New Challenges, New Opportunities
As we all know, this year has been nothing but unprecedented, with many internships being cancelled due to the pandemic. Luckily for me, I was able to secure an internship with Navitas Marketing. The ad agency works as a subsidiary for The Homer Group, which is a company that offers full-service printing, graphic design, signage, and promotional products. Because of this model, Navitas’ services include website development, inbound marketing, traditional media, branding and creative design. Due to its size, Navitas doesn’t have any set teams per se, anyone with any set of skills can be assigned to a different project depending on their skillset, which worked out great for me personally. As a marketing analytics intern, my responsibilities at Navitas Marketing involved developing and running Google Ad campaigns for clients, building SEO reports through SEM Rush, and writing blog posts for my company’s website.
Because my internship was entirely remote, I unfortunately did not get the opportunity to see my boss and coworkers as much as I would in a traditional setting. Knowing that I could potentially be missing out on this part of the experience, I had weekly check-in meetings with my supervisor, where we mostly went over updates on client projects. This was great not only because it kept me engaged, but also made sure that me and my boss were on the same page at all time. At Navitas, I had the opportunity to sit in meetings with clients and actually make recommendations for how they could optimize their website from an SEO perspective, which I thought was really cool because they actually implemented them.
Another interesting experience was when I was given the chance to demonstrate how the Google Ads platform works to a couple of my coworkers. It not only helped me get refreshed with some concepts while walking through the platform and explaining some of its functions, but I also never had to teach anybody something as technical as this, which is something I definitely will have to do in the future. Despite not meeting in person, I was able to get to know some of my other agency colleagues when my boss scheduled an introduction zoom session with the rest of the team. This will be extremely valuable as I continue to build my industry network.
This internship has encompassed many aspects of my past academic experience, as well as my future professional aspirations. Last semester, I was the team captain for Klein’s Google Online Marketing Challenge, where we partnered with a nonprofit organization and helped them run their Google Ad campaign. This time, I’ve had to do much more of the work, since I didn’t have a team of four other students to help me, and I’ve had to work with multiple clients instead of one. Thankfully, I already had my Google Ads and Analytics certifications, which gave me a tremendous advantage. Building SEO reports was also reflective of my academic work because this semester I took an SEO class at Klein, and I’ve seen a lot of the material covered in that class present itself in my internship work. My plans after college involve working in digital marketing, specific on the analytics side, and I think this internship has allowed me to sharpen and build on my skills, which will come in handy for when I start applying for full time jobs.
