five stages of awareness, and depending on their stage of awareness within the customer journey, creating the content that they need to hear. Sometimes these people are completely unaware they have any type of pain and it’s my job to bring it to their attention. Sometimes I’m going to use content to move people who are solution-aware, (meaning they’re actively searching for a solution, but they’re not really sure which one is right for them) to product-aware, (meaning aware of my client’s product).

However, I do want to say that I know that personas are kind of the go-to of most companies, but you do have to make sure that these personas aren’t just categorized as behavioral elements, but more on the emotional, psychological side of them too, which is why most times when we’re coming up with hypothesis for AB tests, we’re thinking about the unique selling proposition. We’re thinking about the different types of people, the jobs that they’re trying to get done from the job to be jobs, to be done framework and their stages of awareness. So, all this to say is that, I don’t really look at it as there’s just one way of doing that, but there are multiple different layers that you need to look at. The job they’re trying to get done, the persona, the emotional state, the stages of awareness, and where they are in the customer journey.

Micheal Stebbins

And adding an emotional state in there is something that’s really, really useful. And it can be extracted from our conversations with our customers as well. Talia, you mentioned that some of this can be fuel for AB tests. One of the questions that shows up on the exam has to do with, what do we do when an AB test shows inconclusive results– It’s flat, it’s just even, it’s boring, there’s nothing that’s definitive. What’s the next step?

Talia Wolf:

Well, the question is first, how long has the test been running? How many conversions has each one of these variations seen? And where is the test living right now? Are you testing this on a very important page with a lot of traffic, a lot of attention, a lot of conversions, or is this a minute part of the funnel that doesn’t have a huge impact. My go-to is if we run the task for at least three weeks, each variation has seen over 150 conversions and we’re still seeing zilch basically, is to stop the test and reconsider, “Okay, what can we do that’s different?” Or, “Let’s review.” Are there any bugs? Is there anything that isn’t working, let’s go back to our hypothesis and figure out what was the problem that we were actually trying to solve. And did we actually find a solution that addresses the problem that we actually found?

Michael Stebbins:

And in the case of a low volume, let’s say it’s a B2B with a big sale. And our funnel is very slow process. Would you recommend the time that it runs to be a complete buy-cycle? What are some other ways of making sure that we have some statistical significance, even if we have a slow moving process?

Talia Wolf:

You know, I think one thing to remember is that conversion optimization isn’t just about AB testing. It’s a lot to do with the research that you’re performing and getting to know your customers better and their goals. And sometimes it’s not a good idea to run an AB test if you don’t have enough data. However, whenever I run a test, I will definitely run it for at least three weeks so that each variation gets to go through a cycle of two days or three days of the same day. And I try and get as many conversions as possible as mentioned a hundred, 150 conversions per variation, to know that enough people have gone through that process. If you don’t have that amount of data, if you don’t have enough traffic or enough conversions per month, I myself would put more of my focus on doing heuristic analysis, on doing profiles of customers, of analyzing different messaging and unique selling propositions, and doing it in a different way that isn’t necessarily AB testing.

Michael Stebbins:

Talia, what are some ways that a digital marketer can stay up to date?

Talia Wolf:

There definitely are resources that I follow a lot and I follow them due to the testings, the tests that they run and conduct and the hypotheses and their in depth guides and, I guess, breakdowns and templates. The first one would be Copy Hackers by Joanna Wiebe, it is hands down the best resource on the web for copywriting, especially if you want to write conversion copy. My other go-to would be CXL. I love Conversion XL’s articles and all the guides that they put into them, especially the first articles they used to put out, which was mostly Peep’s work. I follow a lot of the work that actually Shopify puts out, which I think is interesting, and as you mentioned, we also have a blog. So, that is where we basically put out a lot of our resources, and guides, and templates, and stuff like that.

Michael Stebbins:

Talia, I know that you teach classes in conversion, tell us about those and where listeners can find them.

Talia Wolf:

We have two courses. Our initial program is called Emotion Sells, which teaches you the basics of how to sell with emotion, meaning how you can optimize your entire funnels, using emotion and psychology, and really getting to know your customers on a profound way so that you have a framework that actually helps you for life. The other program that we have is the Income Engine, and that’s where I show you how to build a funnel from scratch, using a step by step process that I’ve been using for many years now for myself and for my own clients. And both of those could be found on our website, https://getuplift.co.

Michael Stebbins:

Dot C-O, that’s right. 

Well, that is the time we have today and a big thank you to Talia Wolf. Checkout Talia’s classes and consulting on GetUplift.co. There’s also a YouTube channel that has some great information, if you search for Talia there, we’ll include a link in the show notes. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnPLPHDZGi_8uxN-EaH3IA)

Talia, are there any other places where people can engage with you?

Talia Wolf:

I’d say Twitter, as you mentioned, and Instagram, and YouTube.

Michael Stebbins:

Thanks Talia. 

So, what Talia shared here today, is very well aligned with the OMCP standards and the competencies. And some of these things will be on the exam.

I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Marketing Best Practices Podcast. OMCP maintains the certification standards for online marketing industry in cooperation with the industry leaders, just like Talia.  Join us inside of OMCP to maintain your certification, get special offers, and engage with other certified professionals, universities, and in training programs that teach to OMCP standards.

The post Conversion Optimization Practices with Talia Wolf appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this special training series, we interview the leaders of seven digital marketing course providers to learn the differences.

In this episode, Mordy Golding, Director of Content for LinkedIn Learning shares what to expect in LinkedIn Learning training, his own thoughts on the value of certification, and where LinkedIn Learning is headed in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio. With us today is Mordy Golding, Director of Content for LinkedIn Learning. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training and some of the differences you should be aware of. Mordy, welcome.

Mordy Golding:
It is my pleasure to be here.

Michael:
I know you have a great history in graphic design, some time as Adobe’s product manager for Illustrator. Then 15 or so years ago, a jump into education and training. What drove you to make the change?

Mordy Golding:
I don’t know if I would say it’s a jump, I think I maybe fell backwards into it.

Michael:
Join the dark side, if you will.

Mordy Golding:
Yeah. Well, so here’s the thing. I am very passionate about design. I left Adobe and basically went around the world teaching people how to use Adobe software. I was just blown away by the response and how people really kind of came around to valuing … when you leave college or you leave school, you have a certain skillset and that skillset doesn’t end. As new digital tools come out, people need to kind of reinvent how they kind of learn. But more so, technology kind of completely changes your approach to how you do work.

So, I found a lot of people had old mindsets. Digital tools that Adobe was creating really allowed designers to completely think differently about how they do their work. I was friendly with Linda Wyman. I recorded some courses for her online, and realized through the response of the people, from members and from learners, that this was way beyond just design. I think it was an opportunity for me to kind of think about how do we actually take this idea, which I’m always passionate about teaching people something, beyond just graphic design, into really all the topic areas that we cover?

Michael:
Mordy, you’re responsible for all of the content, I believe, that’s in English on LinkedIn Learning.

Mordy Golding:
Correct.

Michael:
Of that spectrum, how do you measure the success of the courses or programs that you deliver?

Mordy Golding:
It’s a great question. I say this a very simple way. We measure success, which is we ask people, was this content worth your time? A lot of companies think about using assessments and test scores, and I’m not saying that those are not valuable, there’s a place for each of those. But high level, because today’s environment requires people to embrace and always be learning attitude. I think it’s more about, does the concept we create actually provide value to the learner? And that’s the metric we go with.

Michael:
What do they tell you?

Mordy Golding:
Well, they tell us that the content is even worth their time or they’re brutal and tell us, “Actually, this course can be better.” I mean, we look at various metrics, engagement and views and social proof, like likes and things like that and member feedback. But again, when we think about how we measure the success of our learning, when you asked me what makes a good course, it’s courses that have higher than an 85% or 90% approval rating. That approval rating comes straight from a question that we ask in our post-course surveys, which is, was this course worth your time?

Michael:
You cover a wide range of topics. I know that you have a wide range of participants in the program. Who would be the ideal candidate coming into a business or marketing course that you offer?

Mordy Golding:
So, the primary audience are people who are motivated to advance their careers, and that comes in multiple ways. If you’re already in marketing today, you need to keep up with all the new technology and the new tools, the new trends. It’s not just tech itself, right? It’s how people are doing marketing these days. So it’s ideas, it’s keeping on top of things. So you need to be able to do your job better, and we call that advancing your existing career.

If you are in a role that interfaces with other people, maybe who do marketing, you need to know a little bit about their world. So watching a couple of courses on marketing could help you better communicate and collaborate with those teams. Then of course, there are people who are right now kind of making decisions about what they want to do with their career or what you might call a career switcher. “Today I’m doing X and I would love to do marketing in the future.” There are courses that people will take to help them make that decision or help them get started in marketing.

Michael:
There are a lot of courses out there in digital marketing and marketing in general. What are some of the things people will find in LinkedIn courses that they won’t find somewhere else?

Mordy Golding:
That is a fantastic question. We continuously look at all the great stuff that’s out there. I would go just more towards what learners tell us about why they watch our content, and the main reason why is our consistent quality. We have a very broad range of courses, something like over 200 marketing courses alone in our library. But in our English language library, we have over 6,000 courses total across all of our topic areas. But we are known for having very consistent quality. We carefully vet every instructor that teaches on our platform.

We create most of the content on our platform, we abide by strict and instructional design and scientific learning ideals and principles in our content. So people know that they can come to our library, and no matter what course they choose to watch, they can get a consistent learning experience. So that high level, I think what you’ll find in our library that you will not find elsewhere, it’s a very broad and deep library that is consistent in its quality. On top of that, there are certain things that we have that I think you won’t find elsewhere. Primarily certain instructors, people who, we as LinkedIn, can kind of work closely with, to learn from.

You’re familiar probably with the idea that there are influencers on LinkedIn’s platform. There are certain courses we have from top notch instructors. Jonah Berger, who’s a professor at Wharton, for example, has courses on how to make a video go viral. There’s a great course we have with Neil Blumenthal from Warby Parker, on his story and how he kind of took that company to success. That’s just a few examples of some of the instructors that you would find in our platform that you won’t find elsewhere.

Michael:
Mordy, if you were to take LinkedIn out of the judging role, who do you look up to or admire or think is doing training right outside of LinkedIn?

Mordy Golding:
Outside of LinkedIn, meaning just marketing content? Or really anybody in it, for learning content in general?

Michael:
Any learning content. If somebody’s got a system or methodology or philosophy, delivery, anything that just inspires you. You look over the fence and you’re like, “Wow, they’ve got that right,” or it’s just cool. What catches your attention?

Mordy Golding:
Great question. I will say that we provide a certain type of training and we do that very well, which is video based training. Our content is, again, it’s a broad library of videos, that is pretty much like you self-select into it. They’re not live training, it’s not interactive, in terms of you working directly with somebody else in a live environment. So, that I think serves a very specific need and it’s a very powerful way for you to get information that you want.

But there’s plenty of other ways to learn that do involve being in front of somebody else. I’ve always loved what General Assembly does, where they actually have bootcamps. They’re providing a tremendous amount of material in a short amount of time to help you get a job. If that’s ultimately what your goal is, that’s a great way to do it. I am in love with some of the work that Seth Godin has been doing through his old MBA program or his seminar workshops, where he builds cohorts and he actually provides them with a lot of hands-on get something done in the next hour together. That type of team environment of hands-on of approach is something that is incredibly valuable and is very effective.

But again, they go towards different needs. So, those are two examples of I see people who are doing great stuff out there. But I don’t think one replaces the other, I think they’re all a full package. If you are a person who is very serious about having a successful career, you probably know that you probably need a little bit of everything.

Michael:
Mordy, when somebody completes a tough course, it’s valuable to get a certificate, shows that they completed it. When somebody studies a platform, like you mentioned Hootsuite or even Google Ads or Google Analytics or something like that, a tool, we also think that that’s very valuable. Then we see industry certification as a separate category. Somebody has to prove their skills, they have to prove their experience, they have to verify their training before they earn the certification. So PMI for project management might fall into that category or frankly OMCP falls into that category. What are your thoughts on industry certifications like that?

Mordy Golding:
Well, I have a pretty strong personal opinion on this topic area, only because I have always been the kind of person who is intrinsically motivated to do well at what I do. Ultimately, the person who judges how good I do work is myself. So I don’t necessarily need another certifying body to tell me that I’m doing a good job and that I know certain material, I know myself if I know it or not. That being said, to your point by there are certain industries that value or that require certification and that there is actual value for it, and those are obviously areas that are more regulated.

NASABA’s CPA requirement, for example, is a good one. If you’re an accountant, I want to know that that person knows how to do their taxes and is fiscally sound and doing their work. IT security is a good example, where people do need to have certifications. But then I know Adobe has certain certifications, and it’s nice to have, but for me, it’s just more about proving to yourself that you know that material.

So the way that I look at it for the most part is, if you feel that the work that you’re doing is judged by your skillset and again, whoever you’re hiring, whoever you’re looking to work at a company for, for example. If they need to know that you have a certain set of skills, and certification I think is important. So I think it comes down to just a personal preference. Certain industries require it more than others and certain people value that kind of stuff more than others.

Michael:
Mordy, in terms of teaching business processes, like digital marketing, what is your vision for the future and how we’re going to convey those things through courses?

Mordy Golding:
Well, first of all, I think there’s just the idea of people embracing this idea that after you leave school, there still is ongoing learning that happens all the time. I think that people are starting to embrace that more and more. Most of the people who watch LinkedIn Learning courses actually access that content through a subscription that their employer provides for the employee. So, a large part of our business is selling to organizations, who then make that learning available to their employees.

So, that acknowledgment right there, that an employer is saying, “I’m willing to actually invest in the development of my employees and my company, even after we’ve hired them.” Right? So, going back to that certification thing. “I see that you’re a certified, that’s why I’ll hire you, or that might be a reason why I might hire you. But then even while you’re here, I expect you to continue that learning process and still get better at your job,” right?

So even that idea that right now we embrace this idea of always be learning type of mindset, a growth mindset, if you will. That I think is one part about where I see continued acceleration in that area, where people now believe that just coming out of school you have a degree, that you still need to continue learning.

I think another aspect though is how that actually happens. For there, I would say the vision is that learning becomes more of a social activity. So in the past, maybe I take a course completely by myself online, which a lot of people can do today, thanks to the Khan Academies, the Courseras of the worlds. Previously in the dot com, now LinkedIn Learning, uDemy…all these places, right? Allow anybody who was motivated to take control over their own life and learn something.

