How to use this path
This is a 6-month path in 6 steps of 1 month each, from marketing basics to AI-driven marketing.
One running project for all 6 months. Launch a small real e-commerce business in Month 1 and use it in every step. E-commerce here means any business that sells online, not just e-retailing. E-retailing continues, but you can also choose travel, hospitality, food, restaurants, automobile, or banking and financial services. This business is the one place where you see the full funnel end to end: impression, click, session, cart or booking, payment, repeat purchase. Every other business you work on is read against it.
Time needed. About 6–8 hours a week: 3 hours of live sessions plus 3–5 hours of hands-on work on the store.
Step 1: Marketing foundations (Month 1)
Goal: choose a product and a customer, and define why they should buy from you.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| Marketing and product launch | Marketing concept, launch decision set, market sizing (TAM / SAM / SOM), go-to-market |
| Research, value creation, STP | Primary and secondary research, search demand, social listening, jobs-to-be-done, segmentation and targeting |
| Branding and positioning | Positioning statement, messaging architecture, brand equity across touchpoints |
| Product, pricing, distribution | Product mix, price sensitivity, launch pricing, D2C vs marketplace, webrooming and showrooming |
| Branding vs direct response | When to build memory, when to ask for action |
Practice. Pick a business category (e-retailing, travel, hospitality, food, restaurants, automobile, banking and financial services, and so on). Size the market. Write one value proposition, three proof points and a positioning statement. Set a launch price and check the unit economics (price, cost, margin per order).
Book. Kotler and Keller, Marketing Management (Indian edition). Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow.
Checkpoint. A one-page positioning and pricing note for your store.
Step 2: Plan and build the owned stack (Month 2)
Goal: a written plan, a live store, a landing page, basic SEO and working tracking.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| Digital marketing plan | 6M model (Market, Mission, Message, Media, Money, Measurement), ToFu / MoFu / BoFu, consumer journey, CPM / CPC / CPL / CPA / ROAS |
| Website and landing page | Page structure by funnel stage, form design, lead capture, trust signals |
| Shopify store | Theme, catalogue and variants, product page, payment gateway, shipping and tax set-up |
| SEO | Keyword research, technical, on-page and off-page SEO, SEO audit, measuring SERP impact |
| Tracking | GA4 events, Google Tag Manager, UTM taxonomy, conversion event spec |
Practice. Write the digital marketing plan for your store. Launch the Shopify store. Build one landing page with a consent checkbox on the form (DPDP Act 2023). Set up GA4 and GTM, and fix a UTM naming rule before any ad goes live.
Book. Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice.
Checkpoint. Live store + landing page, and a GA4 report showing sessions by UTM source.
Step 3: Paid acquisition (Month 3)
Goal: run live campaigns with a real budget and read the results by funnel stage.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| How ad auctions work | Bid, quality, relevance, why CPC changes |
| Google Search | Keyword match types, negatives, responsive search ads, bid strategy |
| Google Display and YouTube | Audiences, placements, video ads for awareness |
| Meta (Facebook, Instagram) | Campaign objectives, audiences, creatives, pixel and Conversions API, catalogue ads |
| LinkedIn Ads | B2B targeting by job title and company, lead gen forms |
| Organic social | Content pillars and clusters, posting calendar |
| Ad policy | Education and personal-data rules on each platform |
Practice. Launch one Google Search and one Meta campaign for the store with a small fixed budget. Pick one objective per campaign. Change one variable at a time, and write the decision rule before the test starts.
Book. Perry Marshall, Ultimate Guide to Google Ads.
Checkpoint. A one-page report: spend, CPC, CPL, CPA and ROAS per campaign, and one change you made because of the data.
Step 4: Convert and retain (Month 4)
Goal: turn visitors and leads into buyers, and buyers into repeat buyers.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| Email marketing | List building, welcome and nurture sequences, subject lines, deliverability |
| WhatsApp marketing | Business app vs API, opt-in, broadcast and automation rules |
| CRM and lead scoring | Lead stages, scoring by fit and intent, hand-off to a counsellor or sales |
| CRO and experiments | Hypothesis, A/B test, sample size and decision rule set in advance |
| Remarketing | Site visitors, cart abandoners, Customer Match lists |
| Consent and compliance | DPDP Act 2023 consent, unsolicited email, WhatsApp and call rules |
Practice. Build a 5-email welcome sequence and a cart-abandonment flow for the store. Run one A/B test on the product page. Upload a consented Customer Match list for remarketing.
