 Good morning. What can you rope? How are you guys doing? So I assume you guys are not sleepy. I Was sleepy. So I grabbed a coffee To overcome my jet lag. I played around 14 hours. So, yeah Today we are going to talk about Changing landscape of what press marketing How we use to market our what press product and how we are doing it now. So we are going to discuss that This is Afsana Dia and the CMO at WP developer WP developer is a what press product company which is powering up around five million user for using their what press plugin so before I Before I start the session, I would like to talk about My what press journey a bit. So for me, I started using what press I started using what press back in 2009 when I was in high school. So I Started using what press for a blog. I didn't know about the Ecosystem I didn't know about the other plugins. I didn't know about the anything else, right? and then after a while, I Tried to make my own website for using what press I tried to make a Home page That's back in 2012. So is there anyone who used what press back in 2012? I I see a few hands. So if you remember There was no Base builder back in that time. There was no Gutenberg. There was nothing like this At that time. So the focus was theme. You had to pick a theme and then you built your website with a lot of customization so at that time I I Don't even remember which theme I used after that I finished my undergrad back in 2016 I did my undergrad in Business Administration I had dual major in I Had dual major in marketing and e-business. So when I finished my Undergrade I joined what press product company. I got involved in the what press product At that time I reformed my personal website since I am no code. So for me it was hard to Make the website right that back in 2012 and back in 2016 as well in 2016 There was base builder So there was DV already popular Elementor was starting at that point But if you remember there was no such customization like this at that time so I still had the trouble then I started working with what press product company I worked with a Product company which was doing great Accidentally How come a company can do great? Accidentally because they didn't know what's working and what's not They didn't have a marketing team. So I tried to explore what press marketing I tried to do multiple things some of the things work and I Got some good ROI from my marketing initiatives Move forward to 2018. I joined WP developer at their starting point at that time. We had only few Thousand user for our one plug-in In 2019 we got our first one thousand user for essential add-ons In 2019 I also got involved with other Workpress community We had our first what press Dhaka in Bangladesh. I got involved in make what press and then Move forward to COVID all of the other pandemic staffs and the struggles and technology out there Goodenberg rest API react Today right now we have five million user for WP developer with all of our products So that's kind of achievement So The things I have done for WP developer We have done for WP developer some of the thing works or Maybe a lot of thing works The thing is that I have been in what press ecosystem for last eight years Doing what press marketing Moving with the community. I know what is going on and what we did and what not so I would like to talk about my experience. I'd like to share some insights Before that, how many of you are marketer here? Can you raise your hand? I see a few hands How many of you are what press developer oh Thanks to you because for attending my session and how many of you are what press Business owner or product owner Interestingly, that's the lowest amount of people raise hand, but thank you so much Today We're going to I Am going to request everyone To don't sell what press plugin like 2016 Because why we are talking about that because if they are if there was something that was working great that was great probably wire work back in 2018 2016 but that's not going to work now and if you are keep doing that you are basically Pissing your users off. You are making your user frustrated with the same things that you keep doing for years The world has changed if you look at the CMS what press has Grown so much over the time. So is the Shopify weeks and other other solutions so If I if you look at those platform they have doing they are doing so so many things and for what press in 2016 or 2018 there was very few What press product company there was Very few serious Product business, but right now if you look they are are many So if they find a solution which is better than yours if they find a solution that is more powerful than yours That would be the better thing they will go for right so previously people used to come to the Customer support in your website. They used a lot of time With pre-sell conversation with the support rep and then made the Purchase decision But right now this is the data from recent time There's only 5% Customers who use Who come to the website to Talk with the support rep Before making purchase decision, but interestingly there are 27% people Who actually spent more time on self-research? before buying your WordPress plugin More interestingly there are 77% people who actually prefer who thinks that The buying process is Complicated purchase journey is complicated for software product So talking about that things have changed so far if you Look at the scenario what happened previously if you are a business owner or If you are a end user you own the company you would look for the solution that you need then you would request for a Product demo, but right now The end user could be the team member of the company who are using your product So the team member will activate the free trial They will add team and more team member and then then team member will actually fall in love with your product They will manage the Higher authority to get this product for them Previously it was done by the product owner or the company owners So why this happened there are some challenges What are the challenges we are facing so far I will talk a little bit about the challenges The first thing is technological