Hello and I am Ed, Destination Digital’s Digital Apprentice based here in Bakewell. As part of learning the ropes on content creation, I’ve written a few blogs about a number of topics that you can click through and explore below:
Apprenticeships in this country can be traced back hundreds of years to medieval times, where many different professions had apprentices. But nowadays they are even more common and popular than before.
One of the most popular apprenticeship roles in the UK is a Business Administrator, and in pole position for 2023 is an Early Years Educator apprenticeship (who knew?). These roles have changed quite drastically from what was on offer with medieval apprenticeships, as I’m sure you can imagine!
Now you have had a very short but sweet introduction into the history of apprentices, let’s get into the nitty gritty!
Over 5,350,000,000 people had used the internet by the start of 2024, so the online market is absolutely immense. So immense that this number is also over two thirds of the population of the entire planet. Imagine having access to over 5.35 billion people at one time? Crazy, right? But anyway, now we have established how huge the market is, let’s talk about why this is important or even relevant.
Since the beginning of time, humans have marketed their wares to each other. We’ve come a long way from travelling pedlars and entertainers pulling carts along with them and moving from town to town, showing off and trying to sell their wares. As the decades in the last 100 years have unfolded we’ve move through printed posters, leafleting and signs posted up in public places, to the advent of movies (and talkies coming in too), radio becoming a regular form of entertainment in homes, TV being invented, then latterly, the internet being invented until we’ve hit the last 30 years or so where more and more people got computers in their homes, internet access became affordable, and in the here and now, smart phones and 5G now dominate the airways!
Digital marketing allows you to access people online, and has developed as an industry since before I was even born to become this multi-billions of dollars industry. And now there are over 5.35 billion people online, this is a game changer in reaching your customers like no other technology that went before. Having access to this many people at one time allows you to market to potential customers easily and cost efficiently.
If you are advertising through Google Ads or social media ads, it does require lots and lots of tiny tweaks and adjustments to make the marketing and advertising you do actually lead to a sale (This is known as a conversion; a conversion rate is how many sales per ad interaction). These adjustments can be as simple as improving ad quality, this could be by raising content production budget for example, or more complex edits such as focusing on different keywords or brand themes for advertising.
Delving into the world of long-tail keywords if you are doing SEO is another aspect of digital marketing that helps strengthen the Google presence for your website, making it easier to find. Long-tail key words are more specific and contain less competitive phrases so in turn this improves conversion rates in both organic and paid for traffic as less businesses are competing for those phrases and you can find yourself some lucrative niches.
Other digital marketing channels are social media management, which needs no introduction, and also email. The cries that ‘email is dead’ is most definitely not true! Podcasts, YouTube, Affiliate marketing, Influencer marketing, CRMs, content marketing and other lesser known forms of advertising like Spotify, Sky digital ads, Criteo and Adroll are all part of the digital marketing mix.
Most importantly for most brands, their website sits at the heart of all of these.
This is a question I get asked surprisingly often, well, almost every time someone asks about it. Admittedly it isn’t very easy to explain at all, but I’ll do my best. Digital marketers (especially those who work at an agency and not in-house) usually have a wide variety of different tasks and responsibilities every day.
For example, some of these I personally do include: Search Engine Optimisation (which helps you rank higher on search results), data analytics and writing reports, social media marketing and management as well as content creation which means making Reels and posts on social, but also writing blogs, writing social posts and other content, and answering people’s questions.
I also look after the Editor inbox for Arts Derbyshire, so part of my role is to act as an Editor to decide what goes onto the website and what stays out, and a good proportion of my time is spent doing customer service, helping reunite people with their passwords or overcome a technical difficulty.
Now this may seem like a lot of work but it really is nothing compared to what my co-workers, Debbie, Rachel and Hannah do every day. They are absolute grafters, so much respect to them!
So, now that you hopefully have a better understanding of what digital marketing is, sit back, grab a notepad, and listen to why I believe you should apply for an apprenticeship and why digital marketing may be the career choice for you!
There are many different reasons why you should do an apprenticeship, now not just the obvious reason that it is a paid job, but also the many life skills you gain!
Now don’t get me wrong apprenticeships aren’t always smooth sailing, it is hard to go from school where you don’t have many responsibilities, to a full-time job where you work 37.5-hour weeks and have genuine responsibilities. I am also balancing my time with keeping up with the coursework as part of the apprenticeship too, so it quickly becomes quite a lot to squash into 37.5 hour weeks! But if you can deal with the workload and how hard it may at first appear to be, it is an amazing thing for your career progression. Carry on reading below for 3 reasons why you should consider an apprenticeship.
Number 1: Apprenticeships give you some of the most valuable skills and lessons you will ever learn. From the second you begin writing a CV, to the moment you get your first interview and then finally, becoming part of a team.
The amount of life skills that I have gained because of my apprenticeship are unbelievable, skills such as communication, team-work, time-management and an increase in confidence!
These not only will make you more confident in your abilities, it also makes you so much more employable in future. Not bad for a school-leaver eh?
Number 2: Apprenticeships open doors for you, and can be very well paid. Many successful and famous entrepreneurs started as an apprentice, these include Henry Ford, Gordon Ramsey and even David Beckham! Now these people are household names and they all started off from the same position you could put yourself in, and create your own luck!
Number 3: You get high quality training whilst getting paid!
Apprentices by law have to get paid at least £10,000 per annum, which for a 16-year-old is a lot of money! Think of what you can do with that, pay for your own holiday? Buy a car? Save up for a house deposit? All of the above?
Apprenticeships bring so much freedom and have honestly altered the course of my life for the better!
So, happy National Apprenticeship Week to all those apprentices out there! I hope you are enjoying your placements just as much as I am enjoying mine!
If you’d like to talk to us about this news piece, or any other aspect of digital marketing, then email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199 for a chat.
If you’d like help with digital marketing, ads management, SEO, copywriting, websites, branding or social media management… or anything else related to the internet and digital, then get in touch with us. We’re a friendly bunch.
You can email us on info@destination-digital.co.uk or give us a call on 01629 810199 or you can use the contact form at the bottom of this page.
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