What You’ll Learn in This Episode
This podcast episode is for freelancers, agency owners, and anyone working in WordPress or digital marketing who wants practical, experience-backed advice rather than theory. Lawrence Ladomery, a marketing leader at WP Bakery with almost three decades in web design and marketing, talks with host Jayasty Anandan about his path from studying architecture to running marketing automation programs, how WP Bakery compares to Elementor, why partner programs outperformed affiliate programs at Convesio, the value of in person networking over online noise, and how freelancers can choose better clients by targeting agencies with larger budgets and spotting small businesses that aren’t ready to invest in marketing.
[00:00:00.01] – Speaker 1
Hi there, welcome to The Digital Jayasty Show. I’m so happy you’re here. This podcast is all about digital marketing, how it works, and how people around the world are using it. I’ll be chatting with marketing experts to learn about things like content marketing, SEO, social media, email marketing, and more. I am Jayasty Anandan, your host, and this podcast is brought to you by Digital Jayasty. That’s my digital marketing consultancy helping businesses all over the world. You can check it out at digitaljayasty.com. Since this is a brand new podcast, I would love to hear what you think. Got ideas, suggestions, or topics you would like me to talk about? Just send me an email at podcast@digitaljayasty.com. And if you are enjoying the show, it would mean a lot if you leave a rating or review on your podcast app. All right, now let’s jump right into our today’s episode. Today I’m excited to welcome our guest Lawrence, joining us from Australia. Lawrence brings almost 3 decades of rich experience in the marketing industry, where in the first half of his career he built and managed websites, and in the other half of his career he marketed them.
[00:01:11.05] – Speaker 1
Currently, Lawrence works at WPBakery, a popular WordPress page builder. He’s also the founder of WP Biz Dev, a membership platform he created for the WordPress community where you can find news, jobs, interviews, and more. I had the pleasure of working with Lawrence back in 2021 when he was with Convesio, a company providing scalable hosting services. Since then, we have stayed connected and I’ve personally experienced his leadership qualities and mentorship. Lawrence has always been generous with his guidance whenever I have reached out for help. I am a great admirer of how he balances his personal and professional life with such grace and effectiveness. Today, Lawrence will be sharing his interesting journey from architecture to website design and beyond. Please join me in welcoming Lawrence to the podcast. Lawasrence, the floor is yours. Now you can start sharing your journey with us.
[00:02:03.14] – Speaker 2
Yeah, well, thank you very much. And look, I appreciate that you called me for this opportunity. And yes, we did work together at Convesio, and I remember that we had a good working relationship and also some good results as well. So my journey is quite long. So I’ve been working now for quite some time, but as you mentioned, I studied architecture in university, but it was the final project of the final year that really made me change my course. So it was a little project just to finish off the year, and they asked us to present a building any way that we wanted to, any kind of a drawing or model. This was like mid-’90s, so computers were there but not quite used as much as they are today, of course. But what I did actually, I created a 3D model of another building that I’d built as part of another project. And it was a 3D model embedded on a web page. And at the time, web pages were very basic, layouts were very basic. We were using tables to create layouts. And we managed also to create this 3-dimensional model and just like present it.
[00:03:22.22] – Speaker 2
And it was quite a novel thing. And I actually really like the process of publishing a web page much more than actually designing buildings. So I kind of made the decision there and then to pursue that path. And my first job was not in architecture, it was actually working for a publisher, in particular industries. And I was just like building pages, uh, left, right, and center every, every day. Following that, and this was actually in London, had a number of jobs, for fintech at the time, in community as well. I worked on Warner Brothers Community, which was fun. I worked for a big educational company. I also started, I founded together with somebody else in Italy a vacation rentals portal. This was before Airbnb, so that was quite, quite interesting. But eventually I made my way to Australia and I worked for governments and ended up working for a software company. And in this software company, one of the projects was to migrate off a fairly monodimensional email marketing platform onto a marketing automation platform. Now, this was 2012, and marketing automation was really quite a new thing. And this kind of forced me to work with data, which forced me to understand some of the marketing fundamentals, to understand segments to understand the customer journey.
[00:04:56.04] – Speaker 2
I also had to understand the sales process, so working with sales to understand, you know, how to help them sell the product. And that really opened up the whole marketing universe to me, which I really enjoyed.Following working for the software company, ended up working on the agency side, um, helping companies with marketing automation. I did that for a couple years, and then I decided to do the same, but on a freelance basis. So this was probably around 2016, and the idea there was to offer the same level of marketing automation services to small businesses as I was doing working for the agencies, but for enterprise. So I chose another platform to work with and helped some local businesses, um, basically create quite sophisticated systems, CRMs, automations to help scale their businesses. And that was That was good as well. What I didn’t like about working, say, on the agency side, even though I was more of a freelancer, was the fact that I had like multiple clients and never really focusing on the success of one particular brand. So I eventually ended up going back to a full-time position, and this was for a WordPress hosting provider.
