The Marketing Plan For WP Bids

As many of you know, the latest product that I’m currently promoting is WP Bids.  In a recent post, I discussed about all the things that make this such a unique WordPress product.  I even launched a dedicated website for it at WPBids.com.

Unlike my other ThemeJam themes, part of the challenge in marketing WP Bids is I need to educate people about what it is.  Sure, it’s a WordPress theme, but it redefines how we use a theme in many ways (which I discuss here).

So my marketing plan for WP Bids is quite different than it was when I launched ThemeJam.  The primary strategy?

Press

I’m reaching out to bloggers in the freelancing, small business, and WordPress space about helping me to spread information about what WP Bids is and the benefits it offers to their readers.  I have offered to have my product reviewed on their site, participate in interviews to discuss it, and even write my own guest article outlining the benefits.  I’m delighted that a few have already accepted and will be publishing various forms of coverage in the coming weeks.  One already has.

Why is quality press coverage so important for WP Bids?

1)  Unlike a banner ad, CPC, or a promotional tweet, a blog article (or video) offers a longer, more in-depth medium to flesh out all the features and back story behind WP Bids.  Of course, it’s important to be able to summarize the pitch in just a few words: “Create (awesome) project proposals using WordPress”.  But that’s only a start.  Describing the benefits in detail helps to drive home what WP Bids is all about.  As far as I know, this type of WordPress theme hasn’t been done before, so educating the market is key.

2)  It’s targeted.  WP Bids was built to be used by freelancers and small business owners who use WordPress.  Luckily, there are lots of blogs in the freelancing niche.  There are also lots of WordPress development blogs, many of which are frequented by freelance web designers.  As a freelancer and WordPress junkie, these are the blogs I personally frequent every day.  That’s how I know these are the right places to find freelancers and small business owners like myself.

First to market vs. second to market

Now, I’m not saying WP Bids is a massively ground breaking phenomenon of a product.  But it is in some ways a “first-to-market” within the world of niche WordPress themes.  That means there are yet to be any direct competitors who offer the same type of product to the same market.

My other themes on ThemeJam, while unique in their design, wouldn’t be considered “first-to-market”.  There are many (too many?) premium WordPress themes who have paved the way for companies like ThemeJam.

There are benefits and challenges to each:

Being a “first-to-market” product, the challenge is you must spend much of your resources on educating the market.  First you have to sell your audience on the idea and why it’s worthy of a price tag.  Then you have to sell them on why they would want to pay for it.  In the case of WP Bids, I have created it’s own dedicated website complete with video walk-throughs and an extended FAQ.  Beyond that, I’m spreading the information through other blog coverage.  This is largely an investment of time, which does not come cheap.

In the case of ThemeJam, I didn’t need to work as hard at educating the public on what I’m selling.  Thanks to the other successful theme companies that came before mine, this effort was already done for me.  The challenge of course, is to showcase how my catalog of WordPress themes and support services are worthy of consideration alongside those of the larger, more established companies.  Needless to say, this is not an easy task given how crowded the premium WordPress themes market has become.

Over to you

So that’s my approach I’m taking during this first month of launching WP Bids.  I’d love to get your feedback about the product itself, these marketing ideas, and anything else you care to comment on.