Digital Marketer Apprenticeship Archives

Digital Marketing: Tools, Best Practices & Strategies

April 6, 2023April 6, 2023 by Nadeem Esa

In today’s digital age, businesses must have an online presence to stay competitive. Digital marketing refers to the use of digital channels to promote products or services to potential customers. The goal of digital marketing is to reach as many people as possible through various digital platforms, including social media, search engines, and email.

One of the primary benefits of digital marketing is that it is cost-effective. Compared to traditional advertising methods like television or print, digital marketing channels are much less expensive. Additionally, digital marketing allows businesses to target specific audiences, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

Digital Marketing Tools: A Comprehensive Guide

Digital marketing tools are essential for businesses that want to succeed in the online marketplace. There are many different tools available, each designed to help businesses achieve their marketing goals. In this section, we will explore some of the most popular digital marketing tools and how they can benefit a business.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic. It provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website, including information on their behaviour, demographics, and location. With this data, businesses can identify areas of their website that need improvement and adjust their marketing strategies accordingly.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a comprehensive digital marketing tool that offers a range of features, including SEO, PPC, and social media management. With SEMrush, businesses can conduct keyword research, analyse their competitors, and track their rankings on search engines. It also provides insights into social media performance and allows businesses to schedule and publish content on multiple platforms.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows businesses to manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard. With Hootsuite, businesses can schedule and publish posts, track engagement metrics, and monitor brand mentions. It also offers collaboration features that allow multiple team members to manage social media accounts together.

Mail chimp

Mail chimp is an email marketing tool that enables businesses to design and send email campaigns to their subscribers. With Mail chimp, businesses can create customized templates, segment their audience, and track email performance metrics like open and click-through rates. It also offers integrations with other marketing tools like Shopify and Salesforce.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that allows businesses to create professional-looking graphics and visual content. With Canva, businesses can design social media posts, infographics, and marketing materials like flyers and brochures. It offers a range of templates and design elements, making it easy for even non-designers to create high-quality graphics.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that allows businesses to schedule and publish posts on multiple platforms. With Buffer, businesses can create a content calendar, schedule posts in advance, and track engagement metrics. It also offers analytics features that provide insights into post performance and audience engagement.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an advertising platform that allows businesses to create and display ads on Google search results pages. With AdWords, businesses can target specific keywords and audiences, set budgets and bids, and track ad performance metrics like click-through rates and conversion rates. It is an effective way for businesses to reach potential customers who are actively searching for their products or services.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an SEO tool that allows businesses to analyse their website’s backlink profile and track their rankings on search engines. It offers a range of features, including keyword research, site audits, and competitor analysis. With Ahrefs, businesses can identify opportunities to improve their SEO performance and stay ahead of their competitors.

smart insights essential digital marketing tools

Digital Marketing Best Practices

In addition to using digital marketing tools, businesses must also follow best practices to achieve their marketing goals. Below are some best practices that every business should consider when implementing a digital marketing strategy:

Define Your Goals and KPIs

Before starting any digital marketing campaign, businesses must define their goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This will help them track their progress and determine whether their campaigns are successful. Some common goals and KPIs include website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement, and email open rates.

Know Your Audience

To create effective digital marketing campaigns, businesses must know their audience. This includes understanding their demographics, interests, and online behaviours. By knowing their audience, businesses can tailor their marketing messages to resonate with them and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Create High-Quality Content

Content is king in digital marketing. Businesses must create high-quality content that provides value to their audience. This can include blog posts, videos, social media posts, and email newsletters. High-quality content can help businesses establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry and build trust with their audience.

Use Multiple Channels

To reach as many people as possible, businesses should use multiple digital marketing channels. This can include social media, search engines, email, and display advertising. By using multiple channels, businesses can reach potential customers at different stages of the buying journey and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Test and Optimise

Digital marketing is an iterative process. Businesses must constantly test and optimise their campaigns to improve their performance. This can include A/B testing different ad creatives, optimising landing pages, and tweaking email subject lines. By testing and optimising their campaigns, businesses can identify areas of improvement and increase their ROI (return on investment).

Digital Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimising a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). By ranking higher in search results, businesses can attract more organic traffic to their website. Some common SEO strategies include optimising on-page elements like title tags and meta descriptions, creating high-quality content, and building back-links.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising involves placing ads on search engine results pages, social media platforms, and other websites. Furthermore Advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad. This can be an effective way to drive traffic to a website and generate leads. Some popular PPC platforms include Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing involves using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote a business’s products or services. By posting engaging content and interacting with followers, businesses can build a loyal following and increase brand awareness.

