Shift from SEO to Founder-Led Marketing

[00:00:00] Katie Keith: SEO has built a lot of WordPress product companies in the past, but AI is quietly dismantling the playbook. Search engine traffic is shrinking, content is getting commoditized, and Google is answering questions before anybody even clicks through to your site. So if organic search is no longer a reliable growth channel, what takes its place?

[00:00:27] The answer might be the one thing that AI genuinely can't replicate. You.

[00:00:36] Matt Cromwell: This is WP Product Talk, a place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management, and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go-to podcast for WordPress product owners. Buy WordPress product owners and now enjoy the show.

[00:01:05] Katie Keith: Hi, I am Katie Keith from Barn2,

[00:01:09] Ian Misner: and I'm Ian Meisner from Kestrel.

[00:01:12] Katie Keith: Now, before we get started, if you benefit from WP Product Talk, we would love your support. The easiest way to do that is just to hit subscribe Right now it only takes a second and it really. This out. Thank you so much.

[00:01:26] Ian Misner: Yeah, thank you. And, uh, huge thanks to Freemius as well for being our exclusive growth partner.

[00:01:31] Frees helps software makers grow, monetize, and succeed. Uh, it's a merchant of record program, uh, platform. They do everything you need for selling software, check out payments, subscriptions, licensing updates, uh, tax compliance, all the things so you can focus just on what you do best, building your product.

[00:01:51] Katie Keith: Yeah. Alright, let's jump into the show for this. We've invited Ben Pines as our guest. Welcome Ben.

[00:01:59] Ben Pines: Hi Katie. Hi in. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:02] Katie Keith: Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Please tell us a bit about yourself and what you do.

[00:02:07] Ben Pines: Well. Yeah. I've been a, a content marketer for 20 years. Believe it or not, uh, I was the first marketer at Elementor, uh, led the content teams there.

[00:02:18] Then, uh, did two years in, uh, an AI company in Israel called AI 21 Labs. And, uh, a year ago I decided to become a freelance, leave the Cozy job, and, uh, and, and focus on founder-led marketing because I believe this was where the market was heading, given AI and everything else. Uh, so that's the bet I did, and it seems to have been the, the right one.

[00:02:44] Katie Keith: Well, thank you so much for coming on. For people watching live on YouTube, we encourage you to leave your comments, questions, or feedback in the comments section, and we'll try to get to your comments while we are still live. Now, first, let's talk about the problem and the reason that we need to be talking about founder led marketing at the moment.

[00:03:06] Why do you think this is so important and timely? Ben?

[00:03:10] Ben Pines: Well, this is, uh, wp, uh, product doc and it's for WordPress product people, and they love SEO. Um, and the fact is that when, uh, S-E-O-S-E-O wasn't always there, so the beginning of the internet, um. People just blogged about things they found interesting.

[00:03:32] Okay. This was the two thousands, then Google came in. SEO was formed. Slowly techniques and strategies and influencers and this whole industry evolved. And uh, since. Ai, uh, there, there was a, a clear equation there where you put out content. You got, uh, money. And even, I remember SEO professionals I've worked with, they had equations.

[00:03:57] They had these, these Excel sheets that showed like how much content was produced, how much money I can expect to, to have, and then AI came in and, and, and switched this formula because. For a number of reasons, but basically if you are a consumer, if you're searching online, uh, and you've seen an article, you don't know if this article was written with the blood, sweat, and tears of the, the person, the expert, or was just something formulated by ai and this simple.

[00:04:25] Confusion made it, uh, um, you know, unusable. Uh, and basically we see now stats like LinkedIn recently, like last week, uh, they said they lost 60% of their traffic from search engines. Um, so that was the, the bad news in in, in terms of SEO, especially for WordPress, people who relied so much on it. Good news is there is.

[00:04:51] An alternative and I hope we'll be talking about this today.

[00:04:56] Katie Keith: Yeah, definitely. Um, I've seen with my own, uh, Barn2 website exactly what you've reported. Um, like just between January and October last year, the total entry page visits. To our site was down nearly 28% compared to the previous year. Um, and it's interesting because our traffic has gone down for certain types of content more than others.

[00:05:20] So blog and knowledge based content is the worst hit because of course, that's the stuff that AI is now answering instead. Uh, whereas product pages just declined by nearly 14%, which is like half, um, the overall. So it kind of, to me, that shows that less people are visiting our website in the early research research phase and previously loads of people would buy our plugins.

