Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate: Is It Worth It?
Short Answer: The Meta Certified Digital Marketing Associate course is definitely worth going through since you’re getting plenty of information for free. The actual Meta Certification exam should only be required for people in the business since it’s not cheap at about $50 (~ RM 220).
If you were just casually browsing Facebook, you probably never heard of the Meta Certified Marketing Associate (and probably will never for the rest of your life). However, since I was actively searching for certifications to increase my credibility as a freelance digital marketing consultant, I was naturally led to it.
Meta Blueprint
The course and certification is actually part of a bigger collection of resources – Meta Blueprint, aimed towards helping just about anyone and everyone make use of Meta’s suite of products (primarily Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) for business purposes.
If you want to learn more about Meta Blueprint, check this out.
Personally, I’ve been using Meta’s business products for a bit now and my goal was to get certified so I skipped straight into the certifications portion and dove into the first option on the page – the Digital Marketing Associate certification. The course seems to be more basic compare to other courses that are labelled for professionals and developers.
How Long Does A Meta Certification Take
2 days to about a week
Since I was only doing it during my free time, it took about 1 whole week from start to finish. However, I did skim through parts that I was already familiar with and only went through the study guide and 2 of the 4 practice tests. If you decide to take the route of the Virtual Instructor Led courses, it might take a little longer. For those that are more ambitious and can dedicate more time, you can probably get from start to finish (certified) over a weekend.
What to Expect
A lot of reading (or video watching if you prefer that), doing and redoing tests to get a perfect score.
How Much Do You Actually Learn
If this is your first experience using Meta platforms for anything other than personal entertainment and communication, you’ll learn the basic in-and-outs of Facebook pages, Instagram for Businesses, WhatsApp Business, and Facebook ads. You’ll then proceed to learn how to create basic ads on their platform because that is their end goal – your sweet sweet ads spend.
Admittedly, I could have easily skip 50% of the articles, but I was surprised by how much I’ve actually learnt when it comes down to the finer details!
A Meta Certification Is Not All Smooth Sailing
One of the problems I’ve encountered was, surprisingly, getting back to where I left off. Now, I’m not talking about course progressions because like every other learning management system, Meta helps you track your progression easily. Instead I’m talking about getting back to the course’s page.
Although already renamed, metablueprint.com doesn’t take you anywhere (it doesn’t even redirect *ahem* budget problems? *ahem*).
After getting into facebookblueprint.com, you then have to navigate to the certifications tab to then select your course. Now, I know this isn’t a huge problem that can’t be fixed with a simple bookmark, but it’s just a little annoying especially when I tried to jump back in on my PC, then laptop, then iPad, then mobile.
The online exam registration, which was done through the Pearson VUE system, was a nightmare. It could be just me, but I had tried to select a time slot for my exam only to be told that it was no longer available after entering my payment details (4 progress pages in). One fluke was acceptable, but I went through the whole process of selecting a time slot, agreeing to a multitude of terms and conditions, checking out, and entering my payment details a couple more times.
Thank goodness 5th time’s the charm.
Summary
All in all, after going through the learning resources, I was a lot more confident with my competency in using Meta products for businesses compared to before albeit most of the things that were covered being quite basic.
As for the certification exam itself, I personally feel that the price is quite steep and unless you know it will be appreciated by your company, your employer, or people in your industry, I’d say you can give it a pass.
