Marketing to Agencies & Clients – May 24, 2017 Notes

The Marketing to Agencies & Clients (+enterprises) team met as we continue on two survey projects and our overall goal to provide resources for WordPress adoption though agencies and in enterprises.

Convened by @skarjune at 17:00 UTC, 2017-05-24
Attended by @vishalmukadam, @mcdwayne
Comments by @gidgey, @pollyplummer, @sararosso

Slack Backscroll has details and links

Agenda

Case Studies

We reviewed the Case Study Survey form and determined the questions are fine in a simple open-ended format. We discussed the need and ways to screen out promotional responses to the survey. The concern is to avoid overt plugging of commercial organizations, premium solutions, and brand marketing. This will be handled in two ways:

  • Add a Guidelines preface to the form advising respondents.
  • Review and edit case responses to meet guidelines.

We discussed options for distribution of the survey and made an action list:

  • WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Blog Announcement of Open Call for Surveys
    • Launch in time for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe & Contributor Day
  • Add to agenda of Contributor Day Marketing Team
  • List bloggers and social media influencers for promotion
    • WP Tavern will cover Open Call launch
  • Do not make a list of targeted agencies
    • (open call avoiding bias and favoritism)
  • Team members may individually contact associates at agencies

WordPress Usage Survey

@skarjune completed a review of the original Fact Sheet for the subteam from which to draw topics for the Usage survey, added those to the matrix for the design of the survey, and revised the questions in the form instrument to cover them.

We reviewed the WordPress Usage Survey matrix that prescribes the form design. Need input on Guidelines to preface questions, and final review of the Benefits, Barriers, and other factors for gathering information about the perception and use of WordPress by agencies and in enterprises.

Next Steps

We’ll keep in touch in the 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/. Marketing thread and via direct messages as needed to launch the Open Call for both surveys over the next two weeks, so Survey forms and Announcement post are ready on June 12 in preparation for WordCamp Europe.

Next regular meeting of Marketing to Agencies and Clients subteam is on Wednesday, June 28, 17:00 UTC.

#agencies-clients

Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients – April 26 2017 Notes

The Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients team met with new members joining, while some existing members could not attend, and some prospective members who’ve expressed interest in the Marketing channel for this subteam are yet in the wings. Helpful comments and ideas came from new members on our two survey projects and the overall goal to provide materials and supporting information for WordPress adoption though agencies and in enterprises.

@skarjune convened the meeting.
Slack Backscroll

Case Study Survey

The WordPress for Agencies and Clients – Case Study Survey draft completed by @andymci was reviewed. @anafransilva offered some copyediting suggestions on the survey language, made the changes, and suggested “It *may* be helpful to add very short examples of what we mean at each question.” WIth those additions the Survey should be  complete. Next, we need to determine the steps for announcement, distribution, and collation.

@marcuscouch asked “how is it channeled to the target recipients? How do we plan on getting it to the agencies and creators?” @skarjune remembered that we decided not to formally distribute the open survey to a target list, even though we want to reach a range of respondents for their cases, especially recognizable WordPress agencies in the ecosystem. To avoid any favoritism in targeting specific companies or sectors, we will employ both WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ channels and organic outreach via team member networks. The group agreed that WordCamps and Meetups can help announce the survey, and we can individually reach out through the WordPress Community to influencers and disseminate down the chain to get information out about the survey.

@marcuscouch started a Marketing Survey Distro List for bloggers and other outreach contacts for the survey. This is a key component for promotion of the surveys and the results.

We discussed anonymity for respondents and case curation by the team. The survey currently has an opt-in question: “Can we publish your company name with your case?” We don’t want to appear to be making any endorsements, and we may need to eliminate cases that we determine to be promotional in nature. We should be able to feature named company cases that show initiative and provide good examples for the Community and for the broader ecosystem.

The names of clients with cases are problematic as testimonials that can act as endorsements, and some agencies may not respond to protect their clients from being trolled. @skarjune suggested that we mask all client names, and @nagpai wondered if we might contact clients for permission, but he also cautioned: “however other legal aspects need to be taken into consideration too.”

