Sam Hanes ‘ 16 – So this is awesome. I am in week four of my internship here at Hanapin Marketing in Bloomington and it’s been a blast!
As soon as I got back from studying and singing in Ecuador (also a Wabash occasion), I had two days to gather myself and get down to Bloomington. The first day was a great day for orientation, as I was able to sit in on REDBOP day at Hanapin. REDBOP is held once a month and is a day of research in which we all get together and discuss and present new topics and tactics that we have learned or problems that we have solved. The Director of Talent and Culture at Hanapin, Chris Martin, was my first contact as he guided me through the interview process and coordinated my internship. It has also been great to meet and interact with the CEO of Hanapin and Wabash graduate Pat East (’00).
I have really enjoyed my time at the office. All of my coworkers have been pleasant to work with and are always willing to help me out no matter how busy they are. Since the internship is Pay Per Click Marketing, the work environment is relaxed (they bump music in the office all day) and the employees are young and tech-savvy.
But it hasn’t all been rainbows and lollipops. Going into the internship, I had barely any marketing experience and absolutely no PPC experience. For those unfamiliar, Pay Per Click, PPC and Paid Search are all terms for advertising online (like on Bing or Google) where a company pays money for users to click on that advertisement. Hanapin specializes in digital advertising for their clients. Without any experience, and without being extremely techy (for a young guy), the initial tasks were quite overwhelming.
I was finally able to get the ball rolling. Each day I worked with my mentor, Amanda West-Bookwalter, on learning new tasks. Each time I learn a new task, I get account managers that ask me to perform those tasks on their accounts. The amount I’ve learned about PPC and all of the work that Hanapin does for their clients in just four weeks has been incredible. Despite all the fun and learning, I have still been put to work! I have:
- Ran spelling and 404 checker audits for all of our clients
- Put together congruency analysis and reports for enterprise-level clients
- Performed a mobile audit for an enterprise-level client
- Worked on keyword research for enterprise, small business, and retainer clients
- Done landing page assessments for Conversion Rate Optimization
- Run affinity analytics in Google Analytics
- Worked on a keyword build-out for an enterprise-level client
These are just a few specific tasks I have worked on, not to mention all of the different software and PPC terms and tactics that I have learned!
I couldn’t be happier with my internship here at Hanapin. I’d like to give a big thanks to Hanapin, Wabash, and the Lilly Endowment for making this possible. I’ve become extremely interested in the world of PPC and the PPC community, and the company culture at Hanapin is something that I enjoy and appreciate. My first internship experience is something that will benefit me in the future no matter what path I take!
