Josh Pitzalis

August 17, 2023

My 10-Week Dive into Marketing Funnels

Hey there,

Over the past few years, my attention has been centered on growing Chirr App. With Twitter's current instability, my business partner and I felt it was time for something new. 

We have an MVP for a new project, and we're running closed beta tests at the moment.

As the non-technical co-founder, it's my job to market our new project and make it profitable. I feel like I have deep pockets of knowledge about different aspects of marketing. But I haven't figured out how to connect all the dots into a coherent approach to effectively promote a so business.

I asked chatGPT for help, and it put together a 10-week learning plan to build effective marketing funnels, complete with resources and exercises to focus on each week.

It's not the best learning plan, but it's good enough to start. Part of the reason I'm sharing is for accountability. The other part is to ask for suggestions. If you have experience working on a stage of a marketing funnel and can recommend good resources (books, podcasts, courses, programs, whatever you can think of, paid or not), I'd appreciate it. 

I'll spend about an hour a day working through the plan. I'll use the information to build my marketing funnel for this project, and I'll share what I learned each week here. If you choose to follow along, we'll pull the engine apart, week by week, and then put it back together so that we can build an effective marketing funnel by the end of it.

At the end of the ten weeks, I'll create a revised learning plan with only the most valuable resources and exercises I found for anyone who wants to repeat the process.

Here's the learning plan:

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Week 1: Understand Your Audience - Identifying Your Ideal Customer

Resources:
- Book: "Buyer Personas" by Adele Revella (first half).
- HubSpot Academy's lessons on "Creating Buyer Personas".
Tasks:
- Draft a preliminary customer persona for your software product.

Week 2: Understand Your Audience - Segmentation

Resources:
- Book: "Buyer Personas" by Adele Revella (second half).
- Begin Udemy's "Customer Segmentation and Prospecting" course.
- Listen to relevant episodes from "Everyone Hates Marketers" podcast.
Tasks:
- Continue refining your customer persona.
- Initiate the survey or interview framework for your project.

Week 3: Craft a Compelling Message - Basics

Resources:
- Book: "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (first half).
- Copyblogger’s tutorials on effective copywriting.
- Start Copyhackers’ "Conversion Copywriting 101" course.
Tasks:
- Draft a software product elevator pitch.
- Begin setting up A/B tests for your product's landing page.

Week 4: Craft a Compelling Message - Advanced Techniques


Resources:
- Book: "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (second half).
- Complete Copyhackers’ "Conversion Copywriting 101" course.
- Listen to relevant episodes of "The Copywriter Club" podcast.
Tasks:
- Refine your software product elevator pitch.
- Execute the A/B tests and gather initial data.

Week 5: Optimize Key Funnel Stages - Awareness & Consideration

Resources:
- Selected chapters from "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion".
- Selected videos from Neil Patel's YouTube channel.
- Start ClickFunnels' "Funnel Hacks Masterclass" course.
Tasks:
- Draft a content calendar for the upcoming month.

Week 6: Optimize Key Funnel Stages - Conversion & Retention

Resources:
- Continue ClickFunnels' "Funnel Hacks Masterclass" course.
- Listen to relevant episodes from "Marketing Over Coffee" podcast.
Tasks:
- Finalize and deploy the lead magnet on your website.
- Begin monitoring its effectiveness.

Week 7: Leverage Tools and Platforms - Email Marketing & Analytics

Resources:
 - Book: "Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business" (relevant chapters).
 - Mailchimp official tutorials.
 - Start Udemy's "Google Analytics Masterclass".
Tasks:
- Set up a basic email drip campaign.
- Analyze existing website traffic using Google Analytics.

Week 8: Leverage Tools and Platforms - Ad Platforms

Resources:
- Complete Udemy's "Google Analytics Masterclass".
- Start Udemy's "Facebook Ads & Facebook Marketing MASTERY" course.
- Listen to relevant episodes from "Marketing Smarts" podcast.
Tasks:
- Design a preliminary PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign.
- Execute the PPC campaign and monitor its early performance.

Week 9: Test, Measure, and Iterate - Basics


Resources:
- Book: "Lean Analytics" (first half).
- Selected videos from Brian Dean's "Backlinko" YouTube channel.
- Start Coursera's "Digital Marketing Analytics" course.
Tasks:
- Initiate a comprehensive A/B test on another aspect of your website.
- Begin setting up a feedback loop system.

Week 10: Test, Measure, and Iterate - Advanced Techniques & Completion


Resources:
- Book: "Lean Analytics" (second half).
- Complete Coursera's "Digital Marketing Analytics" course.
- Listen to relevant episodes from "Call to Action" podcast.
Tasks:
- Analyze the results of your A/B test.
- Finalize and implement your feedback loop system.

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Please share suggestions if you have any, and I'll see you next week with the first post.

Josh


P.S. - This is a log of the prompts I used to develop this learning plan. Inspired by Bri 


About Josh Pitzalis

Building effective marketing funnels for software businesses.