CXL Institute Growth Marketing Minidegree <> A complete review
This is Part 12/12 of learnings that I gained from CXL Institute’s Growth Marketing Minidegree.
It’s the final review of the Growth Marketing Minidegree that I got about 3 months ago from CXL Institute via their scholarship program. I have seen a lot of questions roaming around, usually people ask this before committing. So in this segment I am going to cover my overall experience.
It feels like marketing chose me, as I have a security and engineering background. I got my first client for ORM but I was trying to sell him security, and from there the journey started. I even managed a platform did a bit of blogging. What I lacked was the exact how-to’s of marketing and to fill the void CXL seemed a perfect bet. No matter how many articles you read, there needs to be a proper structure of content that you can follow.
Course updates:
When I started the Minidegree, it was of 108 hours and 1 minutes, when I am completing this minidegree, it is of 111 hours 41 minutes. Now when someone else will start this, they are planning to add GA4 to the curriculum and it could be anywhere near 115 — 120 hours. So you can be sure that it is going to stay up-to-date no matter when you start it. Also there were 32 courses and now its 33.
Comparing it with other courses, like coursera has A marketing course as well but its outdated, and even the udacity one is outdated. How do I know it? Recently, before starting with CXL, my college provided my access to Coursera Plus account, and I did the first course on Digital Marketing and it felt really old. Plus they don’t update the course, it has some university lectures and . About udacity, they do cover extensively, I had a chance to go through their Marketing Nanodegree which I dumped over CXL, simply because everything was just old.
What Happens when you have some doubts while going through the course?
At CXL, we have a internal discussion forum, which honestly is not very active but the external Facebook group is insanely active. So I was literally stuck with Statistics course, I posted the query and the instructor who taught the course replied to it helped me to understand the concept.
Apart from doubts, we have regular discussions of current trends, how to handle different client requirements and a lot more other stuff such as job postings and freelancing.
Regular Feedbacks:
So previously, there was a buffer time of 24 hours after you gave the certification exam once and due to this if any of the question was wrongly answered then it could seriously mess up your timelines. Now this was brought to notice and within hours the buffer time was reduced to 6 hours.
Everyone asked about GA4 course, and now its in the pipeline. Some if them like me had a hard time understanding the advanced Statistics for A/B testing and now there will be one basics course before approaching the main one.
Their support team is live 24 hours on working days. I personally pointed out 2–3 mistakes (spelling mistakes and a broken link) and got a resolution within minutes.
My Favorite course?
Product Messaging by Momoko Price. Apart from the standard copywriting I learned managing the copy and the resources that were provided are too valuable. Walkthroughs are also well organized.
Conversion Research and testing by Peep laja. Cut to the point, very specific, actionable and you can literally start implementing right away.
Landing Page Optimization: Very well crafted course and I learned a lot of new things.
So which ones I didn’t like?
None, I liked all of them. Each course taught something new, the kind of new that you won’t find anywhere else.
But there has to be something I didn’t like?
Yes, in some of the courses, it felt that content is stretched out. But it maybe due to the fact that I already knew those concepts, as I wasn’t a beginner. But anyways I played most of them at 1.5X speeds, so everything was smooth again.
The wait time of 24 hours after you answer something wrong, but like I said they changed it to 6 hours after getting a lot of complaints.
What did I learn?
So this isn’t the generic Digital Marketing course. It teaches you a lot of things. I have noticed that each course has its own potential. For example, facebook ads course itself will make you capable enough to run campaigns for almost any product which you can choose to offer as a premium service. Similar things go with Landing Page Optimization, LinkedIn ads, Product Messaging, you get the gist.
Apart from the regular walk around of advertising platforms, they even taught excel which I found really interesting. It helps a marketer skim through complex numbers and identify what they really want.
There was a course on Data Driven Influencer marketing, it is something that all the brands are coming after nowadays. Mostly you won’t find this in any other curriculum. Apart from this, some courses also has the dedicated audio version that you can consume while doing other chores.
Project management is also deeply explained and you also get the Growth master training where you learn what to exactly discuss in meetings. Being thorough and keeping to the point with facts is the essence of whole growth marketing course.
How to apply for scholarship?
It is simple, you just fill the form and boom you get it within 3–4 days. I even recommended it to one of my friend and he applied to it and gained the scholarship of growth marketing. So it’s easy, but the first step is always hard, that is to take action. Everyone has to start somewhere.
What’s Next?
Now that I have finally completed the minidegree, I am planning to do two more on CRO and the other one is Digital Psychology and persuasion. This I will probably start in January. By the skills I have gained, I will apply for internships and full time role in Growth Marketing, or any other marketing related fields.
I am even making one application for an NGO and hopefully I will apply UX and Landing Page Optimization right from scratch. Keeping all the points in mind I can be sure of all the small corners.
I am really thankful to CXL for giving me such an amazing opportunity. Thank You.