Digital Marketing Internship: Combining Passion with Skills
My name is Austin Dhillon and I’m the Digital Marketing Summer Intern at National Vision, Inc. (NVI).
These first few weeks at the Retail Support Center (RSC) have been a whirlwind — I’ve had so much fun meeting my coworkers, soaking up marketing knowledge and lingo as well as trying my hand at copy writing.
Before coming to National Vision, I had limited corporate experience and only low-level marketing expertise, but this has changed since I started at NVI.
Why pursue an internship at National Vision?
National Vision first caught my eye because of its simple and crucial mission: to help people by making eye care and eyewear more affordable and accessible.
The products and services that National Vision gives people are critical. Everyone deserves to see life clearly, and National Vision is determined to make it easier and more affordable to see the world as it’s meant to be seen.
The work done by National Vision Associates can many times contribute to saving a person’s eye sight or even identifying a potentially life-threatening condition. Chief Executive Officer, Reade Fahs, often shares stories of patients whose eyes were in critical condition and upon receiving eye exams, were referred for specialty treatment that saved their eye sight or even another health condition.
It has always been my desire to work at a company that provides a commendable service to people and does so in a conscious way. National Vision fulfills this criteria completely and because of the company’s dedication to its mission, and I couldn’t be more proud to tell people I work here.
Besides being able to work for a company that genuinely cares about changing the world, this internship has also provided me with troves of marketing wisdom in the forms of my mentors and supervisors. These mentors have taught me that a good marketer needs to be able to switch between seeing the big picture as well as focusing on details.
Marketing 101
Something new that I’m getting used to in this role is the language of marketing, which some would term “marketing jargon.” I’ve learned what feels like a hundred different abbreviations: DM (not the Instagram kind), DSA, KPI, RFP, etc…
On one of my first days here, Shajan Thomas, the Paid Search Specialist, gave me a complete rundown of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, focusing on our search engine ads. This intro was integral for my understanding of our marketing presence on search engines like Google, and it gave me a technical understanding of search engine advertising.
I’m extremely excited about having an opportunity to create digital content and copy for NVI because this is where I feel I shine. I was overjoyed to be brought on to name a new brand of frames for our Eyeglass World stores. Assignments like these are my favorite because they blend my love of writing with my knowledge about the symbolic and emotional effect of language.
Overall, this internship has provided me with the opportunity to learn my passion, digital marketing, while putting my skills towards a cause that I care about. I truly believe digital marketing is the present and future of marketing strategy and therefore I know the skills I’ve learned here will benefit my expertise greatly and allow me to better the world.
Looking Forward
Because I also have a passion for the creative side of marketing, I hope to have an opportunity to help with the development of marketing content, both visual and written. I am also interested in learning more about data analytics and how that relates to social media strategy.
Austin Dhillon
Latest posts by Austin Dhillon (see all)
- Digital Marketing Internship: Combining Passion with Skills - July 12, 2017
