Helping a Digital Marketing Team Upskill

Recognising the importance of external expertise

As a people-focused business, Impression recognises the importance of recruiting and developing new talent. With this in mind, the organisation created a graduate scheme and it was at this point they first contacted the University of Derby Careers and Employability Team.

Once graduates are in post, Impression continues to develop their skills alongside those of the wider team, to ensure the agency provides the best possible service. Aaron Dicks, co-founder and Managing Director of Impression explains:

 “As the organisation has grown, so too has the size and requirements of our clients. We found that the larger clients we were serving had more internal digital marketing capabilities. So, to add value, we had to grow our services, by providing more of a strategic marketing offer.” Although this type of training could have been provided internally, Aaron felt a different skillset would be helpful in bringing the strategic marketing theory to life. Having seen the University’s ‘Strategic Marketing in a Digital Age’ online course he decided this would be exactly the type of training his team needed.

The course is delivered by the University through an Advanced Skills Programme, which is part of the European Social Fund (ESF) High Level Skills programme. The short courses are offered to small and medium sized organisations in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire area and are fully funded by the ESF.

Bespoke training for an entire organisation

The team at Impression are from a diverse range of backgrounds, so Aaron decided the course would be a good opportunity to upskill all staff, creating a level-playing field. “We approached the University about the training and they suggested creating a bespoke course for us.This was a great opportunity for our strategy to be delivered by someone with an outside perspective, who knew how to deliver the content in a way that would keep our staff engaged. It was really exciting to see our strategy brought to life.”

The course allowed the team at Impression to understand why they were taking a broader strategic approach and understand how to go about implementing that plan. In the midst of the pandemic, more online course delivery became available and Aaron found the course to be “a nicely timed opportunity to take a deep dive into strategic marketing and ensure our staff are all on the same page.” Whilst the organisation knew they wanted to develop their team, financially it wouldn’t have been possible to send over 50 staff on high-quality training. “The advantage of this course was that it delivered the required level of quality without any cost to our organisation. The course has enabled us to feed into our broader objectives of offering more international services and allowed our staff a period of reflection to look at the bigger picture.”

For further information or to discuss working in partnership with us, please contact our Business Enquiry Team on +44 (0)800 001 5500 or businessgateway@derby.ac.uk