My name is Claire and I’ve been given the incredible opportunity to live and intern in Dublin, Ireland. I am working as a Communications & Marketing Intern at a tech startup called LIKECHARITY. LIKECHARITY provides charities with effective and efficient tech-based fundraising solutions. Their services include a text-to-donate and direct response TV advertisement platform, and they have used these services to bring innovation to an often stagnant sector of society. This company, the people there and the opportunities I’ve been given have blown me away.
One of my favorite jobs so far has been to work on our website revamp. At the moment there are branches of the company, each with their own website, making it difficult to get all of the information you need in one place. So I am working with the rest of the team to create a clear, unified and creative website. I’ve been able to help with branding, graphic design and the content that goes on the website itself. It has been incredible to work alongside such inspired thinkers and to learn from them about what a career in marketing might hold.
In addition to working on the website, I have gotten to write several blog posts, maintain the LIKECHARITY social media, train call centre agents and participate in sales meetings. All of these experiences have taught me a lot about communications and marketing. In classic blogger fashion, I’ll share them in a list. Here are the top 3 things I’ve learned about marketing…
1. Give your client a clear call to action.
Yes, it’s wonderful to have a beautiful blog or advertisement, but pretty graphic design and a nice logo will get you nowhere if your audience doesn’t know what to do with your service or product. If you’re designing a web ad, tell them what to do and give them a big ole’ button to press to “get started.” If you’re writing the script for a commercial, clearly state the website to go to, number to call, etc. You have to feed the audience the information they need, or they won’t respond to your material.
2. Be flexible.
It’s important to be willing to change at a moment’s notice. Trends change and you want to make sure that your advertisements and publicity stay current. If an ad isn’t giving you good responses, have the flexibility to change it up and produce something that will get you the results you need.
3. Keep it concise.
At the risk of being cliche, less is more. It’s important to keep your message short, simple and clear, otherwise your audience just won’t pay attention.
And that’s why I’ll keep it short and cut it off here. Stay tuned for more adventures in Dublin!