CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree | Week 10 | REVIEW
Welcome back one more week to this blog where I take you to my journey through the CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree.
I'd like to start this week's post by sharing some thoughts about how to keep going when motivation is low, and what you could do about it.
The psychology behind why we start
Starting a new project is like falling in love.
We're excited, intrigued, and aroused — we might even become slightly obsessed with this new activity or project.
You know what I'm talking about…
- A new idea.
- A new concept.
- A new chance.
We don't give much thought about potential obstacles or challenges we might face down the road.
But before you even know it, you're in too deep.
The work is harder than expected.
It wasn't as easy as you first thought.
It might take longer to complete than you thought.
If you've ever read a book or heard a talk from Seth Godin, you know what I mean when I say "The Dip".
Whether you're trying to change the world or just learn something new, you will experience "the dip" at some point.
I think I am in the middle of a dip, and there are mainly three reasons why:
1. Job workload
At Triggerbee we're in the midst of launching a big, first-of-it's-kind, report. We've already pre-launched on LinkedIn just before the summer, and we're planning a big public launch in the coming weeks. This is a huge deal for us. It takes up a lot of mental energy and available "brain-space" - in- and outside work.
2. Family-time
I have a 2-year old son and a wife that I love spending time with. These past few weeks I have had to prioritize learning over some valuable family time. I know it's just temporary, but I don't like the feeling of not being "there" when I want to be there.
3. Pandemic
Being in the middle of a pandemic means you have to adapt to a lot of new rules everywhere. Our daycare will send our son home for a 3-day quarantine if they hear him cough or sneeze. This has been both wonderful and frustrating at times. On one hand, you get to spend a lot of time with your kid, which is awesome! But, it also adds a lot of additional friction for your productivity at work. Being a parent is hard, but being a parent to a young child during a pandemic is even harder. The best part of this situation is that I have been able to spend more time with my son, and less time in front of a screen.
Think of any project or process like a smiling curve.
At first, we're extatic. Our motivation is at an all-time high and we have not thought about potential obstacles or challenges we might face.
Then, slowly but surely, the work gets harder. Longer. The results are not what we expected.
We are starting to "dip".
This affects our motivation, because it becomes lower and lower until you're at a point where you need to make a choice:
Continue
End your journey
The human brain is wired to take the path of least resistance. This is why most of us will choose option 2, end the journey.
However, some will choose to power through, and keep trying.
Personally I choose number two. But there's a reason why:
Intrinsic motivation.
I'm a self-taught marketer. I more or less ended up in this field because it's what I realized I needed to learn, in order to do what I love.
I want to create headlines that make someone say "Hey, this is exactly what I'm looking for".
I want to design a graphic element that makes someone think "oh wow".
I want to create content that people want to share — not just with anyone — with people they admire.
I want to create things that are loved. Shared. Spread. Consumed.
I want to understand every aspect of every marketing activity, because if I'm eventually going to lead a team, I at least want to know how to maneuver the tactical stuff well enough to understand what will have a good chance of working.
My internal motivation is the future I am creating for myself, partially thanks to this course.
I want to think about marketing when I go to bed and my family is asleep. I intentionally over-analyze advertisements because it helps me understand. I would rather stay home a friday evening watching a copywriting seminar on youtube, than to go out drinking.
I want to keep learning marketing, because it's the only way I can create stuff that impacts people directly, and passively.
I'm way past obsessive at this point. I just love the process of becoming good at something, and it's my own way of staying ahead.
And it's also why the CXL Growth Marketer Minidegree is one of the few projects I've started, that I am intrinsically motivated to finish.
And I believe that is the key to keep going even when times are tough, and all you want to do is drop everything.
If you're going through the institute on a scholarship, you will definitely hit a few low-points.
But think of why you started. If you're seriously considering quitting, maybe you didn't have enough motivation to go through it from the first place.
I think the time limit also changes the experience quite a bit — because even if it's self-paced, it's not possible to do it in your own pace. You need to make time for learning.
With this week's course, I've felt my motivation increase slightly.
The course is highly relevant to some of my goals at work, and activities we're doing.
Let's dive into this week's learning.
This week's learnings
Product copywriting
I started and completed Momoko Price's conversion copywriting course.
Overall, I feel that the course would be great for anyone that wants to learn how to find out what's important for your audience.
Price walks your through how to do what she calls "Message Mining" — which essentially is the process of extracting reviews or testimonials from your customers or target audience, then categorizing and prioritizing certain messaging.
This is great for companies with large audiences, and lots of reviews, for a smaller company, however, this could be challenging.
Price walks you through the full process from making a page breakdown, to extracting and categorizing messaging and eventually mocking up a page.
She gives you a lot of templates to work with, and a lot of great pointers on what you need to think about in each step of the process.
Facebook ads - BELT Method
The Facebook ads course is taught by Curt Maly, which is one of the world's most sought-after facebook ad experts.
And it's the first course that actually blew my mind.
He teaches you a process called The B.E.L.T-Method, which stands for Believe, Engage, Lead, and Transact.
It's basically a new way of looking at the traditional sales funnel. However, there are a few key differences.
This funnel is not just visual or a way of explaining how the funnel works. Maly actually applies practical work and examples in each stage.
Each stage is highly driven by video, and every stage requires different messaging and video length.
One of the key differences between the BELT-Method and other strategies, is that Maly actually uses every single facebook ad objective, at every stage of the funnel. I'm sure the facebook ad pro's use more type of ads than the average advertiser, but for me it's a completely new way of looking at digital advertising.
The thing that actually surprised me the most is this:
Facebook themselves actually gives you a blueprint to persuade and move people down a sales funnel organically…and if you look closely, each ad objective have its own way of influencing your prospects.
You should not just run conversion ads. Instead, you should start with awareness ads and retarget the people who've engaged with your awareness ads to start running conversion ads.
I'm actually really excited to learn more about this, as the method is most likely pretty generic and could be applied on LinkedIn, or Youtube as well.
Author
Gatesweb Alessandro Eren
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