25 best resources that help you learn marketing for free

Content marketing, social media, SEO, digital engagement – these are all the typical things you’ll be using to try and attract new clients. But are you seeing the results you’d hoped? There is always room for improvement, and that’s why learning should be a priority.

Creative Boom has put together the following essential list of 25 best resources to help you learn marketing. Even better, they’re all free. Ok yes, you might have to share your email address to access some of them – but that’s a small price to pay for what you’ll get.

As always, if we’ve missed anything, please comment below with your suggestions. And don’t forget to bookmark this page, so you can refer back when you’ve got time to brush up on your marketing skills.

1. Content Marketing Reference Library

Brought to you by the friendly people behind Copyblogger, this comprehensive content marketing reference library gives you a crucial list of 100 essential articles on content marketing. We are covering ten different categories from content strategy and promotion to idea creation and traffic generation. Bookmark it!

2. The Beginner’s Guide to SEO

New to SEO? Need to polish up your knowledge? The Beginner’s Guide to SEO has been read over three million times and provides comprehensive information you need to get on the road to professional quality Search Engine Optimisation.

3. Social Marketing Success Kit

Discover how to drive new business and revenue through various social media channels with the Marketo Social Marketing Success Kit. From best practice guides and webinars to social media cheat sheets and helpful blog posts, this resource is highly recommended.

4. Social Media Calendar

This excellent online resource gives you everything you need to grow on social media. Each week you’ll get upcoming calendar events to tap into, details of popular hashtags and plenty of social media tips and guides. An absolute must!

5. Learn Marketing

Learn how research-driven and experience-driven marketing can help your product or vision succeed — brought to you by the inspiring team behind Zana.

6. The Moz Local Learning Center

Prospective customers are looking for your business online. Make that connection happen with local search. Optimising your local search listings helps bring new customers right to your business. The Moz Local Learning Center will teach you what local search is, whether it’s the best marketing option for you, and how to implement local search best practices to drive customers to your website.

7. HubSpot Social Media Blog

HubSpot offers useful marketing content via its blog – all to help you to better market your business. From a handy character count guide to 15 hidden Instagram hacks, this blog has its finger on the pulse and will keep you on top of new marketing trends.

8. The Essential List of Startup Marketing Resources

Learn about marketing strategy, customer acquisition, and growth for startups – all thanks to this essential list of marketing resources. Perfect for freelancers too. Oh, and it’s forever evolving and being updated.

9. Creating Content That Converts

For most people, content marketing doesn’t work. This insightful post will explain why and show you step-by-step how to create content that does, i.e. content that drives opt-ins, leads and revenue to your business.

10. The Multi-Channel Content Distribution Guide

Learn how to streamline your digital content distribution efforts with the "content pillar" approach. This guide will show you how to: align and optimise your distribution efforts; deliver the right content at the right time and drive conversions from your target audience. Ready to provide a high quantity of high-quality content? This guide is for you.

11. Distributing Content Marketing – The Complete Guide

Unfortunately, writing great content is not enough to build a successful blog. You have to learn how to distribute and promote your content if you’re going to make your digital marketing worthwhile. This guide reveals 11 essential channels to use so that people will read your excellent posts.

12. The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media

Whether you're new to social media or just looking to close a few knowledge gaps, Moz provides one of the most comprehensive social media resources available. No matter what your skill level is, there's plenty in here to help you improve your social presence. What are you waiting for?

13. Advanced Content Promotion Checklist and Guide

Content marketing is not easy; it takes a lot of elbow grease to create valuable content and even more to promote it. The promotion part is something that many companies tend to miss when looking at a content marketing strategy. A general rule of thumb is you should spend 30% of your time creating content and 70% promoting it. That’s why Vinay Patankar created this checklist you can use to promote the content you work so hard to create.

14. 48 Content Marketing Tools

Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard shares a powerhouse of epic content marketing tools that will help you do everything from planning to promoting and improving your content. There is certainly a lot to learn here.

15. The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building

Another great free resource from Moz, this guide tells you everything you need to know about link building, and why it’s important, what types of links are good and bad, how to create a link building campaign and advanced tips and tricks.

16. 212 Blog Post Ideas

Thanks to Digital Marketer, this free PDF is the ultimate list of blog post ideas. From list posts (such as this one) to how-to articles, it’s a useful guide to help you when you’re next stuck for blogging ideas.

17. The Definitive Guide to Content Marketing

In the early days of iDoneThis – a status reporting product – the team had never heard of content marketing. They had no cash, no knowledge on how to acquire customers, and no idea how to run a business. This excellent guide is how their journey into content marketing began, and how they grew a million-dollar business purely through content marketing.

18. Primer

Primer is a fast, easy way to learn new marketing skills on the move. You can take bite-sized lessons wherever and whenever you have five minutes spare. Focusing on advertising, content, measurement and strategy – this app will help you boost your marketing skills, even when you’re offline.

19. Marketing Certifications from HubSpot

Check out these 18 free marketing classes and reading materials from HubSpot to help you master inbound marketing. Learn about blogging, SEO and keyword strategy, social media, email marketing, calls to action, and finish up with an exam to prove your worth.

20. The Complete Guide to Building Your Content Marketing Workflow

If you want to produce a steady stream of content, you need a workflow that works. This guide offers a pain-free approach to creating, publishing and promoting content marketing campaigns. You’ll get step-by-step workflow templates, an overview of essential content marketing tools and project management hacks to increase efficiency.

21. Email Marketing Field Guide

You don’t have to be a professional web designer to create and send HTML email. In this guide, Mailchimp will explain the basics of HTML email and run through the tips and best practices you’ll need to consider as you develop your email marketing plan.

22. CoSchedule’s Resource Library

Become a marketing rock star with exclusive access to free marketing templates, worksheets, guides, infographics, and more thanks to CoSchedule’s ultimate resource library. Giving you everything from a social media buttons guide to a content marketing editorial calendar – it's a must-have bookmark.

23. The Ultimate How-to Marketing Guide

With marketing, you have a lot to juggle. Social media, SEO, and email are just a few of the channels you need to master. Plus, new opportunities in online marketing are emerging from every corner. Wouldn't it be nice to have one handy reference guide to learn it all?

Get your free copy of this unique edition guide to learn 20 'how-to' marketing lessons covering a range of essential topics. All thanks to HubSpot.

24. Marketing Guides

This very generous free resource from Kissmetrics gives you everything you need to master your marketing. It’s a superb collection of guides that lets you track, analyse and monitor your digital marketing.

25. The Learning Center

Design studio Impact has its comprehensive learning centre, offering an extensive library of inbound marketing resources. There is a vast amount of information at your fingertips, all designed to help you learn the secrets to inbound marketing.