Digital Marketing Strategy (M.Sc) postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

When the bike repair shop where I work moved its service bookings online, the owner asked me to find out why so few people finished the form. I had ninety minutes on a quiet Tuesday and a free analytics dashboard. I noticed that most visitors left at the step asking them to choose between eleven service packages they had never heard of. I reduced the choice to three plain options, such as a basic safety check or a full service, and added a box for describing the problem in their own words. Over the next two months completed bookings rose noticeably and phone queries fell. It was a small change to a small website, but it showed me how much of marketing happens after someone has already decided they are interested. I want to study digital marketing strategy at postgraduate level to understand these decisions properly rather than by guesswork.

My degree is in psychology, and I chose modules in cognition, social psychology and research methods. My dissertation asked how online star ratings and the wording of reviews influence restaurant choices. I built an online survey with mock listings for 140 participants, varying the average rating and whether reviews were specific about dishes or vague in their praise. I found that specific wording seemed to matter more when ratings were similar, although my sample was mostly students and I was careful not to overstate the result. The project taught me to design a fair comparison, clean messy data in R and write about limits honestly. It also made me curious about questions my survey could not answer, such as how platforms rank reviews in the first place.

My reading has followed the same thread. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow helped me understand why a long list of options can slow people down, while Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow challenged my assumption that marketing is mainly about loyal customers, because it argues that growth depends heavily on reaching light and occasional buyers. I am not sure I accept every claim, but it changed how I read our shop's figures, where many customers visit once a year before a holiday.

At work I mainly fix punctures, adjust gears and serve customers, but I also write the monthly email to about six hundred subscribers. I tested sending it on a Thursday evening rather than Monday morning and compared open rates across several months. I also rewrote the subject lines to mention practical things, like winter lights in stock, and those emails received more replies. I know these are basic tools, and I would like the analytical and strategic grounding to use them with more confidence, including understanding attribution, search and the ethics of data collection.

Outside work I volunteer at my local parkrun most Saturdays, usually as a marshal or helping with results. It has nothing to do with marketing, but it has taught me how a community grows through reliable routines and friendly communication rather than promotion. I also enjoy amateur photography, which has made me more attentive to how images guide attention.

I would bring an understanding of how people make choices, practical experience with a real if modest business, and a habit of testing ideas rather than assuming they work. Postgraduate study would give me the structure to connect behavioural research with digital practice, and I hope eventually to work in a role helping small and medium businesses use their data more thoughtfully.