Top 7 quick SaaS marketing certification courses

Few things look as nice on your LinkedIn profile as a column of shiny new marketing certifications. But not all courses and certifications are created equal.

A search for SaaS marketing certification courses will yield dozens of results, and many are pricey and take months to complete. If you’re looking to get quickly hands-on with marketing your offering, getting started can seem overwhelming given the range and amount of courses available. It’s difficult to determine which ones are worth your time and money.

This list is based on the selection of courses we require our own team to complete at Kalungi.

Interested in more executive-focused, strategic marketing courses? See our breakdown of the "Top strategic B2B SaaS marketing certification courses for executives" on the T2D3 blog.

T2D3 B2B SaaS CMO Masterclass

Type: Self-paced video course & certification
Price: $799

This course & certification is designed to give Fractional CMOs, t-shaped marketers, and founders a comprehensive set of tools to build, execute, and manage a complete go-to-market for a B2B SaaS company.

The masterclass is based on T2D3, the methodology we use to grow and scale our own clients at Kalungi. It is depicted in the book, T2D3: How some software startups scale, where many fail, written by Kalungi's co-founder Stijn Hendrikse.

It includes 10+ hours of self-paced learning paired with a playbook, templates, cheat sheets, quizzes, and certification badges for demonstrating your applied knowledge.

The T2D3 CMO masterclass covers topics like:

• Growth & go-to-market planning
• Diagnosing your market
• Managing your marketing strategy
• Market segmentation & ICP
• Product positioning & messaging
• Persona development
• Content development & SEO
• Voice of the customer
• Writing testimonials
• Reporting & Analytics
• Pricing
• Account-based marketing
• Channel marketing

HubSpot - Inbound Marketing Course

Whether you’re new to the world of SaaS marketing, exploring a new subject, or simply looking to brush up on your marketing theory knowledge, HubSpot offers one of the best suites of certification courses available to the modern SaaS marketer. HubSpot Academy offers courses on email, content, social media, and many other forms of marketing, as well as tutorial courses on how to use HubSpot’s own marketing and sales tools.

The perfect first stop when exploring their courses is their Inbound Marketing Course. In this course, complete with video lessons, quizzes, and a final certification exam, HubSpot’s team covers the basics of inbound marketing that’ll catch up even the most newly acquainted on modern ideas of digital marketing best practices.

When you’ve got the fundamentals down, explore HubSpot’s courses on:

• Content Marketing
• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing

Google Digital Garage - Fundamentals of digital marketing

Much like HubSpot’s group of certifications, this course offered by Google will give you a quick but informative overview of marketing theory on: 

• SEO
• Analytics
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• And other facets of digital marketing 

Learning these concepts with Google’s ideology, through the lens of their tools, is also a unique benefit of this course as these platforms—including Google Ads, Analytics, Alerts, and Search Console—are among the most frequently used among SaaS marketers.

If you plan to or suspect that you’ll need to work in ads at any point it's quite likely that you’ll need to work within Google Ads. For this, it’ll also be quite helpful to take one of Google’s certification courses specific to Google Ads which you can find here.

Google Analytics Academy

While we always recommend trusting the website user and conversion data provided by platforms like HubSpot which are much less likely to double-count users, inaccurately record conversions, and not connect sessions to contacts, for many Google Analytics will be their primary website analytics tool. Because of this, having a basic understanding of the platform and its functions is essential for any SaaS marketer interested in having a comprehensive digital skillset.

With certification courses taking you from the most basic functionalities of the platform to some of the most esoteric, Google Analytics Academy allows you to get certifications for every level of knowledge. That way, there’s no need to complete an extensive course just for the sake of receiving your certificate.

Situational Leadership: Building Leaders

A great marketing leader is as great a leader as they are a marketer. And The Center for Leadership Studies will provide you with plenty of resources to improve the way you think about leadership, management, and how you work with others.

Recommendable not only for a marketing leader but for any member of your team, The online course on “Building Leaders” offers fantastic advice for learning how to be better both at managing and at being managed. Using the leadership framework presented, you’ll be able to quickly and effectively identify the kind of support you and your coworkers need.

Unfortunately, this course is far from inexpensive, costing as much as $259.00 as of June 2022. Requesting a group rate for you and your team is highly recommended if you decide to explore this option for your company.When you’ve finished this course, consider taking their Empowering Situational Leaders course as well which builds upon the teachers of Building Leaders course.

Product-Led Growth Fundamentals

ProductLed’s “Fundamentals” certification includes a video walking you through the basics of what product-led growth is and how you can adopt this strategy. Though you can complete the video and exam within a couple of hours, what will be even more valuable is to pair these resources with a read-through of the Product Led Growth book.

Semrush SEO Toolkit Course

Because of the vital role SEO will play in all of your website, blog, and landing page copy, having a full understanding of it and how you can make it work to your advantage will be almost as essential as learning how to produce valuable content. 

Semrush is one of the most useful tools available to the modern marketer for planning and monitoring the impact of their SEO strategy, so learning how to use this tool to its full potential is a great way to improve your SEO skills.

This course will walk you through the basics of SEO, particularly within the context of how you can use Semrush to boost your own strategy, and is recommendable to any marketer involved in digital content production or review of any kind.

Start getting certified

Long-form certification courses, such as those offered online by universities, can be great ways to dive deep into important marketing topics. However, for many looking to build up their SaaS marketing skills quickly, it’s better to invest time in a wide array of short certifications. These allow you to dip your toes in a variety of strategies and functions every successful B2B Saas startup needs, making them the perfect starting point on your certification journey.

If you’re looking to beef up your marketing theory even more, be sure to reference this list of 10 marketing books every B2B SaaS CMO should read, subscribe to our SaaS Growth Guide newsletter, and browse the Kalungi blog which is updated weekly with B2B SaaS marketing tips, best practices, and templates from our team.