advancement think about the root Gutenberg react or Rest app API it has changed the way people used to think and perceive about what press ecosystem So there are so many new technology. There are new Languages that we need to adapt For our company I can give one one short example for our company a WP developer when Gutenberg was getting available back in 2018-19 We tried to explore Gutenberg for our product so We were trying to look for react developer We are based in Dhaka Bangladesh So in Bangladesh the WordPress community is very popular There are a big large number of people active in the WordPress community So we look for react developer and interestingly there was no one So what we had to do is like we tried to make our In-house team to learn about react we arranged in-house react course and right now we have a lot of react developer in our team So that's one problem we had to solve in a way But I know a lot of friends of mine who are struggling for the take In the recent years which is changing the way they used to market their product and another Big changes is the behavior of web creator if you remember Previously we used to pick a theme and make the Website but right now since there are a lot of base builder like Elementor Divi Beaver builder and there is Gutenberg which is all alone Very much ready to make the website so Right now Previously the same web creator the way they used to think their Mindset has been changed so they tried to find a solution which is more relevant so Previously there was very few WordPress plugin there was very few WordPress theme But right now they are around 60,000 WordPress free plugin in the repository which means you have 60,000 WordPress plugin ready for your next website as well as there are also 100 or thousand of Individual sailor who are sailing from their own website or probably marketplace. So you have ready solution and WordPress in infrastructure also very much ready for the Customization without more effort so the Attention span of the customers that's very limited another things that manipulate the landscape of marketing is The race and fall of social media marketing so Do you remember about Clubhouse? Have anyone used Clubhouse two years back there was a whole Hype about Clubhouse It was a invitation only platform So the invitation was also limited for the user Who are using the platform? So it feels like superior if you can get a Invitation to Clubhouse It seems like Clubhouse is going to be the next big thing, but where is Clubhouse now? Are any of you using it now? No, I don't see any hand So yes there are Many changes over the social platform because that's one of the major thing We use for marketing Right now there are few other other social platform like tiktok and other stuffs which Could be very interesting for some of the users some of the products but for Most of the products probably is not and then we also have another big problem about paid media marketing if you know I Can remember back in 2018 when we were trying paid at there was very few Competitors so that ad cost was very low Because unless a company is very serious about what press products they wouldn't use the paid ads But look at this now If you search about what press probably on first phase of Google search you will see a hub phase of ads For different kind of products meaning there are a lot of competition in the paid ads Which is the reason as the cost of ads increase so high and Part user acquisition through paid ads is very expensive and There are another Challenges GDPR and privacy concern I I Assume by this time everyone is pretty much concerned about the GDPR because It can get you sued for 20 million just for one case So that's another thing. We need to keep in your in our mind before doing anything and There is another major problem with Google Changing their algorithm every now and then so If you are using Some sort of tools Probably it will be easier To manage your SEO on your what press website. Thanks to the what press SEO plugins It got easier Comparative to five years or ten years ago. There is no doubt, but when you figure out how to rank your Blending phase on Google before you figure out the whole thing that Google will change their algorithm again It happened to many of you. I think So that's another thing Google algorithm is changing so much Comparing with the previous time and right now and the SEO become more harder since a lot of people are making A lot of people to rank on the fast pace Which is not good for you specifically When you are trying to rank higher that's not That's makes it harder for your competitor as well, right? And there is another talent and skills gaps in what press marketing Personally when we try to hire the capable and talented people for our marketing team One common challenges is that if there is someone who is who is capable of taking the Marketing things well, then probably they don't have a take background if they have a take background They don't have marketing skills. So you have to actually train people to know and understand the what press ecosystem and And after all these challenges, we need to start selling in a way that our empire Wants to purchase so how can we do that? One of the thing is you have to understand your user first You have to understand your target audience not the whole what press Users are your target audience or not that anyone Randomly use your target audience. You have to be very specific about that. You have to analyze your customer behavior Track your user journey depending on Where are your users are coming from where is? They are which base of your website that they are actually Scrolling which button they are clicking you have to track to understand better and make your customer experience better for the next and Then you have to test your product with the real person Most of the time what a lot of what press Owners or plug-in developer do they build something? They tested themself and then they release the product and they Expect the outcome, but it doesn't happen, right? So if you have build something you need Some someone the third party to try your product to understand what it feels like for the end user If I talk about the team members Have you ever heard about a person with 10 hands? 