Google maintains a partners program where you can earn certifications in either AdWords or Analytics. Each discipline offers various courses that help marketers train and hone their knowledge, and I would like to review each certification and why it’s important to the health and success of any digital marketing agency — or any company’s digital marketing team.
When I began working in digital marketing a few years ago, I wanted to discover a way to get a step ahead of my peers. Fortuitously, I stumbled across Google Analytics certification. Yes, Almighty Google (or as I’ve heard people say: The Google) now began offering certifications.
I wanted this on my resume. A digital marketing Golden Ticket to the Wonka Factory.
This helped my personal growth and gave me a certification relevant to my pursuits. A few years later, I would delve into AdWords to become certified. There are differences, so I want to help you understand what they are.
[The] Google Analytics Certification …
Is valid for 18 months after you pass the course. In order to triumph, you must complete a 70-question exam in fewer than 90 minutes — scoring a minimum of 80%. Don’t panic: if you don’t pass the first time, you can continue to retake the test every seven days after the previous attempt.
And to help you pass…
Google offers the Google Analytics Academy, which consists of six courses with multiple lessons in each. I highly recommend going through each of the videos and taking the pre-test questions at the end of each lesson. These questions, in most cases, are very similar to the actual test questions, so it’s important that you take these if you have no previous analytics training.
[The] Google Adwords Certification …
Consists of a 6 total exams. And before you can claim to be certified, you need to pass the AdWords Fundamentals exam, a 120-question beast that needs to be completed in 120 minutes and with a minimum passing score of 80%.
Once passed, you have five other exams:
- Search Advertising – 120 minutes | 100 questions | 80% or higher score to pass
- Display Advertising – 120 minutes | 100 questions | 80% or higher score to pass
- Video Advertising – 90 minutes | 74 questions | 80% or higher score to pass
- Shopping Advertising – 90 minutes | 63 questions | 80% or higher score to pass
- Mobile Advertising – 90 minutes | 70 questions | 80% or higher score to pass
Unlike Google Analytics, these exams are only valid for 12 months (one full year) before you need to be re-certified. Each exam has study guides and lessons to follow before actually attempting the test. I, again, recommend running through these before taking the exam — these are in-depth lessons that are challenging with and, especially, without prior AdWords experience.
Once you have these certifications, your Google Partners profile will show the certifications below your profile image.
Once these are listed on your profile (may take 48 hours to populate), you can share your certifications with the company to which you’re affiliated. Reunion Marketing not only encourages our employees to all have Google AdWords certifications, we require that everyone be Google Analytics certified within a specific timeframe of working with us.
We believe these certifications are important for a number of reasons …
- We constantly measure our clients’ data to find new opportunities for growth, and that applies to all employees across all departments.
- We want to stay abreast of the latest updates for each platform, ensuring our continued innovation (and avoiding complacency).
- We do not want our team to have expired certifications because it reminds us how dynamic this industry is.
Below is a screenshot of our Reunion Marketing page, and you can find all Google Partners pages to see who is staying on top of these certifications.
Personally, these exams (remember they are all FREE!) have helped me in my career, and I know they have been beneficial to many other individuals I work with on a daily basis. Google has tremendous resources to help study for all of these, so I encourage anyone who is in Digital Marketing who isn’t certified to look into these programs.
