CXL Growth Marketing Review — Week 3

Believe me, this is tough; a lot tougher than I initially thought it would be! Doing a course that is so demanding in the sense that it has got so much going on, it becomes really hard for a novice to keep up with. On top of it, sharing the whole learning made in the past week with you all makes it all a lot harder. But in another way, it is also really great because it helps me to reinforce the concepts learned throughout the past week. But all in all, it has been a great ride so far because I have learned so much about this field that I could have ever imagined. So, now is the time to share what I learned in my CXL Growth Marketing Mini degree program with you all.

So in this week, we talked majorly about Growth Channels which are utilized in this field. Each of them can really help in ramping up the growth number and hence it can come in real handy. So, let’s dive into each one of them:

1. SEM

Search Engine Marketing which normally is also known as SEM or PPC (Pay per Click) is one of the most utilized ways a Growth Marketer can help in building a solid growth foundation. This channel refers to the ads that are run on Google or on Microsoft’s Bing.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Need to get your website ranked in the top on Google’s first page? Well, that is what Search Engine Optimization or SEO is. It is one of the most important and arguably the most difficult amongst all of the Growth Marketing channels.

3. Display Ads:

Apart from PPC, Google also offers ads that are run on other website’s ad space. They are known as Display ads and is yet another paid strategy that a Growth Marketer can utilize in order to boost the number.

4. Email Marketing:

One of the most under rated Growth Channels: Email Marketing still is one channel that should be on Growth Marketer’s channel.

5. Content Marketing:

Ever heard “Content is the King”? That has been true ever since digital marketing domain came into force! It is Content that gets you ranked and gets your audience the info that they need to make the decision in your favor!

So having talked about all of the channels, a Growth Marketer should employ a mix of all of these in order to get the best results possible. But before employing any of the channel, a growth marketer needs to be vary of the fact that each channel contributes differently and that is based on the audience and the nature of the industry the company is operating in. But having said all of this, there are a few rules which you need to follow because doing so will help you ensure success in your selected channels and will justify the time and effort you are spending on it. Number one mistake which most companies make is to spread themselves too thin on any one channel which is equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket. If a business is just starting out and do not have enough data to help them double down on the right channel, they should study the channel which their audience uses the most and identify channels that are a clear mismatch or are too competitive to reap any rewards.

One way you can describe a channel to be effective for you is to not only measure its ROI but at the same time look at how scalable that particular channel is for your company. You certainly would not want to invest in those kind of channels that have a good ROI but normally is only limited to the short term and only have a very limited ability to scale either by being very competitive or not sustainable to provide consistent results. Lastly and I cannot stress on this enough that it is important to make data driven decisions not just for operations or supply chain but for every channel as well.

Optimizing the Optimization Process:

This for me has been one of the best parts of CXL so far because here, Peep Laja talks about how to actually optimize the optimization process because frankly, you don’t have all the time in the world and if you end up relying on the list of optimization process that you will find on Google, you will be left way behind. So, this optimizing of optimization process has basically 3 objectives to go alongside it:

1. Test (or make) more effective changes

2. Reduce the cost (and duration) of optimization

3. Improve the speed of experimentation.

To address the issue of optimizing the conversion optimization process in a way that is holistic in nature, CXL uses its very own crafted “ResearchXL” process which if employed can certainly help in making your optimization process more efficient:

1. Technical Analysis (Cross browser testing, Cross device testing and Speed analysis)

2. Heuristic analysis (Identify areas of interest, check key pages for relevancy, motivation, friction)

3. Digital Analytics (Analytics health check, Set up measurement for KPIs, Identify leaks)

4. Mouse tracking and form analytics (Heat maps and click maps, scroll maps, user session video replays)

5. User Testing (What’s difficult to understand, what; difficult to do, what goes wrong?)

6. Qualitative surveys (Email surveys, focus groups and usability testing)

So, this was the major learnings that I did in the previous week. I hope to be back with more in the coming weeks. In case if you are curious, it will be more directed towards A/B testing and how can it be executed in a proper fashion.