Blog Days of Summer

“We would like to offer you an internship in our digital department.” These are the words I heard when I was told I had been given the opportunity to intern at thevimarcgroup. I didn’t even have to think about my response. “Yes,” I blurted out, “I would love to work for you this summer.”

I had been looking for an advertising internship in Louisville for a few months and was eager to find a good fit; vimarc seemed like the right place. It is small enough to allow hands-on experience, yet large enough to give good insight into all aspects of a full-service agency.

I had answered so quickly that it wasn’t until I hung up the phone that I realized what I had just committed to. Did he say digital department? I thought to myself. Creative, PR, Account Services—these were the departments that came to mind when I thought of an advertising agency. I hadn’t heard of a digital marketing department before.

On my first day, I was eager to find out what the people in the digital department actually did and to get a feel for where I would fit in. Little did I know I was about to be thrown into a world of SEO, CTRs, e-mail blasts, CMSs, blogs, SEM, banner ads, cookies, URLs, and social networking, just to name a few. To everyone in the department, these words were common knowledge, but to me they might as well have been another language.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself an Internet guru. Sure, I can check my e-mail, surf the web, and update Facebook with the best of them, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. When it came to how content wound up on the web and how companies go about targeting specific audiences, I had no idea.

Every now and then, I would sit in on a conversation with a client who wasn’t well versed in digital marketing either. I would take notes on the answers to their questions and make an effort to write down words I did not recognize. After the meeting, I’d go back and look up the words in the digital dictionary I was given my first day—a tool that has proven to be priceless.

The people in the department have done a great job of noticing my puzzled expression and have made efforts to clarify anything that seems confusing. It didn’t take long to catch on to the most common terms. I learned that SEM stands for search engine marketing—when a company pays for certain key words to increase their visibility on the results page. I discovered that banner ads are the small ads companies purchase to be displayed on high-traffic websites. I found out that e-mail blasts are sent by a company to a predetermined list of potential customers to inform them about a product or offer special promotions. All of these tools are used to increase traffic to a company’s website with the goal of generating leads and, ultimately, increasing sales.

Once I got past the complicated lingo, I could see that digital marketing is an integral part of a successful marketing campaign. The digital sector of the advertising world is booming. There is no question that increasing numbers of people are looking to the Internet as their main source of information. I hadn’t realized how much I personally relied on the Internet as a tool for making buying decisions. When is Macy’s next sale? Where is the closest Walgreens? How much are Reds tickets going for? The Internet is always the first and often only place I look to glean information before making a purchase.

How had I overlooked this huge part of advertising? My internship at vimarc has opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of the Internet. In a few weeks, I have gone from knowing little to nothing about digital marketing to understanding that the digital component of a company’s campaign is perhaps the most critical.