CXL Scholarship — 4th Week Review

The 4th week just passed, and here it is my review of that. I am so blessed to be participating in the great program and have to thank CXL for letting me enter it. This week was quite fruitful, and I managed to speed up my learning process. I feel I’m a bit behind schedule and have to think about how to manage it in the following weeks. So let’s jump in the course and find out what I learned this week.

5- People and Psychology — Continued

• This course is mainly about cognitive biases again. The good point is that the new lessons are relatively small and you can go through them pretty fast.
• Once I heard from a previous manager of mine that there is something called “The Curse of Knowledge”. It means that whenever you know something, you think that everybody else should know it, too. But that is not true at all.
• We tend to believe that the newer is, the better. We shouldn’t blame ourselves for thinking this way. We have been wired this way.
• We base our decisions based on the first thing we learn. You know why? Because once we know something, we think we know everything. Learning new things takes too much energy, and we tend to save our energy for the future! We want to live a longer life!
• The next thing that I was reminded once again in this CXL course was that we only think that our decisions are based on rationality. No matter how rational we think we are, we make decisions based on what we “feel” is correct.
• But both rational and emotional reasoning is needed to convince people to purchase what you are offering. We have to address both old and new brains in the process of decision-making.
• Almost all people’s eyes follow a specific pattern while reading. They almost always start from the upper left side of the page and move to the right, and after that, they go to the beginning of the next line and move deeper down and to the right again. Finally, they go down the page. This is what is called the F reading pattern that we marketers must consider when building or optimising pages.
• Using high-quality large images will help you get people’s attention.
• Using bold and big-enough titles is mandatory to make people gaze for a second and think about it. But we shouldn’t force them to think! They don’t have the resources for this!

• Make the process of decision-making as easy as possible for your prospects. You only have to convince them to buy from you for the first time. After having the first good experience, they will come back to you again and again cause they don’t want to risk picking a thing to buy from another dealer.
• A long time ago, I was watching a youtube video from Perry Belcher. He then was teaching a new thing called growth-hacking, and in that video, he taught me precisely this concept. That in this day and age, selling to somebody for the first time is very hard and complicated. But selling to the same body for the second time is the easiest job on the planet! Wise, huh?
• The more familiar we are with sth, the more is the possibility that we like it! Forget about the chance; we definitely like it more. This is the explanation of the mere exposure effect. We have to make our website like the other website as much as we can! Because as you might know, people spend most of their time on other websites.
• Make your website as simple and easy to understand as possible.

6- Social Proof

• I previously thought that social proof is somewhat synonymous with user testimonials. But now I understood that testimonials are only part of what can be named as social proof.
• Social proof can come in the forms of testimonials, case studies, numbers, reviews, interviews and alike pieces of content.
• Customers will always seek social proof, so it’s better for you to personally give it to them and facilitate the buying process for them.
• If you want to make a successful testimonial, make it as relatable as possible. Talk specifically and back up your claims using real-world data. Honesty goes a long way here.
• It is pretty odd that wherever I go, there is something going on about user surveys and interviews. Here it is being repeated again for getting testimonials.
• You have to find somebody who fits into your target buyer persona who is willing to share his/her experience with you. Beware of asking open-ended questions and looking for something that is unique to their experiences.

• Do you know where to use social proof? Social proof is designed to alleviate the perceived risks that people have when buying a product. We need to give them the confidence they need to overcome this fear. Using social proof on the pricing page and sales page will yield the best results.
• We know that not everybody you interview will respond positively. Actually using negative social proof might seem a bit awkward to you, but it is a thing. If you want to act like a human, give your prospects a mix of positive and semi-negative social proof.
• Using polished social proof will give people this idea that they have been made up by you. You have to give people authentic and validatable proof that they actually can go check. Using full names, headshots and preferably a link will make the best result.

7- Introduction to Neuromarketing

• I think I have previously heard about this topic, but never have I put much thought and energy into learning it.
• The professor says that 95% of our decisions are non-conscious! Do we only have control over 5% of the process? It’s unbelievable.
• The more I continue in this program, the more I regret that I haven’t yet read the book “Thinking, fast and slow”. It seems to be a book that works like the foundation of modern marketing.

• I just heard about a thing called the paying pain. Whenever we see a price that strikes us, and we think it is expensive, certain pain-related parts in our brain get triggered. Do you think it is kina related to buyers remorse? I don’t know.
• The more I continue watching this lesson, the more I understand that it is like the behavioral economy, or at least I think it is. Roger Dooley is talking about technologies like facial coding, fMRI, EEG and other things that have similar applications in other areas as well. You simply can’t draw certain lines between fields of science anymore. They have a lot in common these days.
• Another key takeaway that I had: if you want to use the results of other studies, you have to consider the fact that not all studies’ results are reliable enough. You have to go for the ones that have proved to be true during the course of time and others verify their value.
• Never believe A/B test results if they didn’t last for a good amount of time. These tests can be easily misunderstood.
• You can not give statistical significance the same value you give the trusted data. They are not the same and should be distinguished from each other.
• You have to know all the cognitive biases and leverage them while you are trying to improve your conversion rate. They have proved to be valuable, and all marketers have to use them.
• Roger Dooley has a framework himself that is called the Persuasion Slide. It consists of four stages: Gravity (the key driver, basic need), Nudge (triggers or attention grabbers), Angle (motivation), and Friction (ability to do or how easy it is to do).
• Out of these four stages, minimising friction is the cheapest one. You can improve your conversion rate by reducing friction (real ones and imaginary ones, aka perceived ones).