But I think that as learning itself becomes something that is more socially applicable in people’s lives and people embrace that idea, maybe in the past people would say, “I don’t know if I should admit that I don’t know this information.” This idea that we are constantly always learning and learning new things, again, that growth mindset, I think is going to help drive this entire industry forward. That social element extends beyond just sharing the fact that you’re learning, but also that idea of having study groups, having discussion forums, having people talk about what they’re learning.

It’s a process, right? There’s a lot of topic areas that employees at companies today, and this extends into marketing or to other areas. Five years ago, if you were a person in marketing, did you care much about Instagram? No, but nowadays you do, right? New tools are coming up all the time, new ways of viral marketing or new ways of establishing the social presence for companies today are top of mind. Because of that, it’s forcing companies to also embrace other things like leadership.

Because now every company has a social profile, if some person at a company does something that it maybe is inappropriate, that can become public very quickly, and that means that companies now need to embrace this idea of everyone at a company being a leader, everyone understanding things like emotional intelligence. These are topic areas that I think right now that everyone needs to embrace. So this idea of the world becomes more social, learning is a key part of that.

Michael:
Mordy, the OMCA course that LinkedIn has out is generating very good pass rates for the exams here at OMCP. Congratulations for that. The next section that we talk about is a stats blitz, it deals with numbers. Folks like to know how many participants have been in your digital marketing courses over the last three years?

Mordy Golding:
Do you want an exact number? Or do you want a rounded number?

Michael:
We’ll take an exact. But if we can’t get that, we’ll settle for rounded.

Mordy Golding:
Let’s just say a little bit over 1.1 million people have taken marketing courses in the last few years.

Michael:
Thank you for that. How many people have graduated? Or can you apply your ratio to that?

Mordy Golding:
Well, we don’t really track course completion. Again, that’s mainly because our approach is that the learner themselves decides how much they want to engage in a course. Sometimes just watching half of course gives them what they need. We don’t even track … at least I don’t look at numbers to know how many people have downloaded certificates of completion. I couldn’t tell you for sure. On average, I would say, what, 30% or 40% of people finish courses? So, take that as a number.

Michael:
I know this next number is going to be very large. How many hours of training can somebody find on digital marketing inside of LinkedIn Learning?

Mordy Golding:
We have over 450 hours of digital marketing training. It doesn’t mean that you should take all of it, you should take the stuff that’s right for you. But at least that means that there’s a broad enough number of courses that are there with the depth that you would need.

Michael:
You know Mordy, the course that LinkedIn has for OMCA, the instructor was Matt Bailey. I think he did a great job.

Mordy Golding:
Love Matt.

Michael:
The thing that disturbed us a little bit, was that it was just shy of four hours. The normal didactic requirement for OMCA preparation is 26. What we liked is, and what actually allowed us to make the exception, is that the course pointed to various [additional] tracks that somebody could go down, of good quality content, if they wanted to, if they felt the need. So we took the chance to approve the program and it’s worked out very well.

Mordy, from your position watching learners go through and the volumes that you have, what advice would you have for learners out there?

Mordy Golding:
My advice is to stay curious. I always say I have a curiosity bug. I just love the idea of learning and I think about adjacencies, right? You may be a person who’s in digital marketing, but in order to exceed at your job, you probably need to know a little bit about design and maybe a little bit about business strategy. We see that people who are most successful on our platform, the people who engage a lot, are people who have very broad learning … now I can’t think of the word that I’m thinking of. References. They learn a lot of different things, right?

So there are a lot of people that come in and will watch a lot of marketing courses, but then there are people who will come in and watch the same amount of content. But a little bit of marketing, like I said, a little of design, a little bit of finance. It’s the people who have much broader perspective on learning are the ones that end up being more successful. So my advice is that people should just stay curious and sometimes be open to learning things that are a little bit outside of your initial topic area.

Michael:
I think it’d be interesting to see if the algorithms inside of LinkedIn could take a guess at what alternate subjects might build somebody’s career and advise people to go, even if it’s something that you wouldn’t expect on a normal track.

Mordy Golding:
Well, that’s one of the benefits of watching content on LinkedIn Learning. It’s beyond just the courses itself. But we are on a social platform, on the largest economic graph, so we get to benefit from what other people are learning as well, and we see what jobs they’re in. When you take courses on LinkedIn Learning, we make recommendations to other people who are in like situations as you are, see people with the same job title or the same industry. So you get this ability to kind of have us curate content that is on that fringe area of your expertise, and gives you guidance on where you should go next.

Michael:
That’s excellent. Mordy, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Mordy Golding:
My pleasure.

Michael:
You can sign up for the courses at LinkedIn Learning at LinkedIn, and LinkedIn Learning, specifically. I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast, where we’ve done a special section on training courses specific to digital marketing.

OMCP maintains the certification standards for online marketing industry, in cooperation with industry leaders just like Mordy and LinkedIn Learning. We’ll look forward to having you in the next OMCP podcast.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison LinkedIn Learning appeared first on OMCP.

Google’s recent updates are leaning heavily towards knowledge-based search. How does it work and how should our content be optimized for it?  What signals are they looking for for inclusion in the knowledge graph? Find out here in this interview with SEO and Google patent analyst Bill Slawski who is also Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, and author at SEO by the Sea. Here Bill covers knowledge graph usage, ontology based images, augmented queries based on knowledge graphs, and how to stay up to date with the changes in search.

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support. Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to get new episodes.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP Studio, and with us today is Bill Slawski, Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, author at SEO by the Sea. Bill, welcome to the OMCP Best Practices Podcast.

Bill Slawski:
Thank you for having me here, Michael.

Michael:
We know your blog SEO by the Sea for your insights on algorithm interpretation based on patents. We know you’re the director of research at Go Fish Digital, but some may not know he studied law, but before we get started, for those who haven’t read your blog or followed your Twitter or heard you speak, tell our audience something we don’t know about you, and what it is you’ve been working on lately.

Bill Slawski:
Okay. I graduated from law school just before the web came round, and I was interested in environmental law. And one of my professors was rewriting a paper he had written previously and updating it on finding electronic sources of information to do natural resource damage assessment. Sources like LexisNexis and so on. And eventually that became just like the web. So I had an introduction to the electronic databases that were in the world before there was a web, which was an interesting experience.

Michael:
So you were, in some ways, helping categorize knowledge from the start. What brought you into the digital era?

Bill Slawski:
So I had a friend who was a service manager at a car dealership, and he hated his job. He couldn’t stand it. I was reading a book on how to incorporate people in Delaware and be the registered agent as a business. The only technical requirement for performing that job was having a postal address in Delaware, so you can receive notice of process in case there was a lawsuit against one of these companies. So the idea was, you charge people to be the registered agent, you act as a registered agent, and register with the Department of Corporations for the state. I suggested it to him. He said, “Well that sounds like good idea, except I don’t have a website,” and I said, “Well, let me see what I can do about that,” and I learned HTML in two weeks and spent two weeks and built a website.

Michael:
And since then, you’ve helped countless businesses set up strategy for SEO. You’re considered an authority on how search engines work. So it just makes sense that we’re going to cover how marketers can understand how engines handle knowledge base, data queries and results. So Bill, I think you might agree that a primary competency, and we use this in OMCP, is that SEOs need to track the changes in how engines present information from knowledge bases. What kind of things should we be looking at?

Bill Slawski:
A knowledge base is a source of knowledge like Wikipedia or the Internet Movie Database. It’s focused topical information on a particular subject. A lot of the concepts within those knowledge bases are connected in one way or another. That connection, the way they’re connected is how you come up with the concept of a Knowledge Graph, where facts are connected to each other, entities within the Knowledge Graph have relationships with other entities and with facts.

A Knowledge Graph is a step beyond a knowledge base. And Knowledge Graphs are really popular these days. There’s lots of activity from not just Google, but Amazon, Microsoft, somebody from Google came out with the paper on personal Knowledge Graphs recently, where he talked about individuals who have their own Knowledge Graphs that cater to their particular interests. So if you have an electronic bicycle, it might have information on electronic bicycles and how to repair them. So you have a personal search, which is based upon your historic search data. So a personal Knowledge Graph might be based upon your personal search history.

Michael:
And I could even present it or maintain it myself?

Bill Slawski:
The paper didn’t really go into that much detail about how it might be managed by an individual, but that potentially could be something that could be done.

Michael:
So a way to think about how a search engine might be viewing the searcher?

Bill Slawski:
Right. And I also brought it up because when we talk about the Google Knowledge Graph, we think of it as one, but it’s possible Google uses lots of Knowledge Graphs.

Michael:
And would one way that they build that be based on how we ask questions?

Bill Slawski:
It might be based upon the approach that they’re using to answer questions.

So there are some approaches that they use where they look at the Knowledge Graph, and they try to match up what words are in your query and to known entities and facts about those entities and they’ll answer, “the capital of Poland is Warsaw.” Because that’s something that the Knowledge Graph got from colon delimited table in Wikipedia, and it knows the answer. But they might try an approach where a Knowledge Graph and question answering is done by creating Knowledge Graphs specifically for that question. So they’ll take your query, and I’ll do a search using Google, and they’ll find maybe the top 10% of results that are appropriate for the meaning of your query. And they’ll build a Knowledge Graph out of those, and then they’ll find the answer. So they could be building lots of Knowledge Graphs on a regular basis, which they could then incorporate into the big Knowledge Graph.

Michael:
And how can we track those changes and what’s new with Google and what they’re doing?

Bill Slawski:
We can’t necessarily track the Knowledge Graph itself. We can see some things. At one point in time, Google was using a database, a knowledge base that they acquired from Metaweb called Freebase to act as Knowledge Graph. Before Freebase, Google had something that they were referring to as the annotation framework, which had a browsable fact repository, which was their Knowledge Graph. There was no way to track the browsable fact repository. Sometimes we’d hear statistics about Freebase and how many facts it contained, how many entities it contained. Often it was in the billions. They gave up on retaining Freebase because it was a human edited project, and there were people in Germany building something called Wikidata, which was very much like Freebase, except there was a lot of enthusiasm for it, and it was working really well. It was growing quickly.

It’s possible they may be working towards trying to go past that by maybe automating the process of building Knowledge Graph and knowledge bases. The process I talked about where they’re doing question answering, using individual knowledge bases or an individual knowledge graphs, which they could then incorporate into a larger Knowledge Graph would be one way.

It’s possible they could find a news source that that has formatting that’s easy for them to extract entities from, and relationships between entities and properties and attributes, like DeepMind was doing that with the Daily Mail and CNN because the format made it real easy for them to take that information and put it into a Knowledge Graph. so at some point, it’s a matter of Google bot reading the web, grabbing information, driving facts from it, and putting those into a Knowledge Graph.

Michael:
How do images play into this?

Bill Slawski:
There have been a couple approaches historically. About seven or eight years ago, Google started using what’s referred to as machine IDs, identifiers from the Freebase project for entities that there are images of. So, if you did an image search where you search for a known entity, like a band, like the Beatles, you would say, “The Beatles.” That’s a machine ID and a string of characters and letters. Let’s find all the results that match that. So it wouldn’t necessarily have to look for images, it would look for images that are tagged, that are labeled with that machine ID.

And those machine IDs are now used to places like Google Lens. So if you take a picture of a band and you a search in Google Lens using that picture of that band, Google can recognize who that is doing object recognition, and say the entity ID for that is such and such, let’s see if there are any webpages for it. It finds event schema that says that the band is touring in certain places, and they’ll tell you what the tour dates are for that band. What the costs of tickets are, and it’s smart about entities.

Michael:
You and I were just touching on ontology based image categories. Tell us a little bit about that.

Bill Slawski:
So if you do a search, if you’re in the United States, if you’re a fan of history, this was kind of fascinating. You search for a president, like John F. Kennedy, and you can see events that happened during Kennedy’s life, and image categories because the categories are all ontology based. They’re all about other entities or places or times that are associated with the query term that you used. So if you search for Harry S. Truman, you’ll see stuff about World War II. If you search for John F. Kennedy, you’ll see things from Dallas and the Grassy Knoll. If you search for Donald Trump, you’ll see caricatures from Time Magazine.

Michael:
And this built on top of what was kind of the Freebase ID?

Bill Slawski:
The ontologies aren’t necessarily based on the Freebase ID. They are based upon, possibly, a knowledge of related entities, but they tend to be based upon things like queried logs, so it might be associated with certain individuals or places. So if you search for Carlsbad, California, where I’m at, you’ll see a category that’s for Lego Land, which is an amusement center a couple miles from here. You’ll see images of the beach, because I’m not too far from the beach, thank God.

Michael:
Bill, let’s talk a little bit about augmented queries based on Knowledge Graphs.

Bill Slawski:
So the concept of augmentation is that Google may find ways to merge the organic web search results that you’ve seen with something else. So there are augmented paid search results, where Google may show you a geographic location extensions with your organic search results. So if your organic search results have entities in them, brand names, for instance, Google might show advertisements from the seen brands that are augmented in some ways, they offer the advertiser the chance to expand upon those by including things like images. Things are for sale, locations of the nearest stores.

In addition to the paid search results, Google may augment search results with knowledge base type information. If there’s an entity in your query, Google might say, let’s show the Knowledge Graph results, or let’s show a knowledge panel result for that entity. Let’s show POS questions for that entity, structured snippets. So you’re going to get more than just the 12 blue links like you used to have before there was universal search. And universal search, that patent was updated to go beyond just showing news and images and videos and what results to all kinds of results, which include the Knowledge Graphs results. So if you do a query for Amazon, you’ll see a bunch of related entities showing, you’ll see, people also ask questions, a Knowledge Graph for Amazon, and a bunch of knowledge related items within those results.

Michael:
Which even more underscores a need for us to present structured data. Now, Bill, you and I, we were chatting at Pubcon a few weeks ago. We were discussing relevance of content. I think it’s known, you and I both agree that SEOs have to pursue genuine relevance, that genuinely relevant content wins in the long run.

Bill Slawski:
Right.

Michael:
It’s also important for us to know how to signal that relevance to the engines, and specifically, because we’ve been talking about knowledge based data, what are the engines looking for in the context of knowledge based data?