WordPress for Agencies and Clients Survey

@skarjune reported that he did work on the WordPress Usage Survey Matrix to better outline the goal, objectives, topics, and outcomes of a general survey about WordPress adoption and usage by Agencies, Clients, and Enterprises. The matrix outline referenced ideas collected in the WordPress Marketing – Agency FAQs Sheet generated at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US in December, 2016. @andymci had started a WordPress for Agencies & Clients: Big Questions doc, and @skarjune had solicited input from prospective team members, but no input has been provided. The outline sourced an industry list from SurveyMonkey and considered topics from existing WordPress surveys by WPEngine, Pantheon, and others.

Goal

Evaluate WordPress adoption factors & barriers for upscale markets

Objectives

  • Reasons to adopt WordPress
  • Objections to adopting WordPress
  • Key benefits of WordPress
  • Key barriers of WordPress
  • Usage of WordPress
  • Scale of WordPress
  • Engagement with WordPress Community
  • Role of third-party marketplace

No discussion was had on this survey, and @skarjune invited team members to provide input on the Big Questions doc on: What big questions about WordPress usage and perceptions should we answer in a broad survey? Or, you might contribute questions where case examples could help provide answers.

Next Steps

@anafransilva will review the Case Survey for any additional copyediting and for adding examples where helpful to respondents.

Any team members can input Big Questions, and Marketing channel participants can contact @skarjune in 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/. with ideas or comment on this post.

Distro List contacts will be added by @marcuscouch and @skarjune, along with other team members as available.

@skarjune will continue tweaking the Usage Survey matrix and will add and edit questions to the Survey instrument, so that can be reviewed at the next meeting.

All team members should consider how to pursue Next Steps for distributing surveys, collating results, creating reports, and distributing materials; so we can discuss at our next meeting and delegate work.

Documents

Documents mentioned above are in the Marketing to Agencies & Clients folder in GDrive.

Contact the Marketing Channel in Slack if you need permission.

#agencies-clients

Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients – March 22 2017 Notes

We convened a Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients meeting, although most members could not attend due to schedule conflicts. Some updates were shared on work tasks from the last meeting.

  • @Andymci has tweaked the WordPress for Agencies and Clients – Case Study Survey, so he’ll update the subgroup on next steps towards rollout.
  • @Skarjune is working on a WordPress Usage Survey Matrix to clarify the objectives, topics, and methods for designing an industry survey about current WordPress usage by agencies and enterprises; and our FAQ sheets guide that.
  • We agree that the Usage survey should not ask about any revealing information, such as financials, although we need to validate respondent companies.
  • No input has happened on “What big questions about WordPress usage and perceptions should we answer in a broad survey?” in the Big Questions doc, but we’re still looking for ideas.
  • As Marketing WordPress is a new team initiative, some growth is needed. We noted that the Users subgroup is very active and the Developers subgroup is hardly active. It was suggested that “Perhaps some more visibility/promotion is needed? There are just around 300 folks in this channel.”

If you’re interested in contributing to the Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients subgroup, feel free to visit the #Marketing channel at any time or message either @Andymci or @Skarjune on 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/..

Documents mentioned above are in the Marketing to Agencies & Clients folder in GDrive.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to agencies and clients: the subgroup focuses on materials and supporting information useful for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises where the decision-making or platform choices may be happening inside the company. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing.)

Our next meeting will be April 26 — 4th Wednesday — at 17:00 UTC

#agencies-clients

Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients – February 22 2017 Notes

We continued with our second Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients meeting following up on the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.. If you’re interested in contributing to the Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients subgroup, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below. Leave a comment about anything you’d like to help us with! You can read the whole meeting in Slack or the recap below.

Updates

Documents mentioned below are in the Marketing to Agencies & Clients folder in GDrive.

  • @andymci made progress on organizing the Marketing to Agencies & Clients – FAQs Factsheet, and we have a few dozen Features as Selling Points with notations for Stakeholders and Use Cases.
  • No changes were suggested for the WordPress for Agencies and Clients – Case Study Survey, so that will just get a final copyedit review and then be ready for distribution.
  • @skarjune started to draft a WordPress for Agencies, Clients, and Enterprises Survey as a separate questionnaire to gather perceptions and trends about WordPress.

Discussion

The WordPress for Agencies and Clients – Case Study will gather information from agencies about successful WordPress projects that can be showcased on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. The survey will be posted on WordPress.org, and then Marketing team members and others in the greater WordPress community can do outreach to associates, bloggers, and meetups to engage good response. We plan to gather a wide range of cases, and we especially want to see representation from sizable agencies and clients as possible, but we will not create a list of targeted companies. We will use an open call for the survey, and then we’ll review the results and determine how we can best present a range of cases across attributes for size, scope, global, etc.