[00:05:46] In that stage, they would Google how to add checkbox options to WooCommerce products, for example. These really. Specific things. They would find our website and then they'd buy our products when they don't even know they want to plug in yet. They're just looking for a solution. Now that's all changing, and AI is answering questions often in non-product ways, such as code snippets and things like that.

[00:06:10] And our YouTube is down a bit. Uh, but it's, it's very steady compared to Google Organic. It does specifically seem to be about organic search. What about you, Ian? Have you seen that?

[00:06:22] Ian Misner: Yeah, I mean, we got a couple of websites that have very similar declines as what I think you're experiencing. Um, you know, the actual, uh.

[00:06:31] I mean, we're a little bit newer, so we didn't have this huge backlog of content to, to see the impact in the same way you did, I think. But ultimately, you know, the. The obvious, like, you know, very simple. How do you do this? How do you do that? WooCommerce problems that, uh, I think that, you know, over the years we've done a ton of to just draw in traffic, you know, attach your brand to a solution.

[00:06:52] Those like, no one's Googling that anymore, right? Like that's, that's not how you find it. Um, I think maybe something that's a little bit weird and that ties into the stats he shared a little bit though, is. We're seeing like a weird increase in like name search as well though. So like while all of the, you know, landing pages are declining, people are searching for the names of our products and then purchasing, which, you know, I have no attribution to point to AI for that, but it feels like it must be, you know, like they're finding about out about it somewhere else.

[00:07:23] And then those landing pages are still working. So.

[00:07:28] Katie Keith: Yeah, our direct traffic is up as well, and everybody says, yeah, as you say, well, there's no proof. That is because AI doesn't always link to you when it mentions you, so it is not all terrible. Our conversions aren't down in the same way that our traffic are to the same extent, but there's certainly been a hit and it's a scary time.

[00:07:48] Which brings us to Ben. What do you think the solution is?

[00:07:52] Ben Pines: Well, I would say the solution is what I named. Also my business founder led marketing. Uh, it's an up and coming, I think, uh, term. Um, so it's very simple. It's where the company's founder, uh, or CEO directly drives the promotional efforts, the marketing through LinkedIn content, through videos, through a a, any means, but they're involved in the, the marketing.

[00:08:18] I think this is especially, again, relevant for WordPress products because it's usually. Small companies, so obviously it's relevant for small companies with smaller teams. It's also relevant, I would say, to larger companies that already have like these uh uh, ads, but want to elevate, let's say, to move from B2C to B2B.

[00:08:43] So they also need to kind of work on their reputation, branding, marketing from a more personal perspective. So that's another use case where founder led could be relevant.

[00:08:56] Katie Keith: Yeah, that's true. Um, it's interesting because, um, we'll get to our specific stories in a minute, but, um, some companies have very clear founders behind them and others don't.

[00:09:08] Um, in the past, I'd say I've seen success. Amongst both. Um, like an example might be a Y for example, which is a competitor of both Ian and myself in the Woo space. And uh, you don't really see the people from them. There's so much. Um, you just see their products in wordpress.org or whatever, whereas other companies.

[00:09:30] Um, I suppose Yost would be a good example, traditionally was all about one person to the extent that, uh, we discussed this with Yost on a previous episode where if they actually had to debrand the company from the individual because they wanted to sell it. So it is interesting to see a new perspective on that in the age of.

[00:09:51] Ben Pines: Yeah. And I also have experience with this, with, uh, like leading them marketing at elementary, at the early stage where I was kind of like the face of the company. And that gave me the perspective of, of firsthand, of, of doing that. You have, uh, people like Adam Robinson, outside WordPress, uh, he. Had a huge success doing his LinkedIn, uh, uh, marketing, where he focused on founder led, basically, and he was managing to, um, deal with competitors who were golias, like Apollo and, um, six sense, and basically one with the retention.com, and now he's just scaling his business.

[00:10:34] Um, and it's been hugely successful here, but there's also been examples of, again, smaller companies, um, WordPress companies that have done the same.

[00:10:48] Ian Misner: Yeah, I mean, I would say my, I have a lot of thoughts on, you know, what is and what isn't founder-led marketing. I would love to hear maybe a bit of a definition around it. When I, when I think of companies doing it though, I mean, I would kind of point like. Katie, you've shared a lot in the past about, you know, jumping into Twitter and just sort of showing up and, you know, your, your brand essentially almost getting bigger than Barn2 at times, right?

[00:11:12] As far as, you know, within the community and all that. Um, like, I don't know, Ben maybe could help define like what is and what isn't. Founder led marketing. Okay.

