Deploying marketing tests faster than the speed of thought - kind of...

So I had an idea to add value to the course content over at AdSkills. Here’s the idea I had, then how I implemented a test to see if it could be worthwhile.

Total time, around 15 minutes start to finish.

TLDR - “Too Long Didn’t Read” ⏰

• come up with an idea

• ask ChatGPT to create the process

• pay $10 at Fiverr.com to test the process

• write a newsletter post about it….. 🙄

The big idea 💡

I had an idea for AdSkills.com to help identify gaps in marketing-related courses by analyzing user feedback. My intention was to discover what users felt was missing from these courses, and to do so, I thought of scraping a large number of reviews from a website like Udemy.com.

So, not for the first time… I asked ChatGPT for help.

ChatGPT responded with a plan 🤖

1. Install Scrapy: If you haven't already, install Scrapy using pip:

pip install scrapy

2. Create a new Scrapy project:

scrapy startproject udemy_reviews_scraper

This will create a new project directory named udemy_reviews_scraper.

3. Define the data structure: In the items.py file, define the fields you want to scrape, such as course name, reviewer name, rating, and review text.

import scrapy

class UdemyReviewItem(scrapy.Item):
    course_name = scrapy.Field()
    reviewer_name = scrapy.Field()
    rating = scrapy.Field()
    review_text = scrapy.Field()

4. Create a spider: Inside the spiders directory, create a new Python file named udemy_review_spider.py. This file will define the scraping logic:

import scrapy
from udemy_reviews_scraper.items import UdemyReviewItem

class UdemyReviewSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = 'udemy_review_spider'
    allowed_domains = ['udemy.com']

    start_urls = [
        # Add the URLs of the courses you want to scrape reviews from.
    ]

    def parse(self, response):
        reviews = response.xpath("//div[contains(@class, 'review-container')]")

        for review in reviews:
            item = UdemyReviewItem()
            item['course_name'] = response.xpath("//h1[@class='clp-lead__title']/text()").get().strip()
            item['reviewer_name'] = review.xpath(".//span[@class='reviewer-name']/text()").get().strip()
            item['rating'] = review.xpath(".//span[@class='star-rating__rate']/text()").get().strip()
            item['review_text'] = review.xpath(".//div[@class='review-text']/text()").get().strip()

            yield item

        # If there are more pages of reviews, generate a new request to follow the 'Next' link.
        next_page_url = response.xpath("//a[contains(@class, 'pagination__next')]/@href").get()
        if next_page_url:
            yield scrapy.Request(url=response.urljoin(next_page_url), callback=self.parse)

Replace the start_urls list with the URLs of the courses you want to scrape reviews from.

5. Configure the output: In the settings.py file, configure the output format (e.g., CSV, JSON, or XML) and the output file name. For example, to output as a CSV file:

FEED_FORMAT = 'csv'
FEED_URI = 'udemy_reviews.csv'

6. Run the spider: In your terminal, navigate to the project directory and run the spider using the following command:

scrapy crawl udemy_review_spider

This command will start the scraping process and save the results to a file named udemy_reviews.csv.

7. Import the data: Import the CSV data into a database for sorting, filtering, and analysis.

Taking action

Back in the day, I used to think the way to get things done was to learn new stuff, figure out how to use it, and then just dive in. That can be fun, but it eats up a whole lot of time in the process!

As I grow older, I've come to realise that time is an increasingly precious commodity. My priorities have shifted; I want to be more efficient in my work and devote more time to my family.

So this time I reached out to Fiverr.com - this is how I like to work in Fiverr:

• Conduct a search on Fiverr for suitable providers

• Apply filters to display only highly-rated contractors

• Filter results to show providers currently online

• Reach out to 2-3 providers and engage with the quickest responder

• Send a test file with instructions copy pasted form ChatGPT (saves time formatting code in the Fiverr chat)

The conversation at Fiverr

Moving forward

You’ll have to wait for the results I’m afraid. But I do have a new process to dial in…

I've got a laid-back way to tackle marketing tests and ideas, especially when they're about stuff I'm not super familiar with or into.

First, I can cook up a cool idea, and hit up ChatGPT to help me figure out how to make it happen. Drop a quick $10 on Fiverr.com to give the plan a test run.

And hey, why not wrap it up by dishing out the deets in a newsletter post? That way, we all learn and grow together.

Easy.

See you next week…

❤️

PS. Here’s the FB post which triggered the importance of customer reviews, setting me off on this train of thought. Tell Liana I sent you. 🙂

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❤️