The Sea Of Sales And Ocean Of Marketing
Curiosity got me in a chokehold, because if not, I won't be here writing this today.
In the last 18 months I have been through the furnaces of HNG internship not once, not twice but three times!!!
I have no idea how I keep getting myself to come back, one thing is for sure I have learned a lot.
My latest iteration of HNG started in early April, 2026, I had planned to come back to try out the Automation track again, but alas, the track wasn't available for the cohort, heartbroken I opted to see what the video editing track had in store for me, omo, I saw shege, I absolutely respect video editors you guys are patient and pay attention to details and there is an art and balance to everything, from visual concepts to sound design, color grading, there was just so much to learn. While I was busy trying not to drown in the video editing tasks I had to deliver, I made one singular choice that changed the whole course of the rest of internship for me and that was to pick up the sales and marketing track tasks, because why not, I was just curious what obtained there, and boy oh boy, it was an eye opener, my brain got marinated in knowledge I had vague idea of its existence, while I was struggling to research, complete my task and deliver within short deadlines, mind you I was also doing the same in video editing, it was a Herculean task.
With every task I got better, I learned the terminologies, the processes, the research and the collaborations necessary to get brands and products through the marketing funnel.
My most memorable task was creating a multi-channel marketing strategy for an innovative education product that was still in the concept stage.
From interviewing the founder, to getting the origin story, understanding the product then creating the strategy, I was practically ecstatic at the end of that task and the fact that the founder praised my strategy, it was quite refreshing. Following that I was lucky to work on the same product again, this time around I had to flesh out a founder led marketing strategy, this whole experience gave me so much satisfaction, I got to work on a real products that was in development and my strategies are going to help bring them to market.
Social Media Mockup for the CLAIVIS brand for the founder led strategy Task
With every task submitted, the sales and marketing mentors gave us feedback, that way I know what to fix and be better in the next task.
I knew marketing was a walk in the park, but I am like how hard could it be, I do have the Aleph Digital Ad Expert Certificate in my arsenal, it should help, it did help, but the research the countless strategies and restrategies that get done way before any content or ad is created is endless.
The task we did where we had to simulate a PR crisis for a brand and then solve the PR Crisis we formulated was mind bending, because the only way you could do that is if you had a deep understanding of the brand and it's product, this tested my capacity of understanding what testing API endpoints were and what a workflow was, and how exactly does the end-user use the product and what might lead the company to ruins, and at the end of it all, we had to present our formulated PR crisis and our solution, this tested the bandwidth of my brain.
A screenshot of some of the presentation slides for the PR Crisis Simulation and Recovery Task
There are still many tasks worth mentioning, marketing a boring mundane everyday physical product, enterprise B2B growth architecture, community led growth strategy, email marketing and funnel campaign, website growth, SEO and Conversion optimization every one of them has made me a better sales and marketing strategist.
Have you noticed I have been silent about the rest of my video Editing track experience, well that would need to be thrashed out in a separate post.
I love the way HNG is structured (to stress me life), while we have these personal tasks/challenges to deliver, we are also placed in teams, in teams we have to work as marketers for those teams, for instance my team was developing a health tech product, we had other interns on the team too, frontend, backend, mobile, DevOps, Product management, product design etc, we all have to work together to bring our product to fruition. Here, we are tasked with researching brand names,with justification for picking the one we chose, get our ideal customer profile, the segments and buyer persona representing each segment, the domain strategy, the social media research, Go-to-Market strategy, content calendar etc.
Here we get to experience first hand how it is like to work in a team, we get to see what other members are doing and from it all.
I have learned a lot, now I realize that I am able to appreciate and recognize unique marketing strategies around me, I take notice of them, I also get inspiration from many, I now have a new lense of looking at things thanks to HNG.
Now that the internship is about ending, I have been thinking, now that I have learned these sales and marketing skills, what's next? I plan to build on them, there is still so much out there, I am interested in researching a bit more about the psychology of buying and I want to start practicing what I have learned, I want to create marketing funnels and pipelines for businesses, I want to bring clarity to these businesses,so they are not working in the dark, create actionable goals with measurable KPIs and ultimately get the conversions desired.
Through these all I have had the best mentors guide me through the klin of HNG, many thanks to @micheal Abu and @ugnwa ohaghasi for their guidance, and feedback and patience. I hope to make you all proud someday soon. And much appreciation to the chief mentor @mark essien for creating this internship opportunity, I am so grateful.
Now to the best part, I am so lucky, I got to meet the most amazing group of people; my fellow interns, I made a number of friends, together we went through the rollercoaster of HNG, it broke my heart when some had to leave early, but all in all it has been blessing meeting you all.
Special thanks to Clinton U do being the best team leader, to Joy Amaka and Oyinkansola I couldn't have asked for better team members, you were the best.
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