Email Marketing

Email marketing involves sending promotional messages to a list of subscribers. This can include newsletters, promotional offers, and product updates. By nurturing leads through email, businesses can increase the likelihood of conversions.

Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable content to attract and retain a target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and whitepapers. By providing value to their audience, businesses can build trust and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry.

Conclusion

As an aspiring digital marketing apprentice, it’s important to understand the various tools and strategies available to businesses in the digital marketing landscape. By familiarising yourself with the best practices and tools outlined in this article, you can develop the skills and knowledge necessary to help businesses improve their online presence, attract more leads, and ultimately drive conversions. Whether you’re interested in SEO, PPC advertising, social media marketing, or email marketing, there are many exciting opportunities available in the world of digital marketing. With dedication and hard work, you can become a skilled digital marketing professional and make a meaningful impact in the industry.

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5 skills you NEED to be a digital marketer

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 by Sarah Palmer

The Digital Marketing industry

The world as we know it is becoming more digital day by day. We have marketing everywhere we turn on the street and each time we scroll on our phones. According to this article, the digital marketing spending grew up to £25.84 billion during 2022 in the UK alone. In 2019, 61% of companies stated they were planning to hire more digital marketers to their team! After the Covid19 pandemic, it is only an expectation for this to have risen, after so many moved to digital to keep their businesses afloat. We are going to look at the 5 skills you need to be a digital marketer.

Communication

Digital Marketing is all about communication! It may not be face to face all the time, but it is certainly an important factor. There are many methods of communication within this sector. Digital Marketing itself is communication. You will be talking to customers and target audiences about your brand or company all the time through media and trends. There is also the internal communication. Talking with your team and business is essential to implement successful strategies. Furthermore, it is important to keep on top of your workload and distribute roles in order to complete tasks before deadlines. Communicating on an efficient level can provide a steady stream flow of work.

Organisation

Being organised goes with every job role in reality, but it is a key factor to becoming a successful digital marketer. A considerable proportion of the position is planning and organising, whether that be team members or the content itself. Building campaigns to reach their full potential requires planning. Being able to organise a plan or strategy and publish content within time frames can make all the difference to your engagement rate.

Analytical thinking

Everything you produce is analysed and broken down, so it is important to think analytically. Throughout the whole marketing process, you will be comparing figures and analysing engagement. From the first step, you and other team members will be questioning every piece of marketing that is sent out. Looking at its performance, how the audience will perceive it, as well as the journey you want them to take. Having this mindset allows you to look at content and compare it with the overall goal to see if it will perform appropriately.

Creativity

Although it may not seem important to be creative, it can be a large part of the job role. Being creative gives you all the campaign ideas and how they can be produced to meet your targets. Unique content is published every day by individuals, and part of marketing is catching the attention of your audience. If you have this creativity, you can bring fresh and new ideas to the table, pushing your marketing to the next level within your business.

Adaptability

The digital world is always developing further. It is important that as a person, you can keep up with this to make your marketing top-notch. Software is constantly updating, and new software is being created that can benefit you to reach those targets. Even something as simple as jumping on new trends to increase engagement involves adaptability.

How do you get into Digital Marketing?

Here at Apprentice Now, we have a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship Level 3. We can teach you all of the industry skills and knowledge to boost your CV to the next level. Along with this, you will earn valuable work experience as well as a wage.

Do you have the skills to be a digital marketer? Start a digital marketing apprenticeship with us today, contact us here!

8 Email Marketing Tips for Digital Marketer Apprentices

January 6, 2023January 6, 2023 by Laura Nightingale

Have you felt overwhelmed trying to create and send an email marketing campaign? When it comes to email marketing, there are a lot of elements to consider. We’ve listed eight of our top tips on how digital marketer apprentices can improve email marketing campaigns…

Get personal

With email marketing continuing to be an effective way to communicate with target audiences, a great way to stand out amongst the crowd is by personalising your email campaigns. Including someone’s name in a subject line or the preview copy can help to grab people’s attention and ultimately get someone to open your email.

Pay attention to subject lines

In addition to testing personalisation, it’s also essential to pay close attention to the subject lines of your email campaigns. As mentioned previously, there’s a lot of competition among people’s email inboxes, so it’s important to write a subject line that will be eye-catching and engaging. Make sure to keep them short and sweet!

Give A/B testing a go

A great way to find out more about your audience is by giving A/B testing a go. A/B testing (also known as split testing) is when you create two variations of one email campaign and send them to a small percentage of your email list. Half of the test group gets sent Version A, and the other half of the group gets sent Version B. The winning email is then determined by identifying which one receives either the most opens or clicks. A/B testing can help you better understand your audience and the type of emails they engage with most.