8- Developing & Testing an Emotional Content Strategy

• Talia Wolf says that we don’t buy products, we buy a better version of ourselves which is damn true. She is telling it again that we don’t buy based on rational reasons, we buy it because we feel it is good to buy.
• Landing pages are believed to be a desktop thing, and it is the reason why landing pages on mobile phones convert poorly. She says that users feel insecure and unsafe when they are buying stuff on their mobile phones, which I believe to be true. Users on mobile need more trust-building signs to feel safe and protected.
• She speaks about something that she calls emotional content strategy. It has four steps: Emotional Competitor Analysis, Emotional SWOT, Emotional Content Strategy and Testing.
• In the competitor analysis, you have to assess your competitors based on the following dimensions:

• After that, she talked about emotional SWOT. Although everything seems simple and clear about this SWOT thing, I never completely get it. You know, I never knew which is which and how should I fill these empty boxes!
• SWOT apparently has four sides, 2 of which directly concerns us as a company and the remaining two targets our competitors or the outside world to be speaking in general.
• Now she says we need to use the facts we found in the previous steps and form an emotional content strategy that speaks directly to our target audience. She points out again that being emotional is the key here and suggests that we need to know about “Emotional Triggers” and how to use them for our benefits.
• Now it comes the time for testing. You need to test based on color, visuals, emotions, text and elements. How should you test based on these factors? I don’t know either!

9- Influence and Interactive Design

• I don’t know this guy, but he seems to be very smart (based on the glasses he is wearing and the overall style)!
• He is talking about something that is like a marketing model which he has personally come up with. It doesn’t resonate with me, and I think the CVJ (Customer Value Journey) by DigitalMarketer is still the best thing I have ever seen.
• The same awareness, consideration, decision stuff are being repeated here, only with different wordings.
• He says that people don’t buy based on the features, but rather they buy based on the benefits that marketers propose to them. Isn’t it too old to say something like that? Who doesn’t know it? Am I being trapped by the curse of knowledge?
• The doctor talked about evoking emotions, and he used Maslow’s hierarchy to describe what he meant. I didn’t really like what he talked about and couldn’t relate to it.
• One thing the was reminded to me again, was Analysis Paralysis. It is the situation in which you give your customers too much information that they basically paralyse them and they can’t make decisions anymore. You are messing with their minds, and this disables them entirely!
• You need people to trust you, cause if they don’t, they won’t give you their money. By showing your expertise in the field and being honest with your customers, this level of trust could be built.
• You have to know that if people see a good trait of yours, they will think that all of your features are good as well and vice versa.

• Supposing that you have known yourself as an authority and motivated people enough so that they have to make a decision. In this step, you have to make the decision-making process as easy as you can that customers won’t encounter any frictions along the way.
• He continued by talking about re-engaging the customers that have been dropped off out of your customers’ list. I believe he could’ve described it better because I have to push too hard on my mind for remembering what exactly he talked about!
• Does it help to remind your lost customers about why they have been selecting you in the first place? I believe it simply doesn’t because they have made their minds about you and your offerings. It’s done! Get over it, get past it.
• So this is. I didn’t personally like this course.

10- Google Analytics for Beginners

• Finally, this is what I have been waiting for: Google Analytics with Chris Mercer or the GA Giant! I’m very excited to re-learn GA with Chris.
• In the very beginning, Chris taught me a great thing about Google Marketing Platform or at least, the most prominent players in this platform. He truly said that GA is very strong and competent when it comes to storing data. But if you want a better way to collect data, you’d better use Google Tag Manager (GTM) and if you are seeking a better way of presenting the same data to others, don’t miss Google Data Studio (GDS).
• Chris continued by describing what metrics and dimensions are. I have to admit that I had a lot of trouble knowing what these two are when I first started using GA. But he described them very well.

Chris Mercer

• He showed three main report types that are available through Google Analytics. Then he messed with the tables and used advanced filters to show how powerful it is.
• The next part is about the GA admin panel. I mean all of those accounts, properties and views that every web analyst should be familiar with. Chris talked about all of these things and their permissions in detail, leaving no room for ambiguity.
• The real-time report has always been the fun part of the GA, and Chris points this out too. He says that you should never make decisions based on the things that you see in real-time reports.
• In the next section, Chris talked about Users Report in the GA. I don’t know why it is there. It is just a list of dimensions that most of the time can’t give you actionable insights. They are very fun to play with, but you can’t even build a Persona using these data.

Final thoughts of this week

I have to say that after failing five times at the Product Copywriting test, I finally passed it with a score of 92%. I admit that it was tough and really brought me to my knees! But guess what. CXL gave me a certificate of completion after passing the test! Pretty amazing. I will talk to you soon in the following week report.