If you want a marketing career, there are two ways in: apply directly for entry-level jobs, or take digital marketing training with internship experience first and apply from a stronger position. Both work for some people. Here is how to decide which is right for you.
The direct route: applying straight for jobs
If you already have adjacent experience - sales, content creation, running social accounts for a family business - the direct route can work. It costs nothing and starts the salary clock immediately. Its weakness is brutal mathematics: entry-level ads attract hundreds of applicants, most junior roles quietly require the very experience they claim not to, and rejections come with no feedback. Candidates without any evidence of marketing work can spend six months applying and learn nothing in the process. Our guide to what entry-level marketing jobs really require shows what you are up against.
The internship-first route
Training followed by an internship costs money and delays your first pay cheque by a few months - that is the honest downside. What it buys is a transformed application: skills across the full stack, a portfolio of real work, twelve weeks of verifiable experience and a reference. It also buys information: you discover which marketing work you actually enjoy before committing to a role. And because interns frequently convert into hires, the route often ends in a job offer without a cold application at all.
The deciding questions
Ask yourself three things. Do I have any evidence today that I can do marketing work? If yes, apply directly and build a portfolio alongside. Can I afford three to six months of preparation? If not, the direct route with self-built projects is the pragmatic answer. Am I changing careers entirely? Career changers benefit most from the internship-first route, because it replaces "no relevant history" with recent, relevant experience.
Doing both in one programme
Digital Marketing in Practice compresses the internship-first route into six months: 12 weeks of practical training, then a guaranteed 12-week industry internship - at £650 live online, deliberately less than the cost of most bootcamps that offer no placement at all.
The bottom line
If you have evidence, apply now. If you have none, six months of digital marketing training with internship experience turns you into the candidate the direct route keeps rejecting - and often delivers the job offer before the course ends.
The best digital marketing course with internship does both
You do not have to choose between training and experience. The best digital marketing course with internship gives you both at once: LSBUK's Digital Marketing in Practice is digital marketing with internship experience built in - the best digital marketing training with internship, with a 100% placement guarantee - so you apply for jobs from the strongest possible position.