You’ve spent last 4 months developing a WordPress theme. You have an Apple product on the cover of your marketplace listing. You’ve spent extra resources to make your theme fully responsive. You’ve passed the codex requirements and you have an infrastructure in place to provide support to your customers.
There’s just one problem. Your marketing and promoting efforts are not generating nearly enough interest for your theme. What you could’ve done differently and what can you fix right now?
There’s just one problem. Your marketing and promoting efforts are not generating nearly enough interest for your theme. What you could’ve done differently and what can you fix right now?
1. Know your customer
Is your customer a fellow developer, who doesn’t care how your theme looks, because he will be adjusting it to his client’s needs? Or is it a marketer who’s looking for a one-page website and all he cares about conversion optimisation?
They both are looking for a WP theme to fit their needs, but they are in fact expecting a completely different set of benefits from the theme.
Don’t just assume how your customer is. Reach out to your first clients manually. Ask them who they are and how they are using your theme. This will give you the necessary intel and help you structure your promotional efforts around their persona.
6. Host a giveaway
You can giveaway you own premium theme or give away something else that is still extremely valuable to your target audience. Something like two years of free hosting or email newsletter sending software subscription. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but you’ll have better chances of the giveaway going viral, if the prize is of high value.
To host a giveaway, use KingSumo Giveaway WP plugin or Rafflecopter. Both will let you set up a custom landing page and provide an engine to encourage people to share the giveaway on social networks. The more people you invite, the more entries in the giveaway you get and thus the higher is your chance at winning the grand prize.
Is your customer a fellow developer, who doesn’t care how your theme looks, because he will be adjusting it to his client’s needs? Or is it a marketer who’s looking for a one-page website and all he cares about conversion optimisation?
They both are looking for a WP theme to fit their needs, but they are in fact expecting a completely different set of benefits from the theme.
Don’t just assume how your customer is. Reach out to your first clients manually. Ask them who they are and how they are using your theme. This will give you the necessary intel and help you structure your promotional efforts around their persona.
2. Sell on alternative marketplaces
Conventional marketplaces are seriously overcrowded and dominated by the power users from way back. Not to mention the severe exclusivity rules certain marketplaces have in place (I’m looking at you, Envato). What you should do instead is submit your theme to marketplaces with no exclusivity rules, where you can easily get featured with a quality product. A marketplace like Sellfy that only takes 5% of your profits or Themesnap, that takes 25%.
3. Give Away Free Stuff
On your own hosted website, give away free version of your product. Or if you don’t want to support that, give away something else – plugins, psd files, icon sets or other small stuff. It will help with both traffic and emails to promote your product to.
If you do choose to maintain a free version of your theme, you can use the dashboard to up-sell the customers to the premium version. Keeping the free theme up-to-date will also let you appear in the “updated” section of WordPress theme directory.
On your own hosted website, give away free version of your product. Or if you don’t want to support that, give away something else – plugins, psd files, icon sets or other small stuff. It will help with both traffic and emails to promote your product to.
If you do choose to maintain a free version of your theme, you can use the dashboard to up-sell the customers to the premium version. Keeping the free theme up-to-date will also let you appear in the “updated” section of WordPress theme directory.
4. Build a newsletter.
If you’re still not doing this, you’re lightyears behind your competition. When used right, email newsletter alone can help you build a successful business.
Why are emails so important?
Compare these stats from sharing a post to 1000 followers.
And now sharing the same post to 500 email subscribers.
This means email is x25 more effective than social media.
You might say something like: “That’s all very good and all, but I’m in the business of selling WP themes, not writing some blog posts.”
I have a simple response to this – you need to keep your email list warm and blog posts are great for that.
Consider all the times you subscribed to an email list, successfully forgot about it and received a promo email out of the blue six month later? What are the chances you’d open this email, let alone buy something from the sender?
To avoid situations like this, you have to communicate with your list on a regular basis, I’d say at least once a month in general and several times a week when you’re launching.
One thing to remember for you launch sequence, that will dramatically improve your sales numbers is to send a sales letter one day BEFORE you launch your theme. Write a long sales letter, explaining why the reader should buy your theme. Then say that the next email will have a subject line “MyTheme is now on sale”.
This way they will have one day to make a decision about the product and they’ll know to expect one more email from you. In this next email you can simply provide a download link for the product. Easy, right?
And even if you are already building a solid email list from your blog, giveaways, freebies and other sources – there’s always a way to improve. Here’s a detailed blog post with the exact steps you should follow to convert as much as 8% of your readers into newsletter subscribers.
If you’re still not doing this, you’re lightyears behind your competition. When used right, email newsletter alone can help you build a successful business.
