As consumers spend more and more time online (and, by extension, less and less time spent consuming other media), it is becoming increasingly important for businesses and advertisers to consider online marketing as a key component of their strategies and campaigns. This means learning how to tailor marketing campaigns to the space of the internet (including social media platforms) and learning how to use important data collection and marketing tools, like Google Ads and Analytics. These skills distinguish between running a successful marketing campaign and failing to get your project noticed. So, whether you are a small business owner looking to market your start-up or want to find work in professional advertising, it pays to become certified in digital marketing skills.
Noble Desktop: Digital Marketing Certificate
Key Information: Noble Desktop’s Digital Marketing Certificate program is a career-focused training program that lasts 126 hours of instruction and is available in part-time and full-time schedules. Live, experienced professionals teach all online and in-person classes, and students will be able to get direct attention from their instructors. Noble offers free class retakes within one year, and enrolled students can attend one-on-one career mentoring sessions with their instructors.
Suppose you are looking for a comprehensive training program to make digital marketing skills as accessible as possible. In that case, you should consider enrolling in Noble Desktop’s career-focused Digital Marketing Certificate. In this class, students will learn practical digital marketing skills with immediate real-world applications. All lessons are designed to ensure that students prepare to compete in the job market. This is a beginner-friendly training program, and all of the lessons are geared toward students hoping to leave the class ready to find work in digital marketing.
In this immersive certificate program, students will get hands-on experience in the creative and technical processes that go into running a successful digital marketing campaign. Students will learn how to design and execute marketing campaigns that account for how consumers view advertisements and purchase products online, emphasizing the role that social media platforms play in digital marketing. Once students are comfortable with designing these marketing campaigns, they will learn how to optimize their efforts using tools like Google Analytics to monitor and modify websites with traffic and SEO in mind and Google Ads, which lets advertisers ensure that their results are prioritized when potential customers search for them. In addition, students will learn how to use common data analytics tools to track consumer behavior, allowing them to make more informed decisions about the direction of their digital marketing campaigns and any future campaigns they work on.
Since this is a career-focused course, all of the lessons aim to provide students with the practical skills they need to find work in digital marketing. This makes the class an ideal place to learn professional skills that you can apply to your business ventures. Students will receive live instruction from experts in digital marketing, and regardless of whether or not they take the class in-person or online, you’ll be able to receive direct feedback and assistance from your instructor. Noble Desktop also offers a free retake option for students enrolled in all of their courses, so once you complete the class, you’ll have the opportunity to take the course again and receive even more hands-on training in digital marketing techniques. Noble also provides students with career support services, including one-on-one career coaching sessions and portfolio-building workshops.
Noble Desktop: Social Media Marketing Certificate
Key Information: Noble Desktop’s Social Media Marketing Certificate program is an immersive program that is offered in in-person and live online classes. Students can work full-time or part-time to complete the program, which includes 72 hours of instruction. All students enrolled in this program will be able to take the class again within one year.
As of 2025, four of the top five and seven of the top twenty most visited websites on the internet are social media platforms. While the different social media platforms in use have shifted in the past decade (Vine shuttering and TikTok and Instagram taking its place, for instance), the ubiquitous nature of social media has made it a daily part of most adults' lives in the English-speaking world. As a result, if you hope to get your product noticed, it pays to learn how to utilize social media marketing to build brand awareness. This means learning how to navigate the various social media platforms and creating organic marketing strategies to help you stand out.
In Noble Desktop’s Social Media Marketing Certificate program, students will learn how all of the major social media platforms currently used in the Anglophonic world, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), TikTok and LinkedIn. What works on one platform may fail on another since users interface with social media platforms differently, and each platform has its own set of built-in affordances. Thus, students will learn how to utilize tools like the Facebook Marketplace or the group's features to maximize their return on that platform. Students will get hands-on lessons working with various websites and learn how to strategize marketing campaigns and modify them once they are live. Students will also learn best practices for working alongside content creators and influencers to help build brand awareness and market their products.