[00:11:21] Ben Pines: Right. So I think I have my own definition. Okay. So I'll share my personal definition. So I'm not sure if this is the, uh, but this is what I'm using when I'm talking to clients.

[00:11:30] So basically I think there's a, um, a leap that is doing that, that you have to do when you decide to be, to go founder led. So basically, when you. Think about, um, marketing your product, you have kind of like four options. Okay? So you either go PLG, product led, where the product, um, um, markets itself think Calendly, you know, um, you have sales led, which is more B2B, where you are meeting, you have demos.

[00:12:01] It, it's kind of energy consuming. But if the. If each deal is a lot of money, then it, it makes sense to go sales led. You have marketing led, which is, um, mostly paid ads. Maybe you could say SEO, this kind of, uh, content where, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, less personal and the, the disadvantage here, it, it's, uh, if these are ads, we know that just, it's so hard to be there in terms of CAC and in terms of, of.

[00:12:33] Being with competitors that are larger than you. And that leaves founder led. And someone asked me a, a while back, like, is it just founder? What if the CTO wants to be like, founder is just like, because Dave Gerhard, the, the person who kind of coined this, uh, from Drift. That's why it's named. But this is, I would say maybe a more close definition is senior led marketing.

[00:12:56] But you, you know the deal. It's you decide. That you have a role in the marketing. So once you decide this, then the rest is, is like, um, uh, is menial. Like it's less important. But when you decide I'm taking on this role, it actually means I'm going to do this. I'm gonna be active on, uh, LinkedIn, but not just on LinkedIn.

[00:13:20] I'm gonna go to conferences. I'm gonna go to podcasts. I'm gonna, uh, maybe be a keynote speaker. There's no end how far you can. Take this. Um, but it starts with a decision because if you're a small company, you can't go sales led PLG you, you, you have to focus your efforts, especially if you're, you know, 50 employees or less.

[00:13:44] So I would say 80% go, uh, if you decide to go founder led 80% of the efforts will be. In that direction because it takes time and effort and the rest, you're kind of, you know, doing a bit of sales, doing a deal of PLG and, and the rest.

[00:14:02] Katie Keith: Yeah, I'd love to know more specifics about how you did this at Elementor.

[00:14:08] It's pretty impressive. You were the first marketing hire there, and so, and it was such a competitive industry. There was some massive page builders when Elementor, um, became a thing. So how did you do that? And. So first of all, how do you do that as founded of sort of, or senior led marketing? And then how did you move away from it because you're no longer there, are you?

[00:14:35] So what was your story with Elementor?

[00:14:38] Ben Pines: Oh, it's a big story. So I would say, uh, I just wanna say that this last year I really productized it because I offered it as, as a service, not, not as an employee. I really had to productize it. So nowadays the system goes, it's one-on-one, uh, one hour. I sit with the founder every week.

[00:14:57] From that, we carve out the content for the week, plus we deal with all the rest of the strategy and distribution. Element. So this is the system that I, uh, that I built nowadays 10 years later. But back in 2016, uh, I was the first marketer. We were five people. You know, now there are a 400 employee company, but we were five people and I had to do marketing, so I did everything.

[00:15:23] So I kind of juggled everything. So I contacted everyone in the WordPress ecosystem. I think even you, Katie back then, and I. So podcasts, built affiliate programs, started creating YouTube, ch like a YouTube channel, created a blog. So I kind of juggled like every, um, first, uh, marketer does. And sort of slowly this grew because the, the product was also pretty awesome.

[00:15:57] Katie Keith: Yeah. Interesting. So

[00:16:00] Ian Misner: yeah,

[00:16:00] Katie Keith: elementary is not just about you. Now in that sense. So how was that transition?

[00:16:08] Ben Pines: Well, um, yeah, along the way when I started, as I said, I did kind of everything and along the way I, I, I kind of found my niche with, which is heading the content. So my role was kind of, uh, two ways I headed the, the content team, which included the social, um, and all the content efforts.

[00:16:28] And I, I was also kind of the advocate. So going on, uh, conferences and, and, and. And podcasts and the likes. So this was the role for a few years, and gradually I kind of, uh, um, stopped being the, the elementary guy. And, and, um, yeah, and, and finally I. Just said I quit, I guess.

[00:16:58] Ian Misner: Yeah. I, I think for like the, the, I, I'm still sort of fixating on like what is and what isn't founder led marketing to some degree. 'cause I think that at times, some of. Uh, my company, we have like 40 WooCommerce extensions. We don't have like one product to really lead the message, right? We don't have like a, you know, we have a rental products plugin, but it's one of many as an example, right?

