The Marketing team promotes WordPress to current and future users and contributors. We create and amplify campaigns to support the growth of the WordPress project.
Our work is tracked on the Marketing Tasks Board on the WordPress organization’s GitHub. If you are planning a Marketing Table at a Contributor Event, please let us know in the Slack channel.
You can be part of the #marketing channel on Slack. Join our next Weekly Marketing Chat at: Tuesday 15:00 UTC.
Diary dates
X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: The Forums get a refresh
In my Big Picture post from January, one of the major obstacles I mentioned was our stagnating growth. To me, our first order of business to tackle this problem is to get a coordinated marketing push underway and despite significant effort we have not been able to do that. I acknowledge that there is blame to share, and I’m sure no one wants to argue process nonstop. The requests made by the Make Marketing team over the years are clear:
With the exception of the possibility to influence marketing strategy through normal feedback/proposal review processes, these are not requests that I am able to fulfill for a variety of reasons from logistical to philosophical. However, I do want to find a way for this team to feel that their contributions are more impactful and, by extension, have a more meaningful contributor experience here.
Given that I cannot offer you the type of access and resourcing that a dedicated marketing team needs, I believe it is time to change the scope of the work. Since it’s become clear that we (sponsored and volunteer contributors alike) cannot collaborate effectively to market on our client’s (WordPress’) behalf, I would like to enable folks who are marketing independent of us to be able to do so with more confidence and less effort.
It has long been the case that WordPress’ most successful marketing has been chalked up to word of mouth, but our substantial network of WP media partners has never been included in any definition of that. I know that we rely on outlets like WP Tavern Jukebox, Underrepresented in Tech, Do the Woo, Gutenberg Times, and countless others to get our information out to users of every variety. And for all these years, they’ve had to know the right people and read the right stuff to get accurate and up-to-date information into their content for their audiences.
I would like to enable their independent marketing to be of excellent quality with less chasing of people by creating a Media Corps which can be managed through this team.
From a high level, this would mean weekly or bi-weekly media corps meetings where qualified media partners would receive highlights on progress toward project goals, a list of upcoming dates to know, and any future items on the horizon that they should keep an eye out for.
A qualified media partner would:
The work of Make Marketing would encompass:
It’s been my experience in WordPress that when we close things as wont-fix it is heartbreaking. Even when we understand that we can’t fix it because of intractable problems, closing something without movement registers in the “loss” column of our mental tracking.
This solution doesn’t offer any of the direct access our current team wants, but it does give a considerable amount of power to groups who already have curated audiences and have much more autonomy (and budget) to market on WordPress’ behalf. It also gives us a better chance of having clear and consistent information being communicated on behalf of the project. And finally, it gives us the opportunity to acknowledge the years of work that the WP media folks have already put in to our collective success.
It’s not a full set of wins, but I think the wins balance the losses if we keep an eye on the stated goals and obstacles I outlined in January. And if this is not what you were signing up to contribute to, if you can find a way to see that this has the potential to solve some problems that WordPress has, even though it doesn’t solve all the problems Make Marketing has, I encourage you to whole heartedly join this experiment. If you can’t, fortunately there are many other teams where you might find your niche!
This is a dramatic shift. I want you all to be able to ask any questions you have to see if this is an experiment you can participate in. You can ask them asynchronously in the comments, or I will be answering questions synchronously today in #marketing at 9am CDT and 6pm CDT (1400 UTC and 2300 UTC).
X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Comment on Training Team Update – February 2024
Please add any comments on the related Marketing Tasks GitHub issue or in the #marketing channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Here is a look at the numbers for the last two weeks:
This is not a list of all issues from the Marketing Team GitHub in Slack. This is a compilation of items that had discussion in Slack during the week.
Please add any comments on the related Marketing Tasks GitHub issue or in the #marketing channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Here is a look at the numbers for the last two weeks:
This is not a list of all issues from the Marketing Team GitHub in Slack. This is a compilation of items that had discussion in Slack during the week.
Please add any comments on the related Marketing Tasks GitHub issue or in the #marketing channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Here is a look at the numbers for the last two weeks:
This is not a list of all issues from the Marketing Team GitHub in Slack. This is a compilation of items that had discussion in Slack during the week.
Please add any comments on the related Marketing Tasks GitHub issue or in the #marketing channel on the Make WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
This is not a list of all issues from the Marketing Team GitHub in Slack. This is a compilation of items that had discussion in Slack during the week.
X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/project: Comment on Incident Response Team: Call for Nominations
The WordPress Foundation (WPF) is approved for a grant from Google Ads. The primary aim of using the grant is to increase overall awareness and coverage of the foundation and topics related to its mission. This might be reflected in additional coverage via social media, blogs, tech media, etc. Here are some details and how you can help this project succeed.
The grant is for restricted use of up to $10,000 for monthly ads spent through AdWords to support the mission of the WPF:
To ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support. People and businesses come and go, so it is essential to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base so that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come.
wordpressfoundation.org
From Google: “To qualify for Google Ad Grants, your organization must be an eligible nonprofit, have a high-quality website that meets our website policy, and be able to meet the program policies.” The WordPress Foundation has met these requirements and will launch the campaign tentatively this spring, in March 2024.
In an Ad Grants campaign, nonprofits may only leverage text ads (no images) supported by multi-word keyword phrases (no single words). To this end, text ad campaigns will be created that drive awareness of the following topics/items/categories:
Apart from monitoring campaign performance using the typical AdWords KPIs such as impressions, clicks, and quality score, we’ll look at the total amount and quality of traffic driven to the promoted resources. Additionally, with more traffic to the WPF website, the foundation may receive additional donations. While not a primary goal, it’s another valuable measurement of success. @dansoschin will configure and manage the campaigns with approval from the project’s leadership team. Results will be shared in the marketing SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel and/or marketing blog when appropriate.
Leave comments below, including links, for any resources you believe align with the WFP mission and would be helpful to support as part of this campaign through paid traffic. The resources must be non-commercial, educational, and aligned with the WPF mission (as listed above). Furthermore, the content promoted must be hosted on WordPress.orgv or WordPressFoundation.org.
While this campaign will launch soon, feedback is welcome anytime – list your resource below with any relevant context.