Bill Slawski:
So when you include things like schema on page, or you have a fact-based table instead of a layout based table, one that has headers that are labeled certain things, like names of cities, or parts for electronic equipment, like TVs are really big in eCommerce, and they’re often laid out in tables on eCommerce websites. That structured data, the JSON-LD or the metadata is considered structured data too, as well as the table data. Those augmentation queries I was talking about, there is a type of augmentation query that looks for structured data to possibly include with the results for regular queries. So if you search for 8K TVs, you might see a bunch of pictures of 8K TVs. You might see structured data from a website, from tables, whatever, and structured snippets that maybe show a snippet for a page.

And then facts from the tables on that page. Underneath it, there’s a schema for plumbers, and 1D [embedded] additions to schema markup, one of the attributes that they added recently was “known for”. So, a “known for” is something that expresses some type of expertise. So if you’re a plumber who knows about drain repair, you could have, in your schema, that you’re a plumber and that you know about drain repair.

And if somebody searches for, say you’re in Los Angeles, someone searches for Los Angeles plumber and Google says we’re going to augment these results, we’re going to include some of the stuff from the schema for the page, like this fact that this plumber knows about drain repair. So they’ll show a result where they let you know that the plumber knows about drain repair, which, if that’s what a person is searching for a plumber wants to see, it may bring somebody to you.

Michael:
And they might’ve done a prior search, right? And the context of the Knowledge Graph saying that they were looking for drain repair at first, and then a subsequent search looking for plumber in a particular region. Do you believe that that could be combined to give an enhanced result?

Bill Slawski:
I think that’s very possible. Yeah.

Michael:
Now, beyond Google, we know that Amazon, Microsoft are making some headway in these areas as well. Is there anything we should be looking at there?

Bill Slawski:
So, Microsoft has a concept based graph, and I like looking at these things when I do a site audit, I’ll look at the Knowledge Graph on Google, I’ll look at the Knowledge Graph, it’s not known as a Knowledge Graph on Bing, but they have them. And see what it contains, how might be different from the one on Google. Because sometimes what you get in a Knowledge Graph isn’t necessarily what you want. Had a client who was a car dealership and their Knowledge Graph showed their repair shop, which they didn’t want. They wanted to sell more cars, right? So they didn’t want the Knowledge Graph showing the repair shop. So make sure the Knowledge Graph shows what you want to show. And now it’s just a matter of contacting Google through the feedback form and letting them know that they chose the wrong thing to show.

Michael:
They give us a chance to say how we want that to be. Also, I know that Google provides tools to test our structured data. Where else do you suggest that we go to make sure that we’re presenting properly?

Bill Slawski:
So in addition to the structured data testing tool and the rich results tool that Google’s offers, they’re including things in the Google search console, which lets you look at all the pages on your site in a glance. So if you have maybe a mistake with one page, if you want to catch it, that may be a good way to catch it, because it’s all accumulated there.

Michael:
Any other tools to check our site or to spot errors?

Bill Slawski:
The tools from a place like Google give you a sense of what Google might be looking for. Google might interpret the schema on your webpage in a certain way, that a different source might interpret it, like one of the guys who worked on JSON-LD for the W3C created a linter, which is a way of validating JSON. And I’ve used it in the past, I don’t use it when I’m looking at schema for Google because I’m not quite sure that the way it validates schema markup is the same as the way Google validates scheme markup. And I want to check what they validate or the structured data testing tool or the rich results tool. Right.

Michael:
Bill, we know that these things are changing over time. If you were to advise an SEO on staying up to date with these developments and how the engines are handling these, where would you suggest they look?

Bill Slawski:
The first place might involve reading an additional 20 or 30 emails a month, which is a W3C schema mailing list. And it discusses new updates to schema and new releases. Updated schema is now coming out about once a month, so it’s a quickly developing a part of SEO. In addition to new schema, new attributes and schema covering certain things, is the ability for people to provide extensions for schema. So GS1 is an international organization that works with lots and lots of manufacturers and distributors, and they’re the ones who developed commercial barcodes. They’ve developed some schema markup for eCommerce, and they’ve got a GS1 wizard to help you write that schema.

And that’s one of the extensions for schema. There was another schema that came out last year that was from the financial industry. It’s a FIBO, F-I-B-O. Financial, industry, business ontology. And its schema is for banks and for businesses that service loans.

Michael:
All right, Bill, these have been great practices. I really appreciate it. Many of the concepts that we’ve covered will be on the exam, specifically in the practices of staying up to date with these [changes] and providing relevant signals. Any final guidelines that applied to how engines handle knowledge based data?

Bill Slawski:
So, this isn’t new material. This is something that has been part of Google since the earliest days. When Larry Page came out with the page rank algorithm in 1998, Sergey Brin filed a patent, which was possibly the second patent from Google on an algorithm, which you referred to is a DIPRE, D-I-P-R-E, which has to do with patterns and relationships, where he identified five books, the publishers, the authors, the lengths of the books. And the algorithm was supposed to find those books on websites, and if it can find all five of them on a website, it was supposed to collect factual information about all the other books on same websites. And it was a way of crawling the web for facts and for relationships. So I mention relationships, we were talking about relevance and relationships between entities and properties is sort of the new relevance when it comes to Knowledge Graphs, knowledge bases.

Bill Slawski:
Google will look for information to try to gauge a confidence level between an entity and a fact about an entity. Mickey Mantle was a baseball player. 87% chance of that being true, according to everything it’s crawled in the web, and it looks at freshness of sites, it looks at reliability, it looks at popularity and it learns from sites, which things are more likely true about entities than not. So when you’re talking about things like medical sites, that talk about science and whether or not there’s a scientific consensus for a concept. Google tries to get an idea of what information is relevant, is up to date, is more likely than not to be true, based upon creating what they refer to as association scores for that information. It might be saying, “Okay, we have lots of medical information from the National Institute of Health, and from PubMed about certain topics like treatments for different diseases, and they’re likely more true than not. So if we have other sites that are referring us to different things, we’re going to have less confidence in those.

Michael:
That is the time that we have today. A big thank you to Bill Slawsky, check out Bill’s posts at seobythesea.com. Also, I know that Bill posts on gofishdigital.com, you can search for him there and see his posts. They’re quite illuminating. Be sure to see Bill speaking at Pubcon and other conferences. Bill, I think you mentioned that you’re going to be speaking in Italy next. Where else can people engage with you?

Bill Slawski:
The only real place I have left to speak this year is in Italy, it’s my last conference.

Michael:
Which conference is that?

Bill Slawski:
It’s SMXL. Milan.

Michael:
All right. In Milan. All right, a great place to go. I hope you enjoy your trip out there.

Well thanks very much Bill. Listeners, what Bill shared today is definitely aligned with the OMCP standards of digital marketing competencies, and some of this will show up on the exam. I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast. OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with industry leaders, just like Bill. Join us inside of OMCP to maintain your certification, get some good offers, and engage with other certified professionals, universities and training programs that teach to OMCP standards.

The post SEO Knowledge-based Search with Bill Slawski – Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast from OMCP appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this Winter 2019 education series, we interview the leaders of seven digital marketing course providers to learn the differences.

Richard Townsend, CEO of Circus Street was kind enough to sit with us and share what the industry can expect from his company and training courses; now and in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio and with us today is Richard Townsend, CEO and cofounder of Circus Street. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training and some of the differences you should be aware of. Richard, welcome.

Richard:
Hello!

Michael:
I’m glad you’re with us today. So, Circus Street has been a good success story in digital marketing training. You and your co founder started this—how long ago?

Richard:
It was about eight or nine years ago. We started building a pilot about nine years ago and then we launched that pilot eight years ago.

Richard:
Essentially, we saw an opportunity within the marketplace, so we could see from my experience working in digital marketing and in marketing generally, that there was very low levels of understanding about what appeared to be a growing subject. We could see that it was much larger than most companies thought it would be in terms of the levels of knowledge required in the businesses that we were going to work with. And we knew that technology had to be part of the answer to that problem.

Michael:
Were you providing services prior to that and just educating your customer and it grew out of that?

Richard:
So essentially I was a digital marketer working in an agency. I was head of digital for a company called Starcom Mediavest with part of the Publicis group in the UK. And my brother was working in an online learning business, but his background had been more in the mobile networks in the mobile industry, but it happened to end up as an MD for a learning business who had a mobile product. I’d started to do some consultancy and part of that was sitting in rooms with senior folk and discussing digital, which became sort of the basis of the training program because it was clear that many of them had very low levels of knowledge around the subject, technology in general, how technology was impacting on marketing and then digital marketing. And so we could then see that there was this emerging opportunity, but that what we needed to do was solve a problem that existed within learning from an online learning perspective, which was most online learning that we’d seen in most of our learners had seen at that point, wasn’t very good.

Michael:
Just in the last few years I can think of two companies, at least, that have been recognized for training practice success and they were customers of Circus Street. How do you measure the success of your courses and programs?

Richard:
There’s a number of ways really. I mean, the companies that work with us, they will often use our pre and post testing. We test people on the way into lessons and then once they’ve finished the lesson and obviously that gives them a knowledge uplift. We measure completion, so completion is a key stat for us because it shows how much people engaged in the learning. We ask a number of questions around the satisfaction of learning through our product. We use questionnaires towards the end of the lessons on a randomized sample, which gives us a kind of like a net promoter score figure. We also rate every lesson. We ask learners to rate every lesson, again through a randomized sample, but the big one for us really, because we work a lot with companies and large organizations, the thing that we know makes a big difference is if we’re able to demonstrate behavioral change.

There are a number of behaviors, particularly around the subjects that we’re teaching that we need to change. So raising the floor, raising the ceiling, increasing performance in specific areas. So things like we want to invest more in digital channels and a bit less in TV type thing, or get the proportion right, driving innovation, breaking down silos. You know, lots of the organizations that we have they have silos and the future for them is that digital is something that works across the organization. Then, the other thing is attracting and retaining talent. What we do is we demonstrate that we can do those things and we measure those things.

Michael:
And I remember Bayer and I think it was Mediacom underscored those benefits as well as we got a chance to look into their usage. Richard, you mentioned that bigger companies and corporations often are the ones using your product. Who is the ideal customer for the courses from Circus Street?

Richard:
The ideal customer is usually a very large organization with large international marketing teams because the problem that we’re solving is that digital is a fast moving subject. It affects a lot of people across a lot of borders. It’s a difficult problem for most large organizations to solve. And so that’s the problem that we’re solving. So often we’re talking about multiple thousands of people in marketing. It can be used for much smaller companies, but our sort of top 50-75 customers are the ones that represent the vast majority of our revenue.

Michael:
Early on, Richard, you chose a very engaging interactive format for your video lessons. I remember seeing that years and years ago. What else will participants find in your courses that they’re very unlikely to find in other courses?

Richard:
Yeah, I think that is the key thing really. There’s a famous futurologist called Marshall McLuhan (and they find that he’s more quotable than he is readable if I’m honest), but he was the guy that came up with the phrase, “The medium is the message.” And another phrase that struck a chord with us was, “Those people who think that education and entertainment are different industries know little about either.”

Richard:
It’s been a guiding principle of ours since we set up the company. It’s funny because I just got a quote today from a learner that came in, was originally at Proctor and Gamble, but has moved to one of our other clients, and I won’t mention the other [training] company that they’re referring to in this quote, but it’ll give you an idea of what people get from using Circus Street that they don’t get from other products. They said, “To be super transparent. About a year, year and a half ago, we had two digital training programs deployed. One was Circus Street, the other was [XXX]. Circus Street blows it away. Most of my team was on the pilot and it was very painful to get dedicate time to and get through [the other course]. Kudos to you guys. It’s much more engaging. You track a lot better versus competitive programs that we’ve had previously. You can quote it. You can record it.” They said, “XXX was a very painful experience, [but] I did it because I was required to. But Circus Street I do because I learn.”

I think that’s the thing. When we were designing the product, we always thought of three separate disciplines. So technology, the visual arts and education and most companies that develop online learning tend to come from a background of one of those things. If you’re an educator, you probably don’t know a huge amount about developing, engaging content or technology. If you’re a technology provider, you’re normally an LMS and those things are usually a box or a clever box to deliver somebody else’s content. And if you’re great at content, you’re normally a production company. With Circus Street, it’s the synthesizing of those three disciplines into a learner experience that we measure. That means that what people find is that they learn things that are really relevant. They’re easy to apply, that make a difference to their job, but they have a fun time while they’re doing it and it’s engaging and it’s pleasurable. And that’s just really important.

Michael:
Richard, you mentioned that education and entertainment are tied to each other beyond Circus Street. Who in the industry do you think is doing training right?

Richard:
It’s an interesting one because in the corporate world, I think that we’re really just started to see companies take this on. There aren’t too many businesses within the corporate world that we tend to follow. We actually follow businesses, learning companies and products that are in sort of different sectors and different areas. One that I really like and the team really likes is a company called Duo Lingo. I don’t know if you know Duo Lingo. It’s a learning app that teaches languages.

They’re right up there to deliver an effective learning platform because it’s a very efficient learning experience and they’ve just cracked the ability to deliver knowledge and learning almost exclusively through an interactive experience. With our lessons, many of our lessons are combination of content and interactivity, which works really well, but those other areas where if you use interactivity and gamification in the right way, you can deliver a really effective and efficient learning experience. That’s something that we’re going to be concentrating on more as we go forward.

Michael:
What are your thoughts on an industry certification standard like OMCP for digital marketing?

Richard:
I think essentially it’s vital because you’re able to offer a stamp of quality that helps to create consistency of things like language and terminology, which is really important so that people recognize in an area like digital that there is a consistent language that can be used across organizations. I mentioned before that we’re trying to do things like break down silos. Language is really important for that. They also act as a motivation for the learner. Just because like any other qualification having a widely recognized sample of approval is useful and tradable for the learner. It’s a very important part of the industry and we look to work with organizations like the OMCP wherever, whenever we can.

Michael:
Well, congratulations by the way, on the approval of the courses. It was a delight to go through them and to ensure that they cover the subset of digital marketing that’s covered by the standard. Going back to some of the methodologies for conveying information, Richard, for you and the company, what’s next? What’s the future of training and digital marketing?

