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For long-form interviews, news, and commentary about the WordPress ecosystem. This is the companion show to The WP Minute, your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every week.
Matt Medeiros (00:01)
Ben Pines, welcome to the WP Minute.
Ben (00:04)
Hey Matt, thanks for having me.
Matt Medeiros (00:06)
I think most folks know you from the Elementor days. You're probably sick of hearing that, but let's get some backstory. You started with Elementor. You were an early Elementor employee. Elementor is a fantastic sponsor of the WP minute, I should add, so don't trash talk them, Ben. Not that you would. ⁓ You started there. You left. You went back. You left again. What's this roller coaster ride Ben is on? How have you landed your feet these days?
Ben (00:30)
Yeah, so I went back and to a pretty cool job around two years ago, which was develop marketing, doing the product marketing for two new plugins that we launched. And after a year of doing this, I saw an opportunity that I wanted to grab just to leave high tech and start my own consulting business. I felt like the market was there for a need for.
what I started which is basically founder led marketing.
Matt Medeiros (01:04)
That's something that I've been trying to, I've been trying to wrap my head around that phrase and we're probably gonna unpack that a little bit. ⁓ Or in fact, let's just do it right now. I think, I ran an agency for a decade and then, well, my family owned a car dealerships for many years and I started in the business. So I knew what it was like to own and operate a business, not just on the operational side, but like.
love the business, love the employees, love the customers, like really understand it as like an owner. And then I ran an agency for a decade and worked at a few different places like ⁓ Page Lee and Castos and in the podcast hosting space. But a lot of my stuff, like a lot of my marketing and sales efforts was from the understanding of being an owner. Even though I was working at these companies like today at Gravity Forms, I'm not an owner of Gravity Forms, but I understand like
the operation of the business, I understand the customer's ownership of their agency. This is a long way of getting to. Do you think that owner or founder-led marketing can be taught if you never owned a business? Is that even possible? I often struggle and think about that.
Ben (02:23)
don't know if it's possible to teach it. I know it's possible to, to kind of do it if you have the eagerness and motivation. So what are the elements for founder led the marketing? Basically you need to have that basic hunger to be a founder, which just the basic functionality doing no marketing, just be having the curiosity to figure out what is working, being a father, like building a business. That's the first layer, but it's not enough because there are.
A lot of people who are founders and they don't want to hold that position for the audience. And the, that's a decision they need to make like, okay, I'm not just going to do that function and manage people and do all the responsibilities of the founder. I'm also going to be sort of a liaison for my audience with this product. So, you know, sales is marketing. So I'm not just going to do the sales one on one.
one-to-one, I'm going to do the one-to-many. I'm going to be the person that goes on podcasts and conferences and do all that one-to-many ⁓ interactions.
Matt Medeiros (03:33)
Your website is BenPines.com. People can go there, subscribe to your newsletter, learn more about the services. We're going to unpack three hot topics for WordPress plugin and maybe even SaaS based businesses that you want to cover today. Before we get to that, let's keep touching on this topic. Do you, as somebody who's seasoned now, like you've been doing this for a while, what are the unique challenges of an owner
hiring somebody else to do that owner or founder led marketing. I'll use myself real quick as an example. ⁓ Oftentimes I'm creating a lot of content for these companies that I work for, again, Gravity Forms, Castos, Pagely, and all three owners of these companies have to trust in me that I'm going to represent the brand correctly. And...
⁓ You know, this is something that I've had to sort of let go here at the at the WP minute Eric Karkback runs a lot of the podcasts here and I've trusted him to do that and it was tough at first because I'm like, hey Eric Maybe you should intro the podcast this way and maybe you should outro it that way But I have to be like no man. I got a trust in what Eric's doing So what are your particular thoughts on the challenges of an owner who doesn't want to do this stuff hiring somebody? And instilling that trust in them
Ben (04:55)
Well, I don't have something optimistic. I do think it's very rare. Like I, my example that I always know is Eric Doty from, from Doc. That's a marketer that I follow that he's doing a fantastic job and he's not the owner, but it's super rare. You usually don't have it. That's why kind of the business I built was, I didn't want to continue being that employee that comes in to be the internal voice of the company.
