The Marketing WordPress to Agencies and Clients subgroup focuses on materials and resources for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises.
Meeting Notes
Details are available in the Slack Marketing channel, including resource links. @anafransilva led the meeting.
Usage Survey
@skarjune gave an update on the WordPress Usage survey. 71 responses have come in, and the data is very preliminary as we need more responses and analysis. Still, we were able to review some trends.
We looked at the Source for hearing about the survey, though not all responses provided that. Blogs were the primary Source, primarily the WP Tavern post along with the original WordPress.org post, then some response via the Facebook Advanced User Group. We seem to be reaching a targeted audience that follows WordPress news, and we want to continue more outreach.
| SOURCE |
COUNT |
PCT |
| Blog (WP Tavern, Nuzzel) |
19 |
36% |
| WordPress.org |
16 |
30% |
| Facebook |
8 |
15% |
| Personal Associate |
4 |
8% |
| News Website |
2 |
4% |
| WordCamp |
2 |
4% |
| Twitter |
1 |
2% |
| Podcast |
1 |
2% |
Agencies is at the top of the list for the Industry type in responses, so this is a good sign that we will be able to collect Case Studies from our outreach efforts.
| INDUSTRY |
COUNT |
| Agency |
20 |
| Internet |
10 |
| Small Business |
10 |
| OTHER |
7 |
| Software |
5 |
| Business Services |
5 |
| Education |
3 |
| Web Host |
2 |
| Media |
2 |
| Nonprofit |
1 |
| Retail |
1 |
High points for Reasons to use WordPress are expected, as it’s highly regarded for Ease of Use, Extensibility, and Availability of themes and plugins.
| REASONS 1-high, 5-Not at all |
RANK |
| Extensibility |
1.8 |
| Ease of Use |
1.8 |
| Open Source |
1.9 |
| Themes & Plugins Availability |
2.1 |
| Community |
2.2 |
| Integrations Availability |
2.2 |
| Cost |
2.2 |
| Documentation |
2.3 |
| Search Engine Optimization |
2.4 |
| Scalability |
2.6 |
| Accessibility |
2.6 |
| Multilingual |
2.9 |
WordPress users have some moderate concerns, and @skarjune speculated that debate on the Gutenberg editor project could be an example of why Road Map is the highest barrier. However, concerns about Security and Performance could be false myths, as there are many ways to remedy those.
| BARRIERS 1-High, 5-minor |
RANK |
| Road map |
3.3 |
| Security |
3.4 |
| Performance |
3.4 |
| Maintenance |
3.5 |
| Scalability |
3.6 |
| Ecommerce |
3.6 |
| Missing features |
3.7 |
| Architecture |
3.7 |
| Support |
3.7 |
| Workflow |
3.7 |
| PHP code base |
4.0 |
| Licensing |
4.2 |
As we get more data and do some analysis, the Usage survey should provide some guidance for all the subgroups in determining what kind of White Papers are needed in our Marketing resources.
Marketing Message
@anafransilva finalised the Marketing Message and the group found it ready to publish. We want to add a sample Case Study as an example of how the survey responses will be used. @bridgetwillard started one in the Drive, @skarjune needs to revise that as it was only a test entry by him, and he’ll produce a pretty PDF document to go with the message. @anafransilva and @skarjune will work on this for next week to be published on August 2.
Promotional Message Template
@mcdwayne shared the Marketing Message for Agencies being used to promote the call for Case Studies, which can be used by anyone soliciting agencies to respond. Already several members are performing outreach to contacts in their networks and using the Agency Survey Tracker to record their work.
We discussed if we need to make a list of agencies that we know of or that should be contacted. We felt that this would be a very big project that could be difficult to complete. Also, it would create a target list of agencies, and we had previously discussed this and determined that we did NOT want to appear to be selecting specific agencies that would be promoted by publishing their case studies. Even if we did a thorough job of contacting a wide range of agencies, just one complaint of why a particular agency wasn’t contacted might appear problematic.
Instead of creating a list, we will continue to pursue outreach with our own P2P networks, via Community, and through influencers in the ecosystem, and we’ll track our contacts. We do want to reach as many agencies as possible, we want to attract quality cases, and we want to be transparent about the process of finding and selecting Case Studies to publish.
Influencers Message Template
We reviewed the Email Template to Twitter Influencers to promote the Case Studies survey. We liked the nice tone, clear message, and single call to action with a hashtag and sample Tweet:
Agencies, the marketing team at WP.org needs you! Submit your case studies here: #WPAgencySurvey
The message to influencers focuses on just the Case Studies survey, which is a current need, although the template can be easily tweeked for a version to use for the Usage survey.
There was interest in developing some kind of Tweet Now button to automate the follow-through, and @vishalmukadam will follow up on how to do that.
Community Outreach
We considered reaching out to individual WordCamps that are coming up soon, but we’ll check with some Community leaders to ask if they could do a broad outreach to both WordCamps and Meetups to promote the surveys. @bridgetwillard and @skarjune will check with @andreamiddleton and @chanthaboune about that.
Summary
Team members are updating the Trello cards for tasks management as work continues. We’ll publish new posts on the surveys next week, and we’ll continue with outreach to promote the surveys.
To get involved with the Marketing to Agencies and Clients subgroup, or any other subgroup of the Marketing team, see the post on Welcome to the Marketing Team — Here’s What You Need to Know.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 23.
In May the Marketing Team began a 
