So, you’ve started your digital marketing apprenticeship, began to settle into your new company, and in the process of coming to grips with your new role. Now it’s time to start thinking about one of the key elements of your End-Point Assessment (EPA), your digital marketing portfolio. To complete your Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship and gain your qualification you must pass EPA. This takes place in the final few months of the apprenticeship. There are four assessment methods which must be completed in order to complete the qualification.
- Portfolio
- Synoptic Project
- Employer Reference
- Interview
In this article we will cover the basis of the project and supply you with the best tips in how to produce a successful portfolio.
What is a portfolio?
A portfolio is a showcase of your best projects from work. They have been completed during the apprenticeship to demonstrate knowledge, skills, and behaviors against the competencies of the apprenticeship standard.
Key requirements
- It must contain a minimum of 3 Digital Marketing campaigns across different media platforms, including social media.
- It consists of a range of different work and examples that focus on being a digital marketer, and the competencies – not examples of best work that is unrelated to the standard.
- Evidence must link back to why you are successful as a digital marketer, not just why you are successful in the role.
The competencies are categorized into the following points:
- Implementation
- Data
- Analysis
- Digital Analysis
- Digital tools
- Specialist Areas
- Customer Service
- Technologies
- Research
- Problem-solving
- Written communication
- Interprets and follows
- Operate
A breakdown of each competency and what you must do to achieve them will be given to you by your apprenticeship provider via your coach.
Guidance
- The document typically consists of 5-6 projects which are each 15-20 pages long.
- It is often formatted in either Google Slides or Google Docs. PowerPoint and Word can also be used. It must have an table of contents and it is essential it is well organized and easy to navigate and downloadable.
- Each piece of evidence will have a clear narrative including the what, the how, and the with whom.
- You should take into account that the assessor has no prior knowledge of your job role and demonstrate a good level of written English throughout.
You will be required to build and implement campaigns across at least 3 different digital media, including social media platforms. This could be across PPC / Display / SEO / Email / Social / Affiliate / Mobile Apps. The 3 campaigns cannot be all of one media type.
Possible campaigns that the apprentice could implement could be blog writing, email marketing, SEO changes, website creation, organic social media campaigns, mobile app development, newsletters, paid search, paid social, display, affiliate marketing – as long as there are 3 of different digital media types.
Top Tips
- You should start creating your portfolio as soon as you can, think little and often. Start to gather evidence each month of the things you are doing and creating in your role.
- Capture your narrative, using the STAR framework, in a way an outsider would understand.
- Organise yourself with Google Drive. Gather screenshots showing which competency/competencies you are demonstrating and annotate the screenshots to highlight your point.
- Gather testimonials from colleagues, line managers, peers, clients etc.
- Capture videos or audios.
- Think about each task and project and how it relates to digital marketing.
- Remember you are trying to prove you are an excellent digital marketer!
- Do not just say what you did, say AND show how you did it!
Conclusion
This is a great opportunity to get to know your company as a whole, not just the marketing department and build your internal and external networks! Good luck!
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