Richard:
And for us, we have four pillars really that we focus on, which are about that keep us on track in terms of our a product strategy. One is inspiring. So being inspiring, which is about being visually impactful from engaging and surprising. Two is relevant and applied. It’s being current, easy to apply and effective. Three is accessible. It needs to fit into people’s lives. People’s lives have never been busier and more complex, certainly in a work setting. Many organizations are still not prioritizing learning in the way that they should and will need to. We have to make learning that will fit into people’s very busy, complex lives and then easy to use. A big focus for us is simple and elegant interfaces combined with easily discoverable content. They’re the areas and I suppose for us, the way that that will work is in the next year we’ll be focusing on micro learning.

We’ll be launching our spotlight lessons soon. Our main lessons will be rebranded as features. We’re kind of playing on the film industry a little bit, which will enable staff with a lot of fun with messaging and branding. But spotlight lessons are up to 10 minutes long. There’s no pre and post testing. They’ll work really well designed very specifically for mobile gamification. We’re going to be launching shorter interactive lessons, inspired by the Duo Lingo type experience. And then mobile. We just redesigned our lesson player and we will be doing a full redesign of the mobile app, which will be coming out next year, which is user centered design, which will basically enhance the learner experience. They’re the areas that we see now. It’s about making learning more enjoyable, more accessible, more inspiring.

Michael:
Richard, this is the part where we do a stats blitz. We ask you some numbers and ask that you can share the ones that you’re allowed to. First one, how many participants in the digital marketing courses over the last three years?

Richard:
Over the last three years, I don’t have that stat to hand. In the last seven years, we’ve done between 100-150 thousand learners. The vast majority of those, certainly over half of those, will have been the last three years. Just because the nature of how quickly our businesses is growing and the number of courses that are being used.

Michael:
And of those, how many graduates? How many made it to the very end?

Richard:
Well, we have a very high percentage of completion. The majority of those people will have graduated.

Michael:
Yes. I remember Bayer had a incredibly high completion rate as well. And that’s one of the things that made them stand out.

If we were to measure… Somebody’s coming into the program to learn digital marketing, how many hours of training or an interaction should they expect to have available to them?

Richard:
By the end of this year it’s going to be somewhere in the region of 100 hours of content broken up by our main fee to lessons and then, our micro lessons. Then, within the platform itself, there are other areas of learning like case studies, expert videos and all of those things combined. It’s about 100 hours of content.

Michael:
Founder’s choice, what’s the statistic that you’d like to share that we didn’t ask for?

Richard:
We touched on it a second ago, but completion for us is something that we’re like really proud of. So, our average completion rate and completion for us is if someone has been given an allocation of lessons, they’ve completed all of those lessons. Our average completion is 85%. One of our largest clients, a large FMCG company, which I won’t name, they gave the curriculum to five and a half thousand marketers in 110 countries, 23 lessons on average each and they achieved a 99% completion rate. I think they’re the closest they ever got prior to that in terms of completion was about 30-35%, so it’s kind of a game-changing stat for us.

Michael:
I’d say so. If you had to decide the ratio of credit to give to that, obviously a big portion of that goes to he engagement value of the courses in the material, but some of it I think goes to the learning development team and in the group behind that, who I know you partner with closely, how would you distribute the credit?

Richard:
Absolutely. I think that’s the right word. It’s a partnership. Within Circus Street, we also have a very large team of people that their job is to help the learning team to ensure that the learning from Circus Street is being engaged with at scale across borders. We have an entire team that’s just focused on doing that and they’re almost like an extension of the learning team, but absolutely the good thing for us is that we’re often dealing with global learning teams and global HR teams and we’ve often engaged very senior stakeholders at sea level. All of those people together, we’ll make sure that the learning is being received in the right way, is keeping given the right level of importance and that they will drive through completion as well. It’s a true partnership really. I suppose it’s 50-50 if you were to look at it that way.

More than now with Circus Street, is that if they do all the things like create a communication plan, drive it through, encourage learners to learn, they know that the learners won’t be disappointed. That’s our side of the bargain is we will produce something, we’ll make something, we make something that they know they can be confident, they can drive across their entire organization and it will work.

Michael:
A company new to this, they haven’t done training before, they’re considering some solutions. What advice would you have for the people making that decision?

Richard:
I mean, obviously, one of the things you have to get right is you have to ensure that the thing that you’re teaching people is the right stuff. Right? You know, and working with people like the OMCP, enables us to demonstrate that, but also, you’ve just got to look at our client base. We’re teaching marketing to Nike, Adidas, Lego, Unilever, Mars, Heineken, Microsoft, et cetera. We work with the world’s largest brands and more often than not, we are their single digital training provider from an online perspective. They will be able to see that working with somebody like Circus Street, that you’re teaching the right things.

Whether it’s us or somebody else, the really establishing that you’re teaching the marketing and digital marketing that’s at the forefront of what’s happening is really important. But ultimately, as we said a few times already, it’s really important to choose something that learners are going to engage with and they’re going to enjoy. If people don’t enjoy learning, they don’t get a huge amount out of it. We’ve all been at school and we’ve all been in a classroom with a teacher that hasn’t inspired us and we’ve all been in a classroom with a teacher that has inspired us and we know the difference. Our job is to be that inspiring teacher and that’s what you should be looking for if you’re choosing a learning provider.

Michael:
Richard, what’s the best way that somebody looking for this training can engage with Circus Street?

Richard:
The easiest way is to go through to our website, www.circusstreet.com and it’s quite easy to find our contact details from there. Send us an email, give us a ring and we’ll be more than happy to help you with whatever your requirements are.

Michael:
Well, a big thank you to you, Richard Townsend of Circus Street joining us today. You can check out Circus Street and their courses at circusstreet.com. We’ll make sure that URL is in the notes there. Richard, thank you for joining us today.

Richard:
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Michael.

Michael:
I’m your host Michael Stebbins and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices podcast with a special session just for digital marketing training. OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with the industry leaders just like Richard and Circus Street. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next OMCP podcast.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison – Circus Street appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this education series, we interview seven leaders in digital marketing training to learn the differences.

In this episode, industry veteran and Jump Digital Founder Alex Clyne shares what to expect in Jump Digital’s marketing courses and where they are headed in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studios, and with us today is Alex Clyne, co-founder of Jump Digital, makers of best-in-class digital education content and training courses. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins. Today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training and some of the differences you should be aware of. Alex, welcome.

Alex:
Thanks, Michael.

Michael:
We do know you’ve been involved in digital successfully, I might add, since the mid-nineties so as a founder, we want to know what drove you to get into the business of education and training.

Alex:
Sure. We were delivering through our digital marketing strategy organization strategy to corporates, and we were, our business model has always been to up-skill the internal people, so that they could own it going forward, because we believe that’s where digital marketing will live in the future. And we’re building bespoke training for these organizations. At the same time, we’re sort of witnessing this gap between IT and marketing, and the lack of practitioner led training in this new digital marketing field.
So we were visiting lecturers at the University of Aberdeen, and we convinced them to allow us to build their first ever online master’s program, which ends up in an MSC in digital marketing leadership, which has now been running for, successfully for over three years globally, and takes a very strategic vision of digital marketing. At the same time, we wanted to try and understand how people were learning now compared with in the past.

Alex:
So we built a platform that allows us to basically take an hour long lecture that you would get at a university and condense it into a seven, eight minute TV script, and then use them with the appropriate tool to transfer that knowledge. So it could be Camtasia, it could be animation, it could be straight face to camera, and so on. This has become really successful from the MSC prospective. And we embellish that with the relevant Ted talks and the most recent appropriate articles. Alongside this, there’s a sort of transcript, all the video material, so that people can read as well as listen and look at the appropriate materials.

And then two years ago we decided to develop a shorter version of the MSC, which we’ve called the accredited digital marketing professional. And we’ve used the same approach, the same learning methodology, and it’s now been accredited to the OMCA. So I suppose in summary, we came at it from a business perspective saying, “Look, we think there’s a gap in the market, and we think it should be practitioner led, so let’s go and do something about it.”

Michael:
Alex, when people are immersed in the courses, what do you look for to measure the success of your programs?

Alex:
Sure. Well, and that sort of shapes up in several methods. Because of the academic rigor that we are, have been forced to… that’s not the right wording, Encouraged through our relationship with the university, we are subject to their external audits and also independently they get feedback from the students on the programs. So we get regular, probably six monthly audits, and feedback from them independently. Student testimonials. I’ve gotta be honest, as a salesman, I couldn’t make them up. They’ve been really good. Right? Which is it surpassed their expectations. And we offer a lot of support mechanisms.

I suppose the other things that are measurable in this spaces is we have a very, very, very low dropout rate, and also combine that with the roles that people are moving into while they’re doing the programs, or when they successfully complete the programs. I suppose in other areas that our content has been used in other programs with other international universities. So I suppose that’s an acid test and a measure of how successful the courses have been.

Michael:
And the courses, is it a component of the master’s degree or is it interwoven through the whole thing? How is it merged into that program?

Alex:
The masters, we own the content. We own the IP, and it’s a masters delivered online. The accredited digital marketing professional, which is dual MC is basically, we’ve taken the first two modules of the masters and readapted them for people going through a program that is relevant for business now, and is relevant for employability, and is relevant for career development within an organization.

Michael:
So you have a wide spectrum of people taking the programs. How would you describe the ideal candidate for coming into the courses that you’re offering?

Alex:
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I suppose anyone who has an interest or involvement in marketing, or sales, or strategy development within the role. Also consultancy and agencies. Interestingly, we know that students across a range of roles have found the value in the programs. And I’m talking about lawyers, publishers, political advisers. We’ve even got an executive head chef of a major airline doing one of our programs.

Michael:
One of the things, Alex, as you pointed out, you went through the evaluation for the OMCA certification of the program, and congratulations it passed easily. The evaluators noticed and actually really appreciated the academic structure, and noted it was excellent for your lessons. What else will participants find in your courses that they’re less likely to find somewhere else?

Alex:
Okay. We’ve taken the view that you have to look at digital marketing in a holistic view. So what we do is we take the students, the participants on a journey that demonstrates the relationships and the linkages between the major components of digital marketing. We didn’t want to create a history of digital marketing so the content is constantly reviewed and updated. The articles are constantly reviewed and updated, as well as the Ted Talks, and so on. We also built simulated companies so that people can deal with real live data. So they get an understanding of what works and what doesn’t work.

Not only, (I’m not sure should I say it like this, Michael) Not only will it get the OMCA, but it also get a certificate of completion from the University of Aberdeen, which is a top 100 university worldwide, and 20 CPD hours accredited to them. And I suppose the last things, we took the view that we had to train people going through these programs as consultants, either internal or external, so that they could deliver and create a common language with their colleagues to explain what was happening in this field. And I suppose the last thing is, we continue to run digital strategy company. So we have, we’re advising customers and corporates on a daily basis. So that ensures our content is relevant, practical, and current.

Michael:
You’re doing it. You’re in the trenches, and we’ve seen that be an important component to those who are creating the curriculum. Outside of that, Alex, who do you admire out there? Even outside of digital marketing? Who do you admire or do you think really has it done right in terms of training?

Alex:
Yeah, there’s a load of people I could give you names of, who are doing it. Because we also develop content and other areas as well but, in this space and they’re, also accredited by you. People like Circus Street are doing things really well. They really understand their audience, and they have a really neat way of delivering that to their audience. So I suppose in this sort of similar space, Circus Street would be one of the ones that I would look at and try and gain ideas from.

Michael:
Yeah. Actually we interviewed Richard yesterday.

Alex:
Did you? All right.

Michael:
It’s a good crew over there. Different approach than you.

All right, so the master’s and digital marketing leadership is accredited by the university, as you said. You get a certificate from the university. I think you also get a CIM accreditation. Is that right?

Alex:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael:
Okay. So where does OMCP fit into this? What are your thoughts on an industry certification like OMCP?

Alex:
We believe that finding the right, a professional or industry accreditation is really important. The academic stuff is important, don’t get me wrong, but the real life practitioner in the trenches stuff is extremely important. So we’ve been looking around for the accreditation that was most appropriate to the new qualification that we’ve developed, called the accredited digital marketing professional. And in that sense the OMCA qualification was the best fit for us. I think industry standards add value to education programs and we know this from the MIC, that there’s a demand for formal recognition of achievements in the marketplace. So we believe that the OMCA and the OMCP offer our products the best global industry standard.

Michael:
So you and I have talked before, I know that you have a leaning towards developing training for emerging technologies. What do you see as the vision for the future in digital marketing training?

Alex:
I think you need to take a holistic view that allows you to understand the relationships within the main components of digital marketing and do it no more in silos. You have to take a joined up approach to it. I think you have to understand that people are learning differently. So responding to the requirements, like we’ve done, we didn’t know it was called micro learning when we developed it, and everybody’s coming along and telling us this is great micro learning. And I’m saying, “Yes, it is isn’t it? What’s micro learning?” So understanding how the audience is changing. I think also you need to understand the strategic importance of digital marketing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to influence organizations. And the training must be practitioner led with the academic rigor. Now I’m saying that because that’s what we’ve done, but I honestly believe that as well.

Michael:
And probably for other professions beyond digital marketing. It’s just so important to learn from people who make their living having to get it right.

Alex:
Absolutely.

Michael:
So Alex, the next part is something we call stats blitz. This is where I ask you for some numbers that help people understand your program and the through put. You may not be able to share all of these, and if not, that’s okay. But are you ready?

Alex:
Yeah, sure.

Michael:
Perfect. All right. First one, how many participants in your digital courses over the last three years?

Alex:
Okay. Over the last three years, and the accredited digital marketing professionals all been running for two years, but the MSC we’ve had over 120 starting around the program. We’ve had a very, very, very low fallout rate, which has surprised us as well. And the digital accredited digital marketing professional, we’ve probably, in the last two years, we’ve had over 250 people go through the program. Of which probably 95% have graduated. And in the MSC, out of the 120 so far, we’ve had 32 grads.

Michael:
How many hours of training, including all didactic, right? Interactive, simulations, everything, interaction. How many hours of training can somebody expect from your programs?

Alex:
Sure. This is a difficult one for us, because we take loads of content and condense it into that seven, eight minutes. But in the, a accredited digital marketing professional, we’ve got at least 20 hours. The MSC is a two year postgraduate degree, so I’m not sure how many hours are involved in that.

Michael:
And what’s a statistic that you’d like to share that we did not ask?

Alex:
I suppose we’ve been astounded by not only the follow rate, 52% of our students participants are female. Which in this sector, which is quasi IT, quasi marketing is fantastic.

