Student case study: from zero at 18 to two real projects. Snizhana's story
When Snizhana started training, she was 18. Marketing knowledge: zero. Experience: zero. But she had a really interesting idea and wanted to figure out how to bring it to life.
Today she has a full marketing strategy for her own project, a CV, interview preparation and work on two real projects behind her. Here’s how we got there.
How we worked
We had sessions three times a week, 3 hours each — for more than 3 months. That’s over a hundred hours of live practice with a mentor: not recorded lectures, but a walkthrough of every step, homework and detailed feedback.
The training followed the «Marketing from scratch» course programme:
- Basics and strategy — audience, positioning, product, sales funnel.
- Digital channels — SEO, search and paid social ads, content and social media, email.
- Analytics — the metrics that really matter and data-driven decisions.
- Practice and feedback — after every block, a task on a real project.
And the real project was Snizhana’s own idea.
The idea: Local Guide
Local Guide is a service of local guides: routes, recommendations and tours from people who actually live in the city. Not a standard tourist guidebook, but “your personal local friend in every city”.
On this project Snizhana went through the whole marketing cycle — from audience research to an email funnel.
The final project: a full marketing strategy
Audience, pains and USP
Snizhana described the core audience — active travellers aged 22–40 who look for authentic experiences instead of standard routes — and wrote three detailed customer personas: “the weekend tourist”, “the romantic couple” and “the local explorer” who has “seen it all” in their own city.
The audience’s pains: no reliable tips from locals, information overload on big platforms, difficulty planning an unusual route, the language barrier.
Then came competitor analysis: official catalogues of certified guides, platforms with individual guides and international tour services. On this foundation, a USP built on three values was born: authenticity, personalisation and accessibility.
Website and analytics
Snizhana built a responsive website with a booking block with a discount and a price list, connected Google Analytics 4 via Google Tag Manager and set up lead events — bookings and form submissions. That’s exactly the foundation you need to measure the effectiveness of every channel later.
SEO, ads and social media
- SEO: a keyword core with query clustering, titles and descriptions for key pages, technical optimisation, a content strategy and a link-building plan via travel bloggers.
- Google Ads: search and display campaigns and remarketing, negative keywords, ad extensions, monitoring CTR, CPC and conversions.
- SMM: strategy and content — Stories with polls and interactive elements showing “places you can barely google”.
Email funnel, chatbots, Google Business Profile and an app
Snizhana designed a five-email funnel that branches by user behaviour, described chatbot scenarios, created a Google Business Profile for local search and even made a design concept for a mobile app.
After the course: CV, interviews and first work
For me, training doesn’t end with the last lesson. After the course, I helped Snizhana completely free of charge with her CV, interview preparation and her first steps in the profession.
The result: Snizhana has already worked on two real projects.
A mentor’s view
As her mentor, I can say: Snizhana is very attentive to detail, creates great content and has understood SEO, SMM and content marketing really well. I see a lot of talent in her — and the most valuable thing is that it came out during our training.
This story is the best answer to a question I often hear from beginners: “What if I’m starting from absolute zero?” Age, lack of experience and “I don’t understand anything about marketing” are not obstacles if you want to learn and have a system.
Snizhana’s review
Hello! I want to sincerely thank you for our training! Your marketing lessons were incredibly informative, interesting and rich. I’m very grateful for your courtesy, patience and the comfortable, pleasant atmosphere you created in every session. With you, even difficult material was very easy to learn!
Translated from Ukrainian.
Looking for a marketer?
If you need a detail-oriented content, SMM or SEO specialist and want to get in touch with Snizhana, write to me and I’ll introduce you.
Want the same — from zero to your first projects? Join the «Marketing from scratch» course or mentoring. Let’s start with a free consultation and work out where you should begin.