We want to thank the Woo community for joining us last week to talk all about the future of marketing Woo. Mahrie Boyle, VP Integrated Marketing, and Tamara Niesen, CMO, Woo were on hand to walk us through the way Woo thinks about marketing, including our target customer profile and how we can generate more demand in that target market. We also had Brent MacKinnon, Product Marketing & Developer Advocacy, and Olivia Jorgensen, Demand Gen, on hand to answer your questions.
Key highlights
Here’s a quick summary of Woo’s strategic evolution and new approach to marketing.
Woo Marketing behind the curtain
We shared a behind-the-scenes look at the teams that drive our marketing engine forward, including product and integrated marketing, creative and brand, and our customer success team.
Our vision is to provide a platform that evolves alongside your ambitions.
Woo objectives
To spread the word about WooCommerce, our work is guided by two pillars:
- Drive platform growth and brand awareness
- Increase monetization and retention through services, subscriptions, and partners
We want to grow the entire ecosystem and increase opportunities for monetization, enabling reinvestment back into the product and ecosystem. This is the flywheel, and the community- from our agency partners to our marketplace vendors- are critical to the success of the platform.
That success also allows us to invest in programs and marketing to create more demand for products and more business for all of our partners.
Demand generation roadmap
Customer acquisition isn’t as straightforward as showing someone an ad once, they click it, they decide to move their business to WooCommerce. There’s a lot of awareness and perception-building to get to that point.
Platform decisions are infrequent, high-consideration, and complex. It’s not a spontaneous decision to switch commerce platforms. There’s typically multiple decision makers and influencers involved. In the case of established commerce brands, that typically involves the founder/CEO, a technical buyer and marketing.
The buyer cycle for commerce platforms is 3-6 or more years, so our target audience isn’t always going to be ready to buy, or in our case switch platform providers, in a given quarter or period. All decisions start with a consideration set, and Woo needs to be a strong player in that consideration set.
Relaunching the Woo brand was the first step. Now we’re building the full demand engine, to reach our target audience and build trust and credibility with Woo.
Campaign approach
Thematic campaigns throughout the year will include updated messaging, creative and content that we’re pushing in front of our prospect audience. Each theme will have a campaign set with content across funnel stages, directed to different buyer profiles, like founders, marketers, or technical buyers.
We’re rolling out advertising across a full digital media playbook: display, social, video, newsletter, and podcast. It’s a highly targeted program based on an initial data build of a prospect audience, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see our ads.
We’re also creating supportive, user-centric assets and informative, educational, and entertaining content across all programming. You might notice us exploring industry events, louder release marketing, and alternative strategies to increase PR and thought leadership.
Example campaigns in market
Yours Truly
We launched a new platform campaign in May. The campaign is based on Woo’s unique offer of customization and ownership for businesses – called, Yours Truly. With Yours Truly, we hone in on the fact that with WooCommerce, there are no lock-ins or limits to what you can do. Yours truly puts control squarely in the hands of the merchant. Your business belongs to you, not to your service providers or tech stack.
Customize without the cost
Woo gives you the MOST control over your total cost of ownership. We showcase flexibility in cost and tech stack through an expert panel with agency and tech partners, a cost overview and online calculator.
Open discussion
The event ended with a candid community discussion, from questions about our monetization strategies to challenges around ecosystem priorities. A few high-level takeaways include:
- The importance of third-party developers and community members in promoting WooCommerce through content, storytelling, and social proof. Show the world what you’re building with Woo!
- The balance between providing choice in an open-source environment and offering curated, opinionated recommendations for different merchant journeys. Extensibility and customization are key value props and were the centerpiece of our first marketing campaign, Yours Truly.
- The increased value from recent investments in programs like Automattic for Agencies and our Marketplace that exist to help drive growth of the entire ecosystem.
Let’s keep the momentum
Thanks again to everyone who joined the call. Whether you’re a first-time developer or a long-time partner, your feedback, questions, and ideas help shape the future of WooCommerce.
Our ecosystem voices help shape how Woo is seen, understood, and chosen. And that starts with how we show up together.
If you’re wondering, “What can we do?”—you’re already doing it. But since you asked…
- Share and amplify Woo content aimed at merchants (e.g., X, LinkedIn, Instagram)
- Showcase the Woo stores and case studies you’ve helped bring to life
- Add your voice to the conversation through thought leadership
The more we tell real stories of Woo’s flexibility, scale, and impact, the more we gain. Tag us. Send us your best builds. Engage with Woo and our leadership across channels. We’re investing in this momentum, and we want to keep building it with you.
Let’s keep the conversation going:
- Visit the Developer Blog.
- Join the Community Slack.
- Subscribe to the Developer Newsletter.
See you at the next session!
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