Michael:
You have watched a lot of learners go through, you have your opinions. Just for you Alex, what is your advice for people who are taking on learning digital marketing?

Alex:
Yeah. I suppose the really important bit for me is to take a strategic view of digital marketing, and make sure you take a holistic approach as the digital marketing will become more and more closer to mainstream business strategy. So if you, if people continue to learn things in silos, they’ll miss the opportunity to influence the business strategy. Does that make sense?

Michael:
Tell us where people can access the courses. I know you provide to quite a few institutes. Where’s the best place for people to access and checkout jump digital courses?

Alex:
Sure, and the best way to get through to it is through the MCA website, and then there’s a direct site, which is digitaledge.education.

Michael:
Okay. That’s all the time we have today. A big thank you to Alex Clyne of Jump Digital. You can check out the Jump Digital courses through the OMCP website. Just visit OMCP website and click on education providers. You’ll see Jump Digital there, and it’ll take you to the right website where the courses are displayed. Alex, thanks for joining us today.

Alex:
Thanks, Michael. Enjoyed it.

Michael:
I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP online marketing best practices podcast, with a special session just for digital marketing training. OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with industry leaders just like Alex and Jump Digital. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next OMCP podcast.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison Jump Digital appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this special interview series, we interview seven leaders in digital marketing education to learn the differences.

Mark Moran, the Chief Marketing Officer with Simplilearn shared what to expect in Simplilearn’s digital marketing courses and where they are headed in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studios and with us today is Mark Moran, the Chief Marketing Officer with Simplilearn, long time digital marketing veteran with some of the world’s leading companies. I’m your host Michael Stebbins and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing courses. Mark, welcome to the podcast. I’m glad you’re here.

Mark:
Hey Michael, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Michael:
Now Mark, I know your role is to lead marketing, but first question really has to do with what drove the founders to get into the business of education and training and how did you come to join the company?

Mark:
Right. So Simplilearn’s been around almost 10 years now and our original founder who is still our CEO and driving the company is a man named Krishna Kumar, and he had just sold a previous company where he was a founder and he had started a blog on project management, which is his area of expertise. And over the course of 6 to 12 months, it evolved. It went from having a readership to having people asking more and more questions and saying, “Hey can I get on a chat with you, can I talk with you?” to then people asking, “Can you help me pass the exam?”.

Mark:
And in the case of project management, PMI, the Project Management Institute is the definitive certification body and this sort of cascaded and he realized, “Hey, this is a business,” and he also looked, starting in India, but really some of his first customers were in the US as well, and saw that this whole online training thing was really taking off. And so went from a personal passion project to really wanting to help people learn first in project management, and then it’s evolved to what we call digital economy skills, which includes digital marketing, cybersecurity, really anything that is driving sort of the modern economy is where we focus.

And so fast forward about three plus years ago and one of the board members approached me and I had just exited from a consumer e-commerce company and we had a fantastic exit, and was really looking to do something that was a little more mission-driven. I’d always been involved mostly in consumer web and started looking into this company, super interesting company. I hadn’t worked internationally, predominant number of our head count is out of Bangalore, India, and one thing led to another and I’m driving marketing here in San Francisco with a big team in India and folks all around the US. The whole mission is, I like to say, is keeping humans one step ahead of AI and robots, and keeping us all relevant and employed. So that’s what motivates me and gets me up in the morning.

Michael:
How would you or the company measure the success of the courses or programs that you’re offering right now?

Mark:
Yeah, we look at several different things.

First of all, are people actually consuming the course? So one of the key and very measurable measurements for us is course completion. Did you sign up, get motivated, get into it, and stay the course all the way through and really absorb the content? So we, and I’ll get into sort of how we’re this successful, but we see course completion rates well north of 50% and it has a lot to do with how we teach. When you think about some of the sort of big name … MOOCs is a term that we use in the industry, but people who are more primarily video based and most of those folks have completion rates in the teens, maybe in the low 20s if they’re lucky. So first thing, did you actually complete the course? And again, depending on the course, it could be as high as 70% plus completion rate.

The second thing is, did you actually absorb the material? Did you learn something? And that’s where we look for partners like OMCP in digital marketing who have the authoritative and independent certification body. Did our course prepare you? And did you actually pass that certification? Along with certifications, we actually internally also do things like capstone projects that are part of the course itself and that allow a learner to turn around and say, “Yeah, I learned digital marketing and now let me walk you through this whole thing I had to do to pass the course,” and give them something to talk about in a job interview.

Then the third area that we look at is, is it advancing your career? And we really look at that in two different ways. One is during the course and then six months after the course, we survey every single student or professional and get their feedback, get their satisfaction score, and what’s known in the biz as the net promoter score, NPS, which we’re running in the mid 80s percent right now, which is super, super high. And then we’re also constantly getting those testimonials. Did you get a new job? Did you get a raise? To be honest, that information is a little more anecdotal because not everybody chooses to give us that kind of feedback, but we quantitatively look at did you complete it, did you get the certification, did you complete the capstone projects? Are you scoring us very highly on satisfaction? And then more of the qualitative and anecdotal and testimonial around did it really help you drive your career?

Michael:
Mark, some of the early surveys, and they are getting a bit old now, indicated that digital marketing folks who made it through the courses and completed them, averaged 16% higher salaries than those who did not. There’s probably newer data than that, but clearly another sign of success, and I love that you’re following up with folks on their careers. Speaking of that, who are the ideal candidates to sign up for the digital marketing courses?

Mark:
Right. So think of it fundamentally we have two kinds of courses.

One is a very discrete course around a skill, or a topic. So, for example, social media marketing. I just want to know more about how to drive my business with Facebook and Pinterest and all the social media channels. So that’s a specific kind of course, and that’s got kind of different kind of folks who may be looking for that kind of a course. They tend to be people who are in that discipline but need to go much deeper, or who are coming into marketing absolutely fresh and they know they want to work with AdWords, they know they want to do analytics, they know they want to do social, and so they come in for, again, a discrete course. Those tend to be more in the three to six month range.

And again, I would say on average it tends to be earlier in their career, recent college grads, or people who are really transitioning from traditional, like offline marketing. So maybe you were doing PR before and now you want to be doing full social marketing. Those are very complementary. So you’re moving over and you just want to kind of bite off one topic. So that’s one profile.

The other is really more career track oriented or what I think of as sort of full stack digital marketing and we have a couple of programs. Digital Marketing Specialist program is an example of that. This is really somebody who, ideally, is three to six years sort of into their career and they really want to broaden their options. So maybe you’ve been doing email marketing for several years and those in the business know that that is a particular category that people tend to burn out on after about two or three years of doing email over and over again or PPC or whatever it is. And now I want to be able to branch across that one channel and really be somebody who has deep analytical skills, understands page level optimization, wants to know content marketing, social, search, et cetera.

So again, they’re deeper into their career, they want to become more of a full stack 360 marketer, and often those are the people who are really thinking a step ahead. “How do I become a manager, an executive?” “I want, five years from now, to be the VP of Marketing and I really need to have this broad base of skills to be able to effectively do that role.” So these are the people that are at that point in their career when they’re thinking a couple of years ahead and that’s where they want to be going.

Michael:
Any leaning more towards B2B in an enterprise or leaning towards individuals and small businesses in terms of the digital marketing content?

Mark:
The digital marketing content, it’s really the full spectrum. I would say, if you looked at the jobs that are out there and available, there’s a slight leaning more towards people that are doing B2C that are working with big data sets and driving conversion funnels. So a classic be somebody in e-commerce that is using search and social and content to drive top of the funnel and then going all the way through and then going in the CRM and nurture campaigns and looking at lifetime value. So I’d say very much covers both, but I’d say there’s a little bit more of a preponderance of people that are operating in the B2C world. And I think that that overall is the case if you looked across the industry to job openings.

Michael:
It seems to match the ratio.

Mark:
Yeah, exactly.

Michael:
You have supported the OMCP teaching standard longer than any other education provider. I think it was around 2011, 2012 where the courses were teaching to the standards. Now you’ve had a lot of time to develop the content. Obviously we expect that you teach a super set of the standard. What kinds of things will participants find in Simplilearn courses that they’re unlikely to find anywhere else?

Mark:
Yes. We jumped on board early. If you go to our website, our tagline is Get Certified, Get Ahead. So we’ve really believed in this idea of being able to validate and verify learnings and outcomes. And I mentioned earlier, one of the things we track is course completion and I think that gets fundamentally to our pedagogy. There is phenomenal content, particularly related to digital marketing, all over the web. I could name you two dozen really great blogs, a number of the service providers, you know, take Moz for example, an SEO, you know, have incredibly great content. YouTube is chock a block full of it. The challenge is that most of it is in video format and you’re passively consuming it and yourself trying to curate it and figure out is this really current, is this really best practice?

Mark:
What we’ve done is move beyond sort of e-learning 1.0 which was all just straight video, and we have a fully immersive, what we call blended learning approach. So yes, we have those videos and you start with that to get sort of core concepts, and then really it’s all applied learning where you’re signing up and you’re in live virtual classrooms. Think of a webex kind of experience, but it’s fully integrated within our learning platform. And you’ve got teachers, you’ve got TAs, you’re interacting with fellow students. It’s very applied based, as I said, so we have labs, take AdWords, we have a simulator, you’re in there with a budget, you’re creating ads, you’re bidding, you’re running ROAS campaigns, you’re really getting fully immersed. And then we have again, capstone projects and alignment to third party certification, in this case OMCP, to really drive all that home.

Mark:
So our uniqueness is, yes absolutely our content is the most current, we work with literally the leading providers from around the world in each one of the sub-disciplines in digital marketing, but it’s really how we get you there. And it’s taking what could be 20, 40, 60, 100 hours of just staring at a video screen and turning that into a fully immersive, interactive, applied learning experience. That’s our differentiation.

Michael:
Other than Simplilearn, who do you think is doing it right? Who do you admire? Who do you think’s got it right?

Mark:
I think a lot of people do things really well and I also think there’s sort of two modalities of learning going on out there. One is, I’ll call it sort of snackable and that could even be, like in the world of programming, being on Slack and looking for a code snippet and a bit of advice, and Udemy certainly comes to mind if you’re looking for discrete, sort of small, you know, 20 hours, 30 hours, I want to know one subset or one discipline and at really pretty great price point. You know it’s a marketplace, they got some pretty amazing experts to provide that content. They certainly do that really well.

At the other end of the spectrum, several of the universities are really getting into this game, digital marketing is an area where some of them are doing quite well. We partner with Duke University for example, and help drive their digital media and marketing course, which is extremely popular. I can’t give their numbers because I’m not allowed to, but tons of people take that course and they’re seeing great outcomes. And so in that case you get a lot of benefits I talked about earlier, but then you also get the accreditation coming from somebody like a Duke University. So that works really well for some folks. Go to learnmore.duke.edu to find out more about that one. So those are two examples.

Michael:
We’ll be talking to Meredith as well, so maybe we’ll get her to share her numbers.

Mark:
They do really well with that course. Say hello to Meredith for me.

Michael:
If you were to talk about your position on industry certification and standards like OMCP, what are your thoughts on industry certifications?

Mark:
I think, clearly, OMCP has emerged as the defacto standard for what I am calling full stack digital marketing. I think it’s one thing to say to a hiring manager, “Hey, I’ve taken some online courses,” and it’s a very different thing to say, “I’ve taken digital marketing specialist at Simplilearn,” for example, “And I have my OMCP certification.”

Very different.

You might as well say, “I like watching videos about SEO.” It’s just very hard for a hiring manager to translate that without giving you all sorts of assessments and somehow calibrating what really you know or don’t know. So OMCP is a validation factor that’s super important for the recruiting part of the business.

Michael:
In terms of moving forward, I know your role is in the marketing leadership there, but I know you spend time with Krishna as well in planning the future. What are some of the visions that you’re seeing for the future of digital marketing training from Simplilearn?

Mark:
Yeah, so you know, I think two things there. One, we really believe in our pedagogy and we are seeing a number of other competitors, if you will, sort of moving away from just sort of a pure video experience. So, I think that interactivity is critical and is becoming an industry trend. I think the other thing you’re seeing more of, and that’s really important, is familiarity with the major platforms and vendors, such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords, HubSpot, Tableau, et cetera, you know, Salesforce, because you can’t … Very quickly what is abstract needs to become applied, and if you’re doing email and aren’t familiar with some of the major email providers, or God forbid… PPC, and haven’t actually gone into AdWords, that’s fairly incomplete.

And so I know for us what that’s meant is deeper and deeper partnerships with, I’ll call it now big tech for sure, the Microsofts and Googles and Amazons of the world, and then all the boutique providers in all the sub specialties and giving you, along with that core set of knowledge and those labs and projects, direct exposure to some of the major vendors. And I think that’s truly an emerging trend more broadly.

Michael:
And OMCP honors what we call “platform certification” by granting professional development units and in some cases renewal of certification, based on participation and completion of those as well.

Mark:
Yeah. And that’s the right approach.

Michael:
How many participants have gone through the digital marketing courses in the last three years from Simplilearn?

Mark:
That’s a nice easy number to remember. We’re really right at about 10,000 people worldwide.

Michael:
Okay. Just in three years. That’s impressive. And how many graduates?

Mark:
It’s a little over 6,000 of those 10,000 have made it all the way through and graduated.

Michael:
Okay. How many hours, if you can add it all up, how many hours of training in digital marketing in the programs from Simplilearn?

Mark:
Oh wow. So individual courses range from 25 hours up to 350 hours, and I actually didn’t do the average math across that, but I think we’re talking in the range of about two million hours, give or take.

Michael:
Two million hours might apply to how many hours people have experienced. I think what I’m looking for is didactic. If somebody were to take a social media course, for example…

Mark:
Right, right. So again, it’s in the range, depending on if it’s one of those discrete and more introductory courses, it would be around 25 hours, but for most you’re talking under a hundred hours, like 80 to a hundred hours for most of the full stack kind of courses that we offer.

Michael:
And so definitely hundreds of hours if somebody wanted to go full stack and as little as maybe 16 to 24 if they just were trying to get a overview of a single discipline. Is that close?

Mark:
That is very close. I’m willing to take that.

Michael:
Okay. All right. Well, we’ll encourage our listeners to go and check the current numbers because we do know those courses are constantly changing with updates. And you do have to ask didactic, listeners, ask for didactic hours because just counting the video lecture hours isn’t really enough because you do have, as Mark described, capstone projects, you have interactions with some of the specialists, and that all really does count towards what’s available in those courses.

