Marketing, broadly defined, encompasses the promotion and sales of the products or services offered by your business. On a basic level, this includes both the market research required to “know your customer” and the creation of advertising campaigns that will effectively reach them. However, while the core objectives of marketing haven’t changed since the days of “Mad Men,” today’s marketing professionals have a myriad of new tools to achieve them.

For example, online marketing offers new customer and user acquisition tools like social media, content marketing, search engine optimization, and targeted advertising. Once you’ve engaged a customer, sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) software programs allow you to track and optimize their journey through your marketing funnel. The prevalence of online marketing also means new opportunities for creative offline marketing campaigns - and a talented marketing professional will be able to combine all these tools to drive sales.

Regardless of the product or service a business sells, it will need marketing to be successful. And, while some smaller companies and “lean” startups may rely on outside marketing consultants, larger corporations may have entire marketing departments headed up by a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and staffed by a wide range of marketing professionals. More traditional marketing roles include director of product marketing, sales director, and brand managers, while the world of online advertising has created specialized new roles like head of digital marketing, marketing automation specialist, and omni-channel marketing manager.

There are a plethora of marketing courses from accredited colleges and universities available online, allowing you to acquire the specific marketing skills you need to boost your business’s sales. These include courses that provide a background in core overarching subjects like market research, marketing analytics, and media relations as well as a host of more specialized courses in areas like digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and content marketing. In addition to courses, Coursera offers short Guided Projects to help you hone your marketing skills.