How Failing a Marketing Apprenticeship Helped My Career
When I joined Business Thinking as an apprentice Digital Marketer in 2022, I thought I knew everything there was to know about marketing.
I’d built my own website. I’d posted on social media. I understood “content”. What more was there?
The reality that I didn’t understand business hit slowly, but I noticed it when my marketing efforts weren’t producing much return for the business.
I confused planning and being busy with impact.
That misunderstanding followed me for 13 months until I failed my apprenticeship. I didn’t address a fundamental part of the criteria in my assessment, and it cost me a qualification.
Despite that failure, the company hired me full-time.
Less than two years later, I became Marketing Manager at the same company. I’ve led two rebrands, delivered full website builds, helped run three in-person events, and I’m currently studying for a Level 6 Diploma in Marketing.
I’m by no means an expert on any area of this profession, but I’ve picked up some valuable lessons over that time that might be able to help you if you’re:
Considering a career in marketing
Working in marketing and want to know how to progress.
Why Most People Fail in Marketing
It’s not a lack of creativity. It’s naivety and a misunderstanding of what marketing actually is.
Marketing is a unique industry that has an impact on everyone in the world, whether they like it or not. Every purchase we make, every time we pick one product over another, that’s marketing.
So, it’s more than just doing dances on TikTok.
Most early-career marketers have a surface-level understanding of marketing, but they miss the point.
They focus on posting content for the sake of it and treating the job like a tick-box exercise. Or even worse, they use AI to do all of this for them…
They don’t deeply understand:
The people they’re marketing to
The business they’re marketing for
If you can’t clearly answer these questions, you’re guessing and literally leaving £1,000,000s on the table:
Who is the customer? (e.g. Where do they spend their time online? What status do they want to achieve? What motivates them to buy? etc.)
What problem are they trying to solve right now?
What have they already tried that didn’t work?
What does success actually look like for them?
How does the business you’re marketing for make money?
All good marketing starts here. A deep understanding of the market, the business, and the people behind both.
How To Achieve Better Marketing Results
We’re all suckers for a vanity metric. In the first year of my career, that’s all I worked for. I chased LinkedIn impressions, website visitors, and YouTube views, instead of the metrics that actually move the needle forward.
Things changed when I stopped asking “What marketing should I do?” and started asking “What problem does the business need solved?”
That meant:
Talking to sales to understand the sales process and what potential clients say on sales calls
Taking responsibility for outcomes, not tasks
Owning projects instead of waiting for instructions
Marketing isn’t about posting content and hoping for the best. It’s about speaking directly to your target market to influence behaviour (among a plethora of other things).
In Cashvertising, Drew Eric Whitman explains that humans are driven by 8 biologically-wired factors that drive us to buy.
Coined as the Life Force 8, they are:
Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension: The desire to live longer and healthier.
Enjoyment of food and beverages: The desire for pleasure through eating and drinking.
Freedom from fear, pain, and danger: The desire for safety and security.
Sexual companionship: The desire for intimacy, attraction, and reproduction.
Comfortable living conditions: The desire for comfort, ease, and luxury.
To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses: The desire for status and success.
Care and protection of loved ones: The desire to protect family and friends.
Social approval: The desire for acceptance and high standing among peers
This is why marketers who understand customers and business fundamentals outperform “creative” marketers who don’t.
What Actually Gets You Progressing in Marketing
If you want to progress early in your career, the biggest piece of advice I can offer you is to not chase money, chase opportunity. Despite what the marketing agency/ business-building gurus (scam artists) would have you believe, you can’t jump straight into building a six-figure marketing business off the jump.
The lessons you learn from experiencing every corner of marketing is priceless for the rest of your career.
If you ignore that piece of advice, try these instead:
Learn how the business makes money
Prioritise clarity in messaging over creativity
Communicate clearly with non-marketers
Take responsibility slightly beyond your job title
Marketing and Business Books that have helped me
Final Thought
Digital marketing is growing fast. The industry is expected to expand to $1,501.1 billion by 2033 and you can be part of that.
But you don’t get rewards for being busy. You get rewards for understanding.
If you want a career in marketing, stop trying to “do marketing” and start learning how businesses work and why people buy.
That’s the lesson I learned so far. And I can’t wait to keep learning.
