Marketing Apprenticeships | The Biggest SECRET WEAPON for Marketing ROI

Introduction to Marketing Apprenticeships 

John B – Teaser:

[0:00]

Guys, Marketing Apprenticeships, if only I had known about this sooner.

The next guest in our Innovative Marketing Product Series is Brandon Church. He’s the owner and founder of Clear Digital Labs in San Diego.

Clear Digital Labs manages Marketing Apprenticeships. If you’re in the USA, you might be saying, what the, a Marketing Apprenticeship?

But actually, Marketing Apprenticeships are super common in Europe.

Essentially, Brandon and his team recruit recent or soon-to-be college grads, then they recruit seasoned marketing professionals as mentors, and they match them up.

This allows brands and agencies, for that matter, to source the powerful combination that ultimately produces improved marketing output at a lower hourly rate. Brilliant.

And if you think about it, that’s really what you’re doing when you hire an agency anyway, is [0:48] you’re often getting these seasoned strategists that oversee more entry-level talent, but in this case, you can just hire or source both the apprentice and the mentor directly.

Licensed and Subsidized by California to Train Apprentices

[1:05]

Hmm, better output at a lower rate. Where do I sign up? Not everybody can do this.

You see, Brandon and his team are essentially licensed and subsidized by the state of California to help train these apprentices.

This allows them to bolster the skill set of their up-and-coming marketing workforce and increase their value overall.

But even though Brandon and his team are in California, they can put these apprentices to work for you anywhere in the world. So you don’t have to be in California at all. So listen up, Brandon’s gonna tell you exactly how it all works. Sounds great, right?

Guys, do you love diving deep into different industry niches and unique marketing products and services like Brandon’s?

I know you do. So, you know what to do.

Smash the like button, hit subscribe, and enjoy this next episode of the Niche Marketing Podcast.

Introducing Brandon Church and Clear Digital Labs

John Bertino:

[2:05]

Hi, welcome back to another episode of the Niche Marketing Podcast.

Today is going to be our first bonus episode of sorts.

Something new we’re trying as we look to not only have marketers with expertise in certain niche industries, but also marketers that have very niche or very specified offerings, which bring us to my guest today, Brandon Church, president of Clear Digital Labs in San Diego. Brandon, welcome to the show.

Brandon Church:

[2:36]

Yes, John. Thanks for having me on.

John Bertino:

[2:37]

Yeah, super excited to have you. We’ve known each other for quite a while now.

Brandon Church:

[2:41]

Like six, seven years, I think.

John Bertino:

[2:43]

Yeah, but one of our first-time meetings in person. So, it’s nice to get away, get off Zoom and get some FaceTime and all these types of things.

And as we were ideating around the different directions, we want to take the show, we really fell in love with this idea of, of again, not just marketers with niche marketing expertise, but marketers doing something very specific that other marketers wanna know about and have on their radar. And I think you fit that description quite well. So Clear Digital Labs, a newer entity, but something you’ve been working on for some time.

Tell us what it is and at a high level, how it works.

Brandon Church:

[3:18]

Yep, so Clear Digital Labs is at its essence, a training provider.

We train and mentor folks in digital marketing industry, specifically folks who are newer to the industry. So usually less than five years of experience, but we prefer people with one to two years of experience. And we’re also a registered apprenticeship program sponsor.

So, what that means is we’re able to, we’re licensed by the Department of Labor and the state of California to provide apprenticeships for folks in digital marketing.

And so, we really focus on that, focus on the training and mentorship side of things and really helping people take their career to that next level.

And this is a program I’ve been working on for two years now, but I’ve been in this space for about five years, starting out with creating internship programs for students in community colleges in California, and worked really closely, saw a lot of good progress with that, and wanted to figure out a way to really tie into jobs better, helping people get jobs, helping people get trained for a career. So that’s what we’ve been focusing on.

Clear Digital Labs’ Journey and Funding Success

John Bertino:

[4:25]

Oh, I know you’ve been at this for quite a while and have put a lot into it.

You must be really excited to have Clear Digital Labs where it is today.

Brandon Church:

[4:31]

Yeah, absolutely, John. It’s been a long road. A lot of the work that we do, we get funding for. So we’re funded through the state of California and through the federal government to be able to provide apprenticeships.

And so, yeah, so there’s a lot of hoops to jump through and applying for grants and looking at different ways to get funding.

And we’re finally at the point now where we’re in a good place and ready to expand and grow this program. So, it’s been a long journey, but we’re really happy where we’re at.

