Perfect Search Media Internviews: Winter 2017 Part I

Two things are making this (almost over?) Chicago winter great. 1) The lack of snow. 2) Our fantastic team of Junior Analysts.

If you’re a Perfect Search “Internviews” aficionado, we have some more good news for you. This season, there are two sets of Internviews. Get to know Drew, Kimberly, and Sadie this week—then come back next week to meet Anushka, Lizzy, and Luke!

 

Drew Gorenz, Junior Analyst

1) Where are you from? Describe one of your favorite places to visit when you’re home.

I’m from Lisle, Illinois, a suburb about an hour away from Chicago. There’s this little storefront a 10-minute drive from my house named Cookie Dough Creations where you can get a bowl with a 1:1 ratio of Oreo cookie dough (no chocolate chips!) to ice cream, which is how cookie dough ice cream is served best.

Fun fact: I ran my best personal record time in a cross country race in high school the morning after eating this.

 

2) What are the most surprising things you’ve learned about digital marketing so far?

The ability to measure digital marketing return on investment and engagement with incredible precision down to cost-per-click or cost-per-conversion is really cool compared to other forms of marketing. Tools can even track and record a user seeing an ad on one device and later converting on a different device to get information on view-through conversions (or as I like to think of them, “assists”).

Also, the number of ways one can optimize an advertisement at the granular level using different keywords, locations, and bid adjustments for targeting is awesome. It makes finding the best way to advertise something that you can always work and improve on.

 

3) How would you explain your internship to your grandparents?

I’m learning how to drive brand awareness, sales, and conversions for a brand or website through paid advertising on search engines (such as Google or Bing) and social media (such as Facebook).

I’m also learning how to optimize a website to make user experience easy and intuitive for the average user, as well as how to optimize a website to ensure that it comes up higher when you are searching for something relevant that the website or company offers.

 

4) Which historical figure do you think would be great at digital marketing and why?

Paul Cézanne because his top Quality paintings were a Hit during the Impression-ist art period. There is no doubt that Paul would have no problem getting eyeballs to View his digital ads and make purchases.

 

5) What three people (dead, alive, fictional, you name it) would you have over for dinner? What’s on the menu?

My ideal dinner party would feature some of the chillest and goofiest TV show characters out there, including: Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hurley from Lost, and Ilana Glazer from Broad City. And we would have a nice spaghetti and rum ham dinner.

 

Kimberly Fishman, Junior Analyst

1) Where are you from? Describe one of your favorite places to visit when you’re home.

I’m from the one-square-mile town of Ardsley, New York, in Westchester County just north of New York City. Given its size, my hometown is not exactly a bustling metropolis with tons of places to go.

However, when I go home, I love to go to the town right next door, Dobbs Ferry, which is located right on the banks of the Hudson River, and go down to the waterfront.

Growing up, when the weather got warmer, I would always go down to the water with my friends and we would bring food and have picnics and dunk our toes in the river (it’s not exactly the cleanest, so that’s about as far as we would go). We still love to do this whenever we visit home!

 

2) What are the most surprising things you’ve learned about digital marketing so far?

I never knew there were so many interrelated steps that play into a successful digital marketing campaign. From the very basics of keyword research to understanding and utilizing the metrics to determine the success of the keywords and the campaign overall, every step along the way can be monitored and updated to improve the online presence of our clients.

Additionally, having never been on this side of the “search” before, I had no idea just how intricate the SERP is when I do a simple online search, or how many measurements are strategically taken to decide which result goes where on the SERP. This has completely changed the way I see a SERP when I do an online search, and has made me more cognizant as a user.

 

3) How would you explain your internship to your grandparents?

I love my grandparents dearly, but they are not the most technologically savvy individuals. They have loose understandings of email and still use flip phones, and I use the word “use” loosely, as they rarely can hear them ringing and don’t know much beyond dialing a number and occasionally retrieving voicemail.

However, I think I could get through to them if I explained that I am interning for a company that advertises other companies online, and tries to help them improve their overall search and online presence. They still might not totally understand this, but they would be ecstatic at the opportunity to try and learn more.

 

4) Which historical figure do you think would be great at digital marketing and why?

Susan B. Anthony probably would be a boss at digital marketing (in addition to being a boss in general). She was an innovator during her time, encouraging the nation to enter an era with voting rights for women and other social reforms, at a time when society was very averse to change. Although she received immense push-back, Anthony never gave up her fight and never lost her way.

Her passion, confidence, and ability to embrace and promote change would all help her to be a successful digital marketer. The digital world is constantly changing, and she would embrace this change with open arms. She would be persuasive and evocative with clients, and would always fight for her ideas with tenacity and grace. I 100% would want her on my team.

 

5) What three people (dead, alive, fictional, you name it) would you have over for dinner? What’s on the menu?

This is such a tough question just because there are so many people I would want to invite over. My top three would be (1) Joe Biden, because literally how could you not love him (he’s my celebrity crush right now, tbh), (2) Beyonce, because all hail the Queen, and (3) Drake, because I’ve loved him since back in the day when he was on Degrassi.

My favorite food is soup, so I would have the meal just be a sampling of about 20 different soups, which we could all rate and discuss after to find the overall group favorite.

 

Sadie Winters, Junior Analyst

1) Where are you from? Describe one of your favorite places to visit when you’re home.

I am from a suburb outside of Minneapolis called St. Louis Park. However, while home I spent all of my time in Edina, Minnesota (where I went to school from K-12). So I am associated with the “Cake Eater” culture from Edina.

The best part about going back home is visiting my favorite lakes. You can usually find me taking a walk around Lake Harriet or throwing a disc at Lake Calhoun, or I’ll make a trip up north to Birch Lake.

 

2) What are the most surprising things you’ve learned about digital marketing so far?

The most surprising thing was how many different ways you can optimize for Google search and all the tinkering you can do to your paid search campaigns.

Before Perfect Search Media, I tried to self-teach myself how to do paid search and I’ve learned a lot more about how to better optimize campaigns thanks to this internship.

 

3) How would you explain your internship to your grandparents?

I would explain to them that I am learning how to do paid advertisements on Google and how to make a website show up on a Google search results page. My grandparents are actually pretty tech-savvy, so I don’t think I would need to go much further. (Unless I’m explaining it to my grandparents in Japan—then I would need to look up a few words in Japanese to explain it).

 

4) Which historical figure do you think would be great at digital marketing and why?

He’s not a historical figure, but I think that Varys from Game of Thrones would be great at digital marketing. He’s manipulative and knows what is going on in all the drama so I feel like he would be good at thinking of some good keyword terms for PPC and keeping track of and knowing which keywords to keep and get rid of. He is very good at using his resources.

 

5) What three people (dead, alive, fictional, you name it) would you have over for dinner? What’s on the menu?

I would have dinner with Dumbledore and J.K. Rowling. I think it would be a very interesting dinner. We would obviously have a Hogwarts feast.