AI marketing courses: free and paid options for small business teams, compared

Say you run a US small business where two people handle the posts, emails and ads. You want all three using AI well by spring, without wasted fees. An AI marketing course is a set of lessons that teaches you to use AI for marketing jobs like research, writing, search and reporting.

We read the providers' own pages, 13 in all, on October 28, 2026. First come the six at a glance, then two free courses on AI search, Google's two AI courses, Generative AI for Everyone and SmarterX's AI for Marketing. Then we price them for a team of three and say which to take first. Our view: free first, then one paid course for one person.

The six courses at a glance, with US prices

Every row comes from the provider's own course or pricing page, read on October 28, 2026. We picked courses that don't need coding, and lengths are as listed.

As of October 28, 2026, Google bills by the month, so a learner who's still going in month two pays $49 again. SmarterX charges once. If video's your main channel, our YouTube marketing courses comparison covers that list instead.

Two free courses on AI search: Ahrefs and Semrush

The free pair is where we'd send a team first, since both teach getting your business named in AI answers, which our generative engine optimization guide covers in full.

Ahrefs AEO Course

The Ahrefs AEO course lists 12 lessons in 5 modules, 1h 26m in total. Its page says it's "absolutely free of charge" with no sign-up. The lessons run from how AI search works and how each AI platform picks what to cite to prompt research, brand mentions, YouTube and fixes like robots.txt. By the times printed on the page, each lesson runs between 5 minutes 18 seconds and 8 minutes 32 seconds, so one fits in a coffee break. The page lists Sam Oh, VP of Marketing at Ahrefs, as the teacher. A separate AEO exam has 50 questions if you want proof that someone finished.

There's a catch. Some lessons show Ahrefs' own products. The traffic lesson's title names Ahrefs Web Analytics next to GA4, and GA4 is the free half, which our Google Analytics certification guide covers. The main Ahrefs Academy page pitches its whole catalog as "free video courses" on digital marketing.

Semrush AI Search Operating System

Semrush's course is shorter. The Semrush Academy course list shows 9 lessons and 40 minutes. On the AI Search Operating System page you'll see "Enroll for free" and a Semrush Academy certificate after an exam.

It's aimed at in-house SEO leads, marketing managers and agency leaders. The lessons walk you from an AI visibility audit to KPIs and a 90-day action plan, which makes it an owner's course more than a writer's. The longest lesson, at 11 minutes, is an expert chat on leading across teams. Leigh McKenzie, Director of Organic Visibility at Semrush, hosts the course, and Rita Cidre, the Head of Academy at Semrush, joins him in that chat. Lesson three splits AI visibility into four layers: discoverability, clarity, authority and trust. Of the 40 listed minutes, 38 sit in the first six lessons. The last three are a wrap-up, a pointer to more courses and a feedback request listed at 0 minutes.

Together the two free courses take about 2 hours and 6 minutes per person, which fits one slow Friday afternoon with nobody entering a card number. Neither teaches daily writing or ad work.

Google's two AI courses at $49 a month

Daily writing is where Google's two courses come in, and both cost the same in the US. Neither is free. Google AI Essentials has a 7-day free trial, but the course itself isn't.

Google AI Essentials lists 5 modules and fewer than 5 hours of study, running from an introduction to AI through productivity tools, prompting and responsible use to staying current. As of October 28, 2026, it costs $49 a month in the US and Canada after a 7-day free trial. Google says many learners finish within one month. Its practice tasks are plain office work. You turn ideas into an outline, organize research to make a decision, and draft email replies to clear an inbox faster.

The bigger Google AI Professional Certificate also costs $49 a month in the US and Canada as of October 28, 2026. Its page lists eight courses that each take about an hour, from AI Fundamentals and Brainstorming and Planning to content creation and data work in Google Sheets. The research course uses Deep Research and Gemini Notebook to summarize sources and pressure test ideas, which is handy for sizing up a competitor before a campaign. The last two have you build and share a simple app by describing it in plain words. Google calls that vibe coding. Google's page says it's available on Coursera, Google Skills and Udemy, and gives one US price, $49 a month.

Read that page closely and there's an odd slip. One answer says the certificate "includes eight courses," while another mentions finishing "all seven courses." We counted eight course names in its list, so plan on about eight hours, not seven.

For a marketer, the professional certificate is the more useful of the two, because its content course practices images, video and presentations. Use real work, not samples. Have each person bring three drafts to it: a product email, a social post and an ad. Then paste each draft into our readability checker before anyone publishes it.

Generative AI for Everyone, with a price we could not read

This one goes broader than Google's office tasks. Generative AI for Everyone from DeepLearning.AI is taught by Andrew Ng and runs 5h1m, with 32 video lessons over 3 weeks. The page shows an update on October 27, 2026, the day before we read it. Its 6 graded assignments carry a PRO label, and the certificate needs PRO too.

We can't give you the PRO price. The DeepLearning.AI membership page loads its plan prices with a script, and they weren't in the page text we saved, so we left the number out instead of guessing. The page says its Team plan is for groups of 10 to 150 people, so a team of three would buy single PRO plans.

