I Spent a Month Learning About Online Marketing, Here’s How It Went

With October came the start of the “real” part of the Praxis program. For the next few months, I’ll be doing a ton of hands on work and personal projects in several different fields. There are lots of options to choose from, and I’m heavily considering things like sales, using AI tools, and copywriting. This month, however, was on content marketing, and here’s a breakdown of how it went.

Week 1: Introduction to Content Marketing

This was definitely the least intensive week of the module. It was all mostly high concept information detailing what marketing is, which, in few words, is creating and sharing content around a specific idea, product, or business, to engage potential customers. Most of the assignments for week 1 were learning the basic concepts of marketing, and clearing up common misconceptions around the field. At the end of the week, we had to decide what business we would be centering our projects around. I chose Audio Imperia, a plug-in developer that makes virtual instruments and sample libraries, mostly for people who make cinematic music, ranging from entry level products up to professional-level ones. I chose them because I use and love many of their products, and their social media presence and activity isn’t as prominent as some of their competition in the industry, which means that there’s room for growth.

Week 2: Marketing in the Wild

In short, this week was all about landing pages. I had never really done anything like this before this week, unless you count me creating this personal website, but it’s still different. I found this to be one of the easier things to do this week, mainly because there was one very simple objective: to create a landing page around something to do with our chosen business. I chose to promote their flagship orchestral instrument library, Nucleus: The Orchestral Core. I figured it would be a solid option to choose, given that it’s their most popular plug-in and is universally acclaimed. The layout is very simple, mainly because the software I used (Carrd) is oriented towards quick and fast results more-so than ultimate control. As I learn more about design and things related to that, my abilities will definitely improve, so for this assignment I focused mainly on strong wording rather than flashy visuals. I think the end product was a good first stab at things, I’ll go ahead and include some screenshots from it below:

If you’d like to check out the page, click here

Week 3: Growth Marketing Strategy

This week contained the bulk of work that we had to do in terms of hands-on projects. It was a lot tougher than I expected. We had two main assignments: a five-email welcome campaign, and a 15-post, 1 week long social media campaign. Given that we only had a week to do this, I had a rough time. It was really difficult for me to simply come up with ideas. In the beginning, I tried using a new design software, Lunacy, but quickly abandoned that idea. The only design software I really have experience with is Canva right now. It’s not a bad software by any means, it’s just not as detail-intensive for making social media posts as something like Photoshop. It will be very good for me to learn Lunacy as well as Photoshop, but now was not the time to do that. Both programs are too in-depth for me to learn them that well in a week, so I’ll work on that in my own time. For now, here are a couple samples from both my email and social media campaigns:

Week 4: Documentation & Presentation

This week is all about showcasing my work for the month. One of those assignments is this blog post that you’re reading right now, and the other is a video showcasing how I went about creating one of my social media posts, very simple work. If you’re interested, the video will be included right below.

Final Thoughts + Going Forward

Honestly, I don’t have too many thoughts about marketing, at least as a possible career path. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad by any means, it just didn’t do anything for me that screamed “I want to do this for a living”. I could indeed see myself doing this for a living, but that depends on how the next few months go as far as how I feel about different areas such as sales, as well as how my skills and interests develop in the next few months. That’s all I have for now, thank you for taking the time to check out my work!