Marketing Design Sprints
Design Log . Entry #2 . 28 February 2021
Welcome to Design Log Entry #2! With the first three DT courses launched, and with friends & guests visiting and exploring the new site, my attention has shifted to more behind-the-scenes details.
Indeed, as I planned a series of “Marketing Design Sprints” for the month of February, I had two goals: 1) set up and test initial systems for future digital marketing efforts; and 2) get ready to share DT Dojo with my broader network in the coming weeks. As such, I’ve spent much of the last month knee-deep in marketing technology & data and getting more familiar with the nuances of LinkedIn.
Since it’s been about a month since my first update, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the last few weeks of work and write up my second “Design Log Entry”.
As before, I’ve included recent design & development highlights, a summary of my observations & insights from my experience setting up and testing marketing systems, and a list of my favorite tools & techniques that I used for the work. But first, I kick things off with a few meaningful updates (notable progress & activities since the last entry).
Meaningful updates since my last Design Log entry:
Many of the folks who helped test early versions of course videos have signed up and are exploring the new site and DT courses (thank you for all the feedback!).
A few friends have spontaneously shared DT Dojo with their colleagues… it’s great to have friends-of-friends joining as well.
Similarly, it’s a treat to welcome the very first subscribers to this “Design Log”. This curious crew will be the first to receive an update by email.
Also worth noting is I’ve had a handful of deep-dive conversations with close friends and fellow design-thinking pioneers to sense-check my roadmap of what’s next for DT Dojo (which has been both illuminating and exciting).
Design & development highlights from the last few weeks:
Ran 4 “Marketing Design Sprints” (each a week long) to set up and test digital marketing tools in anticipation of running initial campaign experiments
Sketched out a DT-Dojo-specific CX Lifecycle and created an initial CX Model to ensure my marketing setup is human-centered as well as data-driven (see sketch above)
Set up a multi-week Google Ads experiment to test their Smart Campaign tool with Analytics and to gather baseline traffic & site behavior data
Learned about UTM codes (for campaign tracking) and crafted my own linking nomenclature for DT Dojo based on best practices
Updated my LinkedIn profile (long overdue!) and created a new LinkedIn company page in preparation to share DT Dojo with my broader network in the coming weeks
And like before, I’ve continued new-company admin work in parallel (connected new bank accounts to stripe, set up qbo syncing, and worked through initial finance & accounting tasks).
Key observations & insights from my initial “Marketing Design Sprints”:
First, I’ve noticed that doing design work behind-the-scenes (e.g., setting up and testing digital marketing tools and pipeline “plumbing”) feels very different than designing the much-more-visible site and courses. Progress is far less obvious and thus the work feels slower. I believe this is also due to the open-ended nature of design research and decisioning as compared to the more focused feeling of visual design and making. It’d be interesting to rethink the notion of “sprint velocity” when doing divergent vs. convergent design work.
Also, what stands out to me is that while design thinking talks a lot about rapidly prototyping and testing, it’s easy to overlook how much systems setup work is actually required to even prepare to run a test when working in digital and data-rich environments. Indeed, true design agility is as much about tooling as it is about methods and mindsets.
Evenso, I continue to be amazed by how much tech power is now available to micro-preneurs off-the-shelf (at prior startups, I built entire marketing departments to set up and manage these things!). This is true for site development, marketing efforts, data analytics, and finance… now, all in the cloud, driveable from a laptop, and manageable by a lone bootstrapper!
Favorite design tools & techniques that I used these last few weeks:
Google Smart Campaigns - for simplifying and streamlining the process of running quick site traffic tests
Google Analytics - for gathering initial site behavior data (I love the new behavior flow visualization)
UTM Codes - for creating traceable links and trackable data-driven marketing campaigns
Google Sheets - for initial CX Lifecycle metrics modeling & “data sketches”
And as before, I continue to hone my day-to-day “DesignOps” setup using Noteshelf for sketching, Trello for sprints, Keynote for visuals, and Google Docs for design research & journaling.