[00:17:20] So, you know, being the rental products company would be really easy, right? Like, the message around that has been really, would be simple. I think a lot of what I end up doing day to day could look like. It's theoretically founder led marketing, but I'm not doing it on purpose, right? I'm doing it like.

[00:17:35] Because this is just like where I'm ending up. Uh, maybe like, again, when like having a strategy around product-led growth, that makes sense to me. Having a strategy around having like a sales motion. I understand. Like I could go make a list of steps to go do that. Um, do you have maybe again, like, you know, don't give away the whole farm here, but like, do you have like a list of things that, you know, what actions does someone take?

[00:18:00] Ben Pines: I actually Al am all for giving it away. Like I don't care.

[00:18:04] Ian Misner: Yeah.

[00:18:04] Ben Pines: Like, and in my substack, I, I actually, a few weeks ago, I, I gave away the whole systems and it's pretty simple and I'm keeping keep on developing it. So basically we mentioned the one-on-one meeting, so I think this is important, having that.

[00:18:19] One hour where, you know, this is the time where you, uh, reflect on the week we're trying to connect what you do in your work. The basic premise, uh, how I see founder led, why it works. We mentioned ai, we mentioned, uh, SEO going down. What hadn't, uh, went down is expertise. So with AI we have an engine that can deliver answers.

[00:18:47] Are people nowadays less confused? No, they're more confused. You ask AI like, what are the five things I need to do to succeed in business? And it gives you exactly the five, it hallucinates the five, but nevermind that. Then you tell it, okay, what are the 15 or what are the 50? And it'll give it to you.

[00:19:05] It's just a yes person there. It, it's useless in, in that respect of, of strategy, and actually doing action. Um, so having that expert is super important. Having that mentorship is super important. I have people I still follow nowadays that I consider mentors, and when they put out some content, I read it and sometimes it changes a direction that I have, like Erica Schneider and Jay Zo.

[00:19:36] They're more in the content world, but, but yes, mentorship is super important. So. That's the basic idea. That expertise still happens. Now you're thinking, how can I get the micro expertise because I'm not set good in, I have a, a, a very specific niche expertise. I have my work week, and when I offer my service, my clients pay me money because they find that they, they recognize my expertise because I built this one-on-one.

[00:20:11] Relationship. How can you build this one to many relationship? The answer is you find a way to connect your content, your marketing with your work, what you do during the week. So that's just a little preliminary. So one-on-one meeting. That's why it's so important because you reflect back on the week and say, what happened in my work that I can use to create content that will build my expertise?

[00:20:41] Okay, so now you have this and you have consistency. Um, you also need a certain, I call it the big idea. So even though you have 50 products, they have to have some sort of, uh, like idea behind it, some sort of thing that you want to say to the world. Like, I'm coming here and saying, SEO is dead. Founder led.

[00:21:07] Um, is the thing, it's something that people can communicate with me and say, you're full of, you know, baloney and they can argue with me. And this is how people decide where, what is true, what, what's the action they need to take in the world? They listen to experts. So, um, so you are creating this content according to your.

[00:21:34] Bigger idea. You're doing it every week. That's the content part, the content and strategy part. The last thing that you need to take care of is the distribution part, because you, there are ways to amplify your distribution. You go on podcasts, you, you run webinars. Um, so I find that if you have all these three strategy, content, and distribution.

[00:22:04] You can actually build your founder led marketing. You can build your, um, marketing for your product. You don't need this sort of, you know, immense marketing system that includes Marketo and includes like billion dollar tech stack and Apollo and everything else. Um, you just need these, these three, and it's working for, for my clients.

[00:22:30] It's, it's, I'm getting great results.

[00:22:33] Ian Misner: And I like, I will say like as much as I, you know, kind of make a joke about like, I think I'm doing this, but I don't know how is sort of the vibe, but I mean, how do you know it's working? Right? Because when we look back to SEO, you know, I got charts, I got number go up, I got a tool that tells me here's the seven new titles you need to make, number go up bigger, um, and.

[00:22:54] A lot of what I struggle with, with, you know, going to conferences, showing up here right now, right? Like what counts, what doesn't is like the, you know, the marketing's working, what marketing's working and why, how do I know where to focus my efforts?

[00:23:07] Ben Pines: Let's do it backwards and I'm gonna specifically, uh, take an example of some of a small service business or a small product business because they are very worried about results.