⁓ so, and I did experimentation of building other voices in, in previous companies that I worked in AI 21 labs and it worked, but I wanted to see if there was a different approach. And my approach is basically I tap into the brain of the CEO one hour, ⁓ a week. And from that, extract the kind of insights, the content to get them.
front and center stage and putting them in the center without that because they're busy, they don't have time, helping them do that without that eating away from their time. This way they don't have to delegate. that, think that's the easiest way because you don't need to find the map, there you don't need to find, you know, those people.
Matt Medeiros (06:13)
Yeah, we're a little bit expensive these days. And I actually want to talk about. Yeah, thanks. And I do want to talk about that. I want to talk about the in the age of AI and maybe some of this is part of the three topics. one final question on this, like talking to that CEO. What's the big challenge for you when you get the CEO in the room that says, hey, Ben, I heard you can help me sort of be that marketing person and get me on podcast and get me more visible, but.
Ben (06:16)
for sure. Well worth it.
Matt Medeiros (06:42)
it's not really me, is there a certain challenge that you have to overcome that you go through every day?
Ben (06:49)
For sure.
For sure. I think like showing up and having that meeting every week, that's something like you build something. It's like a muscle and it's something about just going the journey that helps them do that. And there's nothing I can say that can convince them. They have to actually walk the walk and improve along the way. ⁓ So they do need to kind of believe in themselves and have that motivation. But
Once I have them in conversation, there are certain techniques. Like I'll come prepared. So if they don't have anything to talk about, I've done the research with AI. So I know like some sort of ⁓ fallback to go on if they don't have any stories. yeah, basically it's something that, it's an experience that grows the founder as they're doing it.
Matt Medeiros (07:44)
Yeah. And it should be one of those things where they kind of, you know, maybe on paper they're not seeing immediate results like, sales aren't just going up. but it is a ⁓ muscle that they get to to stretch and to work through to be like, I'm actually like I'm building relationships for the business. I'm doing, you know, marketing collaborations that I never would have done before. Or I'm building these other relationships with these brands that are just going to open up other inroads, you know, in the future might not always be about like
sales you know x amount of plug-in sales this month but maybe that's different
Ben (08:18)
My insights there is like,
try to poke and like try to feel out what is the urgency with the founders. So sometimes the founder will come and say, listen, I have to get leads. The business will crash. I have to get leads. And then we have a strategy. Okay, we'll do the content, but we'll also focus on kind of outreaching and doing connections. And then they see the leads.
and it's pretty obvious and pretty fast. The other option is to, ⁓ like you said, like going for a longer wait and there's a balance between these two strategies, I would say. ⁓ But yeah, obviously you do need to have the patience.
Matt Medeiros (09:06)
And I got, sorry, one other question popped into my head before we get to your three topics that you want to cover. You also have a very unique background, ⁓ again, especially in WordPress, as a product person, right? I mean, you've seen one of the world's biggest, or the world's biggest WordPress page builder grow, and all that experience, plus your other experiences.
You go into a CEO's room and they say, I need leads and you look at them and go, but your product sucks. So where does the Ben Marketer and Ben product person come into that conversation? And how do you have those conversations if you can recognize like, yeah, you need marketing help, but you know, I just went through your onboarding of your plugin and it's rough. Like we need to focus on product. Do you ever cross that path?
Ben (09:55)
That's a great question. ⁓ I see like this is connected. This is connected and I try to only market products that I have eagerness for. It just doesn't work otherwise. ⁓ And it's also if the customer has a service, it's the same. Like I just fail if it's a bad service, it's a bad product. I don't have any angles like.
Like because what we're building is authenticity and communication. Like, like, ⁓ just doesn't work. We were constantly looking for the positioning. Like that's a pivotal point. Like we're constantly looking for, okay, why do that's a constant question. Like why do people choose your product? What features are they? What's the bigger picture? I like April Dunford's method of like positioning. And I find that just.
It's, I start with that. Like I can't do marketing without figuring out like why clients choose. then you communicate that, that advantage.
Matt Medeiros (11:02)
Yeah. Yeah. That makes total sense. All right. So you have three things before we hit record, you were like, Hey, Matt, I want to just talk about general marketing stuff. have three important things that I think I want people to know. Last I heard ⁓ WordPress plugins, a lot of talk around either the market being stagnant or sales not going up as much as they used to other reports of like, man, there's a ton of ⁓ plugins going into the WordPress repo. Lots of people.