Why are emails so important?
Compare these stats from sharing a post to 1000 followers.
And now sharing the same post to 500 email subscribers.
This means email is x25 more effective than social media.
You might say something like: “That’s all very good and all, but I’m in the business of selling WP themes, not writing some blog posts.”
I have a simple response to this – you need to keep your email list warm and blog posts are great for that.
Consider all the times you subscribed to an email list, successfully forgot about it and received a promo email out of the blue six month later? What are the chances you’d open this email, let alone buy something from the sender?
To avoid situations like this, you have to communicate with your list on a regular basis, I’d say at least once a month in general and several times a week when you’re launching.
One thing to remember for you launch sequence, that will dramatically improve your sales numbers is to send a sales letter one day BEFORE you launch your theme. Write a long sales letter, explaining why the reader should buy your theme. Then say that the next email will have a subject line “MyTheme is now on sale”.
This way they will have one day to make a decision about the product and they’ll know to expect one more email from you. In this next email you can simply provide a download link for the product. Easy, right?
And even if you are already building a solid email list from your blog, giveaways, freebies and other sources – there’s always a way to improve. Here’s a detailed blog post with the exact steps you should follow to convert as much as 8% of your readers into newsletter subscribers.
5. Provide Stellar Customer Service
Providing stellar customer service is the single most important thing you can do to promote your product.
Here’s what Muhammad Haris, the developer behind Avada, the #1 Selling WP theme of all time, has to say about the importance of customer support:
“I would say that about 50% of Avada’s success is because of the support. People buy the theme, they go over our support system and then they get a feel of how much we value our product and how much we value them. [If] they get a quick answer, they are happy, they will buy again.”
They will also tell their colleagues and clients about your theme, both because of how much value they’ve got from your theme and because promoting a good product will make them look good in the long run.
Providing stellar customer service is the single most important thing you can do to promote your product.
Here’s what Muhammad Haris, the developer behind Avada, the #1 Selling WP theme of all time, has to say about the importance of customer support:
“I would say that about 50% of Avada’s success is because of the support. People buy the theme, they go over our support system and then they get a feel of how much we value our product and how much we value them. [If] they get a quick answer, they are happy, they will buy again.”
They will also tell their colleagues and clients about your theme, both because of how much value they’ve got from your theme and because promoting a good product will make them look good in the long run.
6. Host a giveaway
You can giveaway you own premium theme or give away something else that is still extremely valuable to your target audience. Something like two years of free hosting or email newsletter sending software subscription. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but you’ll have better chances of the giveaway going viral, if the prize is of high value.
To host a giveaway, use KingSumo Giveaway WP plugin or Rafflecopter. Both will let you set up a custom landing page and provide an engine to encourage people to share the giveaway on social networks. The more people you invite, the more entries in the giveaway you get and thus the higher is your chance at winning the grand prize.
7. Industry Outreach
Don’t just cold email all the editors, whose emails you can find. Build relationships first. You do have time for this. Follow this simple engagement formula developed by folks over at Groove, and your chances to land a review will increase dramatically:
On paper, it looks like “they need new content, I need exposure. Win – win”. In reality though, popular blogs that you’re going to target are receiving dozens of pitches every day. You really need to stand out in this red ocean.
Hopefully this engagement checklist will give you just enough edge over your competition to be considered seriously.
Don’t just cold email all the editors, whose emails you can find. Build relationships first. You do have time for this. Follow this simple engagement formula developed by folks over at Groove, and your chances to land a review will increase dramatically:
On paper, it looks like “they need new content, I need exposure. Win – win”. In reality though, popular blogs that you’re going to target are receiving dozens of pitches every day. You really need to stand out in this red ocean.
Hopefully this engagement checklist will give you just enough edge over your competition to be considered seriously.
8. Buy Paid Reviews
A lot of blogs out there offer paid review services, usually for a couple of hundred dollars. When you don’t see any meaningful output from the free promo techniques, you might want to test the waters with a strategically placed paid review.
One approach to test is publishing a sponsored post on blogs related to blogging itself, not just WP related blogs. You will receive a steady inflow of leads once the post is indexed by search engines and maybe some smaller blogs will link to the review or even write their own review for free.
---------A lot of blogs out there offer paid review services, usually for a couple of hundred dollars. When you don’t see any meaningful output from the free promo techniques, you might want to test the waters with a strategically placed paid review.
One approach to test is publishing a sponsored post on blogs related to blogging itself, not just WP related blogs. You will receive a steady inflow of leads once the post is indexed by search engines and maybe some smaller blogs will link to the review or even write their own review for free.
*How are you marketing your WordPress themes? Did you find these tips useful? Let me know in the comments section.
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