[00:23:19] They can't, like if I'm Intercom, I can do this for. Years and not care if I'm getting results. So let's take that, that business that cares very much to get results. So first of all, let's take the basic business, uh, results of like, I'm getting more clients, I'm getting more leads, uh, I'm getting pipeline.

[00:23:38] This will take time. If you build, think of yourself following someone you, you won't go from, uh, following someone, someone who started posting content to hiring them. So this, I would say, would take you around three and four months until you're, you're, you're gonna see an up also what it, what does it mean up?

[00:24:01] Because usually when you follow those gurus, those 1 million, I don't know, uh, um, uh, grooves that, that have million, a million followers, they're talking about. Hundreds and, and dozens of, of, uh, leads per per month. From my conversation with small businesses, sometimes it's enough to have like 10 sales calls, 10 between 10 and 20 sales calls a month.

[00:24:27] That's good for them to sustain their business and to grow their business stead. So if we're thinking about that, having an impact of, wow, this week I had one more cell, one more discovery call. Something is working. Um,

[00:24:44] Ian Misner: so. So then is it fair again, working backwards? Is it fair to say then, so you set sort of like a, a goal for pipeline, a goal for volume and it's like rapid experimentation using your expertise.

[00:24:56] Like, uh, again, like to tie this to maybe a more specific question, I've spent the last year exploring the idea of like, we should do more video. You know, show up, have a face, you know, every person present. So people. Can tie, you know, the solution or they trust you even if they don't know the product yet.

[00:25:13] Like that kind of feeling to, to build that. Um, if we set a goal though, and like, is, is founder-led marketing as simple as just experimenting with a few individuals towards reaching those goals? Or am I missing something?

[00:25:27] Ben Pines: Experimenting is difficult. Really doing experiment. Most people don't do experiments.

[00:25:32] So what does an experiment look like? An experiment. An experiment looks like this. I have a certain strategy, meaning if I say, if I talk about SEO is dead and the move is founder led marketing for, for four months, this will generate interest and, and it'll build my branding and people will come and be interested in my service.

[00:25:59] And it's not an experiment that I'm taking out of thin air. I'm actually, this big idea that I have is based on my work experience. So first of all, let's, we, we set what is an experiment. It's something that I'm running with something like four months. Okay? So that's one thing that I'm not sure a lot of people are, are looking at experiments like this.

[00:26:24] They think, okay, I'll do one landing page and see if it works. So. I'm running with this for four months. Second thing is I'm doing it consistently and this is also something I'm not seeing, uh, people do. So I'm gonna post between two and three, uh, times a week without fail. Like that's what's going to happen every week.

[00:26:46] Every week. So that's another part of the experiment. And then you're doing it for, for four weeks. From my experience, after one month, you're gonna see an in. If you're, let's take, uh, LinkedIn specifically bec, but it works on every platform. I've done this on substack on Instagram. After one month, you're gonna see a huge, um, um, growth in exposure and in engagement.

[00:27:16] So I've seen also like 10 times more. So you're getting 10 times more results, even though it's moving from like 1000 exposure to 10,000 exposure. So I, I have a caveat that in, in the early stages it's easy to show, uh, large growth, but okay, you, you have an experiment, you know how long it's going to last, you know what to expect, which is after a month.

[00:27:43] Increase in exposure after three, four months increase in, um, um, in the leads that you're getting leads and, and, um, basically in the, also in sales, what is missing? Basically, that's the whole system. What's missing if you're a small time, uh, uh. Service provider or product person, sometimes it's gonna be hard for you to think this long term to put in four months.

[00:28:18] So I would say incorporate into that. Also outreach. Incorporate a marketing strategy, like a sales strategy that will keep you alive. In that runway. It's like a startup. You have that runway. So I would like, if you're thinking about investing and you're saying, yeah, but it's a long time, maybe I need some short term, I would say no, invest in this long term, but also, uh, complement this with like more direct things like ads or, or, or, um, or outreach or whatever is working.

[00:28:56] Um, so you're not strapped for, for cash.

[00:29:04] Ian Misner: Yeah. Uh, so I think, uh, the next part here, we, we normally run through a bit of like a story time on, you know, experiment, experience with these sorts of things. Uh, should we jump into that next year then, Katie?

[00:29:14] Katie Keith: Yeah. So should we do yours then? You've talked about, um, some things, but not a kind of bigger picture perspective.

[00:29:21] Ian Misner: Yeah. So, well, I mean, like I said, I'm the, I love this topic and I'm really appreciate Ben, you really diving into it with this. 'cause I think that you take sort of more of a structure to something I think I am kind of doing, but haven't been as deliberate about as I probably should be. And it's like a bit of a background, you know.