Now with the power of Claude code and other tools like we can develop whatever we want, push all this stuff in the repo. So how does one survive these days? These days? How should they be looking at their business? What are these three points you wanted to talk about?
Ben (11:44)
So,
yeah, when I started this business, I didn't even think about the WordPress ecosystem. Then I started getting clients from WordPress and I'm kind of confused why nobody's talking about specific problems WordPress plugins are facing. Because I think this is a discussion we need to have, not just here. So I see these three and they also can be divided into six. So one is distribution.
Okay. SEO was the most dominant strategy, even for me when I built element, when I kind of marketed Elementor and, and so SEO was a big focus and is a big focus and it's not working anymore. So that's one problem. ⁓ plus if it's a, a technical product nowadays, people are using, you know, are watching tick tock. They're watching even on LinkedIn. Everything is, is very geared towards contrarian and.
short attention span. So it's for a technical product, WordPress product, it's hard to get attention. So that's a distribution problem that
Matt Medeiros (12:51)
It's hard to get attention
for a WordPress podcast too.
Ben (12:54)
Yeah, you know, like it's, it's,
it's a problem. ⁓ and, and how do you solve? Well, this specific problem, I think you can solve with exactly with founder led marketing, with the understanding that it's a trust game and you need to be able to communicate in a way that people will choose you and not choose the AI slope. And I think there's a huge opportunity. Second challenge is monetization. Okay. So, ⁓ you know, there's a.
With AI, there's the whole idea of like no code. I don't want to add bloat to my site. ⁓ And I can just use cloud code. ⁓ moreover, because of this, the freemium model is ⁓ less working. Because basically, the old way was you install a free plugin. Then people need help. People need an upgrade. They upgrade and pay you.
And now I don't know, I just published about Tailwind ⁓ that they fired like three of their four developers exactly because of that. People are no longer, you know, converting from their documentation, from their support. So that's the monetization problem. The way I think WordPress plugin developers should fix that is kind of move towards maybe SaaS.
and maybe more general audience, but I'm not exactly sure about the solution here, but definitely another problem people need to talk that specifically for WordPress developers. And finally, the final one is the competition. So I'm a plugin developer. I need to face the competition from first of all, like big companies that have a stock of plugins and they can just market it through their hosting.
So they have a distribution ⁓ wheel that's already working and I'm a single plugin developer. So that's a problem. Plus maybe my plugin will be incorporated into core. So these three marketing challenges, you know?
Matt Medeiros (15:10)
So ⁓ attention, monetization, distribution, those are the three, right, loosely. I would even say, let's call it distribution, attention, monetization, so we can use the acronym DAM. You have a damn problem and I'm here to fix it. Yeah, so, but let's start with the attention first, because that's the one that you mentioned. Solo founder, so busy. I mean, even if you're adopting AI to help you.
Ben (15:24)
I like it.
Matt Medeiros (15:39)
⁓ you know, develop the code and, and write documentation. If somebody comes to you they say, and, you talk to one of those CEOs and you say, you've got an attention problem. Where do you start to get them to say, okay, spend one day doing social media or doing a podcast? Like, how do you get them to break their, ⁓ you know, break their habit of like never doing marketing to raise attention? What's the first step?
Ben (16:07)
I think,
I think that's like the way is not think, okay, I'll start writing on LinkedIn. That's not the way to think about this. The way to think about it is I need to be in the know for my audience. So let's say I know who my audience are. Agency owners. I know their exact profile. Then what is my, I am in the know for them. I can be in the know for them for maybe WordPress news.
Matt Medeiros (16:08)
Ahem.
Ben (16:37)
Or maybe WordPress security issues. It really depends on my niche, but I need to know where I'm in the know for them. Maybe I'm in the know for them for like insights into what my customers know from, from sales calls. So once I know that I can, can, know which, and I can give you some examples of like influencers who frequently share information that, that people are waiting for. Once I know.