Mark:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Michael:
What is a stat you’d like to share that we didn’t ask for, Mark?

Mark:
Well let’s see. I’m going to share a stat that theoretically I would have to kill you for sharing because it’s super top secret, but I’m going to share it anyway. We are just completing a major survey with one of the predominant survey houses. I won’t name them because it hasn’t been published yet, but I will do a sneak peak of one of the core findings. So this was a survey of learning and development leaders at over 250 US companies, and it was comparing again what I call blended learning to more traditional say video-based or even in person, classroom based training. And the findings were that this blended learning approach is 66% more effective in driving business outcomes. So that is hot, hot off the presses. Don’t, don’t tell anybody I told you because it actually hasn’t even hit the press yet.

Michael:
When we’re published here we’ll try and time it properly. You heard it first here on the OMCP podcast. Any advice for learners out there who are taking on digital marketing?

Mark:
Yeah. Well so first of all, the nice thing is that digital marketing covers a lot of sub-disciplines and particularly depending on where you are in your career, really find an area that you’re truly passionate about. And along with that, and if you have to push yourself in this direction because you’re not genetically wired that way, you do also want to ground yourself in things like Google Analytics and AB testing and quantitative analysis because that’s the world we live in, and opinions are great, but really all great marketeers are very, very data-driven. So combine a sub area, particularly if you’re early in your career that you’re passionate about, and then get super data-driven, and then embrace lifelong learning. We’re in a world, digital marketing, every year there’s a new platform, you know, is WhatsApp now going to be the hottest B2C platform for most of the world? I’m not sure, possibly.

Mark:
And you can’t stay static, and for most people doing your day job isn’t enough to really keep you current and to keep you accessing what’s truly the latest and greatest. So lifelong learning is particularly critical. And I’d say just stay curious and don’t be afraid to fail because as you’re experimenting and stretching your boundaries and going from sort of a single skill practitioner to a full stack marketer, now there’ll be bumps along the road, and zigs and zags and that’s expected, and learn from those failures, and you’ll do great.

Michael:
Mark, I want to make sure people know where they can sign up for the courses. Can you state just here for the transcript and for the podcast, where should people go sign up for these digital marketing courses from Simplilearn?

Mark:
That would be Simplilearn, with no Y, Simplilearn.com .

Michael:
I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices podcast with a special session about digital marketing training. OMCP maintains its certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with industry leaders just like Mark, and with Simplilearn. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mark:
Michael, it was great. I really appreciate it.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison Simplilearn appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this special interview series, we talk with seven leaders in digital marketing training to learn the differences.

We interviewed Jefferson Flanders, President and CEO of MindEdge Learning who shared what the industry can expect from the MindEdge Learning digital marketing courses now, and in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio, and with us today is Jefferson Flanders, President and CEO of MindEdge Learning. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training and some of the differences you should be aware of. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Jefferson:
Thank you, Michael.

Michael:
Really glad you’re here and excited to get into some of the differences in MindEdge. I know that MindEdge was founded by some highly educated people with a passion for learning. You’re in the role of President and CEO. What drove you to get into business of education and training?

Jefferson:
I worked in the newspaper industry for 20 years, and in 2000 I made a career shift. I’d always been interested in education and I shifted, and I started teaching at NYU and at Boston University. I also spent time with Harvard Business School Publishing. Then I came to MindEdge in 2004, and from that point on I’ve been focused on adult learners, which is our target market. Those are the sorts of people that we want to help, and our motto, which is, Improving the Way the World Learns, I think, aligns and dovetails perfectly with people who are looking to advance themselves in their professions and careers.

Michael:
When people are participating in the courses, how would you measure the success of that type of learning that you just described?

Jefferson:
We ask learners, we give them the opportunity at the end of every module and every course to assess how well they feel that training has progressed. At the moment, we’re at a 96.5% learner satisfaction rate. Our goal is 98%, which is going to be tough, because as you know, there’s a little bit of subjectivity that goes into that.

First we look for learner satisfaction, and then we also look for their success when they move on to take a certification exam. We, essentially, have a money-back guarantee, which we have to this date never had to actually … We’ve never really had a problem with that, because if you can pass our courses, we’re very confident you’ll be able to pass the certification exam that they’re aimed at.

Michael:
Now, I know you cover a lot of practices and disciplines, but asking specifically about the digital marketing courses that you’ve just come out with, who’s the ideal customer or the ideal candidate for the courses for MindEdge?

Jefferson:
I think it’s anyone who’s looking to learn about digital marketing and is looking for validation through OMCP, either with an OMCA or OMCP credential. We’re big proponents of the notion that employers look to these certifications as a way of, in advance, knowing that the candidate can actually come in and start from day one and be successful in digital marketing.

That’s one of the reasons we turn to OMCP. We wanted standards and a book of knowledge, as it were, that would make sure we were covering the waterfront. When a candidate takes our courses, when a candidate takes the OMCA or OMCP exam and get certified, employers know it is the gold standard, and the person’s going to arrive ready to go to work.

Michael:
Just some news for our listeners. MindEdge courses just went through the very stringent evaluation process, and congratulations, Jeff, that those were approved. The evaluators, I’ve got to say, were really impressed with the thoroughness and the depth of the content. What will participants find in your courses that they’re very unlikely to find anywhere else?

Jefferson:
One of the things that we try to blend theory and practice, so we have significant numbers of practitioners who’ve contributed to these digital marketing courses, largely with video segments, talking about what it’s really like in the real world. We are a continuous improvement company, so we’re constantly looking for ways to teach in a more effective and optimal manner.

I think one of the things that characterizes our courses is the variety. You’re going to get video, you’re going to get text, you’re going to get infographics, you’re going to get games, you’re going to get quizzes. We really try to keep the courses moving in a way that keeps the learner engaged, so you’re not staring at a video screen for five hours. You’re being engaged, and it’s a way for you to really immerse yourself in the content.

Michael:
Anyone out there, Jeff, that you admire, that you think is doing training right or is on the cutting edge?

Jefferson:
This is not digital marketing, but I think Duolingo, their language training is an extremely interesting way to teach. I’m a terrible language student, but I’m brushing up on both my French and German through Duolingo, and they make it relatively painless. The issue, of course, is to find the time. But I love their bite-sized approach where they teach in small microbursts, and we have a lot of that in our courses, as well.

Michael:
That’s great. You know, you’re the second leader to point them out as somebody who’s doing it right, so there’s a trend there, and we’ll have to check that out. Now earlier, Jeff, you mentioned gold standard or a industry standard that people can know is worthy of achievement. What are your thoughts on working with industry certifications like OMCP?

Jefferson:
We work with a number of certifying bodies, including Project Management Institute, PMI, and SHRM for human resources, and HRCI for human resources, several of the cybersecurity. We were drawn to OMCP by the clear, the deep thought, that had gone into the building of the standards, and also, the high level of professionalism in terms of coming up with a course of study that would prepare students. Because the last thing in the world we want is a learner taking our course and getting a certification, and then discovering that it doesn’t apply to the industry that they’re in. We were delighted. I think the praise I would give OMCP is, it reminds me very much of PMI in terms of the depth and the thought that goes into the creation of the standards.

Michael:
Well, I appreciate that input. In fact, it’s no secret, listeners, that we’ve been modeled after PMI and actually advised by some of the people who started PMI, or at least built it over the last two decades. I’ll give a little pre-release here. Mark Langley, the former CEO and leader of Project Management Institute, has formally joined our advisory board, and will be advising us, in times to come, how to model after that standard. That’s an exciting change that affirms your choices, Jeff, so I appreciate that. What is your vision in terms of the future of training in some of your topics or especially in digital marketing? What’s next?

Jefferson:
We continue to look at … We have a investment in an artificial intelligence company named Cognii. We look at ways that that can possibly be leveraged for more engagement. Specifically, digital marketing, we are looking at the potential for establishing a sandbox, possibly, where students or learners can actually experience some of the modeling and other aspects of digital marketing. Anything that can provide greater engagement, typically, is what we try to add.

We are also looking at adding some courses in more specific proprietary technologies. Things like Google Analytics, possibly a course on Facebook, which would be supplementary to the overall sort of standards that OMCP has, in the sense that clearly some of the proprietary technologies are going to change over time. I think it’s, the most important thing is for a learner to actually get the fundamentals, and the philosophy, and the approach cemented before they turn to the proprietary softwares.

Michael:
We can’t ignore that that’s an important part. Things like Facebook Platform, or Adobe Experience Manager Platform, or some of the others like the Google Ads Platforms. OMCP gives credit for somebody who’s gone through Facebook Blueprint, or to get certified in Google Analytics, or some of the other platforms as this is what the industry has asked for. That sounds like a great blend, and we think it’s a great direction to go, Jeff.

Michael:
This is the section that we call “Stats Blitz”, and we just ask a few questions that we’ve asked the other leaders, as well. I know there’s a couple of exceptions for you, but, so I’ll put it in this context, which you can share. How many participants have been in your digital marketing courses over the last three years?

Jefferson:
We are currently selling about a hundred individual courses per month. That’s not the entire … I think there are eight courses per certificate, so you’d have to divide that by eight to get the number of participants, but we have seen increasing velocity in the sales of the digital marketing. It’s clearly a extremely hot topic. We have a very broad reseller network, which includes colleges, and universities, and consultancies, and they’re telling us that there’s a widespread desire for the sort of self-paced training that, online, that our MindEdge courses offer. We’re really bullish about prospects for additional participants on the go forward.

Michael:
Can you share what ratio of people complete the courses as you set them out?

Jefferson:
That’s a really interesting question. I’d have to research that, but my guess would be we’re in the high nineties on that. We have very high completion rates for our professional development courses. Typically, because the students involved are looking for a continuing education credits, or are driving towards trying to take an exam. We often have a situation where we’ll … We have a capability where people can extend access to the course, and typically, instead of abandoning the course, that’s what you’ll get. You’ll have someone come back and say, “My family life or my work life has really been challenging, so I can take the course in an extension at no additional charge.”

Michael:
Jeff, for somebody entering the MindEdge digital marketing course, how many hours of training, interaction, immersion can they expect from the program?

Jefferson:
Our online self-paced program runs for 30 to 35 hours. We do find that some learners spend more time and it can run between 40 and 45, depending on how deep they want to engage with the material. We try to keep our learning segments … We try to cut to the chase, because we know that’s something that adult learners really appreciate.

Michael:
Okay. What is a statistic that we didn’t ask that you’d be willing to share with us?

Jefferson:
We’re really proud that this year we’ll serve 500,000 learners, and, hopefully, a growing portion of that will be learners seeking more knowledge and skills from digital marketing and pursuing their OMCA certification.

Michael:
Jeff, you’re at the forefront of a lot of the online education processes out there. What advice do you have for a learner who’s looking to get into the digital marketing world?

Jefferson:
I think that starting with a solid foundation, and I think OMCA is a perfect example. Starting with a program that both provides skills and also offers you a way to demonstrate to employers that you have those skills. That’s where certification comes in. We’re employers as well. We look at that. We look at what, on a resume for a potential employee, a candidate, what can they show us in terms of the certifications that they’ve earned, and that’s a good signal to us that the person is serious about their career.

Michael:
Now you have several channels where people can get access to the courses. Where should people go to take advantage of these?

Jefferson:
I would go to SkyeLearning.com and you can find the digital marketing certificate and program there with a quite nice 20% discount.

Michael:
Okay. A big thank you to you, Jefferson, at MindEdge. You can check out his courses and his company’s courses at SkyeLearning.com. Of course, these are courses from MindEdge. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jefferson:
Thank you, Mike.

Michael:
I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast, with a special session just for digital marketing training. OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with industry leaders, just like Jefferson and MindEdge. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next OMCP podcast.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison MindEdge appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” For this special series OMCP interviewed the leaders of seven digital marketing course providers to learn the differences. We start with the most recent to earn OMCP approval, Boot Camp Digital.

Allison Chaney, the chief digital training officer at Boot Camp Digital, and Krista Neher, CEO of Boot Camp Digital were kind enough to sit with us and share what the industry can expect from their company and training courses; now and in the future.

Michael:
All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studios, and with us today is Allison Chaney, the chief digital training officer at Boot Camp Digital, and Krista Neher, CEO of Boot Camp Digital. Allison and Krista are at the forefront of digital marketing training, delivering keynotes around the globe.

I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training, specifically that from Boot Camp Digital, to help our audience understand how to choose a digital marketing training course specifically.

Allison and Krista, welcome.

Allison & Krista:
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.

Michael:
As founders, what drove you to get into the business of education and training?

Krista:
Yeah, so that’s a great question, and I would say I came into it a little bit by accident, and then a little bit more on purpose. I started my business about 12 years ago just as social media was really taking off. What I found was that a lot of people, whether they were doing it themselves or hiring an agency, just didn’t understand enough to really get results. And so I became really interested in trying to help them learn how to use the tools themselves to get better results, whether they were a decision maker, an evaluator, or an implementer.

And so, I actually ran my first training class about 10 years ago, and I remember thinking, “Oh no, I wonder if people will show up.” Sure enough, it sold out. Since then, I’ve gotten even more focused on helping businesses and individuals to figure out how do they use these tools smartly to get better results faster? And so that’s really what inspires me is helping, whether it’s an implementer, or a business owner, or a decision maker in a large organization, helping them to make smarter decisions with their budgets. Because you just see so much waste, and so many executions that don’t even meet basic best practices, and it breaks my heart. I want to help people do a better job with this stuff, so they see the results.

Michael:
When people are taking the courses, you’re passionate, you want to see them make the most use of their tools and their decisions, how would you measure the success of people who are going through the Boot Camp Digital courses and programs?

Krista:
I mean for me, the success always comes down to results. Are there actionable things that you can and will do that are going to improve your business? Because I think knowledge… If you think about adult education and adult learners, right? Knowledge is a small part of the ultimate issue, right? You have to know the stuff, but then implementing it consistently is the trick part. And so to me, our true success is always measured by results.

Someone sending me an email saying, “Wow, I took what you said about content, and we’re seeing 10 times the reach on our social media posts.” That’s the stuff that I live for, because knowing is half the battle. Using it to grow a business, that’s the hard part, and that’s what I think the ultimate success measurement is.

