Honest CXL growth marketing minidegree review. Part 1/12
Hello there. If you land on this article looking for opinions about CXL, there is something you should know before. First of all, welcome. I was in the same situation as you are, and I know how hard it is to find genuine reviews in this magic world. I will be 100% honest with you.
Please read the following disclaimer to better understand the reason behind my review on CXL.
This will be a long review. So, if you are seeking quick answers, this is not the right place.
And I am obsessed with The Office. You see how honest I am.
Disclaimer
This article reviews just the CXL growth marketing minidegree (not all the CXL courses). The review is written by an actual user, me (Diego). BUT… it is not entirely bias-free. My experience with CXL is due to them granting me a scholarship (yes 100% courses). We know that in this capitalistic world nothing is for free and there is always a bilateral exchanging. Santa Claus does not exist, and it is not a drama only for children. Instead of money, the CXL scholarship program asks you to write 12 posts sharing your learning outputs and impressions with the mini degree. So yes, this review is biased but just for the fact that I am grateful to CXL. As a broken AF graduate (like me) trying to start a marketing career, it is very stressful to gain useful knowledge for free. Giving back to the community by delivering free education to people unable to afford expensive courses is per se a great reason to buy CXL products.
A little bit of contextualization. CXL growth marketing minidegree is a 111h long course (111h 42min to be fair) composed of 9 modules. In this article, I am going to review the first module: Growth marketing foundation. For the review of the following modules have a look at the bottom.
I would like to take a more unusual review by talking about people instead of contents. Growth marking video courses are approximately the same all over the industry. What really matters is how growth marketing has been taught, depending on teachers, not contents. So, today I am going to talk about two guys and a girl.
John McBride talking about Growth Mindset and Building Growth Process.
John McBride will be the very first person introducing you to the growth marketing mindset. He is a very captive guy with this start-up attitude that perfectly represent the growth marketing approach. In fact, growth marketing is more project management of marketing rather than marketing as normally intended. John explains it straightforwardly, walking you throughtout all the phases to build a growth process. He introduces you to various models and frameworks that will easy the setting and execution of a growth process. And you can find the summary of it at the following link:
https://taking.ownership.of.other’s.work.is.not.ethical/buy-the-course-and-not-be-a-smartass
The great takeaway from Jonh McBride’s words is that growth approach is about learning, not optimization. That is pivotal for the understanding of growth hacking. A growth process is basically the iteration experimentations of hypothesis about customers’ pain points. Experiments have obviously two outcomes: success or failure. In either case, you learn something new. Even if you fail multiple times, you are actually growing because you build up knowledge about your customers and their pain points. It remembers the scientific method (it is actually the same but named with cool words). And like Thomas Edison, you don’t fail, but finds 10.000 ways that don’t work for your audience.
Just only one thing I did not like from Jonh McBride’s lectures, and it is the contraposition of traditional marketing and growth marketing. There is a whole lecture called “Growth vs traditional marketing”. He passes a misleading message exalting growth marketing as the new marketing substituting the traditional one. The reality is much more complicated. A great marketer should always consider all the marketing disciplines and not degrading someone. Growth hacking has lacks, as well. For instance, it is focused on short term results. If you run a “no discount” VS “discount” A/B test for sure the discounted version will convert more. Still, it may undermine your business in the long term by positioning your offer as cheap. This is call branding, and it belongs to traditional marketing. BUSTED!!
Paul Boag talking about User-Centric Marketing.
Paul Boag is a classic English gentleman who, contrary to Jonh, has a very serene approach to teaching. He is a storyteller first and an executioner second. User-centric marketing is very similar to growth marketing as they share the same project-management-of-marketing nature. While growth marketing focuses on speeding and optimizing the learning, user-centric marketing focuses on bringing in users’ point of view. And obviously, the interception of them is where stunning results happen. Paul gives you an endless assortment of frameworks and methodologies to better intergrade users’ goals, feelings, and objections. And again you will not find a list of them here. First, because it is immoral. Second, because the way Paul teaches them is irreplicable. The best CXL teacher so far.
I really appreciate Paul’s lectures because he focuses a lot on the user’s deeper motivations and objections. Sometimes there is a misunderstanding in optimizing a business just looking at data from Google Analytics or similar. And even though these are useful data, they only show the user’s action and not the whys behind it. For instance, if we see better conversion rates when changing our email copy, we can’t really understand why this happens just by looking at numbers. Paul really insisted on bring customers in ….literally. The best of Paul’s advice is to go and talk directly to customers. A very non-digital approach, but definitely disruptive.
While user-centric marketing is absolute, a must-to-have approach in a company I believe is not enough. Users are not the only stakeholders of a company. We live in society, and as a society, we are a collectivity of people. So we should also look at other stakeholders that not directly interact with us. The typical example is the planet as stakeholders and how we must take into account suitability values. And I am not talking about leveraging sustainability to sell products but actually including the sustainability point of view when doing business. Ee can’t see a short-term benefit in doing so, but, in the long run, everybody will benefit from it (users, companies and the society).
Sophia Eng talking about Identify and Applying Growth Channels.
I am kind of pissed with CXL. Sophia is a brilliant girl who was not given enough room to shine. Her lectures were a sort of superficial introduction of all the main channel in digital marketing. It seems like a long list of things you can do, and why and how you should do them. Briefly, Sophia’s lectures are definitely useful for beginners who are not used to digital marketing terminology and just approach those topics. Don’t take me wrong, Sophia gives you many tips and tricks to better leverage growth channels. Still, everything is confusing and not well organized. It feels more like a speech than a lecture. So, my opinion is ok but kind of useless. Maybe after completing the whole minidegree you should jump back to Sophia’ lectures to really appreciate them. But I am not sure.
And that is pretty much my comments on the first modules of CXL growth marketing minidegree. Please, read review part 2/12 (link below as soon it will be available). It is going to be a long…review.
