Week 8/12 - CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree Review
I am participating in the CXL Institute Scholarship Program, and I’m going through the Growth Marketing Minidegree. I'm posting a new article about what I've learned every week. This is part 8/12.
In this week's review I'd like to talk about two concepts that are coming up repeatedly in almost every course on CXL:
- Research
- Awareness
These two concepts are fundamental to any marketing strategy — not just growth marketing. Research and awareness are also two of the most recurring topics in almost every course and across all tracks in the Growth Marketing Mini Degree.
Why?
Research is important because you need to know who your customers are. You need to know their goals, objections and questions at every step of their customers journey.
Awareness means knowing where on the awareness scale your audience is when you start communicating with them. Are they aware of your product? Do they know your brand? Or are they completely unaware that the product you're selling could even solve a problem they have?
Knowing where your audience is right now and where they're coming from will help you know how to position your offer, which copy to write, and how to approach your game plan.
Research and awareness are two highly discussed topics, yet I suspect most don't know how to actually use them. Which is why I wanted to share my thoughts and new insights from recent courses and classes.
Like the title says, I'm now at the end of week 8 out of 12 in my scholarship program. Most courses up to this point have been really good. Even if I'm familiar with the skill being taught in the course, it has always been useful to go through the whole course from start to finish because it reminds you of things you might already know, but need to be reminded about.
And for me specifically, doing the research and thinking about awareness is something I've needed to remind myself of. This program has helped me drive that message home.
Research
The goal in growth marketing is to gain knowledge. To learn more about what works and what doesn't. Because in the end, the insights will help you find winning tactics.
Every activity must therefore start with proper research.
If you don't know where you are right now or have a clear understanding of what you don't know, you will have a much harder time gathering the insights you need in order to make good decisions.
Here are a few courses that go deep on research:
- Customer Centric Marketing with Paul Boag
- Conversion Research with Peep Laja
- Landing Page Optimization with Michael Aagaard
- Product copywriting with Momoko Price
- Content Marketing for Lead Generation
Even though these courses teach different subjects, they all start with the same type of research.
And even though research is supposed to be "scientific", there is always a heuristic step to every research process.
Doing "Heuristic" research basically means assessing the current situation based on first impressions and your experience, not numbers or hard data.
The heuristic step might be the most important part, because it's the first step of the process where you try to get a sense of what might be wrong. But it's important to watch out for personal biases, and ask yourself often "Is this just my personal opinion? Is it really aligned with how our customers thinks?"
After doing a heuristic evaluation you will have a list of items that need to be checked and researched further, and you will have a clear understanding of which questions you need answered before moving forward.
This process is extremely useful and important, and it's one of the things I've really tried to implement in my daily work.
For example, I have started to join demo meetings with our salespeople to learn more about our customer's situation and it has been one of the biggest eye-openers in my career so far.
Getting a summary of a sales meeting is good, but actually listening to what your prospects say is truly golden.
I said it in my first post, and I'll repeat it here again: having a process that helps you find answers and can guide you to the next step is what separates good marketers from great ones.
It's definitely one of the biggest takeaways from the growth marketing mini degree so far.
Here's a picture of how Peep Laja's conversion research framework is built up:
At the very core, you have insights. And the insights come from thorough research.
Awareness
Understanding awareness is surprisingly hard. It's easy to understand at a level where you can talk about it, but understanding it to the point where you know how to actually apply and use it is much harder.
The courses that go deep on this topic are:
- Product copywriting
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
- Content marketing
Understanding awareness basically means knowing how to structure your communication with your audience.
Here are Eugene Schwartz's different levels of awareness, along with how you need to communicate at each stage:
If you look closely, this is how most infomercials are structures. All good informercials makes sure to cover each stage of awareness.
Let's break them down, starting from the right side of the image (Unaware > Most aware).
Unaware - Your audience has never heard of you or your product, and they're not even aware of the problem you're trying to solve. This is essentially what is referred to as a "cold audience". To reach this audience, you need to focus on stories and secrets. You need to spark interest, and make them qualify themselves. Curt Maly suggests doing this with a short video clip, and retarget anyone who watches more than 95% of your video. You're not looking for immediate purchases here.
Problem aware - Your audience is aware they have a problem, and they want to solve it. But they don't know how. At this stage you need to speak directly to their experience. You need to make your audience understand that you know what they're going through by focusing on the benefits they might gain by solving this problem. You don't need to say "Hey, we're company X and we can solve this problem", because just by promoting an article that highlights benefits and anxieties will make your audience fill in the knowledge gaps themselves. Everyone who's interested in solving this problem will start noticing your brand, because that's just how our brains work.
Solution aware - Your audience know that your company can solve their problem, but they're still not sure that your brand is the best choice for them. Focus on claims and proof. Show case studies. Testimonials. Real-life results. This is the stage where you're building trust and authority.
Product aware - Your audience knows about your product, and they know that your product works. This is when you should focus on nudging them, with discounts and deals.
Most aware - Here you have brands and products we all use every day. Coke and Pepsi, Apple and Samsung, BMW and Audi. All you need here is to say that you sell a product, and price it reasonably.
The awareness concept is extremely important to understand because if you try to bring in new clients by advertising case studies to a completely cold audience, you'll waste your money.
Summary of week 8
I'm currently on the channel-specific track, which is one of my favourite tracks so far.
The Facebook ads course with Curt Maly is probably one of the most useful courses in the growth marketing course, because you'll learn how to keep your audience engaged for a very long time — and how to keep them in your "universe".
Right now I'm in the middle of the content marketing course with instructor Andy Crestodina.
I love content, so this is right up my alley. Also, it really fits well into what I do st work during this period since we're launching a big report with unique research (which is one of the most valuable types of content, according to Crestodina).
In next week's post I'll talk more about how to write good content, how it helps you drive leads, and why it's one of the most important marketing activities.