[00:06:14.08] – Speaker 2
This was 2017, and I was the first hire of a very small team. Sorry, the first marketing hire of a small team of engineers. And I helped a couple of brands sort of grow and market themselves. So I was wearing multiple hats and effectively this was my foray into product marketing. And that’s really what I’ve been doing since I worked for another hosting provider. I went back to freelancing and helping some WordPress plugin companies and theme companies with the marketing. Then I worked again for a software company, and eventually I just wanted to go back to the WordPress community, and I found a job at WP Bakery, which is where I am now. All right.
[00:07:10.11] – Speaker 1
You have worked both as a freelancer and a full-time employee. What were the key factors that led you to switch between these modes throughout your career?
[00:07:20.17] – Speaker 2
A couple of factors. I think a lot of us want to work for themselves, right? Want to be their own boss and have aspirations to, to build something, and the flexibility as well to work from home and work when, when you want. Um, so that was a big factor. I also really like this idea of taking everything they had learned in enterprise as far as marketing automation was concerned and packaging it up for smaller businesses. So by 2016-2017, the platforms were actually quite affordable and I started using ActiveCampaign. At the time it was super affordable, incredible functionality, and it was a perfect fit for smaller businesses. So that was a big motivation.
[00:08:14.15] – Speaker 1
All right. So now I’ll ask you about your WordPress ecosystem experience. So you have worked with WordPress agencies and hosting companies. What’s your perspective on the WordPress ecosystem’s evolution over the year?
[00:08:31.16] – Speaker 2
I really started working in the ecosystem in 2017. And I think by then already it was really starting to commercialise. I think before that, a lot of the plugin authors were just creating plugins for the community for free as well, or offering them for a lifetime license. You pay once a nominal fee, and then you can use it. And since then, it’s become much more competitive. It’s become much more commercialised. Everyone now is selling subscriptions as well. So it has also become more expensive. But I think that’s really a sign of maturity of the ecosystem. Of course, WordPress now is used on 43% of all websites around the world. And that’s really an indication of a mature product. And also in the case of WordPress, of the breadth of the offering, if you consider all the kinds of plugins that you can, you can find and implement, all the page builders you can use. So it’s an incredible offering from that perspective. It has also become a lot more competitive. So marketing is also much harder now in the WordPress space. Alright.
[00:09:48.14] – Speaker 1
So at WP Bakery, you’re working with a page builder for non-technical users. So how do you position the solution against competitors like Elementor Pro?
[00:10:00.06] – Speaker 2
Yeah, look, that’s a good question. And it’s a challenge. I mean, Elementor has done an incredible job with their product, with their marketing, and it’s such a strong brand as well. So WP Bakery was, I think, released in 2009. So we actually have quite a history and quite a big user base as well. The products are fundamentally different. So if you’re using Elementor, you are either a designer who has some technical skills or a developer that has some design skills, right? I typically say it’s a bit like using Figma, which is kind of intuitive but a little bit hard. You really kind of need to know what you’re doing in Figma. The WP Bakery is aimed at business users who are not technical, so it makes it super easy to create web pages, create layouts, update content via a different paradigm than Elementor’s. It’s, I’d say it’s kind of more, a little bit more like Canva than, than Figma, if we’re doing this sort of comparison. And whilst we hear about Elementor a lot, everywhere, all the time, and I was in WordCamp Asia, and they have a massive stand, and everybody knows Elementor, we actually have quite a user base of very satisfied customers because they just don’t want to worry about their technicalities.
[00:11:36.27] – Speaker 2
They just want to have it do the job, update a page, simply create a new page and get to work.
[00:11:45.10] – Speaker 1
All right, now I’ll jump to the next section, which is marketing strategies for businesses. So at Convesio, you had mentioned that partner programs were highly successful while affiliate programs were quite ineffective. What specific elements made the partner programs work so effectively?
[00:12:05.20] – Speaker 2
Yeah, so it was, it was interesting. And incidentally, sort of the first hire, my first hire was somebody to look after the partner program because it was such a key strategy for us. We found that affiliates didn’t really quite understand what we were offering, which wasn’t your standard shared hosting product. It was much more specialised, much more niche, and effectively a new category – the WordPress scalable hosting. Not many other providers were doing that at the time, and they didn’t really know how to position us on their blogs or on their websites or when talking to us. So they were sort of positioning us next to some other very cheap shared hosting brands, and it just didn’t, didn’t work. We tried to educate them. I actually did a ton of keyword research explaining that actually this is an opportunity because people are looking for scalable solutions, but it was quite a difficult task. In the end, what really worked well was partnering with agencies, not just any agencies, but agencies that had the right type of customers with the right type of projects. So if you’re selling a scalable hosting solution, obviously the site needs to require scalability.
[00:13:34.29] – Speaker 2
And typically this were your e-commerce scenarios where, you know, maybe because of a campaign, suddenly you would have spikes in traffic and you needed the technology to be able to accommodate a rush of 10,000 customers all going to purchase a product. So we found that the agencies that had that kind of client were super keen to work with us because of the technology and also because of the expertise. So support was really specialized around this idea of, you know, providing support during the scaling event. So that was successful. Of course, that also meant that we didn’t have a big volume of agencies that we worked with, but we had a good but A few but good agencies for us.