What's the sources and how am I the liaison of that information? I can do that. Start creating that content, start investigating, start finding out more. I get insights from my plugin, like data from my plugin about something, I can do it as a recurring thing. So this is how you kind of building your authority. And that's what I did also for, for my business, like founder led marketing. I need.
to be in the know everything about like LinkedIn and other people who do founder led marketing. So once you have that kind of strategic idea, I have a hypothesis. think agency owners really want to know about security issues and I can be in the know for them for that. And that will directly correlate to my security plugin. Then, okay, it's an hypothesis. I don't have to...
Be sure about it and invest all my time. try to prove it, try to see, like think of it as a scientific hypothesis and then try to explore it and see if it actually works. If I can be that place at the end of this road is not just, okay, I'm publishing posts on LinkedIn about security issues. The end is like, I'm being interviewed on security podcasts. I'm being invited.
to run speeches on conferences. And authority is not just going to be an influencer. Even though you see those LinkedIn influencers, that's not what I'm preaching. I don't think founders should look at LinkedIn influencers who just post on LinkedIn. And there are people like that and say, okay, I need to be that person. They need to see the person who has the entire kind of, ⁓ I would say, flow.
They have the conferences, doing the podcasts, they're out there.
Matt Medeiros (19:05)
When they turn to you, CEO turns to you says, okay, we've been doing this for six months. How do you drive them? Because I would imagine that most business owners are going to be metric driven to a degree and be like, okay, I've been doing this for six months. I've been getting onto podcasts. Excuse me. I've been making LinkedIn posts. I've been doing the whole thing. I went to CloudFest, et cetera, et I went to a WordCamp. What's the metric that you point to to say that this is working for them? How do you keep them grounded?
so that they're not just constantly looking at like just the views. Like do you wrap this ⁓ to product sales or do you generally see them going, you know what, this is working because I just generally feel better about the position that I'm in.
Ben (19:51)
Okay, so you're starting to post like two times a week, ⁓ let's say, and then you start with that, you start seeing the exposure, your reach ⁓ on whatever platform go up. Suddenly more views, more eyes, more likes, more comments, et cetera. Then you, like after a couple of months, you're starting to see, and it could be sooner.
You're starting to see DMS, you're starting to see the leads. You should implement also like, how did you hear about us in your onboarding? Then you're going to also see sales. So that's what my clients are seeing. And I would say in parallel to this, there should be another metric where they should feel like something different is happening. So they have experience of like using AI and publishing and
just feeling crappy and not even reading what they posted. And suddenly they're like expecting next week and they have the motivation to say like, okay, I liked what I posted last week and I'm eager to see what I'm posting this week. So I think these are the two ways I'm thinking about kind of measuring this one is motivational. One is kind of hard metrics.
Matt Medeiros (21:12)
Yeah, let's turn our attention to the monetization piece. This one must be very difficult to have that conversation with ⁓ your customer about. Is that monetizing the business? How do you think? Do you think that most WordPress companies are doing it wrong on the monetization front, whether it's too cheap, too expensive, lifetime deals, people trying to force like a monthly subscription thing? Like, where does your mind sit with the monetization? What's the big problem there?
Ben (21:40)
Well, know, I'm ⁓ more of the, like, like I'm more of the marketing side and really distribution. And I think this is how you need to think about it. When it comes to pricing, it really involves other things like the product and, and like the strategy and like the product strategy. And I think like, you really need to see the product, how you can think about the, you know, the,
unit economics and figure it out. Like it's not that difficult to figure it out. And if there is a problem, if you're doing marketing and the distribution is working well, but you're not, you get tons of traffic, you get new users, but are not converting to paid users, then it's just a matter of like figuring out why and whether you should maybe change your pricing, change your differentiation.
your messaging, this, like I have the advantages that I have experienced with product marketing, like building those landing pages, those product pages and thinking about, you know, the micro copy and how you can kind of get people to convert. but it's like, it's deep work. It's like, sometimes it's challenging. ⁓ and it, it, it's, ⁓ I would say for
For products, there usually is a solution that also involves like researching, talking to customers. It's not something you can do in your head.
Matt Medeiros (23:20)
What's your take on lifetime deals? That's always a thing in the WordPress space. Do I do lifetime deals? Do I not do lifetime deals? Customers love lifetime deals, but there's a cost that comes with that ⁓ down the road. Any thoughts on lifetime deals?
