Marketing Update: May 2019

Projects Marketing & Design
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Disclaimer: I’m not trying to be a $&%# here - genuinely asking to check progress.

Scott’s goal is to power 1 million websites by the end of 2020.

That leaves 593 days.

To reach that goal, we’d have to get ~1700 new installs a day.

Using the current ~1700 install figure, that’s around 5-6/day.

I get that growth stages are never equal and when something takes off it can be exponential, but seeing those variances and the gap is a good reality check.

Whether the bar is set too high or not, what’s currently being done to get to reach this goal? Or even just the first 10k? Is marketing in full swing? Has monetization been defined a bit better since last time?

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Hi Tommy – Thanks for asking.
Re: “Marketing in full swing” – we’re doing what we can. We have very limited funds currently. Funds approved have been used to get the word out via Twitter, which is currently our most active social media platform. That budget has been used up.

Organically, we average about 3 tweets per week. We need additional content creators to increase these numbers.

Additionally, we have been emailing individual contacts of various news agencies to try to get them to write about us. This is going very slowly, because the list is outdated and may or may not be accurate, so I’ve had to go to each individual website, find their info on how to submit a request for an interview, and follow the proper procedure – in some cases this means filling out the online form; in other cases it means sending an email. I need help vetting these organizations, submitting the online forms when appropriate and forwarding email/contact info to me for the email when there is no form.

Is this inadequate? Sure. I’d say it is. I’d love to have some help.

Would anyone care to take some of this on?

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Also – if anyone else has ideas on how to create marketing opportunities that do not require funds – please speak up. Do keep in mind that any ideas expressed will require someone to actually do the work – thank you!

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That time the RMS WordPress struck a Gutenberg…

Online tech review sites might be easier to get interested in interviews than regular media (who usually pick up their ideas from such sites anyway)

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Thx Michelle.

Whats the budget being used for? Are you guys doing Twitter Ads?

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Hi Tommy, yes, we were doing Twitter ads.

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Hi @JohnE I agree, that’s why the only people I’ve reached out to so far have been organizations that have a technical slant. I have a huge list of over 3,000 contacts, but I’m vetting each one for appropriateness by reviewing their content before I contact them.

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No, we are not doing what we can, and we don’t need funds for that.

Advertising is the least effective tool in the land of marketing tactic. PR is much more powerful.

But we can’t get media to write about us without substantial news story. Sorry, releasing WP 4.9 under the new name is not newsworthy.

So, without CP v2 we can’t expect media attention.

Maybe, just maybe releasing CP v2 Alpha or Beta releases could help. Maybe, especially Beta. Or RC.

The only thing what can be done - a CP blog with really good researched articles about what WP problems CP addresses. There are many cases and many good stories, and it they should be put in writing.

But before that we should come with strategic decision about positioning of CP.

I promised to come with a statement idea, and suddenly it appears to be the hardest task in my 25+ marketing experience. To this day I can’t say any simple, but powerful idea why people should switch from WP to CP. Sorry. I still thinking about that, didn’t give up. What is absolutely clear to me, that “business-focused” is not the right message. The closest word I came is “Productivity”, but I can’t come up with the phrase, how exactly to define it.

Despite my total lack of time (sorry, @klein, I am guilty, but I will complete my story one day), I can promise to guide writing of some articles. Guide - I mean, I can come with idea, write several sentences or paragraphs, but I need one or two coauthors, who can develop an idea and write most part of the article. And correct my awful grammar (English is my third language, English grammar is very different from my native; we don’t have articles, for example).

And I use word “Article”, not “Blog post”, because I think this should be more like well researched article than short post. 1-2 well researched and well written articles per month is enough.

If these articles will be well written, well researched, have a controversy, chances are, they can be picked by some media. If not - they will be a good background for the future references. Plus they will help SEO task. Plus…

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Haha, like I said no rush :wink:

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I like “productivity” as a term. This says more to me than business-focused. It suggests efficiency. Every business wants to be productive and efficient, but it has a broader context as well, so it doesn’t make you feel like it is only for businesses.

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Okay, I’ll rephrase that. Given my time constraints and the other ClassicPress responsibilities I am tasked with, I am doing what I can. I believe that others that have offered to help with marketing are also doing what they can with their available time. We would greatly appreciate some help. Thanks for offering.

Perhaps not. I wrote this because in the past there has been a lot of discussion about how we should be doing paid campaigns. I’m happy to hear suggestions that don’t cost money that can be developed and implemented with a reasonable investment of time and energy.

Maybe not, but if we don’t try, we’ll never know for sure. At the very least, we may get a few organizations to pause and make a note to keep an eye on us. Right now we’re all just talking to ourselves and no one is listening. We need to reach out in order to draw others in. You’ve been doing this a long time so you know that marketing is an ongoing effort and it generally takes time to gain momentum.

I’m glad you haven’t given up. Please keep thinking on it and sharing your thoughts. I agree that refining our positioning will be key to our ongoing success.

I sympathize with your comment about “total lack of time” – we all suffer from that. Thanks for offering help. We have several excellent writers here and I’m sure that if you can come up with some ideas and write several paragraphs about it, they can co-write them with you.

Thanks for your thoughts.

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Nothing personal, I wrote “we”, not “you”. :slight_smile:

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For this we should have some infrastructure, where we can write articles collaborating. From me not only the first idea, I will be active further in writing and editing. Didn’t have any experience on such setup. Maybe a simple CP install is enough.

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Depending a little on what is being looked for, I could probably get involved with this.

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