Try adding GIFs to your email

Using GIFs in your email campaigns can really help attract people’s attention and consequently improve engagement. Just remember to make sure they are the correct size to ensure they display correctly in recipients’ inboxes. Canva is a great digital tool to utilise when it comes to making creative GIFs.

Optimise your emails for mobile

Optimising your emails for mobile is another important top tip for digital marketer apprentices. Now that such a high percentage of people usually view emails on their phone, it’s more important than ever to make sure your emails are designed for both mobile and desktop views.

Apple email app on a device with notifications

Experiment with send times

Another way to learn more about your audience is by experimenting with send times. Try sending email campaigns at different times and see what email receives the most engagement. Over time, you should start to see patterns and be able to pinpoint what works best for your email marketing.

Preview and test your emails before sending

This is probably the most important tip we can give! Do not forget to preview and test your emails before sending. The last thing you want to happen is a typo or the wrong image in your email campaign…

Monitor your email marketing performance

And last but certainly not least, make sure to always monitor and review your email marketing performance. The best way to learn about the success of your email campaigns and audience is to track and analyse their performance. Pay particularly close attention to your open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate as these metrics will indicate whether people are reading and engaging with your emails.

Conclusion

To summarise, email marketing can be an incredibly effective way to communicate with audiences. By following these top tips, digital marketer apprentices will be more than ready to create amazing email marketing campaigns.

For more advice and support for digital marketer apprentices, take a look at some of our other posts here.

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Digital Marketing Apprenticeship – Guide To A Successful Portfolio!

October 12, 2022October 12, 2022 by Sarah Garratt

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!

Learn more apprenticeship tips here.

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The best tips for a Digital Marketing apprenticeship

October 11, 2022October 11, 2022 by Enrico Quddus

The industry of Digital Marketing is constantly growing, and so are the career options that can be pursued. One of these options are apprenticeships, which have risen in popularity, with a 64% increase of applicants since 2010.

Choosing a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship allows the individual to gain knowledge and skillset on the job. Similar to sandwich years provided by universities, where a student would take a break from their studies for a work placement related to their degree.

Whether you are looking to apply or are currently an apprentice, there are many things that you can do to develop your capabilities in digital marketing. Below, I cover the things I did to ready myself for my own apprenticeship.

Researching

Doing research is a core factor for any type of learning. Digital marketing is a proof of this, as you can find a lot information with a simple search on Google. Hence reading through various articles appearing from searching ‘digital marketing’ is a good way of building a foundational knowledge of the industry. As a head start, you can read through this blog on Mailchimp, covering quite a few concepts of digital marketing. Some of the most important information I consider from this would be:

B2B and B2C businesses
Media Channels – SEO, Search, Email, Social Media
The marketing funnel and customer lifecycle
Creating a media plan, optimizing, and analyzing campaigns

A good habit to pick up while working in this industry, is to also research the latest trends. As the digital world is constantly evolving, keeping up with all the innovations is key. Check out this blog for a summary of some of this trends here.

Training courses

Online course were, and still are, the most effective type of training I did before and during my apprenticeship. The ‘Fundamentals of digital marketing‘ was the first course I completed while pursuing this path. Although it is provided by Google which focuses on search marketing, this course covers a lot more than that, from online business strategy to content marketing and analytics. Google provides a lot more courses, free of charge, if you would like to cover more specific topics in marketing.

Compared to researching and reading articles, doing online courses is much more structured and interactive, and can make it really fun to learn with videos and quizzes. Other than Google, most digital media companies provide courses specific to their content. Very useful ones I found are these ones provided by FutureLearn and HubSpot.

Running organic media

As mentioned previously, a key concept of digital marketing are the media channels. As you begin the journey in an apprenticeship, you might specialize in a specific channel your company works on. For example, I began my apprenticeship in the search marketing team, using Google as the primary channel. I also had the opportunity to work in the social media team, on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. However, you can also independently hone your skills in a specific platform of your choice through organic media.

Before starting my apprenticeship, I decided to do this through Instagram, creating a professional account. I used it to test out different types of content, and familiarize myself with the terminology and analytics of the platform. Of course, this can be done on other platforms you would want to focus on, including using Mailchimp for email marketing, and creating blogs for SEO.

Setting up a professional Instagram account for Digital Marketing practice using organic media

From a personal note, I am currently at the end of my digital marketing apprenticeship. If I had the chance to advise myself when starting the apprenticeship, I would have suggested all the recommendation above to the younger me.