Michael:
You cover social media, you cover SEO, you cover digital analytics, you cover digital advertising, you cover the spectrum of digital marketing in the course, and you mention tools too. Give us an idea of the ideal candidate who would come in and take the courses that you’re offering.

Krista:
When I think about who our ideal candidates for our training, really we think about people who want to drive impact. One big thing about us is we’re not going to give you these little, short-term hacks and tricks that work for three weeks, and then an algorithm update erases them. We focus on sustainable impact, sustainable strategies, kind of like the meat and potatoes that gets you 90% of your results.

Our courses are really design to be good for a pretty large range of audience. One of the things we did when we designed our online training was we wanted to design them for the jobs that people had instead of around a topic. Let me tell you what I mean by that. If you think about Facebook marketing, a lot of Facebook marketing courses may be set up as beginner, intermediate, or advanced. But what we realized after doing training for the first five years or so, was that actually it’s not so much beginner, intermediate, or advanced, it’s there’s different types of jobs that need different sorts of information.

We have a digital foundation section, for example in our Facebook course, we have Facebook foundations, which is aimed at somebody who wants to understand basically how Facebook works for a business, where it’s at now, what to look forward to. Then we have the next level, which is our strategy level. This is for, let’s say, a brand manager, someone who’s not going to get their hands dirty, they don’t need to know literally how to set up a Facebook page, but they need to understand how to evaluate a strategy, they need to understand how to look at results, and they need to know some best practices. We see the strategy level as sort of the decision-maker level, but not quite getting your hands dirty.

And then, our 300 and 400 levels are really focused on implementation, so then we get into how do you set this stuff up with best practices, and then our mastery levels, the really advanced tops and tricks, and things that take you to the next level. Because of that, when we look at who our training can help, it’s really people with those different needs for different types of jobs, from implementation to maybe more strategic level, and they can choose the training content that best meets their need across all of our different topics.

Michael:
Krista, do you have a leaning towards enterprise B2B , mid-size, or small business?

Krista:
Sure, so one of the questions I get all the time in trainings of any sort when it’s a broad audience is people say, “Oh, but what about B2B?” Or, “How does that apply to healthcare?” Or, “What about small businesses?” Really, the tools are all the same in terms of how you apply them. We find we have everyone from small businesses, meaning maybe it’s the business owner where this is 50% of their job, all the way up to we’ve done training programs for some of the best known brands in the world.

We really are able to cover a range, and I think it’s because we focus on digital marketing, and we focus on training. And so the tools and how they work are quite similar. It’s just being used a little differently. I think of it a little bit as okay, you’re making a chair versus a table, but you’re going to use wood, you need to measure the wood, you need a hammer, you need to know how to use a level. I actually chose a terrible analogy, because I don’t know how to build furniture. But you get the idea.

Michael:
I think a lot of the audience is just finding out that your courses were evaluated and approved by OMCP, so congratulations for that. We just really enjoyed the evaluation and seeing some of the innovative things that you’re doing. We noticed, you know just for example, a tremendous amount of content. I think there was almost, or over, eight hours on just Facebook alone. And we saw a tremendous number of downloads and checklists. What else will participants find in your course that they’re unlikely to find somewhere else?

Allison:
Yeah, and this is actually one of my favorite things about the course, because to answer your question, it’s the one-on-one coaching with an expert. So many of these courses online are just sort of one sided, you know, you’re watching a video, or you’re downloading things, or whatever it is. But it’s that extra bit that we offer where you can actually get on a phone with Krista or I, or an expert in something specific that you need, usually it’s Krista or myself, and ask us those questions.

That value is just so hard to find anywhere else, and that’s one of the reasons I love these courses so much. Because if you’ve taken any kind of course, if you’ve done any kind of learning in your life, you’ve probably got to a point where you’re like, “Oh, but I just had this question.” Or, “I have this thing.” Or, “I want to talk this out. I want to see if I really get it or I understand it.” Usually the answer is you just have to figure it out yourself.

This extra level of what we offer I think really helps to round out the training, and really helps you to take it to the next level, because learning can only go so far, and then you really do need that expert to say, “Yeah, you’ve got it.” Or, “Let’s think about this differently.” Or, “Let’s dig a little deeper.” And we can help point people in the right direction of more training, or help give them assignments or homework to help really practice a skill set.

Sometimes it’s just asking a question, and getting validation, so they can go back to their manager, or their boss, or their CEO and say, “Hey listen, I got back up from an expert. We need to do X, Y, Z, and this is why.” To have that back up, that’s one of the things we hear all the time. People come back to us after a one-on-one and say, “Oh my gosh, I got this project approved. We can finally get better results. We can finally hire a new person to help me.” Or whatever that is, so that one-on-one coaching is really valuable as part of our training package.

Michael:
It’s great to have a sounding board, and Allison, what is the mechanism? If I am a student going through the program, or a participant and I really want a sounding board for a process I’m about to do. Do I use a forum? How do I raise my hand?

Allison:
In our trainings, you would simply schedule something with a coach. We have a calendar, and you would schedule something with one of us, and we would talk that through together. We also have, for people that go through our training courses, we also have a Facebook group, it’s the Digital Marketing Insiders Group. It’s just for our participants in our courses, and they can kind of bounce ideas off of each other, they can answer questions. We have a weekly Q&A call that we do, for example, where we can answer questions for everyone live. There are a lot of different ways that we offer through our program for people to get answers from an expert, or to look at their peers. Maybe someone in a similar industry has had a similar result, or can share some experience. That’s kind of the benefit of all that through our courses.

Michael:
A question for both of you, or either, other than Boot Camp Digital, who do you think is doing training right out there, and why?

Krista:
I can tell you my answer, I don’t know if Allison has a different one. But I think LinkedIn Learning has made tremendous improvements in the last maybe 6 to 12 months. They acquired Lynda.com, which was where I used to go for every random skill, especially hands-on type stuff. I learned WordPress on Lynda.com, gosh, 12 years ago I think.

LinkedIn Learning just took that to a whole new level, and some of their courses are super cool. It’s stuff you’re not going to find anywhere else, and they have experts coming in, they record it in-house. But they have courses on like influence and persuasion techniques, and all these cool subjects. I really like what they’ve done in terms of blowing up that library, and taking what Lynda was doing to like a whole new level.

Allison:
I would second that. I really love what LinkedIn is doing there. The only thing I would have to add, because I really think my answers ride a line with Krista’s here, the only thing I would add though is for that really beginner, kind of, how to use this tool and dig in. Or before you’re ready to dig in, like you’re starting on day one. I love that Google has a lot of really great foundational videos for how to use Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager, and it’s sort of that initial set up that we need so badly.

One of the challenges with our trainings is when we do a training, things happen so much that we can record something today, and literally Google can decide to change the interface tomorrow, and now my training is no longer valid. So for things like that, I love those types of courses, because it really helps to set people up with that very basic how do I get started, and then we actually build our training courses to build on that. So if you do start there, you’re able to then take it to the next level, and start thinking strategically, and implementing, and things like that.

But I love that Google has put together those really basic like, “It’s my first day, I’m just getting started.” And it’s very easy to go through those, and literally get started the right way. I think that’s the key is getting those foundations down.

Michael:
And it’s great to leave the tool providers to update their training for their specific menu, click here, and here’s a feature, and then to rely on Boot Camp Digital to say, “Here’s a process that’s going to last beyond the tools, and it’s a good practice.”

Allison:
Yep. Absolutely.

Michael:
You just went through an evaluation from OMCP, your courses passed. They definitely are a super set as we expected of the standard. Sometimes a standard is a boring thing, because the OMCP standard really only covers what we consider generally accepted practices that’s considered low dispute. And we leave it to innovators like you, and Boot Camp Digital, to teach beyond that. So, you’ve got through the process, tell us what your thoughts are on having an industry certification standard like OMCP?

Krista:
Yeah, I find this so exciting. I have been in digital marketing for a long time, I was in social media like right in the baby days. One of the things that I found was because it was evolving so quickly, right? Any efforts made to create some industry standards around it were always met with, “Well, no one can be an expert, it changes too fast.” That’s really not the truth of the matter, right? Because there’s foundational things, there’s also, you know, if I think about most digital marketing, a lot of the tactical stuff does change, but the foundational strategies, approaches, basically how this stuff works, that’s pretty long-standing.

And so, what I really like about having an industry standard is that without all the vested interests at play, it’s able to set the stage for here’s this kind of stuff that people in this industry need to know about. And I think it’s great for actually improving the competency and knowledge levels of the entire industry. You see most other professional industries have this kind of stuff, so I think this is really exciting as a way to really level-set, and help the digital marketing industry be taken more seriously.

Allison:
Yeah, I just want to add, going through the process, it was not an easy process to get certified, and I will say I appreciated that because if it was too easy, then there would have been red flags everywhere. The fact that I know that everyone that has been certified had to go through this process, really I know now the credibility that lies there, and I’m really excited about what that does for us, for Boot Camp Digital, and also just for the industry as a whole.

Like Krista was saying, it’s so important to have some standards here, and now that I know the process, I can wholeheartedly say, “Wow, this is a solid list of industry leaders.” Yeah, I think it’s a great process. I love that you guys are doing this.

Michael:
Great. Well we look for you both to continue to contribute to the standard. It is built by all who participate in it. Looking forward, what do you see in the future of digital marketing training?

Krista:
Can I tell you about a trend that I don’t like, and then I’ll tell you one that I do like ?

Michael:
[Laughing] Complaining is allowed, as long as it’s balanced.

Krista:
Well, an interesting trend that I’ve seen, right, is micro-learning. Do you know what this is? It’s like all of these one minute videos, and when I saw it, I was super intrigued, and I thought, yeah, it totally makes sense, right? People have short attention spans, you could watch a video on the go. And then I kind of stepped back and looked at what we’re trying to teach people how to do, and the learning objectives. I’m like, “Look, if you have the attention span of a gnat, no, you can’t do this.” These are complex things that are nuanced and build on each other. Micro-learning to me is one of these trends like I’m really interested to see where it goes, but I struggle to see it being a way to provide really meaningful synthesis and analysis of information.

I can see it for these short knowledge exchanges. So if I wanted to get a bunch of definitions out, I could see that maybe working, but when I think of our goal to make smarter, better, marketers, we need more than that. That would be like a trend that, you know, I’m curious to see how it evolves, and how it works in more complex spaces, but it’s something that has definitely intrigued me a little.

One of the things that I definitely like that I’ve seen more and more of with digital marketing is people who do want to get to this mastery level, and that’s a trend that I’m really excited about. I think as more and more people are getting the foundations down, now we see more and more people who want to come in and really get that mastery, and hone their craft. If you look at especially SEO, you have these people who’ve done this for 20 years, tons of deep, deep expertise, and what I think especially actually in programs like OMCP are doing, is it’s getting that knowledge out to more people to help build the depth of knowledge that we broadly have in the marketing community. That’s something that I’m very excited about.

Michael:
We do a section called Stats Blitz. These are the questions that we get asked by folks who are looking for different trainings, and if you can answer them as quickly as accurately as possible, that would be great. You ready?

Allison:
Yeah. Let’s go.

Michael:
Okay, so how many participants in your digital marketing courses over the last three years?

Krista:
In the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands numbers.

Michael:
That’s great. Okay. Do you differentiate between, forgive me if I get this wrong, but I know you have recorded video, do you also do on-ground sessions?

Krista:
Yeah. We run our own live boot camps four times a year. This year we’ve sold them out, so we just added two more to the end of the year. We’ll be in Cincinnati and back in DC this year, as well as Miami and Chicago. And then we do a lot of corporate training where we go into a company, and train their employees.

Michael:
How many graduates? How many people completed the course? Were there reasonable test at the end or certificate of some type?

Krista:
Yeah, all of our live attendees graduate. Unless, I guess, they leave, right? I would say 90% of people who come through our classes are graduating.

Michael:
And then how many hours of training total in your digital marketing programs?

Krista:
We have over 200 hours of training.

Michael:
And then what’s a stat you’d like to share that we didn’t ask?

Krista:
Yeah, so I have two. One is 1,000, which is we have over 1,000 video modules on our site, and we add more all the time. The second one is 200, which is we have over 200 downloadable resources, like quick starts, check lists, tips and trick sheets, templates.

Michael:
And I know your learners really love those. Any advice for learners out there who are going to take on digital marketing or increase their skill set?

Allison:
Sure. I would say my best advice, especially for online learning, is to get disciplined. By discipline, the thing is we are so quick to just kind of hit the Buy Now button, and then we move on with our lives. That is the wrong way to approach anything like this. What’s lacking is discipline, and it’s not because we’re not smart, or we don’t know how to do it, or whatever. We’re busy people, so it’s going to be super important no matter what you do, whether you take a live course, or an online course, whatever that is, make sure that you’re being very intentional about setting aside the time to do the training, and implement.

Not just to watch the courses, but also, if you know, “Oh, this is going to take me 30 minutes to watch these videos,” also set some time in there, build some time to try what you just learned. If you’re learning a tool, build in 15 minutes, build in 30 minutes to go play with that tool. That discipline, and setting this time in your calendar, schedule that, block out the time, don’t allow anyone to make appointments with you.

Let everyone on your team, if you have a team let them know how important this is to your organization, because they’re going to care about that. And let them know, “Hey, during this hour, during these two hours,” whatever that is, “Don’t bother me. I’m doing this thing.” And make sure you hold yourself accountable to that too. Put that in your calendar, schedule a date with yourself, and then make it happen. Because otherwise, you’re just going to talk about what a great idea it is, and ideas aren’t going to get you anywhere. You have to actually put the action forth.

Set a schedule, set a date with yourself, and make it happen. Be disciplined. That’s my first bit of advice, and Krista, I know you’ve got some great advice as well, so I’ll let you chime in.

Krista:
Yeah, I think your advice is great, the only thing I would add to it… So, something that we find is training really is a means to an end, right? You’re training because you want to be able to do better, you want to implement something. One of the things that we do at our live trainings is we have these big idea sheets that we give people. The thing is you take all these notes so you know stuff, which is great, but what do you want to do, right?

And so what we have people do is separately write down their big ideas. It’s reserved for things they want to act on, so action items, and people leave with four, five, six pages, and then we try and help them prioritize that stuff. But my advice is also to think about not just what do you want to know, but what do you want to do? How do you turn the knowledge into action, and include that in your learning process. You’re learning the stuff, but then you’re taking the time to apply it to your business, and turn it into action that can bring your results.

