This was a highly important week at Escalla as I had my Online and Offline Marketing exam at the end of the week. We began the week by completing the course content, learning about marketing campaigns, CRM, legal and ethical marketing as well as risk management. I found the interactive session on TV adverts was very useful as we depicted how different features impact different consumer groups, I found it especially intriguing to understand how different people in our group thought about the adverts. Later on, in the week, Em allowed us some time to consolidate all of our knowledge in preparation for the exam. I found this time very useful as a small group of us decided to use another room with a Flipchart and map out everything that we could remember and then used notes to fill in any gaps. I felt as though this time was perfect as it allowed me to jog my memory of the topics we'd covered in the previous weeks. I have inserted some of the revision that we conducted in those sessions below.
Back at the dealership the following week, I decided to work on a task, set by Andy - this was to physically drive the cars myself instead of waiting on the Sales Execs. I was quite worried about this as I’d never driven anybody else’s car apart from my own in the past. David came in to see me on the Monday and we both used the time to get some images and videos completed, each of which I drove the vehicles myself. David showed me how to drive an automatic car as I'd never done this before and he also showed me how to position the cars properly to enable us to get the best angles of the car. After I'd spent this time with David, I felt a lot more comfortable getting into these cars and driving them! Amongst getting through a good chunk of the outstanding 360s and images for the week, I created a post that I feel as though worked really well considering the weather, in fact this was my favourite post of the week! One post made most of the terrible weather as I decided to create a boomerang with one of the sales executives https://www.facebook.com/crewevw/videos/861268710902390/
Later on in the week, David invited me to head office to spend the day with Holly to build a page for the website. I was really intrigued to do this as I'd never done anything with websites in the past. Although the page has not yet gone 'live', I have attached a preview below of the web page I'd created, a meet the team page. I can now add to this page as and when we get new members of staff, which I think is really useful and builds on my marketing knowledge.
During this month, I also had the opportunity to have a work experience student shadow myself for 2 days. George, David Smyth's (Swansway director) son was to spend the Monday and Tuesday with me - I'd be showing him what my role as a digital marketing apprentice involves on a day to day basis.
On the Monday, Sharon gave George an introduction into the dealership, a tour around and also a health and safety brief. I then outlined my key job roles to George and told him what my key responsibilities are within the dealership. I showed George how I track and gather information using Net Director and Auto Trader Dealer Portal. We then went outside and I showed George the 'generic' images that are used and uploaded to Modix that then loads them to Swansway. We also talked about the importance of capturing more than just these 'generic' images as this makes an ad more attractive to the customer. We uploaded the images to Modix and also to AutoTrader where I showed George how to edit vehicles on the dealer portal. To conclude Monday afternoon, I decided to show George E-Clincher and how I use this to plan social media posts. We spoke about the different features to add in a social media post and even decided to create a post based on what we had discussed. We managed to get 3 posts out that day, one for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
The following morning, I decided to review our post - how many people it had reached and the response it had gained overnight. I then went onto show George the ways that we can analyse social media through Data Studio, Instagram Insights and also the analytics section of E-Clincher. I decided to show George some of my posts that I'd created for Crewe VW and look into their interactions and why we thought they did so well. On the Tuesday, I'd also planned to show George how to use the Vision app to shoot 360 videos using the Gimble. George walked around the car with me whilst I did this to see how this particular video is shot. We also looked at different types of video, I decided to use another apprentice's so show this. As it was a Tuesday, this meant that the professional photographer was due to come in to photograph the cars that needed images, as well as gathering the key numbers, I showed George what I typical photography session looked like. We finished his work experience by writing a blog of all the different activities that we'd done this week, and even managed to get a sneaky photo of George in a car that he liked the look of!
The week began with another work experience student who I was actually unaware of until he arrived on the Monday morning. I had followed the same procedures as I had done in the previous week with George. We went through how to take images, videos, social media content and all other responsibilities I hold within the dealership. Myself and Will created various social media posts for that evening. Throughout the rest of the week, I managed to get the amount of cars requiring images to 2 and videos to 4, which I felt really proud of as I'd not managed to get them that low for the whole time I'd been there. On the Thursday, I was invited to head office with Imogen to talk to the new intake of apprentices. David left us to speak to the 3 about E-clincher and how we are able to use this to plan and schedule posts. We decided to construct a post together running through all of the various stages of writing a post, what to include, how to attach various features etc. We also spoke to the new starters about what to expect with their dealership, how to manage their time effectively and also gave them opportunities to ask any questions they have.
