Theory becomes practice during my marketing internship - Skryv

Theory becomes practice during my marketing internship

By Anke Vander Linden - Stagiaire - over 4 years ago

Culture
Theory becomes practice during my marketing internship

For five weeks, I’ve been a marketing intern at Skryv as part of my business engineering degree at the VUB. One of the goals of Skryv is to formulate their value proposition more clearly. In order to work on this, they asked some help and looked for an intern. So this is how I got into the company! Let’s find out more about my experience.

Books, theory and more books… Time for some action!

After four years of studying theory, I decided it was time to turn knowledge into practice. I already realized that marketing could be one of the fields in which I would like to work later. Since my degree didn’t offer a marketing-specialized master, I concluded that doing a marketing internship would be a good solution to gain some more experience. Skryv gave me the chance to make this happen!

“eGovernment and APIs”, what?

For getting more insight into the company, I started by reading a lot of literature about eGovernment and the working of APIs. I had never heard about these concepts and I was asking myself how I would be able to contribute something relevant to them in only five weeks. What I learned is that you don’t always need to possess all the information. Sometimes, only knowing the basics in combination with receiving good guidance in a flexible environment is enough to create something useful.

Formulating the Value Proposition more clearly

For developing a more concrete formulation of the value that the products of Skryv can bring to its clients, the strategy included the following. First, I took part in creating a questionnaire that is sent to organizations to have a look at what their current needs consist of.

Next I was the moderator of two workshops where some colleagues brainstormed and filled the Value Proposition Canvas. I had studied that Canvas before in the marketing course of the VUB, but I had never applied it in reality, which was a very enriching exercise for me where I realized that everyone showed up with different ideas.

The combination of these two elements will give a good idea about the value Skryv can deliver to their clients and how to communicate this to them. It was interesting to see that following all the rules and the definitions as originally described in models is not always necessary. Sometimes, changing them a little bit and doing your own thing leads to more inspiration and delivers a better output.

To conclude…

Already from the beginning, it was clear that the five weeks were not going to have a fixed planning. And it was true: after some time I realized that marketing is not really about following a list of steps. It’s about being creative, thinking out of the box, never stop trying and creating ideas in unexpected moments. I am very grateful to have had this experience as my first marketing practice ever!

Want to become a Skryver?

At Skryv there is always room for extra talent. Apply for a specific job or just drop us a note. We hope to see you soon.

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