Conversion Optimization Minidegree at CXL — Review 9/12
I am in week 9 of my 12-week journey at CXL Institute learning Conversion Optimization. This week I will cover the below courses:
- A/B Testing Mastery
- Optimizing for B2B
- Customer Value Optimization
There’s one more course in the 3rd section of the Minidegree which I have skipped for now and will cover next week. The reason for this is that it’s over 4 hours and from the introduction video seemed like a complicated subject (for my brain that likes words more than numbers :) and with an ill toddler at home it felt like it’s a better idea to jump to the next section and dive into some shorter courses instead. I prefer to go through courses in order, but life happens :)
A/B Testing Mastery
A/B testing is really really really important and the most powerful weapon you can have in your company.
A/B Testing Mastery by Ton Wesserling is a 5-hour course in the 3rd section (out of 5) in the Conversion Optimization Minidegree at CXL.
The course promises you’ll understand testing approaches that work, pitfalls that don’t work, and will get more wins and insights from optimization efforts and also start making more money with online experiments.
Ton seems to be a real professional who knows what he’s talking about. Whilst getting subject knowledge in a course is expected, insights about how it all works in real life and how teams should work on it are like a nice bonus to the course.
It feels tempting to just write a summary of the course because it helps to recap what I’ve learned and it wasn’t an easy subject for me, but it wouldn’t really be a review then, so I will mention a couple of things I found really worth attention in this course.
In the 5th lesson Which KPI to Pick? Ton presents a pyramid model hierarchy of KPIs. At the bottom of it, there are clicks. It’s the least important metric and it’s easy to increase it. The second from the bottom layer is Behaviour. The third layer is Transactions (leads in B2B) which is a really good driver to optimize on. And on top of that, there is Revenue per user which is not easy, but doable. The top-level is Potential Lifetime Value. It is a golden metric, however, it is hard to do.
Transactions is the goal you want to go for,at least 1,000 transactions per month. And then you can have this goal metric. If you’re more mature, you can shift to revenue per user or even potential lifetime value.
So why did I like this lesson? Because it is teaching not just what to do, but how to think about the subject.
It’s just one good example from this Conversion Optimization program why in my opinion it’s better than many other courses. And I don’t mean just a specific subject like this one about testing, I mean it in a broader way about what makes a good course. So, talking about how to think about a specific subject is part of the holy grail of teaching :) Perhaps I will expand on this in my final review.
And to mention one more thing about this course what I found exceptionally good was Scaling Up Testing lesson where Ton talks about how to get CRO in the heart of a company. He says that optimizers become proud of their knowledge which makes them more critical to others including the marketing team and their requests, which isn’t a good thing. Obviously, there’s much more what he said about this, but I find it very interesting because I haven’t come across another course before where the instructor would talk about how a specific department should work in an organization.
So to summarize this was another great course packed with knowledge. I’d also like to mention the final exam of it. This time I did an experiment and tried to pass it before finishing the course, well it didn’t happen. I guess we all at some point in life had an exam where you could easily guess the answers using common sense, but it’s not the case at CXL courses. Also, you have to get 90% correct to pass. Makes you appreciate the certificate much more.
Optimizing for B2B
This was a short 20 mins course by Bill Leake. He talks about establishing goals, leads, their quality, quantity and cost, he touches on content, calls to action, and sales teams.
What was really interesting is that when he was mentioning some common mistakes B2B companies made I found myself nodding.
He said many B2B companies don’t have their personas right. I have worked in a B2B company for almost 4 years that turned over 70 M Eur and guess if at least once we had personas mentioned? Nope. Another company I spent 2 years at, 30M Eur revenue, have we ever talked about personas? Nope. So yeah, Bill, you are absolutely right :)
Bill is a published author and I looked up his book and wonder if it’s still as relevant today because it was published in 2012. I don’t want to sound like I’m doubting it, but I guess many of us are drowning in books we bought, but never get enough time to read, so it’s important to prioritize. Sometimes a direct recommendation like “make sure you read this book” is all I need. If CXL is ever to start a book club for marketing nerds I’ll be the first one to join :)
Customer Value Optimization
Diving into complex campaigns and buying new leads can be very time-consuming and ultimately aimless if you don’t have a solid framework for optimizing the ones you’ve got.
This is a 20min course by Justin Rondeau that introduces the Customer Value Optimization Model. It’s a 5-step framework that has been consistently proven to convert prospects across a range of industries from e-commerce to B2B.
I wish this course was more throughout because it was one of my favorites from the Conversion Optimization program. It was interesting and also relevant to me to learn more about things like lead magnets and some concepts like trip wire and slack adjuster were completely new to me. But not anymore :)
I will see you next week!