Of course, there many other apprentices that provide useful information on ApprenticeTips.com to check out. Also if you haven’t yet, make sure to sign up to our newsletter, providing a weekly summary of the latest news on apprenticeships.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Marketing Campaigns

June 17, 2022June 17, 2022 by Stephanie Preston

Envelopes fly out of a laptop into the air to demonstrate emails being sent

There are so many different marketing methods out there nowadays, especially with the rise of digital marketing, that it can often be difficult to pinpoint which methods will be most successful in reaching your audience. Luckily, there are a few trustworthy methods that prove their effectiveness time and time again – one of which is email marketing! While it can be daunting starting an email marketing campaign from scratch, especially as a digital marketing apprentice, there are plenty of free tools to help break it down. This blog is one of them, and I’m going to go over some of the major do’s and don’ts of implementing an email marketing campaign to hit as many competencies in your Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship as possible!

A figure gives the thumbs up while leaning on a green tick

Email Marketing Do’s

Use a Free ESP (Email Service Provider)
There are plenty of tools available online for free that can make the process of preparing and distributing an email campaign much easier. Platforms such as MailChimp and SendGrid offer built-in segmentation tools to segment your audiences, as well as drag-and-drop email editing and easy-to-navigate analytics reports. Using a tool like these simplifies the process, reducing the need to manage mailing lists and content in separate applications. If that wasn’t enough, using an ESP properly and effectively to build an email campaign can contribute towards multiple competencies, including but not limited to implementation, technologies, written communication, and analysis.

Segment Your Audience

As mentioned above, it’s important to segment your audience to ensure that you are sending the most relevant content to each group. There are four types of audience segmentation:

Geographic Segmentation
Grouping audiences together based on geographical location and borders.
Demographic Segmentation
Grouping audiences together based on demographic, such as age, gender identity, education level etc.
Psychographic Segmentation
Grouping customers based on traits such as their personalities and interests.
Behavioural Segmentation
Grouping customers based upon their decision making and purchase history.

As an example, if you were to run an email newsletter based on fashion trends and industry news, it may make sense to use demographic or behavioural segmentation. Demographic segmentation could be used to segment audiences based on their gender identity, to ensure they are only receiving information on trends that impact them. Likewise, behavioural segmentation could be used to segment audiences based on their purchasing history, and to break audiences down into those who have purchased different items, i.e. purses, handbags, shoes, clothes etc.

Not only will segmenting your audience lead to higher open and click-through rates, but you will again meet several competencies from the Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, including research, implementation, and digital tools.

Utilise A/B Testing
A/B testing is a method whereby two almost identical emails are sent to two different test groups, with the aim of finding out which is most effective and produces the best results/analytics. It’s important to note that when conducting A/B testing of an email, the elements that are changed should be kept to a minimal amount. If too many features are different, such as the subject, preheader, imagery and links, then it may be difficult to determine exactly which feature/s impacted the results. In contrast, using only a different subject line and preheader for both emails will enable you to easily track what impacted the results, with whichever one having a higher open rate and generally better metrics being the ‘winner’. Since A/B testing is conducted with just a small sample of your total audience, the ‘winning’ email can then be sent out to the rest of your audience knowing that the more effective and impactful subject and pre-header are being used.

A figure gives a ‘halt’ gesture to signal not to do something

Email Marketing Don’ts

Send Emails for the Sake of it
Since there are particular competencies and projects you may need to complete for your Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, it could be tempting to put together an email marketing campaign and send the emails out in quick succession to ensure you meet the competencies. This could have the opposite effect though, as it is one of the quickest ways to lose your audience’s interest, and can lead to a dramatic increase in unsubscribes and spam reports. If you’ve taken the time to segment your audiences and curate content that is relevant and engaging to them, you don’t want to overdo the emails and bombard them with too many! It’s important to create and adhere to a campaign schedule for email marketing, which should evenly space out emails and prevent too many being sent close to each other. This could lead to audiences losing interest in your content, and may result in email providers marking your emails as spam/junk, further damaging your campaign’s analytics.

Forget to Check Your GDPR Compliance
Since the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was enshrined in UK law via the Data Protection Act 2018, it is vital that every email you send adheres to these regulations and legislation. Every email marketing campaign must include the sender’s physical address within each email, whether it be an office address, home address, or PO Box. In addition, you must also provide a way for email recipients to easily change their preferences or opt out of all email communications from you. This is usually found at the bottom of an email, with buttons stating ‘Unsubscribe Preferences’ and ‘Unsubscribe Completely’. By including these simple elements, you are ensuring that your emails are GDPR-compliant and mitigate the risk of any legal or financial backlash.