In this career-focused training program, students will learn practical marketing skills that they can implement regardless of the size of their business or employer. All of the classes are taught by experienced instructors with a background in marketing, and regardless of whether you are attending in-person or online, you’ll be able to ask your instructor questions and receive immediate, personalized feedback and assistance on your work. You’ll also spend the course building a portfolio of real-world sample advertising campaigns and assets that you can use to demonstrate your skills and proficiency to prospective employers. In addition to this, students will also be able to work directly with their instructors in one-on-one career mentoring sessions, during which they can ask questions and receive practical advice on everything from the job search to the cover letter writing process.Â
General Assembly: Digital Marketing Bootcamp
Key Information: This digital marketing course is offered in-person in NYC or in a live online classroom. Students can enroll in a 10-week part-time or accelerated, one-week full-time version of the class. Students enrolled in the course will receive one-on-one career mentoring and access to General Assembly’s network of nearly 100,000 alumni.
General Assembly offers a Digital Marketing Bootcamp for students looking to learn practical strategies for marketing products and services online. Students will get hands-on experience designing marketing campaigns modeled after real-world advertising scenarios and learn how digital marketing practices are distinct from traditional marketing strategies. Through career-focused training and expert instruction, this bootcamp aims to provide students with the professional development skills needed to become certified digital marketing experts. This course covers how to design advertising campaigns, leverage social media as a means of building brand awareness and connecting with an audience and using data-oriented online tools and services to improve the reach and efficacy of your digital marketing strategy.
This course is offered in conjunction with P&G Ventures–the start-up studio run by Procter & Gamble, and with the help of their P&G Performance Marketing Academy, students will get hands-on experience working on real-world problems that advertisers face, particularly when working with new products and services. Students will learn how to create resilient marketing strategies optimized for a wide range of platforms. Students will also learn how to build ecommerce webpages and utilize common ecommerce toolkits to streamline development. All of the projects that students complete will be materials they can add to their professional portfolio, and all enrolled students will get access to General Assembly’s career services portal.
Digital Workshop Center: Digital Marketing Certificate
Key Information: Digital Workshop Center’s Digital Marketing Certificate program is a career-focused training program estimated to take four to six months (depending on when you enroll in your classes). All enrolled students will receive career training support and one-on-one mentorship in their career search process.
Digital Workshop Center offers a Digital Marketing Certificate program that is available for students in-person in NYC or online in a live digital classroom. This program emphasizes the use of data collection and analysis tools to complement and undergird digital marketing strategies and campaigns. In this course, students will learn the strategies they need to implement to see their digital marketing campaigns succeed. Students will learn how to optimize content for SEO purposes, track consumer behavior data and interpret that data to make informed decisions about the state of their marketing project. Students will also learn how to manage social media accounts and marketing campaigns and how to create content tailored for social media platforms, thus creating a voice for the company or product being advertised. By the end of this course, students will understand how to design, execute and manage a successful online marketing campaign.
In addition to hands-on, real-world instruction, students enrolled in this program will receive one-on-one career mentoring support, giving them added opportunities to practice their digital marketing skills and prepare for the job market. In addition, students will receive personalized support in the job search and resume writing process with the help of a professional career coach. Since this is a career-focused course with a real-world focus, students will design practical examples of advertising campaigns and strategies that they can add to their professional design portfolios to demonstrate their skills to prospective employers.
New York University: Social Media Certificate
Key Information: New York University’s Social Media Certificate program is offered through the School of Continuing Education. The program requires students to take the equivalent of five to seven credit hours of college courses over the course of a minimum of two semesters.
New York University’s School of Continuing Education offers students the opportunity to learn strategies and practices for social media marketing and brand management in their summer session Social Media Certificate program. This program, which consists of several accelerated marketing courses aimed at helping students understand the general principles of social media advertising. Students will begin by learning how to analyze digital consumers and their behavior. This includes the theoretical question of how to best gather information and make informed decisions based on this data and practical considerations of how to gather data and what kinds of data are useful for projects. Students will learn how to design content with SEO in mind and how to use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior and gauge the success of an advertising campaign.
