Thinking of applying for a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship? We caught up with Lauren from MC Products UK Limited who is currently undertaking the Digital Marketer Level 3 training whilst working in a digital marketing role.
- Why did you choose to do an apprenticeship?
I was in a situation whereby I had done over a years’ worth of experience in digital marketing for a charity, which was a voluntary, unpaid role. I decided against completing a Masters and decided that I had gathered enough marketing related experience to try and get a full time paid job in this field. When I saw the Digital Marketer Apprenticeship advertised with MC on Indeed, I saw the opportunity to expand on skills I hadn’t really been able to gain experience of in my previous role due to the nature of the company and lack of resources. I saw the opportunity to learn on the job and gain real skills that would help me in my future. Despite the lower pay rate, I felt the circumstances would be ideal and really give a good head start for my career.
- What does your job involve?
My job has lots of variety, which is great. My basic responsibilities are to complete three email marketing campaigns for the week, schedule and organise social media content across all our channels, which further involved me setting up an Instagram page for the company and will involve my work in revamping our YouTube channel. I also have general admin duties including answering the phone and sorting queries, helping clients with graphics and imagery, completing customer orders and returns etc. Otherwise my role is very web based – I get given product projects, which involve me uploading new products onto our online catalogue system, generating compelling product descriptions and spec sheets, taking photos of the products in our studio, and uploading all this content onto the back end of the website. Other roles include Google Analytics learning and practice, working slightly with social ads, making banners for the website, general Adobe creative tasks etc.
- What is a typical day like in your role?
A typical day depends on the day I suppose. An average day will involve me scheduling social media content for the week including hero content in the morning before breakfast break. Then I will work on a major product upload project (at the moment this is body armour) and work through developing descriptions for these products and sorting photos and product codes, uploading and disabling these on the web for approval by my line manager. This will normally take up my time until after afternoon break. Following this break time, I tend to set aside the time to do apprenticeship tasks including DOT Native modules, organising through files, working through case studies, reading articles, having meetings with my line manager etc. Then the day ends.
- How do you fit the apprenticeship training around your day to day responsibilities?
I set aside the afternoon to do my apprenticeship training. I get what I want to get done for my main role done during the day and then focus this time in on completing what needs to be done for my apprenticeship. It is a good system at the moment and my team understand now that this is my regular time slot for these tasks.
- What modules have you enjoyed the most so far in the training?
I have only fully completed the BCS Marketing Principles module which was interesting in itself to learn more about the background of marketing etc.
- What would you say to someone considering an apprenticeship in digital marketing?
It is most certainly worthwhile, I am not only getting plenty of experience from actually doing the work, I am learning as I am going. Some of the modules obviously do not cater for everyone, like I am not looking forward to the principles in coding module, however I can see the benefit it will have and the experience is truly worthwhile. By the end I will have key portfolios of the work I have completed to show off and I feel like this apprenticeship has definitely taken me a step forward in my digital marketing career.
- What are your plans after you complete the apprenticeship?
My plan is to see what happens with MC Products and see if they offer me a more permanent role with a salary etc. If otherwise, my plan will be to apply for more digital marketing related careers in the hope that my skillset is much stronger than last year, which will make me a more ideal candidate for positions. At this point I hope to be on a high enough salary to be able to move out of my family home and progress in both my working and social life.
