Do Online Technical Marketing Courses Deliver Real Value?

CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree Review – Part 6 of 12 

Founded by Peep Laja, an entrepreneur who was voted the most influential conversion rate optimization expert, CXL Institute is an online platform offering a range of technical marketing courses designed to equip students with the knowledge they need to be the best at their craft.

 The Institute prides itself in giving learners access to teachings from practitioners who are in the top 1% most successful in the industry.

 I was given the incredible opportunity to complete and review the CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree. Over the next 12 blog posts, I will be sharing my opinions and learnings from the 33 courses (111h 41min) making up the Minidegree.

At the end of this journey, I hope that you will be well equipped to make an informed decision about whether or not online technical courses are worth your time and monetary investment.

 Welcome to week 6!

I will be continuing with the focus on channel-specific growth skills, tools and strategies necessary to improve SEO, Content and SEM.

Facebook Ads - Curt Maly

 Curt offers learners a complete deep dive into Facebook Ads. Whilst some of the concepts he shared were familiar, his B.E.L.T method was completely new to me and I will focus on this constructive method.

 The BELT method is a process made up of the four stages of Belief, Engage, Lead and, Transact. Through the BELT process, we are made aware of how these four stages relate to a customer's journey.

 Belief

The belief stage is about crafting top of the funnel content that allows your prospects to identify and align themselves with a problem that your product or service solves. This is where prospects become aware of your brand.

 At this stage of the customer journey, they may or may not be aware that they have a problem. They may or may not know that you have a solution for that problem or that your product or service could even solve that problem. So it is our job to help them to begin to believe that there is a problem and it can be solved.

 Engage

At this point of the Customer Journey, your prospect has been made aware of a problem that your product or service can solve. Now they've identified themselves as a potential customer within your original targeting by engaging with your ‘‘Belief’’ ad campaign.

Now the purpose of your Engage campaign is to nurture the relationship with the prospects, to continue educating them on the problem and your solution, with the ultimate goal of establishing trust.

 Lead

At this stage, your prospect should be product or service focused. Your messaging should offer your prospect support, solutions, the ability to actually buy something from you. It is your job to lead them to the sales presentation of your offer.

Lead content should help users engage with your brand to enter your sales funnel and buy from you. 

 Transact

The prospect is now ready to make the purchase decisions. At this point they have visited your site, gone through the sales page and maybe initiated an initial transaction with you, maybe they have become a lead.

So at this point, we are going to make sure that the retargeting is set up. The goal is to get prospects off the fence and to make a purchase. Once your prospect makes a purchase with you, they are going to align directly with you and your messaging, and they are going to lign until you mess up that process.

These four steps, when implemented consistently, ensure that we are constantly in the face of the customer during their buying journey, providing them information that reinforces that our product is what they need.

Curt shared Facebook campaign strategies to implement the BELT method. This module gave me a fresh perspective on Facebook advertising. Through BELT, It is easy to see how it ties in seamlessly with the sales funnel. 

Data-Driven Influencer Marketing - Siim S?inas

 Influencer marketing is when brands work with individuals who seem to have a voice on social to tell their brand story. On the one hand, 76% of marketers will say that it is difficult to determine ROI from this medium, yet some other marketers will say that they have realised 11 times ROI from influencer marketing.

 The different results can be traced back to how well the channel is used to drive demand, to build brand distinction and to tell a story. The main goal of influencer marketing is to tell a relatable, distinct, and entertaining brand story that cuts through the usual advertising noise.

 A good influencer campaign begins with a clear brief. Siim shares a brief template that outlines how influencers will fit into a brand’s overall marketing objectives. Your brief should include:

●    Human insight

●    Marketing objectives

●    Audience

●    Timeline

●    Product magic

●    Campaign message

 As a rule of thumb, you do not want to run a campaign with very few influencers. Siim advises working with no less than 15 influencers for a campaign. You want to make sure that the creative has different channels where it lives and also different creative takes because each influencer will bring their unique way of approaching your brief.

 Influencer marketing is best suited where the goal is to tell a story and drive engagement. Measures for good engagement would be organic search, content engagement in owned media, earned mentions, advocacy and cost per engagement.

 When it comes to identifying influencers, there are numerous tools that list and rank influencers. I found Siim’s recommendation of HypeAuditor worthwhile. The platform is comprehensive, reliable and it offers flexible pricing options. Definitely worth checking out.

 Identifying an influencer should go beyond just looking at follower numbers. These 5 questions are important for evaluating Brand fit:

1. What does my brand stand for on social?
2. How creative is influencer's content; how good are they at content creation?
3. Has the influencer worked with my competitors? (this could be a red line or not)
4. What is the influencer’s tone of voice and style?
5. What content format is required for the campaign? (the effort involved in posting an Instagram story is different from that required for a Youtube video for example)

 The value exchange between brand and influencer progresses as the relationship grows from standard, personal to exclusive. To get more out of influencers, you want to have trust, you have to give more, to get more.

An aspect that is critical to build successful relationships with influencers and get the best work out of them is to provide them with the creative freedom they deserve.

 Instead of throwing out commands, challenge your influencers to come up with creative responses to their given briefs.

 It is important to note that the steep decline in organic reach that we have experienced over the past years affects influencers equally. For that reason, once your campaign kicks off, it is imperative to amplify your influencer’s efforts by promoting their shared content to maximise its reach.

 Influencer campaigns when successfully run have shown to result in positive ROI. If this channel is a good fit for your objectives, it is worth pursuing!

 I look forward to delivering next week’s post, we are now halfway through our journey!

CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree: https://cxl.com/institute/programs/growth-marketing-training/

 Part 5: https://link.medium.com/mui7yaWRKfb

 Part 4: https://link.medium.com/tfvJx6TRKfb

 Part 3: https://link.medium.com/e6fJd6Ronfb

 Part 2: https://link.medium.com/FCUtyVTonfb

 Part 1: https://link.medium.com/qwcsNTUonfb