My certificate for Digital Marketing was achieved as part of my professional practice module at YSJ. I achieved this certification as I was unable to complete the workplace experience due to covid-19. However, I personally feel that I have gained more knowledge from doing this certification than doing workplace experience. There is only so much you can gain from the workplace such as, customer skills and insights as to how a specific business is run. 

Through this certification my business knowledge has been expanded on topics such as, the concepts on strategy, digital tools and marketing, SWOT analysis, SMART objectives, digital marketing channels, a variation of media channels, digital marketing performance and KPIs. Throughout the course I also had to fill in a workbook so that I could keep all of my notes from the lectures to look back on. You will be able to see this workbook attached to my portfolio. 

In the first session I watched the lecture based on strategy, since I had never heard of this before. I was very interested to learn about how businesses used it to create a focus on where they wanted to be within a certain time frame. This may be important for me to know in the future if I want a role in Human Resources Management, I will need to know how to structure goals through using strategies to help them be achieved. Following this, I also gained knowledge on the SWOT analysis, which defines a businesses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This would be something I could apply towards employees and looking for gaps as to what needs to be improved internally, this would also link to strategy as well when past strategies are considered this model can be used to identify what worked and what needed to be done better. 

The second session that I completed was based around Digital Marketing channels and how they could be implemented effectively. Digital Marketing also needs a strategy as to how the marketing will come across to consumers and how effective it is, this can be identified through using statistics from google analytics. Overall there are 3 main media channels that are used within organisations, these being paid, owned and earned. These channels allow for tactical implementation where organisations are able to target their specific audience that they want to attract. 

In session three, the focus was around Digital Marketing performance which is measuring the success level of an organisation. Measurement for organisations allows them to identify consumer behaviour, what they are doing right and what they need to work on, this also helps organisations keep up to date with their KPIs. This is where organisations may use SMART targets to achieve specific needs of the customer journey, this will also demonstrate to users that they are working hard to improve performance. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this short course and the level of engagement that Mediaworks were still able to obtain through recorded lectures. Having gained all of this Digital Marketing knowledge it could allow me to make advancements within the workplace while in any job position. It has also given me a wider insight as to how an organisation works within the Digital Marketing sector and it allows me the flexibility to be involved in any kind of Digital Marketing work that I may be offered in the future through them acknowledging that I have achieved this certification.