John Bertino:

Fantastic. Congrats. And before we dig back into Clear Digital and some of the nuanced aspects of [5:00] how it works, let’s actually take a step back and talk about you. So, you’ve been in marketing for at least a decade that I’m aware of.

Brandon Church:

[5:13]

Yeah, a little over 15 years.

John Bertino:

[5:14]

Tell me about your journey through and what some of your background looks like and what ultimately led you to this.

Brandon Church:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I really, I went to college in Florida, graduated around 2006, and went back [5:21] home for a little bit in Albany, New York, and said, you know, I gotta find a job, and I wanna do marketing, so let me figure out what I’m gonna do.

So of course, I took a job in the mortgage industry helping process loans. Because I couldn’t find the opportunities I wanted in the marketing.

John Bertino:

[5:46]

We should have had you on our Mortgage Marketing segment as well, huh?

Brandon Church:

[5:49]

So, I did that for about six months, and fortunately I have family in San Diego, and I had a great opportunity to come out here and work for my uncle’s business, which worked in the software industry. And he said, hey, you want to do marketing, come in, you can help me do my website, you can help me do my pay-per-click, social media, et cetera.

Just do what you need to do, help me grow my business, and get the experience you need.

John Bertino:

Because he’s like, I’m not hiring an agency for 10K a month, screw that. So, you can come in, you [6:13] can do it all.

Brandon Church:

[6:19]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, I did that and had to train myself, figure out what to do to help him be successful.

And it was a good run. Worked together for a few years, but ultimately, I said, I need to get more experience, I need the right training, I need to really be in a good infrastructure that’s gonna help me kind of grow my career and get to where I want it to be.

And so, I took a job at a marketing agency and did that grind for a few years.

John Bertino:

[6:48]

You got to, it’s a rite of passage.

Brandon Church:

[6:49]

It is a rite of passage. Learned a lot and it was a good opportunity and moved on from there.

Took some other roles and up to the point where I was, got to the point of being a marketing strategist. And so I did that for about eight years at Thomson Reuters and that’s where we came in touch, and it was good.

Learned a lot and got to a good point, But, you know, I ultimately wanted more out of my career, wanted to, you know, feel like I was giving back to some degree and, you know, being fulfilled in the work that I do.

And so, I had an opportunity to help create some internship programs for community colleges in California and saw a lot of good promise in doing that.

Partnered with some really great schools in the state, helped create, you know, work experience and training programs for them.

And, you know, really, again, so a lot of good, a lot of good potential in that pathway. And so that’s when, you know, a couple of years ago I decided, you know, I want to really take, build this into a business and grow this.

And then that’s where we came across apprenticeships and started to really build out that model.

John Bertino:

[7:59]

Okay. And quite the unique business it is. So, as you led off and as you were just getting to the core premise of Clear Digital Labs, is that you train students either toward the end of their college tenure or fresh out of college or recently graduate. Graduated. Enjoy.

You train and mentor those students through apprenticeships so that they can serve as the marketers or part of the marketing department for brand side.

Meanwhile, you have mentors above them that kind of coach and train them along the way, right? So, let’s talk about the mentors a little bit.

Where do you find them? How do you qualify them?

And how do you structure things so that they’re able to oversee these apprentices without it being too much of a heavy lift?

Brandon Church:

[8:52]

Yeah, great question, because it gets to be a lot of work, helping train mentors and so on.

So to this point, I’ve been working a lot with people that have been in my network or folks that I’ve worked with in my career, who I trust, who I know, or a vetted network of marketers that you know just, and they were a game to support, okay?

Mentors and Apprentices in the Clear Digital Labs Program

John Bertino: 

[9:12]

Yep, exactly.

Brandon Church: 

And then we take referrals from their group. So, we haven’t had to do a ton of outreach to get new mentors, although we’re getting to the point where we will need to add more mentors to our team. But it’s pretty flexible for the mentors that join our program.

What we have them do is we assign them to an individual apprentice or a team of apprentices, a small group, and we have them meet with them, once or twice a month to just go over what that apprentice is doing in the job, help give them ideas, help look at career growth strategies how they should be positioning themselves.

So really just taking a lot of their expertise that they’ve gained up to this point and passing that on. We try to align mentors with apprentices who are in specific career paths.

So, if someone’s really focused on search engine optimization or social media, we try to align a mentor who has experience in that area.

But really, it’s that straightforward. It’s just giving the apprentice someone that they can rely on, someone that they can trust in and be able to learn from as they go throughout this program.

Various Marketing Specializations Covered by Clear Digital Labs

John Bertino:

[10:16]

Yeah, and you mentioned SEO and social media. Are those two of the core use cases for your service?