The WordPress for Agencies, Clients, and Enterprises Survey was brainstormed between meetings as a separate supplemental instrument to gather information about WordPress usage, attitudes, and trends in addition to the Case Study. As our philosophy is to “Help agencies win their clients over to WordPress,” this could help us understand how agencies, clients, and enterprises view and deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. WordPress. We have a startup draft, but we need to outline our objectives and outcomes for this. So, we’re listing questions about WordPress usage by agencies, clients, and enterprises; and we’re creating a matrix of how those dimensions apply to the three use types.

The subteam will do some more work by cross-checking the FAQ items, survey objectives, questions, and expected outcomes for these surveys. We want to ensure our design for gathering information will serve to generate good marketing assets.

Additional Comments

  • We should consider participating in small business forums, like the National Entrepreneurship Week  (now past).
  • The “page builder” for “prototype” seems a winner for Agencies as UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. is a top sales service in digital ad agencies these day.
  • Torque/WPEngine & Pantheon have published WordPress industry surveys in the past year showing how ease of use and expansive marketplace are key drivers, while security and scalability are cited as objections.

Action Items

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to agencies and clients: the subgroup focuses on materials and supporting information useful for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises where the decision-making or platform choices may be happening inside the company. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing.)

#agencies-clients

Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients – January 25 2017 Notes

We’ve just wrapped up the first Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients meeting since WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US. We continue to iterate on what was started during Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.:

  • Gathering case studies & insights by surveying agencies.
  • Developing a comprehensive list of features & benefits that would eventually become a landing page.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below. Leave a comment about anything you’d like to help us with! You can read the whole meeting in Slack or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to agencies and clients: the subgroup focuses on materials and supporting information useful for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises where the decision-making or platform choices may be happening inside the company. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing.)

Projects in progress

The following topics were shared in the chat. As mentioned above, we’re iterating on the work that began during Contributor Day at WCUS. Consensus was to approach these projects in small phases.

If a particular suggestion strikes your interest and you have time to work on it, please raise your hand in the comments with a mention about which one so those interested can start coordinating in 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/. (in #marketing).

  • Case study survey for agencies
    • Gather information from agencies about successful WordPress projects that can be showcased on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. These case studies would focus on the projects from a business perspective, i.e. “what were the challenges, how were they overcome with WordPress, and what impact did it have?”
    • Insights from the case studies would be added to a list of features & benefits that target specific use cases or agency personas. See below for more detail on this.
    • To promote: Join forces with the Make Community team to share the survey via Chapter Program meetups and WordCamps. Additionally, reach out to local agencies and agencies with a strong relationship to the WP community.
      Based on initial response rate, we’ll set an incremental goal (# or %) for gathering additional responses each month.
      • Action items
      • @skarjune and @nirmaldesai updating survey questions
      • Check-in after 15 days
      • Review & launch survey during next meeting
  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Info gathering
    • Philosophy = “Help agencies win their clients over to WordPress.”
    • This is an iteration from the FAQs/Fact Sheet concept that began at WCEU and continued during WCUS. We agreed that more value would come from a functional page on WordPress.org instead of printed collateral.
    • Features and benefits would be filterable based on use case (e.g. eCommerce, SaaS platform) and agency persona (e.g. designer, developer, account manager). Imagine: “What’s your role? What’s the project?” Display relevant features & benefits accordingly.
    • Initial audience: WordPress-friendly agencies that are looking for information to use in their sales & marketing process. Future audience: Agencies that are considering WordPress alongside other platforms.
    • Action Items
      • @andymci converting existing FAQs/fact sheet notes into a spreadsheet
      • Review during next meeting

Future projects

The following topics were shared as follow-ups to the above projects that are in progress. Other suggestions are welcome (please bring them to the next monthly chat).

  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Spec & build
    • Using information that we’ve gathered from the surveys + populated in the spreadsheet, identify requirements + create a brief for the new landing page.
    • Work with designers on the Marketing team to create mockups.
    • Work with developers on the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team to create the landing page.
  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Case studies
    • Using surveys that we’ve gathered, identify requirements + create a brief for how agency case studies should be presented on WordPress.org.
    • Work with designers on the Marketing team to create mockups.
    • Work with developers on the Meta team to create the landing page.

#agencies-clients