Use Too Many Images
Finally, don’t use a lot of images in one email! While it may look nice when you’re designing your campaign, images can have a large impact on email’s loading times, and may not even display due to data limitations on mobile devices. It’s fine to use a couple of images in each email, but using too many images reduces how well your content will display on different devices, and may therefore result in people losing interest in your campaign. If you are including imagery in your email campaign, be sure to test the email before sending, and view the email on multiple devices and platforms to ensure the content and imagery are optimised and fully visible on every one.

Conclusion

While it may seem a daunting task with too many technical aspects to remember, building an effective email marketing campaign can reap sizable rewards for your company. If you stick to best practice and the advice above, you can easily build and schedule an amazing email marketing campaign that takes care of itself, with you only needing to monitor the analytics once each email is sent. In turn, you should have a brilliant campaign to include in your portfolio for your Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship, and hopefully have ticked off quite a few competencies along the way!

Digital Marketing Magic

April 25, 2022April 25, 2022 by Ella Lambird

Digital marketing is essential for any and all brands. Creating an impact across all channels increases the brand revenue, awareness as well as brand image massively. Working within digital marketing to make this happen for a brand is magical! We’ll be sharing the different areas you can go into below.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is huge right? It is actually 4.95 billion people, huge! According to The Digital Overview Report, that is nearly 63% of the world using social media regularly. Social media is a key element to digital marketing, looking for all the potential customers for your client to target across the key social media platforms coupled with choosing and placing strong performing formats.

You have the chance to partner with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, LinkedIn as well as Pinterest. By creating exciting campaigns for your client, measuring success by developing your analysis and digital tool skills. Find more about the skills you can develop here. Additionally, check out Apprentice Now’s blogs on Social Media here.

SEO Marketing

There are many key elements that make up SEO (search engine optimization), one of these being keywords, together with all the coding that goes into a website. But what are keywords, exactly? Keywords are words and phrases that the target audience use to find online content, and brands can then use to connect with those who are looking for their products and services.

You will learn how to value a site based on coding, improve the site by the successful use of digital tools and watch the site ranking improve day-on-day! Google ranks a site based on Google uses crawlers to crawl, scan and index every website page. The website then gets ranked based on Google’s opinion of its authority and usefulness to the end-user.

Find out more about SEO, what it is and the apprenticeships available now here!

Display Marketing

Within display marketing you have the opportunity to partner with a huge choice of magazines and newspaper titles to create brilliant campaigns and results. Furthermore, build strong professional relationships with the media owners, developing your skills meanwhile creating great campaigns for happy clients.

You will discover an abundance of formats from superhero, carousel to MPUs, choosing the best format for your client brief to attract your target audience the most efficiently! Find out more about Display Marketing and the apprenticeships available.

Email Marketing

Email marketing builds customer relationships, launched easily and effectively as well as creates brand recognition. You use email marketing to promote the clients brand, business and services by creating customer loyalty through email communication. Keeping the brands customers in the loop about latest news, products, discounts, etc.

It is a simple, yet effective way to increase client revenue, sending emails through a custom made mailing list. Check out roles, education schemes and more about Email Marketing now!

Other Options

Within digital you have other options such as: Search Marketing, PPC, Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, SEM, Influencer Marketing and more! To find out more on all the other channels and paths you can go into click here.

Marketing is a huge industry, fast-moving and exiting! The industry provides you will many transferable skills such as organization, communication, problem solving, analysis, and many technical and digital tool skills. These skills will set you up for the basis of great marketing, as well as the ability to transfer into other departments successfully.

Check out the roles available on Apprentice Now, along with the training you under go here.

Past apprentices have created a page where you can review each apprenticeship and if this department would be the best fit for you, you can also see the success stories and the progress you could make within the industry! Find out more now!

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How to become a self made digital marketing expert

January 20, 2022January 20, 2022 by Hannah Ballard

Person using the internet to become a self made digital marketing expert

If you’re wondering how to become a self made digital marketing expert, here is the perfect place to start. Read on to find out the best tips and tricks to start a successful digital marketing career.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is how you connect your brand with your customers, normally over the internet.

As more and more of our life becomes digitalised, digital marketing has taken over and there is a large demand for digital marketing everywhere. It is a great time to pick up the skill and take advantage of what digital marketing can do for your brand, or to start a career in digital marketing.

So, now you know what digital marketing is, you may be wondering how exactly to do it. Well, there are lots of new and exciting ways to get your brand out there, but let’s start with the basics.

Read on to find out how to become a self made digital marketing expert.