[00:14:23.22] – Speaker 1
All right. Then you had mentioned that account-based marketing and physical networking as effective strategies for your business. So could you share a specific success story where in-person connection led to significant business results?
[00:14:38.12] – Speaker 2
So as a freelancer here in Melbourne, I attended all sorts of in-person events, meetups locally. The local authority here in where I live in Melbourne organized monthly meetups effectively of business owners of the area, and that was fundamental. More recently, working for a software company, we actually decided to organise meetups as well, and this brought in people interested in the solutions that we, that we were selling as well. I think even a more recent example is WordCamp Asia, which was a couple of weeks ago now that I attended. And I think these days, particularly with AI and all the noise there is online, I think we’re valuing more sort of in-person relationships these days. And I tend to go to WordCamps Asia every year because of that, just to catch up with people I know and meet new people. So, you know, I’ve had a couple of good leads there in Manila, and we’ll see what happens next.
[00:15:55.01] – Speaker 1
Awesome. Okay, now we’ll jump to the next section, which is freelancing strategies for freelancers. So we had a conversation regarding this, like you had suggested freelancers should work with agencies serving large clients rather than directly with small businesses. So what specific benefits have you experienced with this approach?
[00:16:18.06] – Speaker 2
Yeah, look, it’s not necessarily the only approach. It’s one approach that certainly works well with me, but I think it’s also an easier approach because it’s quite hard to find direct clients. When you work with an agency, they kind of are the middle person between you and the clients, you and the project. Now, if that agency is a larger agency and therefore is working with larger budgets, there’s more of a chance that they can pay you a better rate, right? And you, if you find those kinds of agencies, then you can get more regular work from them as well. And as I said, you’re not trying to compete with every other freelancer in the area, and often that’s like a race to the bottom as far as pricing is concerned. I think, though the key there is to be more employable by the agency, and for that you really need to have a special specialisation. Because I was pretty much a marketing automation expert, that’s the kind of projects that I ended up working on via other agencies. I mean, again, this was 2017-2018.
[00:17:45.11] – Speaker 2
Marketing automation was a thing. But there were a few experts. So I was able to be employed by consultancies and agencies as their external consultant and even facing the client. I used to hold workshops and so on. So that’s a strategy, but I think you really need to have that specialty, that superpower, let’s call it and again, building relationships. And again, what helped is, you know, going to events, meeting agency owners, and so on.
[00:18:25.00] – Speaker 1
All right. So my last question is, what’s your perspective on the red flag of small businesses without an in-house marketing person? So how can freelancers identify such clients? And like with sustainable budgets?
[00:18:43.21] – Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean it’s a difficult one. I mean, I’ve worked with sort of owners that did not have anyone in marketing or sales that, were actually really good clients. I mean, they had good regular work. But also worked with some owners that were always trying to squeeze as much value out of you as well, as many hours as possible out of you. And they’re also very stressed themselves because they were spread thin across operations, across sales, across, across everything. And for me, that was a very big flag. And what I ended up doing is really, you know, doing my due diligence, researching the company maybe on LinkedIn to understand how many employees that company, had at the time and whether there was anyone in marketing. So if there was somebody in marketing, it would tell me that, okay, well, this company can at least employ and afford one marketer, right? Which means that they’re more likely to require help as well. Maybe if there was only one marketing person in that company, and they would likely to have a budget for that as well.
[00:20:05.07] – Speaker 2
But look, it’s kind of more satisfying working for a smaller operation that perhaps doesn’t have the marketing function because you go in there and you actually help set it up. Okay, and that happened a couple of times as well where my role was not just to do marketing but set up the marketing function and often finding resources offshore to help with that, sort of really working with small budgets, but making the most out of that. And again, leveraging things like marketing automation that can help you scale. But, you know, having to feed a family, so to speak, my preference was going for slightly larger companies that already had at least one marketer involved.
[00:20:56.05] – Speaker 1
All right, Lawrence, you had shared a lot of valuable insights. I’m sure this is going to help many businesses and even freelancers. So where can people find you online?
[00:21:07.16] – Speaker 2
Look, the best channel these days for me is LinkedIn. I kind of stopped using Facebook regularly, you know, some years ago, and I’m not on X anymore. I just find LinkedIn to be the best place. I mean, we interact on LinkedIn as well. It’s just the context is business, so I like that. All right, awesome.
[00:21:29.16] – Speaker 1
Thank you so much for your time, Lawrence. It was great learning a lot of insights from you. So thank you so much for your time. Have a good day.
[00:21:38.04] – Speaker 2
Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
[00:21:43.04] – Speaker 1
This podcast is brought to you by Digital Jayasty. If you want more tips, strategies, and interviews with top marketing experts from around the world, make sure to subscribe to The Digital Jayasty Show. Thank you for tuning in, and I’ll catch you next time.