[00:29:39] Uh, we were with Skybird back in the day. We had done, like, we built a pretty big business on mostly SEO, right? Like in documentation as a way for people to identify us. You know, they, they find a solution. Google sends them, they get into the product. If the product's happy, they tell their friends. That was really easy.

[00:29:56] Getting into this though, with Kestrel, like 18 months ago, we were starting from basically zero, right? Like the brand nobody had heard of. Um, you know, we did a few things to try to make a little bit of a splash, but, you know, I accidentally kind of encountered this thing where, you know, even like on Twitter, the brand account has like 200 followers.

[00:30:13] Mine has like a thousand. And it's just simply because, you know, it's easier to show up and be genuine with your name and your face on things. And I've sort of like really leaned into that. Almost unintentionally. So, you know, even the blog content, um, that we are still doing, it's been a bit lot more inconsistent than it would've been in the past, simply because, you know, it works, but we need like an angle, we need like a hook, something that we're adding that's unique or else

[00:30:39] Ben Pines: uhhuh.

[00:30:39] Ian Misner: It's just another thing for people to ignore. Um, I think. So to tie that all together though, we actually just recently launched a new product in a community where I don't have as much of a presence yet. And you know, I'm really trying to sort of kickstart things there. And I've been doing this thing that I would love maybe even your guys to share your opinion on of just, I don't have a big audience, I'm just getting in the room with people, you know, talking one-on-one with customers, agencies, developers, and like just getting them excited.

[00:31:08] And the thing is. The thing that it, it's market research, but again, very unintentional. I'm testing like lines, angles, hooks, you know, I'm like saying words about my products to one person to try to see how they respond to it, see which words resonate to the, to this audience. Um, and again, I, that's, I think it's founder led marketing because I couldn't do that as a brand.

[00:31:32] It's just I'm showing up to say hi. You know, I'm just some guy. Right. Um, yeah.

[00:31:38] Ben Pines: I, you, you mentioned before, like the things that, that you love, the things that, uh, don't scale in our preliminary, uh, talk, like things that don't scale. Yeah. Yeah. So do you think this could be like your angle, what you are bringing, like the brand you're billing for yourself and maybe you can show up, uh, you know, and, and deliver this because.

[00:31:58] Ian Misner: And I, I think, yeah, like, uh, the do things that don't scale has always been a big push for me because, you know, I, I have a support background, right? You know, helping individual customers at scale is hard, but ultimately, um, you know, if you get in a room with somebody who, you know, they think you're, you're one of the founders of the product, you're, they think you're somebody.

[00:32:16] You know what I mean? So you, you show up, you say hi. They think that they're like privileged to have your time. I don't think that these folks recognize though, that they're the ones doing you the favor. Right. You know, getting to hear what they think about the message, having them try out the product, tell you what they dislike and what they do, what they do and don't like.

[00:32:33] And a lot of those people end up going on to use it like that is, it's like, it's almost the sales call, but I'm not selling, you know, I literally am just showing up. To, to get their thoughts and opinions and to use that, to build content, to, to understand what language actually resonates with that type of person to use it to, to put into the product listings or, you know, the blog posts or whatever.

[00:32:55] Ben Pines: It's, it's really a feedback, like it's a virtual cycle. So it's, it's both a virtual cycle and a win-win where the person getting you on the call is also getting, you know, the, the you that they know, the, the. I dunno if you build it already, but the, like, the em, that's the don't, uh, do things that don't scale CEO, you know, and they're getting that.

[00:33:19] And then you're taking insights from that conversation. You're pushing this to LinkedIn, then people resonate, write a comment. Then this turns into you outreach someone, they read your posts and they say, oh. So it improves your outreach as well. And there's some sort of virtuous cycle that happens that everyone wins, like in comparison to like, you know, shady marketing where it feels like someone is selling you something in this method, everyone wins.

[00:33:50] Ian Misner: Yeah. And I mean a very, I I may be sorry, I, one more quick example of that. So we have our checkout product, checkout wc. Um, we were getting a lot of great feedback on. The, the, the thing that it actually does is like the UX is better. People land on the checkout page. They trust it, they feel good about it.

[00:34:05] But we've had to do all these like features, these bells, these whistles, the things people Google for. You know, no one's googling better UX on checkout, you know what I mean? Like that's not the thing they're seeking. I. So to try to put the thing that really matters in the hands of more people, and based on those discussions getting that feedback loop, we, we, we really enhanced the free version of the product.