Or what, if any, are some of the other aspects of marketing where Clear Digital Labs can provide value and support?

Brandon Church: 

[10:31]

Yeah, so we have mentors who are specialists in email marketing or that are focused more on like on-site web optimization or off-site web optimization or experts in those areas. So, it really varies, but the apprentices that are coming into our program, they follow two career paths. They can either be a marketing coordinator or a marketing specialist.

And typically, the marketing coordinator is really designed for someone who’s fresh out of college or still in college looking to graduate soon.

And we’re just teaching them the basics, really, the things they need to know to be successful, how to oversee a campaign, how to interpret analytics, how to create a good posting strategy for social media. So, it’s really beginner level things that they’re setting up and learning.

Marketing Coordinator vs. Marketing Specialist Apprentices

[11:20]

Whereas the marketing specialist is gonna be more focused on strategy, right?

And how to build an effective organic search engine optimization strategy, how to build an effective paid strategy and looking at the things there.

So again, with the mentors, we just try to align based off the skill set and opportunity that, you know, apprentices in, what they’re gonna do in that role.

John Bertino:

[11:46]

Okay, and so then the apprentices themselves, we discussed the mix of recent college graduates or those nearing the end of their college tenure.

These are all marketers, right?

You’re specific to just working with marketing apprentices, correct?

Yep. All right, and is there something that makes one candidate better than another? or like what qualifies an apprentice to be an apprentice in your program?

Commerical: 

[12:13]

You’re listening to the Niche Marketing Podcast where we interview marketers with unique insights to specific industries and drill down on lucrative niches to uncover secrets to marketing success. I’m your host, John Bertino.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by The Agency Guide. You frustrated with an underperforming marketing agency?

Maybe you’re unsure of what marketing channels invest in in the first place.

Maybe you’re just fed up with the overpromising and underdelivering of marketing agencies. Fear not, you need to contact The Agency Guide. The Agency Guide represents a vetted pool of 200 marketing agencies and consultants and will matchmake your brand’s specific needs with trusted marketing partners for free.

Yes, for free. And they’ll do so based on your needs, budget, timeline, location, and personality. They’re marketing agency matchmakers.

They’re marketing professionals.

They’re The Agency Guide. www.theagencyguide.com.

Brandon Church: 

[13:12]

They’re not coming out. They don’t have a lot of skills yet in the field.

So we have them do some assessments up front. We do personality assessment. We have a test that judges their work ethic.

And then we have them take some general marketing assessments as well to just get a baseline of where they’re at. But we’re not using that as the only barometer.

We also meet with them, interview them, and really try to understand what they’re looking to gain from our program and where they’re looking to go with their career so that we we can then match them with a good opportunity at an organization who’s hiring.

And so we’ve been really fortunate to have some amazing apprentices, you know, apply and be entered into our program who, you know, really just have a passion for marketing.

And truly, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re looking for, you know, someone who’s passionate, willing to learn, and just willing to do what it takes to be successful in that role. And that will take them extremely far, as you know, in this industry, just the ability to want to learn. And so, you know, looking at folks like that helps us kind of position them for good, good opportunity.

John Bertino:

[14:19]

And is there a regional requirement, Brandon? Do they have to be from a certain part of the country?

Regional Requirements for Apprentices and Hiring Companies

Brandon Church:

[14:23]

Yeah, good question. So, the majority of our apprentices we’re working with right now are located in California.

That’s where the majority of our funding comes from.

So organizations that hire through us, it’s a very low cost.

They don’t have to invest a lot into getting access to that talent.

If they’re located out of state- So the apprentice. If the apprentice is located out of state, then there’s a little more cost for the hiring company, but it’s not significant because we still have funding we can access that helps us support and train and mentor and bring them through the program. But companies can be located anywhere. There’s no restriction on where the company is located. And so we try to work with the companies and try to identify what they’re looking for in a new hire and match the best talent to them.

But we can still, we can train talent at organizations that already have folks in place and work with them on that. And again, if that person’s in California, there’s no cost to the business. If they’re out of state, there’s a little bit of cost, but again, not significant. Okay.

John Bertino:

[15:26]

And I mean, there’s just so many things that are really unique about what you’re doing here.

Significant Cost Savings with Clear Digital Labs Program

[15:31]

So, as a guy that represents several hundred marketing agencies and consultants and is always trying to bring the right solution to the table for a brand that needs to hire, you know, oftentimes budget is an issue, right?

It’s for so many small businesses, and it’s a tough pill to swallow to, you know, to be, excuse me, support that marketing retainer of several thousand dollars a month or whatever it may be. So what you’ve developed here really is an interesting way to offset some of those costs through harnessing university talent or recent graduates and then having them overseen by an experienced mentor.

