Hi @iamlarrypotter, I was a Global Brand Manager at Red Bull for 5 years and responsible for global advertising campaigns across all media channels (TV, OOH, Digital, Print, Radio, etc).
I'll start by answering your question and then giving you some pointers of what i'd do if i was you. But please note this is only my opinion...
Marketing is about 1 thing and 1 thing only: attention. You need to win the attention of your target audience otherwise nothing else matters. There are many ways that you can grab attention: by surprising people, amazing people, inspiring people, etc. But before you can win a person's attention you need to know where they are 'spending' it and you need to start from the default position that the audience doesn't care about you. So you need to do something to make them care, the result is that they will give you their attention and this is the starting point for accomplishing whatever it is that the marketing is trying to accomplish (increase brand love, sell tickets, drive app installs, etc).
A marketeers job is understanding where their audience spend their attention and where that attention is overpriced (eg TV ads) and where it is underpriced (eg Instagram stories).
Why does this matter for you? Simple. Because you're biggest asset is your age. From your post i'm guessing that you're probably around 17. This age group of 16-24 is a common target group for advertisers. Brands and agencies are constantly trying to understand what this age group are doing and where they are spending their attention. By default you know the answers to this. Use it to your advantage. Make sure to know the top 10 apps that are used by your peers and when a new one comes into the mix pay attention to it! If, in an interview situation, you can tell me about an emerging trend / app / zeitgeist that i'm unaware of then i am going to sit up and listen...
If i was in your shoes and starting again here is what i would do:
A. Stay in touch with what's hot, trending emerging.
B. Digital is a big umbrella term, so if you can broadly define what you'd like to do within 'digital marketing' then this will help - the first big question is do you want to work for a brand or work for an agency? Do you want to be B2C or B2B? Next, would you like to work on the media buying side or the creative side? Does social media excite you or would you be more at home with search engine marketing, etc, etc.
If you haven't been exposed to these roles yet then it's likely that you're not really sure what they entail or what you'd like to do. So, if that's the case then you need to get some experience. Think about ads that you've seen that have connected with you, look up the agency behind it and apply there. Apply* to be an unpaid intern to begin with, it doesn't matter. You need to find a role where you can get your hands dirty and learn the basics and i'm afraid that half the time you may have to eat shit. But that doesn't matter if the other half you're learning.
You mentioned that you like social media and that you have a following on your photography page - great this is brilliant experience. Make sure to leverage this in interviews and always keep your discussions current. How are you finding FB's algorithm change? Has your reach dropped, have you found a way to combat this? etc
C. Once you've tasted the different aspects of digital marketing you'll know whether you want to specialise in a certain direction or stay broad and be more of a generalist. This is when you can up the anti and double down on what you want to do by focussing on building the relevant skill set for this.
D. Do your homework. What are the 3 biggest advertising / social agencies in your city? What are the biggest in the country? What's your favourite campaign from within the last 6 months? Why? Which brands are nailing it on social? Which can do better? You need to know the answers or have opinions on all of the above, that's the prerequisite for before you start speaking to people or going to interviews.
Best of luck with your journey @Iamlarrypotter, it's a great time to be in marketing and i hope you enjoy it as much as i have done.
*if the company isn't hiring that doesn't necessarily matter. Call them up and speak to the receptionist, be enthusiastic and speak with her to ask for advice, she's the gatekeeper and will be able to open doors and set a meeting with a hiring manager. If this doesn't work then perhaps there's a local freelancer that you can work with and support to start off with..
The cynic in me thinks that this is simply a clever bargaining chip for Unilever. eg they put out a press release stating that they are considering dropping FB and Google from their advertising. Then they go into closed door meetings and hammer FB / Google into giving them lower deals than they previously had. (Don’t forget that FB have hiked their CPM prices by 171% within the last 12months). This seems like a tactical money play under the guise of 'Unilever only want to support all things nice and friendly’...
All of these systems are priced by auction, so it's not like they're signing fixed CPM I/Os with FB and Google - I'm not sure how much of a bargaining chip that is.
Big brands sign joint business plans with FB and Google each year where they commit to a hitting a global spend figure and in return FB / Google give a % discount. Money is always the main part of these conversations, however, there are also many more value adds that FB and Google offer on top, such as running workshops and training days with the company’s staff at their offices and offering the brand the ability to leverage their in House creative teams ( at Google this is called The Zoo, at FB it’s The Creative Shop). On top of this if the advertiser has enough Klout they can also demand things such as access to new ad formats before others, access to new technology before launch, etc
...the ability for the advertiser to negotiate in these meetings largely depends on the spending power that they have and their ability to move their ad spend elsewhere. So it isn’t unusual for a press release like this to come out before a major meeting takes place...