Michael:
Folks, note that down, and follow that advice. Last question, where can people sign up for the courses?

Krista:
Yes. BootCampDigital.com.

Michael:
All right. Well that’s the time we have today, a big thank you to Krista Neher and Allison Chaney of Boot Camp Digital. As you heard, you can check out Boot Camp Digital courses at BootCampDigital.com. I’m your host Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast, with a special session about digital marketing training.

OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry in cooperation with industry leaders just like Krista and Allison. Thank you very much for joining us, and we will see you in the next podcast session.

The post Digital Marketing Course Comparison Boot Camp Digital appeared first on OMCP.

One of the most common questions asked of OMCP is “Which Digital Marketing Courses are right for me?” In this special training series, we interview the leaders of seven digital marketing course providers to learn the differences.

Meredith Gray Stone, Program Manager, Professional Certificate Programs at Duke University, was kind enough to sit with us and share what the industry can expect from the Duke University Digital Marketing Programs.

Michael:
Welcome back to the OMCP studios, and with us today is Meredith Gray Stone, Program Manager, Professional Certificate Programs at Duke University. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be discussing digital marketing training and some of the differences you should be aware of. Meredith, welcome to the program.

Meredith:
Thanks for having me, Michael. Glad to be here.

Michael:
Glad you’re here as well. Now, I know you manage five certificate programs at Duke. You’ve been in education, in some capacity, for over 10 years as a Program Manager. What drove you to get into the business of education and training?

Meredith:
Well, I was a high school English teacher for many years, prior to doing this. I was working with high school students, as you know, and then eventually I moved into working with the Huntington Learning Center, and there I was able to work with a wide variety of students, of all ages, and I noticed that I started to have a yearning to work with an older audience, just for a change. Even though I can’t really take credit for founding this Digital Media Marketing Course here at Duke, or even in founding Duke Continuing Studies itself, I can provide some history about how it all began.

As everyone knows, Duke has a very long, rich history of academic excellence, we’ve been on the map for a long time. But our continuing studies has really only been around since 1969. That’s the year it started. And it actually started in order to really try to bring female students back into the college setting and encouraging them to finish their undergraduate degrees. That’s how it all started, which I think is pretty interesting. From there it’s really blossomed into providing a lot of different opportunities.

In the 70s, it was mostly about the female students, and then eventually we started catering to an older audience, with folks who were retired and just wanted to get out of the house and delve into some of these random topics and have the opportunity for enrichment classes. It was in the 80s that we started moving towards having these summer conferences. We started inviting younger audiences to Duke to have these academic camps and these summer experiences here at Duke so they could get a taste of the college life, while still being in Junior High or High School, whatever age it was that they came and experienced it.

Then from there we moved into more of a professional type of setting. We were still doing all those other things I mentioned, but to focus our energy more on things like corporate training, we added a nonprofit management program and then, obviously, the professional certificate programs that we offer now as well.

I think, at the end of the day, Duke realized that there’s always going to be a strong need for professional development. That’s never really going to go away. A lot of adults always have that desire to keep learning and a lot of times, they’re using it to their advantage. They need to have some type of an edge in their job to get advancement, or maybe they want to transition careers altogether. And let’s be honest, a lot of times people don’t have the funds or the time to go back to school and get additional degrees. I think that’s why this is important to Duke, and I think that’s why it continues to be important to us. Ultimately, we really want to help people enhance their lives. Whether that’s through, again, getting a better job or being able to move into to a new industry and just grow their skill sets. I think that’s what continues to drive us. We just want to see people be successful.

Michael:
1969. That’s an incredible legacy. I can’t imagine what some of the programs were back then. Do you have any knowledge of that?

Meredith:
Oh, I think they have varied extensively to things like very specific history classes. Like … I don’t know, if you wanted to learn more about FDR. I know now, especially with the older population, some of the technology classes that are popular are, how to use your iPhone to take great photos and capture your grandkids on video, or whatever you want to do with that. They’re kind of all over the place and I know they’ve gotten into much more niche subjects then that. Those are just a couple examples.

Michael:
A little different than 1969, but it’s great to know it goes that far back.

Michael:
Just a quick thank you to you from hiring managers for teaching English. Even at the high school level. One of the biggest criteria, as we interview hiring managers, is just the ability to write, and they have such a hard time finding that. They find these folks who understand marketing through and through, but they cannot write a few sentences. It’s just wonderful that you put in your time to do that and set up these marketers for success.

Meredith:
Yeah, it’s a hard topic to teach. I think that’s why I eventually I started to say, “You know what? I’d really like to start working with people who want to learn.”Rather than these kids who are fighting me every day.

Michael:
I wish we could just get it in their heads that how well you learn to write has a direct correlation to your income later.

Obviously, you’re in a different world now, to some degree. Your programs are being delivered online. At least I know the digital marketing program is and certainly some of the others. How are you measuring the success of your courses and programs now?

Meredith:
That’s a great question. I think students who inquire about our programs, they ask that very question. I do think, since our program does attract a very wide audience, it is kind of hard to narrow our definition of success to only really one or two outcomes. Because I think different people enroll for different reasons and just the definition of success means different things to different people.

For instance, some people, they come into a program and they really just want a very general understanding about what digital marketing is, or they just want to be able to speak more intelligently on the subject. Whereas, other people, maybe they’re already in the industry and they want to be a little bit more informed about what their colleagues are doing, as far as the decision making process that goes on behind the scenes with these strategies, and they really just want to learn the basics of the methodology behind all of the digital marketing that’s going on in their companies, or wherever it is they’re working.

Then I think some people come into it and they are really ‘gung ho and they want to make sure that they are mastering everything they could possibly master. Which, as you know Michael, from experience, is quite a large task to take on because mastering marketing is something that really takes a lot of time and experience to do.

Then, I think other people come in and they’re looking for very specific guidance on a particular type of marketing.

There are a lot of factors here, but I think that when you boil it down, I think that learners are looking to walk away with two things. I think those things are probably confidence and, based on the comprehensive program that we offer, because it is quite comprehensive, I think that’s generally the two indicators of success: Confidence that they can pursue these digital marketing strategies that they’re learning about, and second, that they can actually apply the skills and the knowledge that they’re learning, and that they can immediately do something with that.

I know from experience, it’s frustrating when you put the time and energy into learning and trying to improve yourself on something and all you do is walk away with theories. We don’t want that to happen. We want people to actually be able to walk away with something that they can apply immediately and see results fairly quickly. I get that feedback continuously, that learners are able to do that when they complete our program. To me, that means success.

Michael:
Meredith, you described a wide range of students who are coming to the programs, each with maybe a different measurable outcome. Would you say that the program is catering more to larger corporate settings, like at an enterprise company, or is it catered more towards people who are going to be independent contractors or working in a small business, or does it cater to all of those? Is there some kind of positioning that you see?

Meredith:
That’s a great question. I think the answer is all of those, because it is such a comprehensive program. I think that you can take these strategies and you can apply them on a very small budget, but I think you’re also capable of applying them on a much larger budget and taking it to the next level, if you will.

For our ideal candidates, they do come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are already, like you said, already have the marketing experience and want more targeted content to take their knowledge to the next level. Because they’re already working with marketing, they just want to know how to do things, probably, more independently. Or they’re focusing in on, how can I have less waste, wasteful spending. And some people, they’re new to the industry and they want to just be able to get a foot in the door somewhere, and this is a good place to start. For instance, working on principles that would allow them to get the OMCA certification, or even OMCP. But obviously, you need experience for that.

Michael:
Now’s the chance to talk about what makes the courses different or what people might find inside. I’m curious what is in the courses that you’re offering that is unlikely to be found in other courses?

Meredith:
We’re definitely proud to be able to offer one of the most extensive online courses on the market. I do believe that. There’s a lot of content within our program. But, we’re also proud to be able to offer some unique opportunities. Some of those things, or I guess, one of the things that would really stand out would be what we call live mentoring sessions.

What those are, are, they’re private mentoring sessions that are exclusive to our Duke students. We offer these twice a month for students who are enrolled in our program. Really what it allows them to do is engage with instructors, They’re not just people who have studied digital marketing, they’re people who are actually active in the industry, who are doing this day in, day out. They’re keeping up with the trends. As you know, digital marketing is always evolving, so they really have a lot of experience with a lot of the strategies that they’re teaching to.

Essentially, they’re going to come in and they’re going to lead a learning session through a virtual classroom and it’s going to be on a topic that’s obviously relevant to the program, and just digital marketing in general. It allows the students to not only get, obviously, just an extra added value within the program because it’s probably going to be content that’s not already within the program itself. So, again, kind of a freebie. But it also allows them to, well, just to talk with the instructor and they have the flexibility of submitting questions or ideas ahead of time. The instructors can actually look at this feedback and they can create unique sessions that are tailored to what the students want or what they need.

If students want the opportunity to come in to the live classroom and interact, they can, and they can do that at their own comfort level, or if they simply want to sit back and observe, they can do that too. We record the sessions and give students the opportunity to listen to them whenever they can, if they’re too busy to make it. I think that students really appreciate that because it’s a very small setting, private setting, and it gives them the opportunity to ask things that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

Michael:
Meredith, how long is the access for your typical student? Do they get a few months of access or more?

Meredith:
We are very generous on our access. Even though it is quite a long program, we do give students a year in order to complete the program. One of the perks that’s also unique to Duke is that, if they do successfully finish the program, they would get a complimentary year of access so they can keep going back and reviewing the material. They have access to any newly updated material that comes along because we are always making our classes better and revising those as things change. It’s quite generous.

Michael:
That is. If I’m understanding right, if I sign up and do really well, I could end up with 24 months total access?

Meredith:
That’s right.

Michael:
Okay. That is generous. Tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on industry certification standards, like OMCP.

Meredith:
I think they’re very important. I think they’re critical for many reasons. I think they’re critical for students because it allows them to get an idea of what’s going to be a reputable program.

As you know, leading OMCP, you have what are called The Registered Education Providers, so a student knows that if an institution is offering a program and they’re a Registered Education Provider, they’re going to have to adhere to a criteria that’s set forth by someone, that will ultimately provide a quality program. At the end of the day, that’s going to set them up for success.

It’s good for the student, it’s good for the education provider because they know that they’re giving students quality content and they’re coming up with effective training programs that are going to be relevant to what people need and what they want. And, it’s also good for employers, obviously. There’s just so much competition out there in the workforce and it can sometimes be hard to find people that are very skilled in what they do, and take it seriously. It allows employers to look for someone who has made the investment in themself, so it gives them some confidence that they’re going to be hiring a valuable employee who’s been held to these standards.

I think it’s important for all those reasons, and I think, especially today, there’s just … with the flooding of free information out there and there’s all this content available online, we know that while that can be a very good thing, that content isn’t always correct. Or maybe it was correct at one time, but now it’s outdated or … so, having the certification standards guarantees that someone who really is taking their learning seriously is going to be able to get quality content.

Michael:
Well, we’re really happy to have you as one of the leading registered education providers. The pass rates are exceptional coming in from your graduate. If, Meredith, you’re looking to the future of digital marketing training, what are some of your predictions or plans or visions that you have?

Meredith:
Well, I think in general, I see training becoming more hands on for learners. While I think it’s all well and good that we have the flexibility of a self-paced content and students definitely, they definitely like that because we’re all busy, we all have different schedules, and it works. A lot of times, when I talk to prospective students I get the same questions, and those questions are, how will I be able to interact with instructors? Or, how can I connect with other students in the program? Or, is there a way for me to practice these skills that I’m going to be learning? Those are very common questions that I get.

I think a lot of us are … we’re pretty used to learning by videos, thanks to YouTube. We’ve all kind of become adept at that. But, I think students still want the option to be able to ask questions to an actual live human being. Just like I said, with the live mentoring sessions, I think students appreciate the opportunity, even if maybe they never use it, it’s there.

I think they also want to be able to talk to other people, just to get a feel for, hey, this is what I’m encountering, how would you handle this? Or, just use each other for sounding boards and get an idea for best practices. Also, they want to be able to make sure that they’re getting something out of the course. Just because you watched 20 videos on SEO doesn’t mean that you can actually apply that.

We’re already accommodating these things with the way that our program is already set up. We offer the live mentoring sessions. We have these simulation labs and exercises the students can do to apply their skills. But I think that in the future we’re definitely going to be exploring how we can take this to the next level and really amp it up.

Michael:
Meredith, the next section is, normally in these interviews, a stats blitz, and I know your management isn’t ready to share those numbers yet so we aren’t going to put you on the spot for that. If there is some room, or that gets approved later, we’ll put those in the show notes.

So I’m just going to skip to the next thing and ask, what advice would you have for learners who are just approaching digital marketing or learning digital marketing through a program like yours?

Meredith:
You would think that most folks aren’t afraid to do this, but don’t be afraid to ask questions, I think that we all start somewhere, we all start at different places, and some of us who are in the program are a little more experienced than others, but, don’t be afraid to ask if you don’t quite understand something.

Also, when it comes to marketing, as a learner, you have to really be prepared to take risks. As I talked about before with being able to master marketing, it is something that takes a lot of time and experience. I think, you and I both know, from experience, that you really have to try a lot of strategies before you’re going to find that one that works best for your purpose and your specific audience. So don’t be afraid to take risks and try different things out.

And I guess, just always be open to learning. Even if you do go through a digital marketing education program and you get a certificate, or you do whatever you do to prepare for some kind of certification, or even a job, just always be open to learning. Because, as we said before, the digital marketing industry is always evolving, and very quickly. You have to be open to learning new strategies and you have to do that so that you don’t become stale. Take advantage of free resources and other people that are out there, and again, just be open.

Michael:
Meredith, when somebody does decide to enroll in a course, where can they find the certificate programs at Duke Continuing Studies?

Meredith:
Well, the best place is to find us online. They can find us at https://learnmore.duke.edu. Once you go there you’ll see, right at the top, Professional Certificates, and that’s where the Digital Media Marketing Program is located.

Michael:
Well, that is all the time we have for this session.Meredith, thank you so much for joining us.

Meredith:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Michael:
I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and you’ve been listening to the OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices podcast.

OMCP maintains the certification standards for the online marketing industry, in cooperation with leaders just like Meredith and Duke University. We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next OMCP podcast.

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