Honest CXL growth marketing minidegree review. Part 2/12
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.
If you are seeking quick answers, this is not the right place. It is going to be a very long review. So long that you may get hungry in the meanwhile. Have a snack at your fingertip!
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 second module: Running Growth Experiments. For the review of previous and 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 three very smart guys.
Peep Laja talking about Research and Testing, and Conversion Research.
Peep is the founder of CXL, so shout out to him for creating this fantastic learning platform. You can’t aspect anything then precious lessons from the CXL founder. Peep is a fucking genius. The two courses he teaches in this model cover the essential process of growing with experimentations. If you are up to date with the new trends in the marketers’ world, you should know about A/B testing and how valuable it is. But the truth is a little bit different. In my humble opinion, there is a lot of misinformation about A/B testing, especially from the “guru of marketing” selling you the Sacro Graal of optimization. A/B testing is not just comparing version A vs B to see which you have a higher conversion rate. It is much more.
In the Research and Testing course, Peep introduces you to what a good optimization process looks like. And surprise, it is not all about A/B testing. A good optimization process is all about problems and not solutions. If you A/B test your “cool” new idea that will boost conversion, you are not optimizing; you are playing a lottery. And I am quite sure that your boss did not hire you because of your luckiness. Ideas are part of the optimization process, but they don’t come from your magical creativity.
Ideas come from problems that must be solved. A “cool” idea is not a good idea; a problem-based idea is a good idea. Good ideas are potential solutions (it will be clearer later). Therefore, a good optimization process starts with problem-discovering and not problem-solving. Problem-discoveryìing is done by research, user-centric research. Having a low conversion rate is a business problem; the whys of a low conversion is one or more users’ problem. So don’t try to solve your problem; solve your users’ problems. Peep shows a plethora of research techniques you can undertake to spot users’ problems. He actually does more by explaining you the ReseachXL Process (you can probably find it online in some CXL blog). The advantage of having a research process is that the research itself is optimized. This is the great advantage of all the courses in this module: they are more about optimizing the process of optimization rather than just optimize. Optimizing your process allows you to generate better ideas that will lead to potential effective solutions (this is no lottery anymore).
If research is all about problem-discovering, testing is about problem-solving. A/B testing enables you to prove that the research-based idea is an actual solution. So, please don’t test ideas just because they are a new trend in marketing. Testing is only a part of optimization. Consider the power of the research part as well. Consider having a look at Peep’s courses. For the sake of clarity, the “Research and Testing” course is about the optimization process (research + testing), while the “Conversion Research” course is about what researches to conduct and how.
Since I am a pain in the ass, Peep’s courses are not 100% great. In my opinion, they have some issues, like some concepts now been very well covered (e.g. survey design). But the takeaway of these courses is the methodology and the approach behind optimization. So consider them a starting point, then explore each concept in more details to advance even more in your optimization process. You have just started learning!
Tom Wesseling talking about A/B testing.
Tom is an Einstein-lookalike dutch guy walking you through the testing phase of your optimization process. Tom is a real expert in A/B testing, which is why this course is tough to do. While the total length of videos is 5 hours, it took me 2 full days to actually understand it. Similar to Peep, Tom focuses on the approach rather than on the operation of A/B testing. Out of the thirty pages of note I took, only 3 pages are about using an A/B testing tool.
Before you open the A/B test tool, there is an endless list of stuff you must do. A/B testing is a very scientific approach to testing, and it needs the highest proficiency in rational thinking. It is not something you do in one day. Not only advance statistics is involved but research, designing and developing. Here again, it is all about optimizing the process. Thanks to god, Tom will guide you to this complex procure of planning, executing, and analyzing A/B tests. What really stands out from this course is that testing is not about uplifting the conversion rate but rather about learning. This point of view is fascinating and pivotal. The real outcome of A/B test programs in the most growing company like Amazon, Booking and Netflix is building knowledge efficiently and efficacy. And the wonderful thing is that Tom teaches you how to do it when you are not a big company. A/B testing is a very flexible approach that can be shaped around your company size. And although a small company cannot run significance A/B tests statistically due to a shortage of data, the approach of learning thought experimentation is useful anyway. It is just a matter of allowing some risks in your experiments and complete experimentation with other knowledge sources. For this reason, it is not surprising to find research also in the A/B testing process. At the end of the day, both research and testing aim to grow the knowledge you have about your customer to deliver a better experience.
This approach is so essential to understand that for scaling it, you should spread it to every team in your company until it is embedded in your company’s DNA. I honestly did not expect a similar course on A/B testing. It was really mindblowing. This course is so impressive that it makes all the boring statistics fun because even statistics can optimize your leaning process.
And that is pretty much my comments on the second module of CXL growth marketing minidegree. If you want to know more, please read review part 1/12 here:
https://diegotraini.medium.com/honest-cxl-growth-marketing-minidegree-review-part-1-12-7da7328d432e
or part 3/12 here (link below as soon it will be available).
Thanks for reading this article.
