Discover the Best Digital Marketing Classes in San Francisco
The field of digital marketing was a direct result of the birth of the internet. It is the strategy of leveraging digital channels (like websites, social media, search engine optimization, and email) to market products and services to customers. There are eight types of digital marketing – search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, marketing analytics, and affiliate marketing – and each of these helps companies to connect with the modern-day consumer and increase sales.
Digital marketing picks up where traditional marketing leaves off. You can’t interact with a business through a billboard or print ad, but you can engage in two-way communication with a business through articles, emails, and social media platforms. Liking posts, leaving comments, and clicking links can only be done through digital marketing tactics.
Leveraging the time people spend on screens (like phones and laptops), digital marketing promotes business products and services across the internet and is now a crucial part of any business’s marketing strategy.
Best Digital Marketing Classes & Schools in San Francisco
Down in the Financial District, Prompt Yes! hosts SEO Fundamentals will teach you how to leverage your content to optimize click-through rates and search rankings. You’ll learn to research keywords, identify your competitor’s strategies, and analyze pay-per-click advertising data to improve your SEO strategy. You’ll also practice raising your search engine optimization by convincing other websites to link to yours and how to optimize the return on investment (ROI) by turning searchers into visitors. A basic understanding of HTML is recommended for this course.
Prompt Yes! also offers a social media marketing course that will cover identifying your demographics and how to leverage content on all the major social media platforms. Open for all levels, this class is a great place to start if you’re new to this specific avenue of digital marketing.
There are also several virtual class offerings in digital marketing. Noble Desktop hosts Facebook Marketing Bootcamp which takes an in-depth look at all aspects of marketing on the Meta platform. Students will learn to develop a successful marketing strategy and create visual content that increases engagement and drives sales. You’ll also learn how to gain and expand your following and use paid advertising for increased engagement and profit.
Noble Desktop also has several other courses, like TikTok Marketing and YouTube Marketing. All of their classes are held live with an expert instructor and students will be sent additional information about how to log in and what’s needed for class once they register.
UC Berkeley's Advanced Media Institute hosts How to Create A Marketing Video in Northgate. This two-day graduate-level certificate course will guide you through producing a short-form marketing video that can be used internally or externally to transmit a marketing message to the public. You’ll learn how to use written reports, data and analysis, and interview transcripts to create a short two-minute marketing video. This class is ideal for content creators, content marketers, communications and PR folks, publishers, and educators.
Want to study successful digital marketing examples? Enroll in Insta Brands Killing It at Email Marketing to learn everything you need to build and maintain the perfect campaign list. This course will teach how to sign up your first customers and design the perfect email template to engage and convert. Also in the Financial District, this class is open to all levels.
There’s also Introduction to Google AdWords which is ideal for those interested in paid search. This three-hour crash course teaches the strategy, campaign building, and optimization skills you need to get started with Google AdWords. By the end of the class, you’ll know how to identify business goals and high-intent keywords, set up your own campaign, use the Adwords platform, examine targeting methods, and the best practices to optimize ads for ROI.
San Francisco Industries That Use Digital Marketing
San Francisco is home to over 300 IT firms and boasts the largest number of research universities and federal research institutions in the nation. In the third quarter of 2017, the internet sector received the highest percentage of Bay Area VC investment, proving the area’s longevity within the tech field. Whether these companies are business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), they rely on a team of digital marketers to help drive brand awareness and generate sales leads. Digital marketers create and post content, update content, and oversee social interactions and campaigns, like those you see on Facebook or Instagram.
Social and digital media are another main industry. More than 300 digital media companies operate in the Bay Area, including Youtube, Twitter, Pixar, Sony, Sega of America, and PDI DreamWorks SKG. These companies have a focus on digital marketing, making them ideal places to look for employment in the field.
San Francisco is the original home of the contemporary biotech industry and has close to 300 Life Science firms, with two of them raked in the top three US Biotech Firms by Forbes in 2015. Digital marketing within the life sciences has a scientific approach: from content creation to deploying and analyzing the effectiveness of campaigns. These strategies can include standard digital outreach and messaging across various channels like email, SMS, social, and search.
A hub for environmentalism, San Francisco boasts 225 Cleantech companies and nearly 60,000 jobs in the region’s core clean economy. A leading city in the clean technology industry, these environmentally-focused companies require digital marketers to help them distill their research-backed information into a more palatable form for the average consumer. Customers these days are educated and informed, and value companies that reflect their values back to them. Developing a brand that consumers can trust is key to the success of these companies.
Digital Marketing Jobs & Salaries in San Francisco
A social media manager is a must for any company that interacts directly with its consumers. This can include retail, B2C tech companies, and those that operate in the fitness or entertainment industries. The average base salary for this role is between $60,000-$80,000, with the potential to eventually earn six figures.
A content marketing manager is responsible for the company’s overall content strategy, including online content (emails, articles, paid ads) and offline content (direct mail, billboards, and paper ads). The Content Marketing Institute reports that 73 percent of B2B marketers and 70 percent of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy, so there is a healthy job market for these roles. You can expect to earn around $130,000-$170,000, depending on the position and your years of experience.
An email marketing manager will focus solely on email touchpoints and can earn $95,000 or more, depending on their expertise. Email marketing managers plan and implement all email campaigns while also managing subscriber databases, improving retention, and analyzing campaign performance.
A paid search manager is responsible for implementing pay-per-click campaigns, updating bids, adding or removing keywords, running tests, and monitoring profitability. Salaries in this role range from $80,000-$130,000, making it a profitable career choice.
An SEO manager’s goal is to convert visitors into customers and increase click-through rates by considering all aspects of a web search. These positions range from $90,000-$115,000 per year and the rate of pay is often determined by your level of expertise.
