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- Deploying marketing tests faster than the speed of thought - kind of...
Deploying marketing tests faster than the speed of thought - kind of...
Automations & AI For Busy People
Hi, I’m Graeme, for the last 6-7 years I’ve been heads down building automations for a multi-million dollar company. Now I’m sharing a weekly email that will help YOU build automations and tools that don’t require any coding skills.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/3ee3e1b9-4bb8-4b27-9910-cfb13d0fcf4c/implementing-ideas-faster-than-thought-kinda.png)
Implementing ideas as fast as I can think of them… kind of.
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 🤖
“Yes, it is possible to scrape reviews en masse from a site like Udemy.com. To achieve this, you can use a web scraping tool like Scrapy (a Python-based framework) or BeautifulSoup. Here's an outline of the process using Scrapy…”
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/509dea2a-4fdc-4771-9806-4507bf8b4fd3/scrapy.png)
scrapy.com
Install Scrapy: If you haven't already, install Scrapy using pip:
pip install scrapy
Create a new Scrapy project:
scrapy startproject udemy_reviews_scraper
This will create a new project directory named udemy_reviews_scraper
.
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()
Create a spider: Inside the
spiders
directory, create a new Python file namedudemy_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.
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'
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
.
Import the data: Import the CSV data into a database for sorting, filtering, and analysis.
“Please note that web scraping may be against the terms of service of the websites you're targeting. Make sure to check and comply with the terms of service and guidelines of the websites you scrape. Additionally, avoid overloading the target website with requests by setting an appropriate delay between requests.”
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
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/4e53ada2-c18f-465c-9502-12cc96c72558/fiverr-convo.png)
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. 🙂
Marketing loves speed…
Just finished a 2 hour product/marketing session with a portfolio company, which illustrated the importance of SPEED.
In the beginning, there are so many things to try. Some ideas will work. Many won’t. Identifying which ideas are 💯 or 💩 quickly is everything.
— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover)
2:03 AM • Nov 19, 2018
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