In the last week of April, Guides for Brides welcomed students into the office for work experience in sales and marketing. They helped with tasks pertaining to search engine optimisation, assisting clients with the online adverts and content design and creation. At the end of the week, we asked them to reflect on what they learnt from the placement. Here is what each student had to say…
Loulou
I chose to do work experience with Guides for Brides because I am looking to study marketing and I wanted to get a feel for what real-life marketing in action was like, and also what it was like to work in the professional setting of an office. The team was friendly and welcoming and I felt comfortable asking questions.
I really enjoyed my work experience at Guides for Brides and appreciated the fact that we were doing real work, as opposed to doing a coffee run. For example, I wrote a blog about flower girl dresses for the spring/summer season and this was published on their website. I felt very trusted in doing so and it is a great achievement to add to my portfolio, personal statement or discuss in potential university interviews.
I learned a lot about some of the behind the scenes elements of marketing, such as boosting SEO (search engine optimisation), where we edited and updated current listings on their website. I enjoyed updating an advert for a wedding cake maker. It was interesting to see the behind the scenes of marketing and it is not as I thought it would be.
I enjoyed the group project that Trinity, Anastasia and myself did together, where we created buyer personas for couples to see how we could market to different types of people with different budgets and requirements. We created a plan as to how to best market the autumn wedding fairs that are coming up in order to get as many couples and suppliers to go as possible.
I used Canva several times to create different designs and it was fun to play around with the app and learn how to use it better. I'm grateful for my work experience at Guides for Brides as I got an insight into both marketing and the wedding industry and am now considering marketing as a potential career!
Trinity
I wanted to do my work experience at Guides for Brides as marketing links well with my current A-level choices (Business, Psychology, Art and Core Maths) and I could see how the knowledge from those lessons could be applied in real life. Also, my mum had previously worked at Guides for Brides and had many compliments for the company.
I learnt a lot about how Google and other search engines decide which website should be shown on the front page. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is very important when trying to get at the top of the page. We worked on Guides for Bride's SEO by adding more keywords in ALT text (used by screen readers).
The part I enjoyed most was being able to freely design Pinterest and Instagram posts, it was my first time using Canva but with some help from the team it was easy to get the hang of. I also enjoyed the group activity I did with Loulou and Anastasia where we got to brainstorm ideas on how to market the wedding fairs and create buyer personas to help with creativity and understanding how to reach a range of people by advertising.
Furthermore, since we were all pretty new to the website, we did a little competition to see who could navigate it the best. If you got there first you won some chocolate (always a good motivation method). If you were unable to navigate it quickest the team would listen carefully to see which parts of the website they could improve to make it easier for the user.
It was interesting to shadow meetings where you could see how the chain of command works and also how comfortable everyone was with raising opinions. It was a very welcoming environment and I felt quite relaxed, especially since we were allowed to listen to music and wear smart casual clothing.
I think, in the future, I would like to work in a job where I design things and come up with innovative ideas, like I did this week!
Anastasia
I really enjoyed work experience at Guides For Brides this week. I have learnt many things about the behind the scenes of a business. I had the chance to produce designs for their Instagram stories; ‘Review of the day', as well as select clothing pieces for the flower girl dress ideas for summer/spring blog and write a little bit about that.
As a group (Trinity, Loulou and I) were able to come up with ideas for the marketing team by creating couples and seeing how we could market the wedding fair for them which was very interesting. We were able to shadow meetings which in turn helped us recognise the importance of good communication in a business environment and showed me how to be more forthcoming with any problems or confusion I had.
Also, we got to learn more about how to improve the SEO for the website, by adding ALT text which describes the image contents. Additionally, we got to update wedding venue information for the website. It was especially fun to update the Greek Beyond Weddings venue page as I am Greek and I know information about the locations. This made me feel trusted to implement changes in the webpages.
The work culture here is very friendly, fun and determined when it comes to deadlines and keeping on track with progress. I felt very comfortable when finishing tasks as we were allowed to listen to music and we also had the help of the awesome GfB employees if we needed help.
Overall, this has been a great experience and helped me improve on my social skills a lot. Also, this week helped me build more confidence when doing the work and taking part in discussions. I am glad I chose Guides For Brides for my work experience week!
Permission was granted by the parents of the students to feature them in this article.
If you are a university or sixth form student and would like to work with our team to build experience in marketing or sales, please reach out to the team at info@guidesforbrides.co.uk.
