From Classroom to Client Work: An Intern’s Marketing Journey

By Dahlia

Before starting my internship at Social Star, most of my experience with marketing had come through university and working with smaller businesses.

While completing my degree, I had the opportunity to work on the marketing for a local restaurant Fandango Banh Mi and manage my own clothing business Kanel d'AoDai, primarily creating content for their Instagram accounts. It gave me an early opportunity to take what I was learning at university and start applying it to real businesses.

I’ve always been interested in content.

In high school I was involved in content strategy for our media club and loved creating meaningful content for a particular community.

Originally, I thought I might pursue professional communication, but I realised I wanted something that combined creativity with a stronger understanding of business.

Which led me towards marketing.

My early experiences built my confidence with producing content and social media skills, but I wanted to understand more about the strategy behind marketing and what it was like to work with a wider range of clients.

I first heard about Social Star through one of my university lecturers, the lovely and famous Pearly. During our classes, she would often share examples from her experience and show us how social media and marketing decisions could create a real impact for a business.

As I got closer to graduating, I reached out and asked about internship opportunities.

Luckily, they were just taking on a new batch of interns!

Finding the balance between creativity and strategy

Before starting my internship, a lot of my marketing experience had been focused on Instagram content. I enjoyed that creative side, but I wanted to understand more about how those ideas could contribute to a bigger marketing strategy.

Starting my internship at Social Star gave me the opportunity to explore that.

Working with different clients and industries has shown me that strong marketing isn't just about creating something that looks good.

There's a lot of thinking that needs to happen first.

You need to understand the target audience, what they need, what the business is trying to achieve and how marketing can connect them.

Since starting my internship, I've found myself becoming more understanding of our strategic side of marketing. I still enjoy being creative, but now I want to understand why we're creating something, what it means for the customer and how it can make a meaningful difference to the business.

That’s a direction I’d like to keep exploring as I continue my career.

Taking what I learnt into real client work

One of the biggest differences between university and an internship is that suddenly, the work is real.

You're no longer completing an assignment for a grade, you're working on something a client is actually going to use.

One project that really challenged me involved mapping the customer journey for a specialist doctor.

Coming from Vietnam, I wasn't as familiar with how the Australian healthcare system worked, so before I could even begin the task, I needed to understand the industry and the patient's experience.

I was tasked with creating a visual customer journey, identifying the different touchpoints a patient would experience and areas that could potentially be improved.

The client appreciated the work, which was a really rewarding moment for me. It showed me that I could take something unfamiliar, learn about it and turn that information into something useful for a real business.

Learning more than marketing

This internship has also been my first real experience working in an office, and I'll admit, the first couple of weeks were tiring.

I wasn't used to spending eight hours working at a screen and when I'd finish my day, I would go home and feel like I had no energy left for anything else.

Over time, I started learning how to manage that better.

Sometimes that meant eating properly before work or going straight to Pilates afterwards rather than straight home.

They sound like small things, but I've started to understand how I work best, how to manage my energy and how to build a routine.

That's something I don't think you can fully learn in a classroom.

The people make a difference

One of my goals when I started the internship was to make more connections, and that's been one of my favourite parts of the experience.

At university, I sometimes found it difficult to build relationships beyond the people I already knew.

At Social Star, it felt much more natural.

The team was open from the beginning, they were willing to explain things, help when I didn't understand something and have conversations that weren't always just about work.

Having other interns around has helped too.

We're learning together, working on projects together and helping each other when we need it.

Being in an environment where people are open encourages you to become more open yourself.

My advice to future interns

If I could give one piece of advice to anyone considering an internship with Social Star, it would be to be confident enough to ask.

Ask for help when you need it, ask questions when you don't understand something and ask for opportunities to work on the things you're interested in.

I've found that if you show you're dedicated and willing to learn, people are willing to give you opportunities to grow.

University gave me the foundations of marketing, but working with real clients, navigating unfamiliar industries, receiving feedback and becoming part of a team has shown me what applying those foundations actually looks like.

I'm still learning, but that's exactly why I wanted to do an internship in the first place.