Week 7 and 8 of my internship by Emily Marks

Week 7 at Purpol

A belated post, I was so engrossed with my project work and other tasks that I forgot to upload this post! This week has been another busy week at Purpol, with my time split between finalising my project for the meeting next Tuesday and working on award entries and I have begun to become more involved in the bid writing process.

The project has been really interesting and has taught me a lot – what goes into and how to create landing pages, MailChimp emails, Facebook and LinkedIn adverts and contact mailed letter campaigns. I wasn’t sure what a landing page was before this project and now I not only know about them but have created a mock-up of one which I am pretty proud of! A landing page needs to be eye-catching with little content yet informative and should result in the user providing some information. Apparently, you only have 10 seconds to make an impact on them before they make a decision to either leave the page or provide their info. Creating something which does all of this is a lot harder than it first sounds so it has been interesting to be able to play around with ideas and the copy – I finally settled on my 5th draft as the one to take forward to completion. It is so much better to learn through practical application rather than only theory which is what this internship does so well. I have been able to use InDesign this week for the landing page and adverts which gives even more value to doing this project.

This week has also had a focus on reading through past bids that Denise has shared with me – not only looking at the finished pieces but also everything that comes before. This isn’t a quick job – there is a lot to read and it is not a case of scanning the document, I have been trying to read to understand the document rather than simply read it which has meant reading the same pieces a number of times. While it is not an easy task it has been really insightful although I still have a lot of reading left to do. Hopefully by the end, I will be familiar the tone ad language of bids as well as what the process is and what this process looks like.

I can’t believe that this week marks the end of my seventh week at Purpol – my list of skills and projects I have been involved in and learnt from at Purpol continues to grow. I am looking forward to next week’s meeting and to see everyone’s projects and ideas!

Week 8 at Purpol Marketing

It’s the end of my second month at Purpol and it has gone so fast! This week has been yet another interesting and exciting week and finding out that we were the first to be featured for Small Business Saturday was amazing! I feel very lucky to have managed to get an internship with a small business that is so successful and am really pleased that both the Purpol team and Denise in particular has had the hard work, expertise and passion recognised in such a brilliant way.

On Tuesday I travelled up to Chippenham for the team meeting – the last to be held before some of the team finish their internships. It was a full on day with a lot of information and learning to be had and was a great opportunity to see everybody’s marketing campaign ideas – Purpol’s team is a talented bunch! Denise had a lot of good news and success to tell us about and we were also involved in thinking up new brand names for a client. This is something new to me and was surprisingly difficult but an interesting and insightful process.

The rest of the week has been a steep learning curve as I have been involved in a new bid. This is the first bid which I have been asked to start writing myself – I have been editing and proofreading bids previously, as well as reading through past ones to try and understand the process, but this is the first one that I have started writing properly. I have got a much better idea of what I am doing and where I am going with it today, however, the initial process of getting started required a phone call from Denise to get me on track and help get my head around some of the confusing parts. It is easy to see why many people avoid writing bids, but it is also very satisfying to feel like I am making progress and learning so much about the process. I am looking forward to next week when I shall be continuing to develop the bid. It is exciting to think that this bid, and the work I have contributed will eventually become a real bid!

Thinking about the fact that this week marks the end of two months at Purpol in addition to both the meeting and working on this bid has made me realise just how much I have learnt in such a relatively short space of time. I feel so grateful for the constant support and advice that I have received which has allowed me to learn so much and be truly involved in the business, something I’m not sure I would have got elsewhere – Purpol’s feature in the Small Business 100 is very well deserved!