Regardless of profession, industry, or expertise, artificial intelligence (AI) will come to disrupt the technical skills professionals need to stay relevant, if it hasn’t done so already. Today, every industry has its own unique way of approaching and implementing AI, and marketing has inevitably adopted multiple applications. According to Forrester, ‘artificial intelligence will spark a real marketing renaissance.’
AI and machine learning (ML) technologies are evolving more and more. It will open up doors for new fields we don’t currently know about, and may close the door for some. But more importantly, it allows marketers to enhance their strategic thinking and unleash innovative ideas like never before.
AI allows businesses to make better decisions and drive ROI, leading employers to look for marketers who know how to incorporate AI technology into digital marketing strategies. As a modern marketer, it’s increasingly important to get on board and ramp up your skills for the AI economy.
The impact of AI on marketing is already here, and its potential will only continue to grow. AI is revolutionizing digital marketing, and those who step into the world of it and learn how to approach and enable this technology will be the ones that stay ahead of the curve.
Digital Marketing Headhunters’ Top AI Training Courses
Everyone involved in marketing will benefit from an understanding of artificial intelligence and how it impacts marketing organizations. Whether you’re a Content Marketing Specialist, Data Analyst, Chief Marketing Officer, or a Chief Digital Officer, knowledge of basic principles around AI will become extremely valuable for marketers across all levels and disciplines.
Whether you’re just now getting started or already have a few skills under your belt, you can never become too educated when it comes to AI. Digital marketing headhunters believe these five AI training courses and certificates will help you become more skilled in AI and take your understanding to the next level.
Google AI aims to share AI research and knowledge, and its education courses are designed to help develop fundamental skills. Its Learn with Google AI resource is good for those who are just learning to code or are already well-advanced in machine learning. It provides tools and open-source platforms like TensorFlow, a machine learning library.
Here, you can find courses that introduce you to the basics of machine learning problem framing, how to work with TensorFlow guides, guides on best AI and ML practices, and much more.
Google’s collections of AI courses and guides are great for those who don’t have prior knowledge. Those that do can pick and choose between which modules they want to learn from.
Price: Free
Stanford University: Machine Learning
This is one of the most subscribed courses on Coursera, and covers a variety of fundamental machine learning processes and practices. It was created by Andrew NG, a professor at Stanford University and formerly head of Baidu AI Group/Google Brain.
This class is a great introduction to machine learning, data mining, and statistical pattern recognition. You will learn about the most effective machine learning techniques, and gain practice implementing them and getting them to work for yourself. Topics it covers include supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and best practices in machine learning.
While the course is free, you can pay for a certification. However, Coursera warns that the certificate does not represent official academic credit from the partner institution offering the course.
Price for course: Free
Price for certificate: $79
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Microsoft (edX)
This course is part of the Microsoft Professional Program in Artificial Intelligence, and is taught by Graeme Malcolm, Senior Content Developer at Microsoft Learning Experiences.
Microsofts’ introduction to AI course provides an overview of AI to learn how machine learning provides the foundation for AI, and how to leverage cognitive services to build smart apps. You will learn how to build simple machine learning models with Azure Machine Learning; use Python and Microsoft cognitive services to work with text, speech, images, and video; and use the Microsoft Bot Framework to implement conversational bots.
Microsoft notes that the practical elements of the course are based on Microsoft Azure and require an Azure subscription. So, make sure to keep this in mind if you plan on signing up.
Price for course: Free with trial or a Microsoft Azure subscription
Price for certificate: $99
Deep Learning Specialization with NVIDIA
Deep learning is a highly sought-out skill and a subset of machine learning in the scope of AI. It is concerned with algorithms that are similar to the brain in structure and function, teaching computers to learn by example.
This deep learning specialization course by deeplearning.ai and The NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI) was developed to teach the foundations of deep learning. Across five courses, you will learn about convolutional networks, RNNs, LSTM, Adam, Dropout, BatchNorm, Xavier/He initialization, and more.
Through this course, you will not only master the theory, but see how it is applied in industries from healthcare, autonomous driving, sign language reading, music generation, and natural language processing. Its end goal is to teach users how to build neural networks and lead successful machine learning projects. It will teach you how to practice these ideas in Python and TensorFlow.
This course is best suited for marketers with some related experience and not for absolute beginners. Andrew Ng helped to create this program, so it’s a good idea to take his introductory machine learning course with Stanford University we discussed above.
Price for course and certificate: Included in Coursera subscription for $49 per month
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Intro to Artificial Intelligence with Udacity
Udacity’s School of AI offers a range of specialized AI courses for subfields like machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing for people at all experience levels.
Its introductory course will introduce you to the fundamentals of modern AI and some representative applications of AI. Topics include machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing. This program is a good starting point for those who want to step into the world of AI and consider pursuing a Nanodegree from Udacity to put on their resume.
The course is led by AI experts Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun, and counts as credit towards the Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree and the Data Analyst Nanodegree programs.
Price: Free
Conclusion
As digital marketing headhunters, we know it won’t we long before we face AI-driven growth across all functions in businesses, especially marketing. As companies embrace AI to drive marketing success, they will look for marketers who enable them to maximize its opportunities.
The difference between marketers who thrive and those who don’t in the near future will be the the extent of technical aptitude and skills. Forgoing the reality of an AI world will cause you to fall behind where the inevitable can happen. Educating yourself and learning core skills will prepare you to make the most of AI-powered marketing and not get left behind.