Don’t waste gold aka don’t waste data-the CXL Growth Marketing minidegree REVIEW(part 8)

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there” — every wannabe Tony Robbins on his Instagram page.

Although the sentence is cheesy and makes me vomit, it is true.

Sadly, it is true.

And once again it sums up my CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree week.

Because I mostly did courses on technical stuff.

And if you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know, I really am as rookie as a cookie in that.

But it is necessary to know.

We live in a digital world, and we must now what is under the hood of all that beautiful packaging.

That is the only way forward.

That’s what distinguishes winners from losers — doing what is needed.

But on the other end, I think it is crucial to be very aware of where your interests and natural skills lay.

You probably will never be an outstanding engineer when You started studying it only because it pays well.

To become a very successful person, you must enjoy it as well.

But at the same time, you gotta keep your skills broad and specific. You gotta learn things which just improve your understandings of complex systems and broaden your horizons.

You have to know a lot of stuff to make the right decisions and understand what is possible. And so no one could rip you off.

When You study the basics of something new, it opens a lot of possibilities for you.

But for me, it is still like astonishing how tech people find technology fascinating.
It makes them tickle in all sorts of funny places. They could talk about it for hours. And there are so many of them.

For me, it is just as much as a tool as a nail or a hammer is — a road to a solution.

I don’t care what type of engine the car has, I just want it to be fast.

Luckily some of the technical people teach people like me in the CXL Institute.

And they do it extremely well. They are so thorough and present the ideas in such a simple manner.

Thank You!

But what are the main nuggets I learned last week?

Work smart, not hard. These days there is an “app” for everything.

When someone signs up as a lead for you, you can instantly enrich his customer profile with extra information and get to know a lot about them.

And automatically add all of that info into your CRM.

So when your salespeople open the customer profile, there are already his Twitter handles, LinkedIn profiles, job positions, etc.

So background research is already somewhat done.

Just be a man, nurture the lead a bit and close the sale. Let the technology do the digging, you do the talking.

And at the same time, these people can be automatically chased with different Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads.

And after the first call, the ads can automatically change. Because even your CRM should be tied to your targeting. (You have to use middle steps aka other software for that)

I would like to know how many companies really do that?

Do managements even understand it?

They probably want you to hustle and push more — to pick up more phone calls and do more reps.

But to reap all the benefits of it, your customer data can’t be siloed. We all use different software, CRM, customer chat, Google Ads, Facebook Ads.

They all have to run into one big customer data pot.

So You could know the last email the client received from you, their questions on customer chat, and so on.

Setting it up is a bit easier and more beneficial to companies which have accounts on their website. Because You can really credit the actions to users, not just to the always-changing website user ID-s.

And it really made me think that whatever I do, ideally I would need to create accounts for all of the websites I am associated with.

Of course, that shouldn’t mean extra trouble for the client. When you buy socks, it shouldn’t be mandatory to sign up with an account, no matter how much you as a marketer want it.

(What I do hate the most is not caring about a seamless experience for the customer- don’t be a selfish prick).

If in B2B you can use technology to continually bring you in new leads from people you really want to target.

And I don’t mean paid advertising but… drumroll…. scraping emails, from the clients you would like to work fit.

Scraping emails for B2B cold emailing isn’t illegal (not spamming but cold emailing — there is a difference)

No social media, no Google Ads, just get automated website searcher, and automatic email scraper and boom leads start flowing in.

So let’s say, you are a business consulting/educating others about using Mixpanel analytics.

You can set up a system that tracks all the websites on the web that add Mixpanel to their site.

And when those sites fall under your other requirements as well, email scraper can automatically bring leads from that site to your CRM.

But how do you know how to get lazier and automate even more?

Instead of picking up the phone, you pick up your laptop and surf online for different tools. It should be a regular, once a month job.

There are many websites where you can read about all these different software for your industry (one is G2.com).

Or You can hire someone to do that for you. Because you have to evaluate how these tools merge with your marketing stack and how beneficial are those to you.

I think for entrepreneurs who have a passion for technology, not even tech skills put a passion for it, can build a huge consulting business out of this.

Enormous opportunity to help everyone become more effective.

Start thinking through how you wouldn’t waste a spill of data about every action your customers have taken.

And start researching tools which can help you to become more automated, more effective. And then use all of that to create a pleasant experience for your customers.

Just like Abe Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

These days software is your axe, pick it wisely and sharpen it.