Online Marketing Basics

Online Marketing Basics is a 12-hour, self-paced introduction to the structure of online marketing. It explains how channels work together, how to define audiences and goals, and how to use a small budget to find out what is working.

Online Marketing Basics at a glance

• Format: Self-paced, 4 modules
• Level: Basics
• Participants: unlimited
• Language: English
• Certificate: AEI certificate of attendance
• Investment: free of charge

What you take away

You get a working map of online marketing rather than an isolated introduction to one platform. The course shows how search, social and content, email, and direct marketing can contribute at different points in a customer journey. You examine the route from a first click to a purchase and learn why a channel should be assessed in relation to a defined goal, a specific audience, and the offer that is being presented.

You also learn how to make practical decisions when resources are limited. This includes choosing a useful audience description, matching a message to an offer, setting a manageable budget, and selecting measurements that support a decision. The examples use familiar shop situations, such as a visitor comparing products, leaving a product page, returning through an email, or completing an order after several contacts with a business. The course does not train detailed platform operation or campaign management.

Your learning objectives

• You can describe what online marketing can contribute at different stages of a customer journey.
• You can distinguish the main roles of search, social and content, email, and direct marketing.
• You can define useful customer groups without relying only on broad assumptions.
• You can connect an offer and its argument with an audience and a suitable brand tone.
• You can set measurable objectives and select metrics that relate to those objectives.
• You can plan small tests, allocate a limited budget, and use the results to decide what to change.

The levers at a glance

Customer journey: A shop visitor may discover a product through a search result, read a guide on the shop site, compare alternatives, and return later through an email or a saved link. Looking at these steps together helps you avoid treating every click as an independent event. You consider where attention is created, where information is needed, and where a purchase can be completed with as little friction as possible.

Channel role: Search, social and content, email, and direct marketing do not perform the same task. Search can help people who are already looking for an answer or product. Content can explain a problem or make an offer easier to understand. Social activity can create contact and conversation, while email can support people who have already shown interest. The course uses these differences to build a coherent plan instead of a list of disconnected activities.

Audience and message: A product page for a first-time buyer may need different information from a page for an experienced customer replacing an existing product. You therefore work with customer groups, their situation, and the reason an offer could matter to them. The argument should be clear and credible, and its tone should fit the brand. This makes the message easier to assess than a general claim aimed at everyone.

Measurement: A number is useful only when it helps answer a question. Visits may indicate interest, but they do not by themselves show whether a shop is reaching the right people or generating orders. You connect metrics with objectives, distinguish activity from results, and allow for steps between the first contact and the purchase. This gives a more careful basis for deciding whether an activity should continue, change, or stop.

Testing: When a shop is unsure whether a product argument, landing page, audience, or call to action is more effective, a small test can replace a broad assumption. A test needs a clear question, a defined comparison, and an agreed way to read the result. The focus is not on testing everything at once, but on learning enough to make the next practical decision.

Who is this course for?

This course is for people who are beginning to work with online marketing or who need a structured overview before taking responsibility for individual activities. It can help shop owners, founders, assistants, junior marketing staff, content teams, and people moving into e-commerce roles. It is also suitable for anyone who needs to discuss marketing priorities with colleagues or external specialists and wants a shared vocabulary for channels, audiences, objectives, budgets, and measurement.

This course is not for people looking for detailed instruction in a specific advertising platform, advanced search optimisation, social media production, email automation, analytics implementation, or campaign buying. It does not replace specialist training, a technical setup, or a channel-specific operating manual. If you already plan and optimise multi-channel campaigns independently, the level may be too introductory for your needs.

Cost and access

The course is free of charge. You sign up through the shop and receive immediate access to the course content after registration. There is no fixed start date and no scheduled classroom session, so you can begin when it fits your work or study routine.

The material is designed for your own pace and can be completed in sections rather than in one continuous sitting. The total scope is 12 hours across four modules. You can pause after a lesson, return to an earlier explanation, and use the examples to consider how the same decision would apply to your own shop or organisation.

After the course

A sensible next step is to apply the framework to one concrete shop situation. Choose a product, service, or customer group and write down the intended audience, the main offer, the desired action, and the small number of measurements that would show progress. Then review the existing customer journey and identify one uncertainty that could be checked with a manageable test.

From there, you can decide whether you need deeper knowledge in one area, such as search, content, email, measurement, or paid media. The course gives you a basis for making that choice. It does not require you to use every channel, and a useful follow-up may be to improve one step of the journey before adding another activity.

Programme: 4 modules

• Module 1: Understanding online marketing — What online marketing can do; The path from click to purchase; Goals you can measure
• Module 2: The channels at a glance — Search: SEO and SEA; Social and content; Email and direct marketing
• Module 3: Audience and message — Customer groups instead of guesswork; Offer and argument; Tones that fit the brand
• Module 4: Plan, test, measure — Allocating budget sensibly; Metrics without self-deception; Testing instead of guessing

Our approach

AEI works from practical decisions and clear reasoning. We separate the role of a channel from the mechanics of a platform, connect examples to real shop situations, and treat measurement as a way to learn rather than as a collection of figures. The course presents a manageable system: define the situation, choose an audience and objective, select an appropriate activity, observe what happens, and use the result to make the next decision.