If you are looking to get into the digital marketing space, 100+ B2B Growth Hacking and Digital Marking Tools is a free online course that provides a list of tools for various purposes. And that is pretty much it. The course provides no details and no depth. The instructor mentions each tool and says a few words to summarize its intended purpose.
In fact, you can skip the rest of this review, download my Course Guide, and get a concise list of all the tools mentioned in the course. Time-saving shortcut!
Pre-Launch and Launch
The course splits up the tools by loose association to the two phases of your business:
- Pre-launch
- Launching your product or service.
Pre-Launch
The pre-launch section suggests eight steps (using a tool for each) to choose your product or service. The tools in this section are widely known, including things like Gmail, Facebook Ads, and AdWords.
For a much better process, check out my review of another free course on How to Validate Any Business Idea.
Launch
The launch section lists 25 tools to use when launching your chosen product or service. Unlike the pre-launch section, which provided steps in a loosely-defined process, the tools here are simply listed by purpose.
One example the course lists is MailChimp, an email marketing service. They suggest using this for its automation capabilities. This is quite a deep topic, deserving far more in-depth coverage. I review a course called MailChimp for Beginners, providing an intro to email marketing concepts and an overview of MailChimp.
This list of tools is a good starting point. For example, if you want graphics or a logo, the list includes Canva (which I knew about) and MyEmblem.io, which I did not know about. It is a pretty good reference list, even if you do not need everything right now.
Is This Growth Hacking?
The instructor tosses this term around quite a lot. One list of tools is even dedicated to it. However, I have a hard time believing that using a good microphone, or using Grammarly are really tools for “growth hacking”.
Many of the tools mentioned in the course are quite useful, such as Biteable, Buzzsumo, and ClickFunnels. You can imagine many ways that such tools are even essential for digital marketing, especially when you are just getting started. But growth hacking is a meaningless buzzword that does not improve clarity or add value.
Course Delivery
One major concern I have with this course is in the delivery. Honestly 2x was not even fast enough most of the time! Also I would frequently skim through sections of the videos when the instructor was describing tools that I am already aware of (I think everyone knows what Gmail is by now!).
The content of the course is literally one slide per tool. Each slide includes the tool name(s) and overall purpose. For example, “sending cold emails” tools include MailShake and Yamm. No URLs, no demonstrations, just the tool name and purpose. While concise, there is very little depth in the instructor’s coverage of the subjects.
Conclusion
The list of tools in this course is probably useful, especially if you are just starting out. Unfortunately, if you are just starting out, you probably want more than just the name of the tool in order to inform you about whether you really need it and even how to use it. Since you will not find such information in the course, I cannot recommend spending an hour watching the videos.
Instead, I recommend spending just a few minutes reviewing the full list of tools by downloading my Course Notes below, and doing further research on any that pique your interest.
