Matt Medeiros continues Season 8 with the roundtable format asking the question is there change in the WordPress ecosystem?  John Turner and Phil Derksen are the special guests that share what significant changes they have made in their careers and what they see in the  WordPress ecosystem.

Listen to this episode:

John Turner joined Awesome Motive through their customer accelerator portal to help his company grow. Syed Balkhi, Awesome Motive's owner,  suggested that John join the company as a partner since his product and strategy aligned with Awesome Motive. (3:10)

Phil Derksen recently joined Sandhills Development LLC after running a one-man shop company called WP Simple Pay, which is a stripe payment and subscription program.  Sandhills Development, LLC  has a whole suite of products that was founded by Pippin Williamson. (4:20)

What you will learn in this Episode:

Startups in the WordPress economy were easy to start as a fully bootstrapped business. It can be a roller coaster ride of going solo and joining a company, then trying to go solo again. (6:48)

John - Worked for 6 or 7 years and did not feel like he was continually growing. When the opportunity became available with Syed and Awesome Motive John decided to give it a try and take the growth to the next level. It was difficult where the uncertainty and change is concerned, but he is excited to be a part of the company.  (7:48)

Phil - Phil had many happy customers with his product and support. Although he had a level of comfort with his company, he did not feel like he could release the features that customers were requesting. For example, EDD could offer many things that his product couldn’t do. Phil had one product to focus on, but it was distracting to jump from being a developer, then marketing and support. It is exciting to work with a team and see the growth of the products. (11:11)

Product Growth - Marketing or the Product Alone?

Phil – Product features and planning for the future is critical. Then the focus needs to change to marketing to get the word out to the customers. (11:59)

John– Marketing is the most important focus and the lesson to learn. You can have an awesome product, but you need to have the time and focus on marketing. (12:23)

Matt - For people to scale their business they need to market their product successfully and make more money. It takes a lot of time and money to do marketing correctly.  (13:41)

Marketing

John – There is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. When you find out what is working you need to concentrate on it. When your business is small, you don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing. You need to focus on one or two channels (like Facebook and Content Marketing) and focus on what is working for you. It could take awhile. (15:19)

Phil - Phil has recently spent money and time on content marketing. Finding what works and knowing that changes over time are important. It is tough to get noticed with new plugins or themes on WordPress.org. Sandhills Development has a marketing team that reaches out and promotes products. (17:19)

Matt - Some businesses try a blanket approach with marketing and cover too much. The person in the WordPress Community that is doing marketing well seems to be Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains. His company does a great job with their brand and content marketing. Pagely is another company that does a great job with their quality and material.

Phil: Chris Badgett at LifterLMS does a great job with content marketing and his podcast concentrating around learning systems.

John: LifterLMS has very focused content with their brand and audience. The material has intent.

Content Marketing Focus:

Matt - Content Marketing is very expensive and very hard to do as a business owner. If you are preparing webinars and podcasts, it takes a lot of time when launching a podcast. It can be hard to produce quality content consistently. (19:54)