How to get started with online marketing (8 ways)

OMA is looking for staff, and often we get applications from people who unfortunately have too little experience for us. When I indicate that we are looking for someone with more experience, I always get the question, "how can I learn more or marketing?" or "do you have any tips for me?

To help that group of up-and-coming marketers (and entrepreneurs who want to get started themselves) get started, I've chosen to write this blog full of useful starter tips and tricks . So if you want to know more about online marketing, be sure to read on.

Start a hobby project

This is personally the single most important of the list. If you enjoy playing basketball, then do so as much as you can.

The same goes for online marketing. If you say during a job application that you love marketing but don't do anything about it in your spare time, you won't come across as credible.

Having your own hobby project is incredibly valuable. It teaches you the ropes and introduces you to real online marketing in practice. Not something written in a book or told to you.

No. You learn from your own experience and on your own feet. After all, if you are not doing a good job, you will notice it directly in your own wallet or visitors.

But in addition, you will also learn what it is like to be a website owner and how to deal with online opportunities, challenges and problems.

That too is something you cannot learn from a book.

Ps. If you want to know anything about Daniel's own hobby project with now 43,000 organic visitors per month, you should listen to the 11th Daniel Kuipers Podcast. It can be found on YouTube, Spotify and all the other major podcast channels.

YouTube videos

Some people read better by reading something, some by listening and some by watching. And for the latter group, YouTube is the channel.

The number of international and national online marketers explaining customer cases, giving tips and showing how to do certain things is huge. And there is an awful lot of free valuable information out there.

Pro tip: stay away as much as possible from people who either promise golden mountains or have no proven track record.

E-books

Many companies see e-books as a simple lead generator,pop some words on paper in an hour and call it an e-book.

But there are also parties that create e-books that are incredibly valuable, that have a lot to learn from and that are also just free to download. That group of e-books should all be requested and read as if you had to take an exam on them tomorrow morning.

There is also a group of people who create paid e-books. These often involve a lot more time and work, but you have to pay for them. The cost is not extremely high (often a few tens) and it is generally worth it.

So definitely purchase a few of those as well. But be sure to do so only from people who:

• Have a proven track record
• Not just writing about online marketing, but actively engaging in it
• Not believing golden mountains

Pro tip: we've also written a number of free e-books where you'll find all kinds of useful online marketing information. We're happy to list them for you:

• Dominate Google
• Google Analytics 4: the basics
• The Ultimate SEO Migration Guide
• The Ultimate KWFinder Manual

Read cases!

Virtually every online marketing agency has them online: case studies. Or in our case, success stories.

These pages describe what the online marketing agency did, how they did it and what the results were. Unfortunately, of course, agencies can't reveal everything, but in broad terms you can often get a pretty good idea of what needs to be done for a particular challenge.

You can then look at these clients' websites yourself to see what they did well and what they didn't do well. And you can learn a lot from that, too.

Ps. Here are all the success stories from OMA.

Free courses

Why am I talking mostly about free courses here? Well, there are a number of reasons. Courses are useful, but often superficial. When you're talking about online marketing, experience is everything. And you don't learn that from a course.

Therefore, do not spend too much money on expensive general courses, but start with some free courses first.

Like the one from Google, for example. Or the one from Hubspot.

In case you do want to do courses, go for very specific courses or training. One that deals only with Google Analytics or blog writing, for example.

And not a general SEO course. Those often contain so much general information that you might as well have read an ebook on the couch. And that saves another time and money.

Subscribe to newsletters

Of course, it is hard to keep track of 20+ websites of online marketing agencies, Frankwatching, Marketingfacts and all the other websites that are on your reading list.

That's why it's helpful to subscribe to all those newsletters. Then you won't miss anything. An additional advantage is that many companies do not put everything on their website, but share it in their newsletter.

You will be the first to know when something new is shared.

Pro tip: we send out 1 newsletter each month containing all the blogs and podcasts we've posted that month. If you would like to subscribe to that, you can do so at the bottom of this page.

Listen to online marketing podcasts

The podcast has become incredibly popular in recent years. Every day hundreds more people are starting podcasts.

And that includes marketers. Marketers who explain customer cases, do interviews with other marketers from large organizations and marketers who just enjoy talking about online marketing.

Of course, you can learn nicely from that. And if you're still looking for a podcast that's mainly about online marketing, I recommend listening to my podcast.

Read online marketing blogs

We have arrived at the last method of learning online marketing. Namely, reading blogs. In the online marketing world, it is normal to blog and every online marketer or online marketing agency has a blog.

Here they explain you simple things like setting up an ad, but there are also gems in between where they share all their secrets. So you should definitely learn from this as well.

Pro tip: If you want to read online marketing blogs, don't skip our OMA blog.