Types of Digital Marketing

There are many different forms and channels in digital marketing. however it mainly refers to:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Content Marketing
Email Marketing
Social Media Marketing

These are the main channels a digital marketer will use to reach their goals. A self made digital marketing expert will have to master all of these areas and more to understand how to grow their brand.

All of these channels have their own individual uses and you will need to learn the proper industry standards and best practices for them.

Getting digital marketing right

The most important part in getting digital marketing right is setting clear and realistic goals. You should start any digital marketing campaign in this way. You may want to get some new leads, or more sales on your website, or you may even just want to generate some brand awareness.

Whatever it is, you should keep a record of your targets and measure your success against them.

How to improve Search Engine Optimisation

Here are five quick ways you can improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation):

Publish relevant, useful content
Update your website frequently
Optimise metadata
Build up your backlinks
Use alt tags on your images

Search engine optimisation is an often overlooked part of growing your brand, however it should not be disregarded. The initial investment of creating content may be high, but it is certainly worth it.

Here are 5 ways to generate more website traffic.

How to use Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click is just that – you pay advertisers per click you get on an ad. This is most often done through Google.

This is how you set up a PPC campaign in five steps:

Set your goals
Choose an advertiser
Select the keywords you want to bid on
Set up your budgets
Write your advert and create a landing page for it to link to

PPC is a much faster way of seeing your return on investment (ROI), however it can be costly. Just remember to keep your budgets small at first, until you have an idea of what works for you.

Content marketing for beginners

Content marketing is all about finding out what makes your target audience ticks, and using that to attract them to your brand. This may include articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.

Content marketing is not to be confused with SEO. SEO is the process of optimising your web pages to rank higher in the search engines, whereas content marketing is used to reach more people to connect with your brand with the use of content.

As you can see, SEO is more technical, while content marketing is more creative.

Here are 7 ways to generate more website traffic.

How to up an email marketing campaign

Email marketing has been around since the start of the internet, and is still a very effective way of reaching the right audience. Here are some tips for always creating an successful marketing campaigns:

Build your mailing list
Set your goals
Send different email types for different purposes
Segment your audience
Monitor your analytics
Make your opt-in attractive
Always follow up
Create original subject lines

An important thing to be aware of is that sometimes less is more with email marketing. It may be tempting to always send everything to your whole subscriber list, but this will quickly begin to feel spammy and won’t generate the leads you’re looking for.

Instead, personalise and tailor your content for different audience segments and it will be much better received.

Here are 5 free email marketing tools to create effective campains in 2022.

How to launch a successful social media campaign

Now it is time to launch your first social media campaign. Follow these simple steps to never fall short again.

Research your competition
Decide on your strategy and change it if you need to
Use different types of content within a campaign
Use a mix of promotional and informative content
Find out what’s trending
Make your content stand out
Create a social media schedule

Social media is a great tool to use as a digital marketer. You have the option to set up either paid or organic campaigns, suited to any budget. But which platform should you choose?

Find out more ways to make your social media campaigns successful.

Pie chart of social media

It is also important to use the right platform. Research by Statistica shows that the most popular social media platforms in 2021 were:

Most used social media platform (millions)

Facebook – 2,895
YouTube – 2,291
WhatsApp – 2,000
Instagram – 1,393
Facebook Messenger – 1,300
Weixin / WeChat – 1,251
TikTok – 1,000
Douyin – 600
QQ – 591
Sina Weibo – 566
Telegram – 550
Snapchat – 538
Kuaishou – 506
Pinterest – 454
Twitter – 436
Reddit – 430
Quora – 300

Must have digital marketing tools

Some must-have digital marketing tools include:
Keyword research tool – SEMrush
SEO dashboard – yourSEOmarketingreport
Website analytics – Google analytics
Email marketing tool – Campaign monitor
Social media scheduling tool – Loomly
Photo editing tools – Canva or photoshop
Website tool – WordPress
Google data studio

These will help make your life much easier by automating certain tasks, tracking metrics or assist with content creation.

Is digital marketing a good career?

Digital Marketing a great career for anyone who is both creative and analytical.

You’ll have a lot of variation in your job. From creating social media campaigns, to PPC and display advertising, to SEO and the daily running of a website. You’ll never be bored in digital marketing.

It is important to note that you will need good english and maths skills, as the job involves a lot of analysing data and writing content. So, as long as that sounds something you’ll enjoy, digital marketing is definitely for you!

How much money does a digital marketer make?

The salary for an entry-level digital marketer, like a digital marketing assistant can range from £18,000 to £22,000.

Once you are more experienced in digital marketing, you could be earning p to £30,000 a year.

