Digital Fundamentals: Lauryn Mazzilli

This project is part-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF).

Lauryn Mazzilli

I learnt the importance of outlining a plan and purpose. Starting with a broader scope marketing plan and then narrowing in on the specific tools that are best used to achieve the desired outcome or campaign goals.

Lauryn Mazzilli

Tell me about yourself

I first moved to Nottingham in 2015 to start my undergraduate degree in BA Media Studies. I then wanted to steer my studies in more of a career-focused direction so stayed on at NTU to complete a master’s in digital marketing.

In my first role after graduating, I worked as a marketing assistant for a small financial planning firm called Balance: Wealth Planning. Here I assisted with the business development and marketing activities from copywriting and creating content for socials, to maintaining the website and planning and organising events and webinars.

I then went travelling for 3 months and was lucky enough to find a maternity cover position working as the Marketing and Events Executive at NTU Enterprise when I returned. Now I enjoy supporting a great team with the development and delivery of a marketing strategy to raise awareness of our enterprise support programmes and the Dryden Enterprise Centre as a home to SMEs.

What first attracted you to taking the Digital Fundamentals course? And what were you hoping to learn?

While I was working at Balance, my boss forwarded information about the Digital Fundamentals course run through NTU. At the time, I felt like I was slightly thrown in at the deep end in my first role and wanted to recap what I’d learnt in my studies so I could make sure I was doing the best I could.

What did you learn in the course that you found particularly useful?

During the course, I learnt the importance of outlining a plan and purpose. Starting with a broader scope marketing plan and then narrowing in on the specific tools that are best used to achieve the desired outcome or campaign goals.

It reminded me to take a step back and think about why we were choosing the marketing tools we were using and how that was helping us achieve the bigger goals or KPIs. This changed my approach from trying to produce as much content as possible to being very intentional and critical about what message we wanted to share and how we were best to communicate it using practical marketing tools and techniques.

How much time did you need to invest in the course to complete it?

From memory we had six sessions over six weeks and then I committed couple of extra hours each week to prepare for the task in the next session and to start working on the assignment.

I used my work hours to complete the scheduled sessions, and then did any additional work in my spare time.

How did this course benefit you?

The course really helped in reminding me of some of the basics, core theories and best practices to help build a comprehensive marketing plan.

During the rest of my time at Balance, it helped me be more strategic and measure the success of my marketing activities better. And in terms of my role now, I’m trying to implement processes and procedures to better track the different marketing plans across various projects and measure the success of our promotion of these projects – including events, business support programmes, the DEC and so much more.

Would you recommend this to other people? And if so, why?

I would recommend this course to anyone wanting to progress their career in marketing. It’s very easy to get caught up in the rush of work when you’re juggling lots of plates or have a lot of services to market, so much so that you might not always consider why you’re doing what you’re doing. This course is a great opportunity to remember the ‘why’ and also start thinking about the ‘how’ to help you get there.

How to access the support available

If you are interested in our marketing courses and would like to find out more, please take a look at our marketing courses page.