There are thousands of courses across hundreds of universities and I chose to study digital marketing at the University of Derby – or Bsc (Hons) Marketing (Digital) if you want to be technical about it. So I thought a good question to ask myself was how I ended up here and why I chose to study digital marketing for my degree.
For a little bit of background about me, I am in my second year of university and I am still completely in love with my course and its content. I started off studying my GCSEs at an all-girl grammar school and moved to a mixed sixth form to study my A-levels which brings me to now, studying digital marketing at the University of Derby. (Although it feels pretty underwhelming that I can summarise my entire educational career in one sentence, I think I have a fair amount of knowledge to show for it so I don’t mind so much.)
I didn’t make the decision to study digital marketing on a whim so I wanted to outline for you the biggest reasons why I decided to study digital marketing for my degree.
1. Blogging is my hobby.
Now is probably the best time to mention that I found digital marketing after exploring a number of different options – I wasn’t one of those people that just knew all along. While studying for my A-levels, one of my biggest hobbies at the time was blogging. I loved to read blogs, I wrote one of my own and loved the community that went along with it. It was this that got me exploring relevant career paths that would let me expand my knowledge about it and practice the hobby I loved professionally. Therefore when searching online I came across digital marketing and how the subject covers a range of topics closely associated with what I already enjoyed, like blogging, social media, websites and how these can all be utilised by businesses.
Something that particularly enticed me was the module ‘Digital Tools, Technologies and Platforms’ at the University of Derby in which part of the assessment was to create and write a blog, from which this blog and post itself have been born. I am being assessed on something I already enjoy and love to do which is a huge contributing factor as to why digital marketing was the right course for me.
2. Digital marketing is the future – and I want to keep up.
Second to my love for blogging is my passion for digital media and technologies. I strongly believe that digital is where the future of business is headed and it is essential for organisations to keep up with the fast moving pace at which digital is moving. With the ways in which brands and consumers interact constantly changing, I wanted to learn more about how digital technologies affect this and continue to shape our daily lives and interactions with the brands we love. I didn’t want to be stuck in the past studying rocks from a 1000 years ago or dated business models and theories – I wanted to know about the current and contemporary marketing landscape and be at the forefront of new marketing opportunities and techniques. Digital marketing as a degree pretty much hits this nail on the head and covers a range of topics that explore how digital marketing techniques can be properly integrated alongside traditional marketing methods in order to stay one step ahead of your competitors.
3. Businesses and brands fascinate me
The ways in which brands create such loyal followers and make their products seem as though you cannot live without them is not done by coincidence. The same process goes into the marketing of musicians, restaurants, games, services, government schemes and university choices and the campaigns which promote them are all around us. They say we come into contact between 4,000 and 10,000 brands per day, most of which we probably don’t even realise – from the apps on our phones to the labels in our clothes. Almost everything is exposing us to brands and businesses thousands of times and day and I didn’t just want to be subject to it, I wanted to be part of it. When choosing my degree I wanted to move from a passive to an active member of this constant conversation and I wanted to learn how to help businesses cut through this noise. I was inspired by this therefore to learn not only about digital technologies but about marketing as a holistic subject.
It was these three main factors that made me sure that digital marketing was the right career path for me and I must say that I am so glad I made that choice.
If you are a university student, I would love to know what inspired your degree choice and if you’re still sure it is the right path for you. Let me know in the comments.