In a more senior management role, you could get up to £40,000 and more.

Level 3 digital marketing apprenticeships

The best way to start a career in digital marketing is to take a digital marketing apprenticeship. This way, you’ll be able to earn and learn, while gaining experience in digital marketing. But what does this mean?

If you take a digital marketing apprenticeship, you won’t have to pay a penny towards your learning costs, as this is covered by the apprenticeship levy. You also will get paid for full-time work while getting extra paid time to work towards your apprenticeship.

Another great thing about a digital marketing apprenticeship is that you’ll get the chance to gain valuable insight, knowledge and experience while you learn. You’ll even get a recognised qualification after you finish!

Level 6 digital marketing apprenticeships

After completing a level 3 digital marketing apprenticeship, you’ll be able to progress onto a level 6 digital marketing apprenticeship, which is actually a degree course. So, you’ll be able to gain a university-level qualification without any student debt.

After completing a level 6 digital marketing apprenticeship, the world will be your oyster, giving you unlimited opportunities for career progression – you will truly be a self made digital marketing expert.

Digital Marketing: Do’s and don’ts of Facebook ads

May 7, 2021May 7, 2021 by Alice Moloney

There is few a tool more powerful in any digital marketer’s arsenal than Facebook. Despite the rise of newer social media channels, Facebook and Instagram (which are integrated on the same ads manager) remain unbeatable social media giants. 44% of the UK population have a Facebook account and 32.4% are on Instagram. That’s a lot of people to potentially reach! Therefore, a key component of digital marketing is running an engaging and impactful Facebook campaign. I’ve compiled this list of do’s and don’ts to help you make the most of Facebook and maximise your campaigns.

The do’s of digital marketing on Facebook

DO define & refine your audience

With almost half the UK population on Facebook, you don’t want your brand message to be lost into the ether. Instead, take time planning who you want your ad to reach and what stage of the customer lifecycle they are at (see Understanding The Customer Life Cycle). Facebook’s targeting options are the best in the digital marketing industry, so make sure you play around with narrowing your audiences based on location, age, gender, interests and language.

DO carry out split tests

Split testing is the simplest way of improving your campaign performance. Often referred to as A/B split tests, they allow you to change variables (e.g. creative, copy, audience) to see which variation of your ad delivers the best results. Although it may be tedious at first, split tests can boost your ROI by 10x when done properly. Best practice is to focus on a single metric to determine success of your split test and compare performance accurately.

DO report weekly & optimise

Campaign optimisation is a necessary step if you want to decrease costs, increase ROI and boost engagement. The easiest way to do this is to check your campaign consistently by pulling a weekly report and analysing your metrics. Is one audience segment engaging with your ad more than the other? Optimise toward them. Are one of your creatives underperforming? Turn it off and shift spend to a better performer. Facebook is incredibly competitive so optimisation is essential to compete with big brands.

The dont’s of digital marketing on Facebook

DON’T stop organic social posts

While Facebook paid ads are a great method of driving engagements and sales, they should be seen as an addition to organic posts. When someone sees your ad, they will most likely view your other social media before they make a purchase. You should post regularly on organic channels and also use non-paid social to interact with your audience in ways that you can’t with paid ads. This maintains your brand image and builds a sense of community that paid ads cannot.

DON’T use engagement bait

Engagement bait is a tactic used to goad users into interacting with your post (think “share this post to win ££”). Facebook has a strict policy in place against engagement baiting and there are rules to ensure that it is not done. Not only does this deceive the customer, but it also harms your brand. The key to good digital marketing is to keep your posts authentic and then your target audience will engage with you without being goaded.

DON’T overdo it on the copy

It’s easy to think that because you’re paying for your ad, you want to get the most bang for your buck and fill it with copy. However, the average human attention span is only 8 seconds and on Facebook people spend an average of 1.7 seconds looking at a piece of content. Don’t waste your time writing long copy for no one to read, instead invest in your creatives. An engaging, thumb-stopping creative will be more impactful than lengthy copy.

Conclusion

When done correctly, paid ads on Facebook can reach your target audience and boost your ROI. Facebook and social media are always evolving so what works one week may not work the next. You should consider these do’s and don’ts as a general guideline of Facebook paid social best practice to navigate this ever-changing landscape. Now you’re ready to explore Facebook ad manager for yourself!