[00:34:25] So we could just put it in more people's hands so they could experience the, the higher value part, um, rather than the, um, it's not about the message, it's about giving them the re the, the resource, the value as early as possible. Right. So, uh, Katie, how about you?

[00:34:45] Katie Keith: Yeah, it's an interesting one. In some ways, I'd say I'm quite successful at founder led marketing, but at on the other hand, I've done it really badly because the people that follow me are not directly the people who buy my products.

[00:35:03] Um, so. That's an issue. I've kind of, I suppose, made a name for myself sharing information about how to build a successful WordPress product, appealing to WordPress product companies. Um, and they are not the people that are typically buying my products. Some of them. Are also developers or agencies that maybe have plugins on the side or aspire to transitioning to selling products.

[00:35:29] So maybe at some point they will have a project and they will think of one of my products as a result. But that's really indirect. And I do know that some people that follow me on X, for example, have bought my products as a result of my tweets, but that's. Very minimal, and that's not what people follow me for.

[00:35:49] If you contrast that to say, uh, Ben being prominent in the community, talking about the benefits and strategies of founder-led marketing, that is a direct correlation with your target audience. People that want to get better at founder-led marketing with mine, it's, there's a little bit of a mismatch.

[00:36:08] There. And so we, you were talking earlier, Ben, about the measurement side of things and measuring improvements in, um, your data and sales and appointments, whatever your metric is. I certainly couldn't do that. So I just show up and get many business benefits from the things that I do, such as like learning from other people in the community, um, being invited to talk at different events, some of which might end up being my target audience.

[00:36:38] So, for example, I was invited to speak an event today that I just had a call with somebody about, which is targeted at agencies. So hopefully those will be my target audience. But my primary audience is not people that are buying products for their clients, and I feel a bit uncomfortable about that because while it's something I enjoy, it means the ROI isn't measurable.

[00:37:02] And is it the best use of my time?

[00:37:06] Ben Pines: I, I think this is. Uh, one of the biggest problems, um, because I also experienced this, like when I started, I was kind of talking about marketing and things that interest me and I wasn't getting, like, I, I also tried to build the community and the people in the community weren't relevant.

[00:37:24] ICP and I had to change because we're like the. The, the worst thing that, the worst problem that we have as, as founders is time. Uh, and it's, it's, if our time is directed to creating content that doesn't serve our ICP, it's a problem. It, it's a complex problem because sometimes you, you have to match, um, the, the ICP, your direct clients, but you also have to match who are your audience.

[00:37:56] On the platforms, and sometimes there's kind of a workaround around it. I, I'll explain. I have one of my, uh, clients, they have, uh, uh, uh, a WordPress plugin and we started by, um, talking to, uh, agencies. Uh, creating content around stuff that is interesting to website agencies and we find, we found we couldn't get any traction, but then we we're, we're, what we're doing right now is we're pivoting towards talking also to the ICP of, um, other plugging developers.

[00:38:35] And this way, the knowledge that this, this person has, the, the CEO, uh, is a lot broader. It's the expertise is a lot more relevant to, uh, plugin developers. And then it's like, it's a more indirect thing because plugin developers might be also agencies or they might connect him to agencies. So sometimes you have to play the game of icp.

[00:39:02] It's not,

[00:39:03] Ian Misner: yeah.

[00:39:03] Ben Pines: Yeah.

[00:39:04] Ian Misner: There, there is a distribution thing there too, though, and I, I don't know if this is actually correct. Um, this might be me coping 'cause I, I have similar issues at times, but I, I do genuinely believe that, you know. Because you know, Katie, you're out in the community, you're visible, and other developers and agencies know who you are.

[00:39:21] You know, when it comes time to recommend a product that's on your list, I'm gonna recommend yours to a pot like one of our customers before someone else's, right? So even if it's not the exact audience that you're targeting, that you're getting, you're building that trust with, I think you are getting, you know.

[00:39:36] Whether it's the most efficient use of your time is debatable, but is it valuable? I think that's pretty clear. Cut that. Yeah, like you still, you know, those benefits are still accruing as a result, right.

[00:39:48] Katie Keith: Yeah, that definitely does happen. And then people will recognize you, um, at the point they come to buy your products and, uh, sometimes they're a bit surprised.

[00:39:57] Oh, that's Katie's products, I didn't realize. Um, but there is some of that. It's just whether that's the most direct way to achieve that. I've been experimenting with ways to make the most of all of this on our website, given that the people. The finders may not know me from social or something, but they've, I mean, Google is still our biggest source of sales by far.