10 hands mean what press developer who? build the plug-in do the UI do the UX and Do the marketing all alone? So that's not going to work anymore You need to have your solid team from design team development team testing team marketing team and support team To ensure that your product is ready to meet the user's real need So what we can do? We need to focus on customers what they want how they want and The experience they are going to get through your product So here comes the PLG anyone heard about PLG? So PLG is product-led growth It's a way that You can build your product anyway, so it can be used it can sales itself Focusing on leveraging the products to drive growth Automatically I can give you some examples, so You can understand So most of these tools are very well known from slack to Dropbox to Figma. These are SAS tools, but If you can think about the pattern all of this product They need to Use by other party for example, I can talk about zoom if you sign up zoom and want to have a Video call you need another person, so you are inviting another person they are Signing up for the product so your product needs to in a way that it has to be sales itself and We also have chargeivity and AI Which is another big thing? I think we have few session about chargeivity and AI today. I Just asked chargeivity about What they can do for marketing and this is the stuff they suggested so it's not like they can do it Everything and they will do it better than human, but there's a good way to utilize your team's potential and probably Spain less time on some tasks So I have few quick tips For what press marketer that I have learned from my own experience For all the products. I have been marketing so Dig deeper into your competitor editors We do competitor analysis A lot of people actually copied the feature from your competitor, but don't don't do that look at the competitors features and Websites and they are even Customer review to understand what's working well for them What they are not doing well that their customers are complaining so you can actually Do bring those things from in your products and Do NPS and reviews to move a major your customer satisfaction I know in what press people actually don't use these things much people mostly rely on the what press Reviews or their personal Website reviews, but if you try to put our email campaign to ask for NPS Nate promoter scores You can understand if your customers are satisfied with the product or not And Again, there is a video I if If I look back a few years back there was no much Videos in what press ecosystem, but if you search in YouTube right now, there are hundred videos of each and every topics and there are also web in your and live-streaming Podcasts that people are using for to market their what press product and Another tip says that you need to Set up and pick set up your pixel from the start when you launch a product so that you can utilize those visitors when you are ready and Then after a while you will try to Retarget them for better campaign Also make most out of your content marketing Publish resourceful content why I say resourceful is because For each and every what press topic there are like 10 to 50 articles on the same topic. So what's the point? You have to make your content at least that gives some kind of Help which others are not providing You also need to keep updating your content. So If you have published something back in 2020, which was relevant at that time, but it's not relevant anymore So you need to build? You need to keep updating your content and also build guides Which can be helpful for your users and also Lifer is influencer marketing if you talk about the influencer marketing a lot of people think that it's only for the probably beauty blocks or probably Other styles, but even for what press you can actually utilize Influencer marketing if you are building a who commerce plugin We have Bob WP attending. What can Europe if you can? on board Bob to promote your product that would be a great use and Sponsor contribute or attend what can or community events? You cannot measure the exact outcome from these things but the amount of Exposure you will get the amount of experience you will gain from these events. That's unbeatable so Take a stand for a better Future through sustainable and ethical marketing What I mean is like you need to keep the honesty transparency a sustainability and privacy of your user so you can make the Marketing space better not clumsy So that you don't make your customer or potential customer frustrated about your product So we have few take hours from this session Understand your audience well no In deep so what did they want to do how they want to do and how you can help them build a passionate and dynamic team who really wants to Do something with all their passion? Create a really really good product. There is no alternative of that and You need to also add up the technology use tool for better and make most out of it Stay updated about the take and the community and whatever Is happening around Make it sustainable and do it ethically Thank you Thank you so much Afsana for a fantastic talk. I've got so many takeaways from it on top of what you have said and personally I am so delighted that you once again said something that is that is so important, which is Research and test and know exactly what your customers want very interesting now as before if Anyone has any questions their microphones are halfway down or up The stairs so please Gather and and ask your questions to Afsana in the meantime I have well I have more than one actually but the first one is It's a really incredible growth that you showed us of your WP developers So you went from I mean already a hundred thousand users is impressive But then you jumped from that to five million Do you think that the pandemic helped or what you were at the helm of the marketing? So what did you do to get to such an amazing result? Well That's a secret We did actually a lot of things From our perspective it's