Ben (23:35)
Well, well,
yeah, that relates to the other thing that I'm, I'm talking about, like moving into SAS, like understanding that there is a huge advantage to being part of the WordPress ecosystem. ⁓ but there is a need to at the same time, also market to just customers, not just WordPress customers, just, ⁓ SAS customers. And then you need to adhere to, you know,
It's pretty simple, like standards, like, you know, the price is usually what your competition ⁓ is charging. Usually you won't be able to charge like, you three, four times the amount. ⁓ So it's like things are moving so fast in that respect that you really need to be at the top of your game just to ⁓ adapt because.
I don't think just having, being in WordPress is enough to kind of secure your fact that you have an audience.
Matt Medeiros (24:43)
Yeah, yeah. Let's move to the distribution part. This is one that's often overlooked in a lot of conversations in WordPress, ⁓ even WordPress itself, right? Like people talk about like, it's gonna get dethroned by some other CMS or some, know, Webflow or AI. It's just like, man, you don't understand the distribution that WordPress has across ⁓ hundreds, if not thousands of hosting companies and brands across the world.
Same can be said about everyone's favorite enemy, is Awesomotive. ⁓ A lot of people are always talking about their marketing tactics, their pricing and stuff like that. And what people fail to realize is that's just on the surface. You're looking at that stuff, which is way, in my opinion, might not be the right phrase, but top of funnel or top of the stack. The Awesomotive and what Syed has built from a distribution channel is so much deeper.
Ben (25:16)
Thanks
Matt Medeiros (25:40)
and so much more valuable than the limited time deal that's presented every day or ⁓ Distribution, so hard to get, where does one start with distribution?
Ben (25:53)
I think the mistake that plugin developers can make is going through the route of Ossimotive. So they built an amazing, like, I don't know, I would say flywheel ⁓ of like a PLG movement. And they did it. Not a lot of companies can do that. And you need to appreciate that, that not a lot of companies will be able to do that. So what's the other route? And this is how everything kind of
Matt Medeiros (26:18)
I agree.
Ben (26:22)
Connects you always have like Decisions routes you can you can choose if you're not going through this flywheel of of like portfolio of products, which is almost impossible thing to create nowadays ⁓ Then the other way is like be there's a line by Jay Kanza was a marketer I like who's saying be their favorites be their favorite like yeah be their favorite like if you
Go deep into understanding your audience, doing everything I talked about, like being in their know. You know that nowadays that even if you have like, you know, a hundred followers, ⁓ a thousand followers, you can build a recurring business that is profitable. Everything depends on how much you want to make, what's your business model, how many employees you want to make. But it's possible to do that if you build.
Let's take an example of, I don't know, like we mentioned the security plugin. If you're able to understand the client at a much deeper level, ⁓ then you'll always win. Like you'll win over the awesome motives because they have a model where they they're selling McDonald's. They're selling something that's kind of ⁓ in that assembly line method.
And if you're building something that's ⁓ super unique and we've seen that happen, then yeah, you can create a product that has a mode that is continually developing and ⁓ is addressing the real needs of the ever changing needs of the audience.
Matt Medeiros (28:10)
Do you think it involves, I know Jay, actually work with Jay ⁓ a little bit at the podcast company that I worked at, ⁓ the Be Your Favorite, I see that as being human, being more connected to the person. These are things that don't scale really well, in my opinion, like having conversations, having product meetups for your own customers, doing webinars, fielding questions ⁓ outside of support.
It involves being a lot more, you know, roll up your sleeves and get connected. Is that still possible today? I know it's possible, but do you get pushback on that and say, you know, Ben, we want something that just scales infinitely. I want an AI chat bot. That's what I want when people hit my site. And you're like, no, no, no, you should really talk to these people first. How do you balance the scale and the human capital that's involved with this kind of method?
Ben (29:08)
think that it's not easy. think that how I approach it is like, I don't know. I don't know the best method to constantly getting deep insights into the needs of the audience. So I know which feature I need to develop next, but I'm curious about it. Like, so I'm trying to figure it out and I'm because you can easily go into like too much.
user research, right? I'm sitting, I'm researching, I'm asking questions. I'm not getting anywhere. So there's a certain balance and the way I solve it is like in terms of, ⁓ I look at it as a scientific method. Like I have a hypothesis. My users are really wanting this feature. Then I'm trying to prove it. I'm talking to five people and presenting this and seeing how it bounces.
