How a Digital Marketing Apprentice Can Benefit Your Business

If you are an entrepreneur you will already know that you are expected to wear a range of hats when running your business. You often get caught up not only in sales, but production, customer service, logistics, staffing and finance. As more and more businesses move to an online presence, you also have to be a savvy digital marketer, too.

Digital marketing continues to become the foremost source of trade for online businesses. This means that having the right staff with the right set of digital marketing skills is more important than ever, particularly if you are not in a financial position to engage a digital marketing agency to take care of such things for you.

A digital marketer can:

help you create brand identity and awareness
promote your products
look after data gathering, market analytics and return on investment (ROI)
create customer engagement
respond to customer reviews
set up and manage social media platforms
increase traffic to web based platforms through search engine optimisation (SEO)
create content for your social media platforms, blogs and web pages

Here at Virtual College Apprenticeships we can help you create your own in-house digital marketing strategists. Given all of our years of experience in the digital sector via our e-learning business, we decided to enhance our apprenticeships delivery provision by embracing the apprenticeship reforms and the new apprenticeship standards. We now specialise in the delivery of Digital Marketer Apprenticeship Standard at Level 3.

We can assist you in either recruiting an apprentice in to your business or help you access apprenticeship funding to upskill an existing member of staff in all of the latest digital marketing techniques.

Our flexible technology driven model using a blended learning approach allows us to deliver high quality training that meets the needs of the apprentice and the employer.

How is the Virtual College Digital Marketing Apprenticeship delivered?

Step 1: Weeks 1 to 4

The apprentice will receive a full detailed induction on to the Digital Marketer Apprenticeship programme. They will carry out initial assessments and diagnostics for Maths and English and will complete a number of induction tasks, including workbooks on Prevent, Safeguarding, Equality and Diversity, Health and Safety and British Values.

They will spend time getting to know the businesses digital activity and will carry out some remote independent learning via our bespoke LMS System, Enable2.

Step 2: Weeks 5 to 8

After spending time completing all activities in Step 1, the apprentice will undertake their first five day online live classroom week. They will still be within the workplace but will be away from their day-to-day activities to focus on their training sessions. The sessions involve tuition from our experienced digital marketing tutor, individual and group work, assignment writing and lab activities. Once the five day session is completed, they return to the job role and begin to apply the knowledge they have learnt.

Step 3: Weeks 9 to 52

The apprentice will undertake four further five day online live classroom weeks for each module spread equally throughout the remaining weeks. They will also receive a face-to-face workshop session every eight weeks with our digital marketing tutor, undertaking learning towards the workplace competencies elements of the standard.

Our bespoke LMS System, Enable2, will support the face-to-face learning. They will undertake an exam at the end of each module. You as the employer will also spend time mentoring the apprentice and providing opportunities for product knowledge sessions, work shadowing and self-study opportunities.

At the end of the 12-month programme of study, our trainer will be on hand to support the apprentice through the end point assessment phase in month 13.

What skills will the apprentice learn?

A few examples can be found below:

logic of coding skills
social media advertising
digital marketing strategies
utilisation of of blogs and micro-blogs
successful delivery of marketing campaigns
using Google analytics
how to engage with customers online
how to analyse conversion rates

This delivery model has been well received by both employers and apprentices as they enjoy the technology driven elements of the LMS and the online live classroom sessions, but still value the face-to-face interaction which the work-based workshops bring, with one employer stating:

‘The online learning platform was impressive and the tutor knowledge, program of study and delivery model was perfect and intelligently developed in line with our specialist area, with digital classroom delivery and use of technology.The other impressive benefits above and beyond our previous experience was the contact time and one-to-one support for both the apprentices and ourselves’.

If you are undergoing a digital transformation or have scope to enhance your in-house marketing teams and would like to find out more on how apprenticeship funding can benefit your business, please get in touch for an honest, informal chat. We are on hand to answer any questions you may have about apprenticeships, incentives available, and the apprenticeship levy.

For more information on digital marketing apprenticeships Virtual College has developed and how this can improve behaviour change within your organisation, please contact Melanie Thompson here.