Once students are comfortable with the data analysis side of digital marketing, they will take classes covering the essential elements of running a social media marketing campaign. Students will learn how to manage social media communities and how to build an audience for their product or company. This is vital to keeping the community engaged and active once it has been established. From there, students will take two elective courses to ensure that they have a well-rounded understanding of social media marketing and digital advertising. These courses include lessons in running branding campaigns, managing social media accounts, advanced analytic techniques and multi-pronged digital marketing strategies. Students enrolled in this course will have access to the career services offered through NYU, and they will receive a certificate of completion upon finishing the course.
BrainStation: Digital Marketing Course NYC
Key Information: The Digital Marketing Certificate Course, offered through BrainStation, is a part-time digital marketing training program available in NYC or live online. The course runs for eight weekly three-hour evening sessions. Enrolled students will receive one-on-one career support services and leave the class with a professional design portfolio they can take onto the job market.
Students in New York City can attend BrainStation’s Digital Marketing Course in-person or in a digital classroom from their own homes. This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive education in the practices and theories of digital marketing. Students will learn how to plan and execute digital marketing campaigns from start to finish and how to build campaigns from multiple angles. Students will learn techniques for maximizing SEO, utilizing paid search engine advertising, building email marketing campaigns and creating and managing branded social media accounts. This class aims to produce professional digital marketers who can find jobs almost immediately after graduating from the program. Students will also spend time learning important data analytics skills that will help them understand consumer behavior and respond to changes in their marketing strategies.
This career-focused certificate program aims to prepare students for their time on the job market by ensuring that they leave the course with practical knowledge of digital marketing. Students will work on real-world projects that they can compile into a ready-for-the-market sample portfolio, and students will work one-on-one with instructors to make the portfolio as enticing as possible. In addition, students will receive career mentoring support, hands-on experience working on digital marketing design projects and a certificate of completion indicating that they have completed their training.
Meta: Meta Certification
Key Information: This certification exam demonstrates students' proficiency with advertising techniques applied to Meta platforms like Facebook. This 90-minute exam covers advertising fundamentals and Meta-specific concerns, and students who pass the exam will be certified for two years. No training is included, but Meta does offer a study guide and practice exam.
Meta, nee Facebook, offers a wide range of certificates, certification courses, and exams for students and professionals looking to master their various advertising platforms, particularly FaceBook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. These certifications include generalist marketing associate and professional certifications and more targeted classes teaching skills like media acquisition and community management. Given the reach of Meta’s webpages, particularly FaceBook, which remains the most popular social media platform on Earth, it is worthwhile for any professional digital marketer or social media manager to learn how to navigate and utilize these platforms as tools for digital marketing. Each certification requires students to pass an exam demonstrating their knowledge and competencies.
Among these exams is the Digital Marketing Associate Certification, which aims to demonstrate that a digital marketer has the skills to design and run an advertising campaign on Meta platforms, including Facebook. This exam is designed for entry-level job seekers and students who want to demonstrate their specific skills in working with tools like Facebook. The exam covers students’ knowledge of the technical and legal aspects of Meta advertising and practical applications of their knowledge for designing and building marketing campaigns. Students taking the exam will be tested on privacy policies and data collection, target audiences and direct advertising tools, and optimizing Meta solutions. This practical exam will demonstrate a student’s knowledge of Meta and Facebook's specific affordances and structures as digital advertising platforms.
Google: Google Analytics Certification
Key Information: This is a brief, three-hour study tool for students looking to become certified in the Google Analytics application. This beginner-friendly program provides students with a baseline overview of the common questions the Google certification exam covers.
Offered through the Udemy digital learning platform, Google offers a Google Analytics Certification program for students looking to learn how to use the program in their digital marketing campaigns. This certification exam prepares students to work with the Google Analytics tool for collecting and analyzing data and making practical recommendations and marketing decisions based on that data. Google Analytics is an important tool for anyone looking to monitor web traffic or build online content with SEO considerations. It is one of the most commonly used business intelligence tools in the industry, and it is invaluable for anyone looking to ensure that their online marketing campaigns are working in full force. This industry-recognized certification is an ideal starting point for students looking to learn digital marketing skills.
