Digital marketing postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Last February I wrote a short Facebook post for the garden centre where I work, telling people our seed potatoes had arrived and that chitting trays were by the café entrance. I had been helping with the page informally because the manager knew I had studied language, and most posts until then had been photographs of new stock with a price. This one explained what chitting was, in two sentences, and asked people which variety they grew. It drew more comments than anything we had posted that winter, and over the following fortnight several customers at my till mentioned it. That small result made me curious in a way a single post could not answer. I did not know whether it was the practical advice, the question at the end, the timing or simply that people in our area care about potatoes. I want to study digital marketing at postgraduate level because I would like to be able to tell the difference.

My undergraduate degree in English Language gave me a useful starting point. My dissertation examined push notifications from three supermarket loyalty apps over eight weeks, which I collected by installing the apps on a spare phone and logging every message. I coded around three hundred notifications for features such as imperative verbs, second-person address, urgency markers and emoji, and compared how each brand's tone shifted around paydays and bank holidays. The analysis was descriptive rather than causal, and I was careful to say so in my conclusion: I could show what the messages looked like, not how customers responded to them. That gap is exactly what I now want to learn to close. I am keen to understand how marketers design tests, read engagement data and decide what counts as evidence that a message worked.

I have started preparing. I worked through Google's free Analytics training to understand sessions, sources and conversions, and I used Meta's own page insights to keep a simple spreadsheet of our posts' reach against the day and time they went out. With only one small page the numbers are too modest to prove much, but recording them changed how I write: I now plan posts a week ahead around what is actually in stock and what customers ask about at the till. I have also been reading Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow, which challenged my assumption that loyalty is the main thing marketers should chase. His argument about the importance of reaching light buyers and building mental availability made me reconsider my dissertation data, since supermarket notifications only ever reach people already using the app.

My job itself has taught me a lot about customers. Working the till and café at a busy garden centre, I see the same regulars every weekend and also the rush of first-time visitors in spring. Learning what different people want, from a retired couple asking about hedging to a parent buying compost in a hurry, has made me wary of treating an audience as one group. It has also given me practice at staying calm and accurate during a queue on a sunny bank holiday.

Outside work I sing alto in a community choir. Last year I offered to redesign our concert posters and email newsletter, and I tried a version that named the pieces and included a short note on why we had chosen them. Ticket sales for that concert were the best the treasurer could remember, though I know a popular programme probably mattered more than my newsletter.

I would bring to postgraduate study a close attention to language, a habit of collecting and organising data myself, and real contact with customers in a small business. What I lack is the methodological and strategic training to turn curiosity into sound judgement, and that is what I hope to gain.