It's the right pick if your team keeps asking how these tools work, not just how to use them. Our guide to large language models covers the basics in one read.

AI for Marketing from SmarterX, a $499 certificate series

SmarterX's series is built around your own marketing tasks, more than the general office tasks in Google's courses. SmarterX also runs the AI Academy that the Marketing AI Institute links to.

The AI for Marketing page lists 5 courses with a total duration of 3.5 hours, and a professional certificate after an exam. You start by breaking your job into a list of tasks and ranking them by priority in a use case workbook. Custom tools the page names JobsGPT and CampaignsGPT help with that list. Then you match AI tools to each task, including features hiding in software you already pay for, like your CRM. The final project produces a 30-day action plan and a competitive analysis report. Semrush's course ends in a plan too, but for AI search only. This one covers the whole marketing job.

The SmarterX course catalog says each series sells for $499 per single license, a one-time charge, as of October 28, 2026. The other route is a yearly membership, which the SmarterX pricing page lists at $999 per user, per year, with Business pricing of $399 per user for 5-99 licenses. That Business price starts at 5 licenses, so the next section works out whether three people still save.

What the six courses cost a team of three

Here's the bill for our example team at prices as of October 28, 2026: three learners on one course, each finishing any Google course inside a month.

One formula fills the last column: price per learner divided by the hours the page lists. At October 2026 prices, the lowest-cost paid row is Google's certificate done in a month, at $6.13 an hour. SmarterX costs the most per hour, $142.57, because its 3.5 hours sell as one series. Hours aren't everything, though. SmarterX's hours end in a marketing plan, and Google's end in general work practice.

Memberships change the math for small teams. As of October 28, 2026, team plans start at 5 licenses for $399 per user per year. That puts 5 Business licenses at $399 x 5 = $1,995, against $999 x 3 = $2,997 for three single memberships. That's $1,002 less, with two seats spare. It's an odd result. Buying two seats nobody uses still saves money, as long as all three people would have bought memberships anyway. The page also lists reporting, admin tools and custom learning paths for Business accounts. We didn't ask SmarterX's sales team whether three people can buy fewer than five seats, so ask before you pay for two that nobody will use.

What we tested

On October 28, 2026, an offline Python script read the saved page text. It found all 29 page lines it looked for, from 10 of the 13 pages. It also summed lesson times and counted modules:

• Ahrefs: 12 lessons sum to 86 min 51 s, shown as 1h 26m. Match.
• Semrush: 9 lessons sum to 40 minutes. Match.
• Google AI Essentials: 5 modules, as listed.
• Google certificate: 8 course names, against eight and seven.
• SmarterX: 5 course headings, as listed.
• DeepLearning.AI: no lesson times, so no check.

The script then did the team math for the cost table above. It never opened a lesson. It checks only what the pages say about length, price and certificates, not teaching quality.

Who on your team should take which AI marketing course first?

With the costs side by side, the order depends on who does the posts, emails and ads. If you're new to marketing itself, start with our digital marketing 101 plan, because AI speeds up work you already know how to judge.

Our take: everyone takes the Ahrefs course in week one, and the owner adds Semrush's course for its 90-day plan. In week two, whoever writes your posts starts Google's AI Professional Certificate and aims to finish within the month. Run that person's practice drafts past your brand voice guidelines so the output still sounds like you. Hold SmarterX until someone needs a structured plan for the whole team. At October 28, 2026 prices, that first month costs $49 for one paid learner. Two people learn the AI search side, one person learns the daily tools, and you've spent less than a single SmarterX series costs.

When that day comes, buy one series rather than a membership unless you'll fill five seats. And if you're still weighing where AI fits at all, start with our rundown of AI uses and rules in digital marketing before you spend anything.

If a course you're weighing isn't on this list, run the same four checks we did on its own page. Find the listed length and divide the price by it. Find the billing term, since a monthly plan costs more the longer anyone takes. Check what the certificate needs, because every certificate in our table needs an exam, a paid plan or both. Then read the final project. In our view, a course that ends in a plan for your own business is easier to put to work than one that ends in a quiz.

A note on our interest: we don't sell or resell any course here, and no link in this guide pays us. Our paid work is writing and running marketing for clients, through the content marketing work we offer, for owners who'd rather hand off the writing than train for it.

How we made this guide: We saved all 13 provider pages linked here on October 28, 2026, and an offline script checked the quoted lines on 10 of them. We didn't enroll, start a trial or buy anything, so we don't grade lessons. Facts checked by the DigitalTreed team on October 28, 2026.

First published April 2026. Rewritten October 28, 2026 for small business teams, with six courses priced from their own pages and a team cost sheet.

Sources

• Ahrefs Academy: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Course
• Ahrefs Academy: course catalog
• Semrush Academy: courses
• Semrush Academy: AI Search Operating System
• Grow with Google: Google AI Essentials
• Grow with Google: Google AI Professional Certificate
• DeepLearning.AI: Generative AI for Everyone
• DeepLearning.AI: Pro membership
• Marketing AI Institute: home page
• SmarterX AI Academy: AI for Marketing
• SmarterX AI Academy: courses
• SmarterX AI Academy: individual pricing
• SmarterX AI Academy: Intro to AI free class