Book. Ronny Kohavi and others, Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments. Robert Cialdini, Influence.
Checkpoint. Live email flow with open, click and conversion rates, and one finished A/B test with a clear decision.
Step 5: Measure, optimise and allocate budget (Month 5)
Goal: find the one funnel stage that is holding back results, fix it, and move budget to what works.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| KPI tree and dashboard | Business goal to KPI to stage metric; Looker Studio or GA4 reports |
| Funnel diagnosis | Find the weakest stage before changing bids or creative |
| Attribution and incrementality | Last click vs data-driven, lift tests, what attribution cannot prove |
| Unit economics | CAC vs contribution margin, ROAS break-even, payback |
| Budget allocation | Reallocate by CPL / CPA / ROAS; plan vs actual |
| Influencer and affiliate | Selection, briefs, tracking codes, commission models |
Practice. Build one dashboard for the store. Do a planned vs actual review by funnel stage. Move 25% of the budget from the weakest channel to the strongest and measure the change. Try one influencer or affiliate partner with a unique code.
Book. Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics. Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, Hacking Growth.
Checkpoint. A dashboard and a one-page budget reallocation memo with the arithmetic shown.
Step 6: AI and GenAI for marketing + capstone (Month 6)
Goal: use AI to do the work of Steps 1–5 faster and at larger scale, then present the full-funnel results.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| GenAI for content | Prompting for ad copy, emails, images and video; brand voice; checking claims |
| AI in search, ads and social | AI Overviews and answer-engine visibility, automated bidding, Performance Max and Advantage+ |
| AI analytics and segmentation | Using Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT to clean data, find segments and write analysis |
| Automation and agents | HubSpot workflows, n8n, Zapier; when to keep a human in the loop |
Practice. Automate one workflow for the store (for example, new lead to scored CRM record to WhatsApp or email follow-up). Use GenAI to produce and test 5 ad variants. Present the capstone: full funnel from ad spend to revenue, with what you would do next.
Book. Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput, Marketing Artificial Intelligence.
Checkpoint. Capstone deck: planned vs actual by stage, CAC vs contribution margin, and a learnings list.
Portfolio and diagnostic note
Portfolio at Month 6. Positioning note, DM plan, live store, one SEO audit, campaign reports for Google and Meta, a nurture flow, one A/B test, a dashboard, a budget memo and the capstone deck.
Diagnostic note: use the store as the reference, then check your own business. For every step, ask four questions about your own employer’s funnel:
- Which stages exist here? Some merge, some split, some are missing.
- Which stages do I own, and which sit with another team or a partner?
- Which are lit (tracked), dark (happen out of sight) or inferred (a proxy only)?
- How long is the loop, and how many tries do I get before the decision is made?
Two examples:
- Long-cycle B2B / industrial. The decisive stage (a buying committee) is dark, and the loop runs for months. Light the handoff with CRM stages and a lead-to-opportunity rate, and reason carefully about the rest.
- Professional services with no catalogue. No cart or checkout exists. The enquiry and the first meeting are the only lit stages, so the enquiry form and call notes become the main data source.
FAQ
Why does the programme build a real store? A store is the only place where one person sees money spent and money earned, in days, with data at every stage. Tool tutorials teach the tools; the store teaches the full funnel.
Do I need coding? No. Shopify, GA4, GTM and HubSpot are no-code or low-code. Basic HTML and spreadsheet skills help.
How much ad budget do I need? A small fixed monthly budget is enough to learn, if you change one thing at a time. Set the amount before Month 3 and do not exceed it.
Can this path be done alongside a job? Yes, at 6–8 hours a week. It runs for 6 months, 60 hours across 22 modules.
Sources: Books are listed from general knowledge; check current editions.