So suffice to say that there’s a significant savings associated with going this route, right?

Brandon Church:

[16:17]

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we’re positioned the way we are, Because as we know, it’s not cheap to hire agencies. You’re gonna have to spend several thousand dollars a month on a retainer and where we try to- Even the small ones. Even the small ones.

John Bertino:

[16:29]

So- Even the solopreneur, right? A lot of times it’s like a minimum $1,000 a month.

Brandon Church:

[16:33]

Yep, and so with our program, we say, hey, if you wanna even hire someone for 10, 20 hours a week, you can hire someone through our program who’s going to be trained.

We do three to five hours of training a week with this person.

Again, they meet with their mentor and have that influence on the account as well. And let’s say they start them at $18 an hour, you know, for a thousand bucks, you can bring someone in for 10 hours a week who is also being trained and getting to learn, you know, that organization, being able to implement strategies that can be extremely effective.

John Bertino:

[17:03]

Kind of groom them from the ground up. Exactly. You know, there’s no like obligation, correct me if I’m wrong, but if recalling on previous past conversations, there’s no obligation to commit to that person for an extended period of time, right? Just a few months at a time.

Apprenticeship program commitment and requirements

Brandon Church:

[17:16]

Exactly. The apprenticeship typically lasts for 12 months, but there’s no commitment for that company. If it’s not working out, it’s not working out.

And we’ll find a new home for the apprentice and be able to find them a different opportunity. But we like the organization to be able to work with them for at least a year, so they can really get a good grounding and understand, you know, the skills they need to understand as part of the program. You know, we have a very specific list of requirements that we like that apprentice to achieve, you know, specific things that we’d like them to learn while on the job.

And so we just have to have the time for them to get those experiences.

John Bertino:

[17:50]

Are there certain certifications that are kind of a mandatory requirement for.

The apprentices you’re putting on these projects.

Brandon Church:

[17:59]

So every apprentice that comes to our program is required again to do that learning.

So they have to do three to five hours of education every week.

And what we’re aligning them to our digital certifications through Google, through Meta, and then we have some other additional certifications as well that they’ll get. So by the time they’re done with that program, they will have multiple certifications.

They’ll have that work experience and they’ll have the training mentorship on top of it. Yeah.

John Bertino:

[18:23]

Really cool. Great way for a small business to get, you know, hungry talent that’s doing all the right things to increase their, you know, continuing their education, even when they’re beyond university and do so at a fraction of the cost.

Apprenticeship vs Internship: Understanding the differences

Brandon Church:

[18:37]

Yeah. I mean, it’s these types of programs have been huge in Europe for decades and it’s apprenticeship model.

John Bertino:

[18:44]

It’s not really something you hear about much.

Brandon Church:

[18:45]

It’s not something you hear about and people don’t understand and and they don’t understand the differences between an internship and an apprenticeship either.

You know, which are, they’re very different, right? An internship is just a short scope of work, 12 weeks usually, either paid or unpaid.

And, you know, it’s to give someone just a little bit of experience, whereas an apprenticeship is a job, you know, that person’s being hired and they have a strict education they have to do as part of the program.

And they have to achieve a certain number of hours of training during that program. And again, it’s paid. And so they’re very different, but both effective. And so we have a pre-apprenticeship set up as well.

So if someone applies for a program who just isn’t ready yet to take on a job, we align them with our pre-apprenticeship program, which gives them, which is essentially an internship in a lot of ways. It’s a 12 week training that they’ll do.

They get a small project to work on, so they’ll get some work experience as part of it. But it’s a great way for us to engage with that person, really understand them, what their strengths, what their weaknesses are, and so that we can help them get that job when they’re ready.

John Bertino: 

[19:53]

Very cool. Can you talk through a few specific use cases or case studies where you’ve leveraged what Clear Digital Labs is doing to help a brand or an agency?

By the way, quick clarifying question, are you supporting agencies and brands or just brands? Both. Yeah. Both. So an agency might want to call on you as well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So use cases.

Success story: From internship to full-time employment

Brandon Church:

[20:15]

So yeah, there’s a… Actually, I’m really proud of this one.

There’s a girl we worked with as part of our internship program that I set up three and a half years ago, we worked with her. She went through our internship program. She did a great job. We didn’t have anything for her next. So it was just, you know, Hey, you know, great job. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll stay in touch type of thing.

And so she went on, she went to go to graduated to, to university.

She, she continued on there and I had an opportunity to come up with one of our clients and I thought she’d be a really good could fit for it.