Digital Marketing Apprenticeship Level 3 | Top 5 Tips for Email Marketing

January 29, 2021January 28, 2021 by Matthew Varlow

Male using laptop with mobile on desk for digital marketing apprenticeship

Email marketing is a specialist area of your Digital Marketing apprenticeship and also remains as one of the most powerful marketing tools, it has truly stood the test of time. Whilst Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok all pose big opportunities for your company, algorithms, spend and following all have a substantial impact on ROI. With email marketing you have the opportunity to digitally ‘hand-deliver’ a message, promotion or information directly to the customer. Yes, they will need to have signed up to your mailing list, but as soon as they do, you have an open door to one of the most personal possessions, their email inbox.

Below I cover five top tips for email marketing within your organisation and as part of your level 3 digital marketing apprenticeship.

1. Know your audience and make it personal

So, to make this work you need to learn about your email subscribers, 77% of consumers want personalized content. With Mailchimp predicted demographics you instantly get a better idea of who you are talking to. At this point, what you know about the customer is, rough age, gender, name and email address… This is all useful information, but your emails would benefit from a little more background before they are created. Key information to learn:

Date of birth – good for birthday vouchers, discount codes and knowing age.
Location
Product preferences
Lifestyle interests

If you are using Mailchimp for your email campaigns, see the survey builder here.

Knowing your audience not only allows you to better connect with them, but you can also tailor campaigns to them, segmenting your audience into different groups with different needs. This will help you build a positive relationship with the customer, and keep your email being opened.

2. Invest time in your subject line

The subject line is the first impression of the whole email, all the hard work you have put into the email campaign itself could be lost if you are not successful in crafting a catchy, relevant or interesting subject line, they can make and break your campaign. Mailchimp carried out an email marketing study and found that short, personal and descriptive subject lines that gives the reader a reason to learn more work best. One approach may not work for the entirety of your audience though, be sure to segment your audience into groups so you can adjust the subject lines to better suit them. Also, you can use merge tags to include the customer name or location in the subject line, this making the email very specific to that person.

3. Easy reading and good imagery

In a digital world where everything is so busy, advertisements are everywhere, and we have less and less time, it is important that you make emails easy to read, skimmable and interesting to look at. It is important that you communicate your message as quickly as possible to ensure the audience will open your email and give it any time or thought. Content structure is crucial to enabling easy reading and understanding. Use bullet point, lists and headings so the important part of your message is delivered quickly. Keeping the valuable content in your email above the fold is a useful tactic, this saves the reader time, without sacrificing what you want to tell them.

Making your emails easy on the eye will also prove beneficial, keeping the campaign text down and complimenting this with good visuals will reinforce your email message and give you more chance of the campaign being successful, would you read a white page full of text if it landed in your inbox?

Super sale promotional image for interesting content for digital marketing apprenticeship email marketing

4. Limit how frequent your emails are

How often should you email your subscribers? Well, marketers who send only one email per week have the highest open and click-through rates. This being said, if you want to maximise ROI it is important you don’t miss out on valuable sales opportunities. Email frequency can be a balancing act, optimising email frequency is important to get the most out of your campaigns, without losing subscribers. A study carried out by Validity found that primary subscribers could tolerate up to five emails per week before complaints substantially increased. I feel this is pushing the boundary though, depending on your market and products of course. Typically, I would recommend starting with a single solid campaign per week, perhaps increasing this up over time to two, all the while monitoring for positive and negative impacts to open rates, click-throughs and subscribers, then making frequency adjustments accordingly.

5. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe

Yes, that is correct, make it easy to unsubscribe. This goes against everything you will work so hard for, building up you subscribers just to make it easy for them to get away… Well, it is unfortunately inevitable that some people will unsubscribe, it could be anything from changing location, not requiring your services anymore or they were just not satisfied with your emails. Unsubscribers are good and bad; bad because you lose a contact to email, good because it makes your subscriber list cleaner, holding only people that are interested in your campaigns.

To ensure good deliverability and worthwhile data from campaigns it is better that people unsubscribe than put your emails into a separate folder, or even worse… mark as spam.

A few tips to allowing people to easily unsubscribe:

Make it clear, “Unsubscribe” as hyperlink text so it is quickly found.
Check it is big enough text so that it can be seen on mobile devices.
Don’t require subscribers to log into an app or website to confirm, a simple two-click process is desirable.

It is not beneficial to you or the customer if the text is buried somewhere deep into the footer.

Conclusion

Whether you are currently taking part in a Level 3 Digital Marketing apprenticeship or an interested employer, these five tips to email marketing success should set you on the right track to boosting open-rates and click-throughs. Monitoring campaign success, how well each subject line performs and unsubscribe rates is very important in maintaining and expanding a healthy mailing list.

If you are looking to become or hire a Level 3 Digital Marketing apprentice, have a look at our article Level 3 Digital Marketing Apprenticeship for more information.