ICDL Digital Marketing (ICDL) study guide
ICDL Digital Marketing · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
ICDL Digital Marketing is a professional-level ICDL module, part of the ICDL Professional programme, that certifies practical digital marketing competence rather than fluency in one vendor's tools. ICDL describes it as covering the main concepts and skills of digital marketing: creating a web presence, optimising content for search engines, using social media platforms, selling online, different types of advertising, and monitoring and improving campaigns with analytics. The ICDL Digital Marketing study guide has 8 sections and about 2,482 words.
01Digital Marketing Concepts
Digital marketing uses digital channels - websites, search, social media, email, display - to reach and convert an audience. Four organising ideas carry most exam weight.
292 words, about 1 min02Web Presence
A web presence is the set of owned digital properties through which an organisation is found and judged: website, blog, landing pages, microsites, and the profiles that point to them. Key technical vocabulary: a domain name is registered through a registrar and points via DNS to hosting , where files actually live - the two are bought separately and are a classic mix-up.
320 words, about 2 min03Search Engine Optimisation
SEO divides into on-page , off-page and technical work. On-page covers the title tag (the clickable headline, roughly 60 characters), the meta description (a ~155-character snippet that influences click-through, not ranking directly), heading hierarchy with one H1, keyword placement in body copy and URL, internal links, and descriptive alt text for images.
288 words, about 1 min04Social Media Setup
Platform choice follows audience and objective, not fashion: a B2B firm may live on LinkedIn, a visual retailer on Instagram, a local service on Facebook and local listings. Setup steps recur across platforms.
311 words, about 2 min05Social Media Management
Management covers planning, publishing, community, listening and reporting. A content calendar schedules posts against themes and campaigns, usually with a mix rule such as 80% value and 20% promotion.
305 words, about 2 min06Marketing and Promotion Activities
Promotion activities include email marketing, content marketing, sales promotions, contests and giveaways, loyalty programmes, referrals, affiliate marketing, influencer collaborations and PR. Email marketing is permission-based: build lists through opt-in, honour consent and unsubscribe rules (for example GDPR), segment by behaviour or lifecycle stage, and personalise.
308 words, about 2 min07Online Marketing and Advertising
Paid search ( PPC ) auctions ads against keywords; match types control how closely a query must resemble the keyword - exact, phrase and broad. Ad position depends on Ad Rank , which combines bid with quality signals such as expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, so a higher bid does not guarantee the top slot.
334 words, about 2 min08Analytics
Web analytics turns behaviour into evidence. Distinguish users (unique people or devices), sessions (visits, which end after inactivity) and pageviews (each page load; one session can contain many).
324 words, about 2 min