And so reach out to her when I was ready to register for apprenticeships and had her interview and she got the job.

And she started out there doing 10 hours a week to AMN healthcare.

They’re publicly traded healthcare recruitment company here in San Diego.

So she joined their team and their social department and was doing only 10 hours a week and has done that for about four months. And they loved her.

They thought she was amazing.

She really, really proved herself well. She’s getting ready to graduate here in June and they’re gonna be hiring her full-time, bringing her on board.

And so it’s just to see someone go through, you’re gonna be able to start at that beginning stage and grow and get to the point where they’re now able to get a full-time job and graduate with that job in hand. It’s been really a great opportunity, rewarding experience for all of us.

John Bertino:

[21:37]

That’s fantastic. So that was a healthcare business, a large one at that.

But you’re on the other end of the spectrum. You’re working probably with some small businesses as well. Sure. Yep.

Success story: Small business leveraging apprenticeship for digital support

Brandon Church:

[21:47]

Another opportunity is Epson’s to be also a healthcare company, a company in Indiana.

They do in-house small procedures. And this guy just- So like surgical procedures? Yeah, surgical, non-invasive, and just like same day type of procedures, but pretty- Independently owned.

John Bertino:

[22:04]

So opposite end of the spectrum. End of the spectrum. End of the spectrum.

Small business, Indiana. Okay, yep.

Brandon Church:

[22:08]

Yep. And they just spent a lot of money setting up and launching this office.

And they reached out and said, hey, we need someone to just help us do everything. We need to manage our website. We need to get clients. We need to do SEO. We had all these ideas.

John Bertino:

[22:25]

The old, we need someone young and hungry to do everything. There it is again.

Brandon Church:

[22:29]

We don’t have a big budget.

John Bertino:

[22:30]

That’s how you started, right? Basically.

Brandon Church:

[22:32]

Exactly. And so exactly the same way. And so, I understood what their needs were.

And I had some candidates who had applied for the apprenticeship program that I thought could be potentially be a good fit, set up some interviews for them.

They interviewed, they selected someone and brought him on.

And this is a gentleman who has very limited experience, but it wants to learn again, wants to be active and do a lot of different things in the digital space.

And so we saw this as an opportunity give him access to say, hey, you can have the keys, you know, and do whatever you, whatever you want and be effective, um, we’ll help you develop the strategy and put him in a place to do that.

So now he’s on board and really helping out and, um, they’ve been extremely happy with him so far. And so yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good opportunity and a good situation for him where, you know, you can get, you just like myself, you can get in and do many different things to really build your resume on and learn, um, as long as you’re willing to learn. Thank you.

John Bertino:

[23:32]

Great. And so while we have you utilizing this platform, there are a couple different moving pieces here. I’d imagine that you’d be interested in calls from a number of the different players here, maybe the mentors, maybe the apprentices, certainly the businesses.

Who would you love to speak to if this sounds appealing?

Seeking businesses interested in hiring or training apprentices

Brandon Church:

[23:51]

Yeah. Businesses, you know, businesses who are looking to either hire, you know, entry-level marketing talent or businesses who have marketing support on staff already who need additional training.

And so, you know, we’d love to continue to add more businesses.

We’ve had, I think over 600 apprentices apply for our program in the last two months. And so, we have a lot of different apprentices who would love to be a part of this program.

People want to learn; they want to be active. We just, we need more opportunities. We continue to need more more opportunities at companies.

And so, yeah, even if it’s just to have a conversation, we’re always happy to share resumes with companies. We don’t charge anything upfront or anything like that.

So if companies are looking to hire, you can get in contact with me and we’ll definitely share some talent with you who could be a good fit for what they need.

John Bertino:

[24:42]

Great, and what’s the best way to get in touch with you, Brandon?

Brandon Church:

[24:44]

Yeah, you just go to our website at cleardigitallabs.com and you can fill out the contact form there or you can email me at brandon@cleardigitallabs.com, and we’d be happy to chat with anyone. I’ll also say mentors, we always need new mentors. So, you know, if you’re specialized in a marketing field, reach out to us same way and happy to chat with you and look for opportunities. And, you know, we’re always bringing on new mentors.

Filling the void: Providing entry-level talent to businesses

John Bertino:

[25:07]

That’s fantastic. I love what you guys are doing. I think it fills a very necessary void that a lot of businesses are running into and getting great entry-level talent.

So, love it, keep up the good work, and thanks for coming on and talking about the business.

Brandon Church: 

[25:23]

Thanks for the opportunity, John, really appreciate it.

John Bertino: 

[25:24]

All right, my pleasure.