During my honours year at university, we were required to do a thesis as well as a four-week practical internship at either a brand or an agency so that we could get real-life experience based on the four years of theory we'd been learning. I took that as an opportunity to really move out of my comfort zone and to do something I've never done before. I really didn't want to do an internship in South Africa because I thought I need to really push myself and throw myself in the deep end. So I managed to get an internship in Dubai, which was pretty awesome. It was at a full-service agency and they had a traditional communications arm to the business. They also had a more activation guerrilla tactics business unit, as well as a digital business unit.

Digital marketing is no longer just basic marketing done on a digital platform. There are many aspects to it and each almost requires a specialist to plan. It's rare to find anyone who is great at paid media, organic media, SEO, CRM - everything at once.

Digital marketing is the fastest way to test your ideas. Because the feedback is almost instant, you're aware quite early on what works and what doesn't. When in doubt - put it on digital and test your idea out.

The pandemic pushed a lot of businesses and consumers online. Businesses have had to innovate to stand out from the crowd in a very busy online space. Customers are more demanding than ever and want faster delivery options.

Great campaigns resonate with people without the need for exuberant budgets. They incite action and conversation through clever marketing tactics.

You need to be able to track all the activity on your platforms. Tracking allows you to see insights into audience behaviour. The more you understand your audience the more you can create content that resonates with them.

Know your intended customer thoroughly. A great trick is to create personas for them and then find lookalike audiences to serve your product to. Remember to look at cost versus volume versus value - make sure the output matches the input.

I think what works is really doing your customer personas and customer matching on digital platforms. So, creating personas, analysing your customer audience and plugging that into digital channels. It's quite interesting to see how your new customers just start filling into that funnel because you're using your existing data to find people who have similar data points to your existing customers. I always find it interesting, and I love doing customer personas.

Having a smaller budget doesn't have an adverse effect on your digital marketing strategy. You're forced to get more creative and that tends to have more authentic results. So small businesses shouldn't be discouraged from joining in on the fun.

The platform you market on is perhaps more important than how you market. For small businesses, it's key to play in spaces where they stand a chance to compete. TikTok is a great place for small businesses to shine because few big businesses have profiles there.