4 Things You’ll Learn as a Marketing Intern
We asked the interns of a Fortune Global 500 company what they learned while interning on the corporate marketing team. Here are four things they found to be most important:
1. You’ll do more than fetch coffee
We’ve all heard of the stereotypical intern experience: going on coffee runs, scanning mountains of documents and being consumed by busy work. You’ll likely be pleasantly surprised. Instead of being asked to get coffee, today’s marketing interns may be collaborating with creative minds, writing blog posts, managing social media platforms, drafting a press release and much more. Marketing interns generally get to work on tasks that are relevant to the career path they’ve chosen to follow.
2. An internship is better than a typical summer job
An internship is much better than a typical summer job and not just because of the classic “it’s good for your resume” answer (although that’s a huge help). It’s better because it will prepare you for the workforce by providing you an opportunity to build your experience, and it will serve as a launching pad for your career. You will gain real life experience, make connections and build a strong resume. Not only will you be earning while you’re learning, but your internship will show me why you’re majoring in marketing—and assure you that it’s the major that best suits your talents and career goals.
3. Marketing is more complex than you’d think
Many people are surprised to learn how many divisions of marketing there are. Marketing isn’t just the cookie-cutter definition of promoting products. In fact, it’s far more complex. One department can have multiple teams: content, operations, digital marketing, digital production and proposal. Although each of them falls under the same category of marketing, they each do something completely different but equally beneficial. Each team consists of people who specialize in certain aspects of marketing and are experts in their field. Seeing every team work together and the thought process that goes into coming up with new strategies will teach you how a marketing department functions.
4. You’ll learn things you could not learn in a classroom
In a college class, you could methodically memorize marketing terminology, but would most likely be bored to death doing so. Instead of staring at a textbook reading about marketing strategy, an intern actually experiences it firsthand. Being hands-on within a fully operational marketing department, gaining real-life professional experience, will teach you more than even the best classroom ever could. Not only are interns learning, but they are applying what they’ve learned. You’ll absorb knowledge from completing tasks, sitting in on meetings or just having simple conversations with coworkers.
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