And then I'm like this constant feedback loop. If you're very strategic about what you're trying to figure out, then you're going to reach some conclusions. Okay. It's like I came to this podcast and I said, okay, these are three problems that I think, ⁓ like WordPress, plugin developers are facing. It's because I thought of hypothesis that I can corroborate and, and, and see, and that's kind of.
What I'm trying to do, ⁓ I went off course a little bit, but I think this is like, that's the way you're trying to figure it out. if you want, okay, you build a product, okay? If you understand it never ends, the fact that you constantly need to ⁓ make it unique and win positioning, ⁓
then it's possible, but like, it's definitely a different world than the previous. I built a plugin, it's code, now I can just sit and get the profit.
Matt Medeiros (31:19)
Yeah, like SEO traffic, blog posts and, you know, lead people back to a landing page. All that stuff is a lot harder. ⁓ He's Ben Pines. You can find him at Ben Pines dot com. You click on the services. You can see the different services. I'm going to read for the four that I see right here. Founder content system, founder positioning and narrative sprint, AI assisted production workflow and podcasts and thought leadership outreach. want to just touch on this podcast and thought leadership outreach. No surprise to you as we're on a podcast. One of the things and this is
All part of like, I think a lot of the advice that you've given people, ⁓ know, people reach out, obviously reach out to the WP Minute to be on podcasts. And oftentimes it's not that it's a weak ⁓ pitch. It's just not a very like unique pitch. It's generally something that is just like, hey, we get this new thing. I'd love to talk to your audience about it. Right. And it's just like, OK.
you and a thousand other people want to do the same thing, I need to find something that's going to be valuable to the audience. But what I do often recommend to people, it just baffles me because if I were selling a product, ⁓ I would take full advantage of this. I often respond with, sounds pretty good, maybe we can fit you in in the future, you know, whatever. Like if it's not something that's like great, I'm just like, OK, it's
It's okay, but maybe sometime down the road we can have a conversation. But what you should do is join the WP Minute Slack channel for free to talk to other people. Like the whole point of the Slack group at the WP Minute is to have conversations with other WordPressers, right? Other people who love WordPress for, you know, what it is and whatnot. And so few people take me up on that offer. It blows my mind because it is a place
where you're gonna find people who just always wanna talk about WordPress. And if you got some WordPress thing, or like you said before, you've got this piece of advice that people can only get from you, why not be involved in as much as possible, especially in private communities where the hit rate is a terrible phrase, but the hit rate of conversation is so much better than just dropping it off into.
into X or LinkedIn where you're not going to get a super high engagement or like that kind of thought leadership engagement. the again, long way of getting to what's your one last advice for getting people motivated to get up off their seat and do something about it for their business?
Ben (34:00)
It's a challenge like being in communities is a challenge in terms of how you everything has to do with how you ⁓ spend the time and ⁓ kind of make it worthwhile for you to spend the time so you're looking for a way to ⁓ Spend time where you win the person you communicated to win like everyone wins
And I can share my own experience. Like I joined a growth mentor who's like, this is like a platform where you kind of help people. And like, I really love it. Like 30 minutes one-on-one where people come ask questions about topics that we discussed. And I just love helping people there. and so this is a way I found to interact that really contributes to my own kind of understanding and.
gives back to them. So, but it's hard, it's hard to fit, to find that internal motivation. So my one answer to this is internal motivation. Some people find it in WhatsApp communities, some in Slack groups. ⁓ and, and it's just a matter of discovering where your thing is and then committing to it.
Matt Medeiros (35:24)
Fantastic. Ben Pines, benpines.com. Ben, thanks for hanging out today. Anywhere else you want folks to go to say thanks?
Ben (35:31)
⁓ Sure, yeah, LinkedIn. I'm a lot of times on LinkedIn, so hit me up.
Matt Medeiros (35:37)
search for Ben Pines on LinkedIn. I'm sure he's got some non-AI generated posts. It's as human as it gets with Ben Pines. Ben, thanks for hanging out today.
Ben (35:42)
For sure. ⁓
Thanks.