[00:40:21] It's dropped, yeah. But it is still our biggest channel. So people find us from Google or AI or whatever, they don't know who I am, so how can we make. Be a benefit to that, and we found a few ways to do that. Some of it is things like adding trust factors to the website. We have, for example, a media coverage page where various interviews and podcasts and talks and things that I have or sometimes my team members have done to show this is a company that is actually out there doing things and is respected in the WordPress.

[00:40:54] Base. Um, a project that's ongoing at the moment that isn't launched is that we're experimenting with putting pictures of real people at the top of our product pages. We don't wanna take over the product, but in this world of ai, we kind of wanna put a face. To it. Uh, we've experimented with designs with just me, with a quote about why we built the product or what we're more likely to go with is some little circles somewhere in the top with different team members.

[00:41:22] So me first and then some other people. And partly people might recognize us, but if they don't, at least it shows a face to the company. So it's ideas like that that we're trying to use to create a more direct benefit, but I feel that it is still indirect.

[00:41:42] Ben Pines: For sure that, that those are some, uh, great ideas.

[00:41:45] Uh, it shows indication, uh, to the people searching that, that it's relevant. That again, it's bridging the connection between who you are, what you do, where you go, and the the product experience.

[00:42:02] Ian Misner: Yeah.

[00:42:03] Katie Keith: So shall we move to best advice now? This is, um, we wrap up every show with a quick round table question, which is, what is your best single piece of advice for anyone who is thinking about how to reduce their dependence on SEO and grow their personal brand to kind of safeguard their product business against these changes caused by ai?

[00:42:26] Do you wanna go first, Ben?

[00:42:28] Ben Pines: Yeah. So I have a few things. First, what you should avoid. Uh, I think if, uh, the AI thing that you're reading suggests AI superpowers, you should definitely avoid it. AI is great at helping what you're doing, the workflows that you're doing, it won't give you superpowers. It, it's just, it's not, uh, gonna work.

[00:42:50] Also, avoid, we've been talking a lot about founder, uh, branding and foreign marketing. Avoid billionaire mentors. Mentors are very important, but the billionaire ones, they just, they're full of. Crap there. It's just useless advice. So find more niche, small, uh, um, mentors. They're, they're much more valuable, I find.

[00:43:12] Um, and then what you can do proactively is, again, we're we, we talked about establishing. For deciding you want to do founder uh, marketing as something, as a decision, then think of what is your big idea that you're coming with? What are the formats that you're going to publish week over week? Run this system consistently for a while.

[00:43:38] Um, and only when it's like running smoothly you can think of actually, um, doing. Uh, other stuff like expanding it a little bit, like experimenting with podcasts and with conferences and, um, slowly you'll build the system that doesn't overwhelm you and you feel like just, it's too much.

[00:44:04] Katie Keith: Yeah. Good advice.

[00:44:05] What about you, Ian?

[00:44:07] Ian Misner: Yeah, I mean, I think my best advice for this topic is to maybe. Ignore some of the tools for, for, for how you share your information. I think ultimately the things that work best now always did work best of have the right answer, confidently share it, give more value than you ask for people to give back.

[00:44:29] And if you continue to do that, it doesn't matter if it's ai, it doesn't matter if it's SEO, um, you know, all the big companies, they wanna deliver the best information. So if you, you know, give unapologetically. You can be the source of that information and, um, measuring ROI is important, but maybe it's hard sometimes.

[00:44:48] And if you just do what's good, do what's right, it might work out. And I think, I think that's gonna continue working. Yeah. You, Katie?

[00:44:57] Katie Keith: Yeah. Uh, for me, I'm gonna say, um, do as I say, not what I do. And by that I mean, um, think about how you are going to do marketing, um, with yourself as, um, somebody that is in the public.

[00:45:12] I, and target that at your actual audience in the way that I didn't. Um, well, uh, that's a wrap, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you online?

[00:45:26] Ben Pines: I am usually on LinkedIn and also I have a SUBSTACK called the founder led marketer.

[00:45:34] Ian Misner: Yeah, awesome. I'll check that out. Thank you. And, uh, if you're enjoying these shows, please do a fist, a favor and hit subscribe on YouTube.

[00:45:41] It's free, it's easy, it's literally right there. It helps support getting this in front of more people and, you know, other WordPress product product builders. So we'd really appreciate it.

[00:45:51] Katie Keith: Yeah. And next week, uh, we will be back with guest an Anthony Franco on avoiding AI Failures by using AI first principles.

[00:46:01] So very current topic that people are always interested to know more about. Well, thank you for watching. Bye.