Review of 6 month Kickstart placement Ali Hamrang

For the past 6 months I have been on a Digital Marketing placement for Purpol Marketing through the kickstart scheme, and I will forever be grateful for the opportunity. Denise has been very welcoming and professional from the very start making the overall experience an extremely positive one. Coming from an affiliate marketing background myself, I wanted to gain some experience working for an in-house marketing company and I am glad to say the past 6 months have allowed me to do so in a captivating environment.

In the first few weeks of the internship, there were many courses and learning resources available to bolster my knowledge both in marketing and employment. One of the courses I completed, Magnificent Marketing, takes the student on a journey, paying meticulous detail to marketing as a whole and how to implement effective marketing strategies that lead to greater successes. It’s not just about the theory of the subject, but how to implement it. I plan to use the new marketing techniques I have gained through Magnificent Marketing and apply them in the future to my own affiliate marketing endeavours.

A subject that we covered during the internship that I had not really encountered in the past was bid writing. One of the courses that we had access to was the better way to bid course, which provided great insight into the subject and gave a beginner like me the chance to learn more about bid writing through clear explanations. The structure of this course made it easy to follow and all of the content is delivered through a series of videos with great explanations throughout.

As well as learning through courses and instructional webinars, there was the opportunity to work on a client-based project for a recruitment company. This was a great experience as it incorporated many of the skills developed through the courses and provided a great opportunity to develop team working, research and presentation skills. The tasks were varied and involved the designing of marketing-based graphics, content writing and research.

I found the pace of the internship to be excellent with a good balance stricken between completing learning courses and more practical content creation tasks. One of the areas I wanted to improve in my affiliate marketing endeavours was content creation and specifically designing promotional graphics. In the past I struggled using traditional Adobe tools due to their overall complexity, however Denise referred me to an online based graphic design platform called Canva that allowed me to create graphics with ease due to an extensive collection of readily available graphical resources. Using Canva streamlined the process of content creation for me and it is definitely a resource I will continue to use for marketing. In summary I been able to greatly develop a whole host of skills related to marketing and employment over the past 6 months. I would wholeheartedly recommend anyone aged between 16-24 that is eligible to apply, even if you don’t have a marketing background. I’d like to thank Purpol Marketing and Denise in particular for her great advice and approachability.