This particular assistance course offers three hours of preparatory materials and a 100-question practice exam for students to prepare for Google’s certification exam. This course covers content for the exam and test-taking strategies for students hoping to maximize their chance of passing the certification exam. The course aims to assist students without prior analytics experience looking for a quick introduction to the tool's basic functions.
FAQ for Digital Marketing Certificates
What is the Difference Between a Certificate and a Certification?
If you are new to the world of professional digital marketing, you may be surprised to learn that certificates and certifications aren’t the same thing. While they are both ways to demonstrate to employers that you are professionally certified in a field or skill, you earn them differently.
Certificates are akin to diplomas, and they are awarded to students who complete professional skills training courses, like those offered through Noble Desktop. These courses tend to take a long time to complete (many lasting several months), as they are skills development courses aimed at providing students with no background in digital marketing the training they need to succeed in the industry. Certificates tend to last for a lifetime.
Certifications are awarded to students who complete proctored exams designed and administered by industry-recognized first-party or third-party providers. These exams test an individual’s proficiency in various areas of digital marketing or using specific tools and platforms (like FaceBook Markets or Google Analytics). Each exam varies in length and content, though very few take more than two hours to complete. Many certifications expire after a fixed period of time, requiring professionals to retake the exams.
Should I Pursue a Certificate or a Certification?
When choosing whether to pursue a certificate or a certification, the answer will usually depend on how much existing digital marketing experience you have. If you have worked in the field for a long time or you have prior training, either from a professional development program or a university, you are likely to want to take a series of certification exams to demonstrate your overall skills proficiency.
If you are new to the field of digital marketing, you will want to enroll in a certificate program. Since these are career-training programs, the main appeal is that students with no prior background in digital marketing can learn the skills they need to find a job. They are also excellent places to get the training you need to eventually pass a certification exam.
Do I Need to Become Certified to Find a Job?
As a general rule, no, you won’t need to be certified to find a job in digital marketing. While this won’t apply to every opening, most job listings won’t require any kind of certification (the exceptions are usually fairly specific, wanting to know that you are certified with Meta, Alphabet or another online platform). However, becoming certified is a great way to make your job application significantly more competitive in the eyes of prospective employers. With a certification or certificate in hand, the hiring manager will be able to instantly tell you are prepared to start working in a digital marketing role right away.
What Certificate Program is Right for Me?
Given how important online marketing is in the current consumer marketplace, more and more companies are investing in their digital marketing departments, and consequently, more and more service providers are offering certificate programs. While there are many options for students to enroll in located in NYC, they can also find a range of online and asynchronous courses. What is best will vary from student to student, but there are commonalities between course modalities that you can use to make a more informed decision.
Which is Better: In-Person or Online Classes
Most students report preferring in-person classes to online classes since the intimacy of the classroom helps them stay focused and engage with their instructor and their lessons. Students who enroll in in-person classes will also have the advantage of using a training center’s computer hardware and software, which can make life significantly easier for students with limited access to technology at home. Students will need to commute to the course, which can be a challenge for some and without access to the technology on hand, working on homework might be difficult.
Online classes have improved significantly in the last several years, and most training centers offer live online classes that are identical (or nearly identical) to their in-person counterparts. Students enrolled in live online classes can interact directly with their instructor and receive personalized feedback on their work without having to leave their homes. These courses also give students added flexibility since they won’t be restricted to courses that they can physically commute to attend. Students will need to provide their own technology, including a device that can run a digital classroom, which can be restrictive. Students will also need to spend more time managing their own workspace and environment to ensure they aren’t distracted during class.
Which is Better: Live Online or Asynchronous Classes?
Another option for students is to enroll in asynchronous online classes. These courses let students learn at their own pace and are most often composed of recorded lessons and exercises that students can watch and do when they have an opening in their schedule. These classes are ideal for students without a consistent schedule or whose work and familial obligations limit their ability to enroll in a live online course. The drawback is that without access to a live instructor, it is easy to get lost in the material without a clear source to turn to for help. This can, in turn, make the courses take significantly longer than they otherwise might. In addition, students will need to be self-motivated since it is easy to put off work and fall behind. As a general rule, asynchronous courses are less productive and effective than live online classes, but the flexibility they offer can be essential for some students.