I’ve just realised something… I’m marketing team lead but nobody knows anything about me. Perhaps it’s time to give you all some background on my “credentials”.
I first got into the internet marketing 20 years ago by creating bots for mIRC. This kicked off a passion for using code to automate marketing campaigns. I’ve done everything from flooding the first 20 organic pages of Google for tens of thousands of keywords by figuring out a flaw in their algorithm to walking through crowds of people at Hong Kong’s biggest musical festival and taking photos that automatically appeared on 50 foot screens above the main stage (and then were automatically posted to social media to take the offline online).
Professionally I’ve been in digital marketing for 15 years, have managed budgets in excess of $2 million / year, have been personally responsible for growing digital ROI by over 500% for national brands and I currently run a social media marketing service (www.chooseholly.com). I still program daily and my passion is marketing automation, and nothing makes me happier than using novel technologies to drive engagement.
I’m also aware of my weaknesses - I’m completely self taught, with no formal training, and am much more focused on the practical than the theoretical.
As such, one thing I really loathe is talk and no action. For me, marketing should be simple. 3 quantitative goals and 3 qualitative. Everything else is just figuring out how to achieve them.
For ClassicPress, this is even simpler. We have two goals: to power 1 million websites by the end of 2020, and to be known as the best choice for a business CMS.
Getting there is easy in my eyes. The product we have is great because of the community we have. If we can get this message out to the mass market, then the rest will follow.
To the specifics: I’ve never seen HARO succeed. It’s far too passive - waiting for a reporter to ask a question that might be relevant, and hope they’ll use my reply in an article. As for fiverr… Great for buying followers on crappy social media accounts, not good for much else.
We need to think big, we also need to think like a scrappy startup. Both of these things are my bread and butter. What I said in my previous post will see ClassicPress reach the mass market. I just need people who are willing to help with the boring jobs to make it happen.