not like Just a pandemic we were actually growing before the pandemic as well, but definitely pandemic Held the whole ecosystem as well one of the major thing that I Personally feel is very unique about my team is that all of them are passionate and We do whatever we do with all their passion and we do it constantly So there are also a lot of things that didn't work But the things that work those are the things that a lot of people Probably didn't even try Consistency and a great team right we have it. We have a question, please Hello Thank you so much for the talk and I had to a question if you could just get a little bit more specific about How you track the customer journey? There are many tools to track customers journey for example, if you are looking for WordPress Have you installed? Google tag manager and other stuff senior website I'm coming at it from a more of a video angle So yeah on the on the back end of things. I was just hoping just to get a general idea. Yeah, okay, so Google tag manager and also Google tracking system if those are perfectly set up for your website It will or you will see already few things like which That from which source are your users are coming from your Google dashboard and there are also a few other tools Which is sus tools you can use for More in-depth Understanding I hope I have answered your question. Thank you very much. Thank you Any other questions, let me I'm gonna just check if we have any questions from online audience In the meantime, I don't think so unless I think we have a question. Oh, yes Yeah, I have one question. Yeah, great presentation great numbers to see on the screen so I'm sure this question could be a lot other people are asking about this question like what's special specifically for WordPress What source of channel you were using to generate those numbers like? Content marketing social media marketing or maybe Google ads, you know, I'm sure this is more like test and try thing But yeah, definitely based on your experience. What you suggest Actually, then there are many different platforms we have pride For our company we have around 10 products and We have we are using different platform for different products. So for example If you have a product which is relevant to End user who roam around in Facebook for that product Facebook would work. So for some of our product Some of the platform work and other didn't but in general if you ask me for what press The best part from is Twitter. I think most of you would agree And Google ads also retargeting campaigns work well for what press Facebook and Other platform is for a very niche user But right now YouTube is also getting popular YouTube ads I hope that I have answered your questions Thank you. Thank you We still have got time for a couple more questions if anyone wants to to Ask but in the meantime Well, I have I have I actually have quite a few but One thing that interests me a lot and already we've only we're only like a couple of hours in and already AI has been mentioned Many times and we have a panel coming up and various lightning talks about AI But so you mentioned this as well and in the list that you had earlier about what chat GPT can do for you There was there was also market Research which obviously it can do but how do you feel about? Actual customer research because that's something that you pointed out as very important How do you feel about that? Can that ever be? substituted for market research Actual user research so talking to real users. Can GPT do that? Yeah. Yeah, so For customer research We did the competitor. We do the computer research in depth. So we not just the WordPress repository but also for all of the relevant and probably not just full competitor even the partial competitors Who are Having similar type of product. So we tried to check whatever they are doing From their website from their social media from their community Which which things they are doing and how they are doing we try to see that for users experience We tried to talk with our users. We tried to Send different kind of customers feedback Build One-to-one relationship with our customers. So understand better Even we were just talking about this yesterday that if you send a survey people will send you generic answer But how about you connect with those in some community in probably some group or forum? So they will explain better about their experience using your product Thank you. That was really interesting. We've got a question. Yeah. Hi. I'm great talk. Thank you I just had a question for say you're a small business and you've got limited resources to To focus on marketing. What would you consider to be the most vital channels or marketing angles to focus on? channel or Social media platform you mean? Any aspect of marketing what? Well, the easier one to get started with Twitter and I really understand small business have limited budget So for them probably get started with the content marketing share those in Twitter and other platform, but more important is Get connected with your existing user even if they are Small in amount. I mean If you are connected with your users They are the one who can recommend to other people who might need your product So get started slow, but get started At the fast fast phase of your product So you can get some visibility or from social media that could be Twitter That could be your personal forum, but get connected with your users Great. Thank you very much. Thank you Any more questions anyone? Well, Afsana, this was great. Thank you so much. So interesting and I'm sure that people if you've got more questions that you want to ask Afsana you'll be around Whole day and I will be available tomorrow as well Actually for what press marketing it depends for what press marketing any kind of marketing it depends based on Your product depending on how your audience are says are so If we can talk in details with the background you you have probably I could Help or I could suggest few things for you So I'll be available. Feel free to reach me or even get connected with me in my Twitter. It's Afsana Dea I would love to have more talk. Thank you Great