Afshana Rahman Diya is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Startise, where she has spearheaded the company’s growth from zero to over 6 million users, building a global brand that serves customers in 180+ countries. Previously, she played a pivotal role in scaling WPDeveloper’s Essential Addons from a modest WordPress plugin to a must-have tool for millions of users worldwide, all while navigating the challenges of building a marketing team and brand from the ground up in Bangladesh’s nascent tech ecosystem.
In this fascinating conversation, she joins Ruhul Kader to discuss the lessons she’s learned along the way, including why starting lean and staying user-centric is the key to early-stage growth, how to build a marketing team from scratch, and why consistency is the unsung hero of scaling a product globally. She shares her thoughts on the importance of balancing short-term wins with long-term sustainability, and how to navigate the complexities of global branding while operating from a non-traditional tech hub, delves into the nitty-gritty of growth hacking, the art of building a multi-channel marketing strategy, and why solving real problems—not chasing numbers—is the ultimate competitive edge, and reflects on the importance of community engagement and thought leadership in global branding, how to design a marketing organization for sustainable growth, how marketing is ultimately about human connection, and lessons learned from scaling a product to 6 million users while operating from Bangladesh.
From her early days tinkering with WordPress to her current role leading marketing for one of Bangladesh’s most successful tech companies, Afshana’s journey is a masterclass in curiosity, resilience, and the power of human connection. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a marketer, or simply someone fascinated by the intersection of technology and communication, this conversation is packed with insights that are as practical as they are inspiring.
Ruhul Kader: Thank you so much for agreeing to this conversation. I'm super excited to talk to you about your journey as a CMO of one of the fascinating technology companies that Bangladesh has produced in a while and also talk about your take on marketing, growth, digital communication, and all those things. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Afshana Rahman Diya: Thank you so much for having me for this discussion and I'm excited to share my journey - marketing, growth, and everything in between.
Ruhul: Perhaps we can start by talking about an overview of your career and your path to what you’re doing. I know bits and pieces of your journey—starting in an agency and working for some interesting digital products from Robi to Yonder Music, among others. I think for our readers, it would be useful to give an overview of your journey and what brought you into the field of marketing.
Afshana: I’ve always been curious about technology, maybe that came from my brother. I was that kid who spent hours exploring new tools, watching tutorials, and keeping up with trends. But back in high school, I had no idea I would end up in marketing. It was during my university years that I discovered my fascination with how brands connect with people.
I started using WordPress in 2009! Back then, it was just a fun experiment with blogging, tutorials, and personal projects. Little did I know, it would later shape my career. By the second year of university at BRAC, I was sure marketing was my thing. I decided to go for a double major in marketing and e-business; which was essentially a combination of digital marketing if you think in that way!
For my internship, I had my eyes set on Asiatic Digital. I applied, got no response, and tried three other companies and got offers from them. Just when I was about to accept another offer, Asiatic called at the last minute. That was my entry into the world of marketing, exactly where I wanted to be.
After that, I worked as a Strategic Planner in StrateGeek (which is now Agency X) and worked with brands like Robi Yonder Music and a few local companies. Back then, digital marketing in Bangladesh was mostly about social media marketing. But I wanted to dive deeper, beyond just running campaigns. That’s when I decided to move into the tech space.
Joining WPDeveloper was a turning point. With my early experience in tech and marketing, it was the perfect intersection. The company was just starting to gain momentum in the WordPress ecosystem and I took on the challenge of helping scale it from a few users to millions of users worldwide.
Ruhul: Before going to WPDeveloper, I want to focus a little bit on your early career working for agencies. Agencies are on the other end of the product/company spectrum where you work for other brands and companies. Working for an agency means working with multiple brands and companies, not just a single company. What are some things you learned from your earlier experience that you took with you when you moved to work for WPDeveloper?
Afshana: Working in an agency was something I always wanted, it felt like the ideal place to start. The energy, the fast-paced environment, and the chance to work on multiple brands at once - it was all very exciting. And honestly, agency life is a great way to sharpen your skills quickly.
The biggest advantage of working in an agency? The exposure. One day, you are working on a telecom campaign, the next, you are brainstorming for a fashion brand. Your canvas is wide and you get to experiment a lot. But that’s also where the challenge comes from. You come up with 10 ideas, and push for bold, creative campaigns; only to have most of them rejected due to budget constraints or brand restrictions.
That was frustrating for me. I wanted to build things, not just pitch them. I wanted to execute ideas, not just propose them. That’s when I started realizing that I wanted to be in a product company, where I could own the results of what I was creating. The agency world was an incredible learning ground, but I was drawn to the impact of building something long-term. And that realization set me on a new path.
Ruhul: Let's talk about your journey beginning at WPDeveloper. How big was the team when you first joined? I don't think they had a marketing team in those days.
Afshana: No, at that time we had around two developers. When I joined, we had one and a half content writers—one full content writer and another who split time between content writing and support.
At the starting point, we had around 10,000 users for Essential Addons. We had one product, and I made the initial website. At that time, our WordPress presence was only visible in the WordPress repository.
From the very first website to multiple products, I had to start everything from scratch.
Ruhul: I think your journey combines two things. One is doing the marketing part—designing communication, marketing strategy, growth strategy—for the product you had. Also, you needed to build a marketing team and marketing organization as the company grew. That's a really interesting combination.
Afshana: Yeah, it wasn’t just about marketing the products; it was about shaping the brand itself and gradually building a strong marketing team. But it didn’t stop there. From the very beginning, I managed the design team and also supported HR in structuring the organization. Since we were growing fast, I naturally got involved in hiring across different teams and helping to shape the company culture. Looking back, it was a collective effort of course, growth isn’t just about scaling products but also about nurturing teams, processes, and a culture that makes long-term success possible.
Ruhul: That's very interesting. I think we have a lot of interesting things to talk about. I'd like to start by asking how you approached designing the marketing strategy and brand strategy for the organization when you first arrived. You had just one product and nothing established about your marketing approach. How did you decide—we need to think about organizational brand building, we need to set up the marketing approaches, etc.
Afshana: Before starting at WPDeveloper, I already had experience working with multiple WordPress product companies from Bangladesh and abroad. I closely worked with a WordPress product called Analytifi, an analytics tool for the WordPress dashboard. I did marketing for them for a couple of years before joining WPDeveloper. I also worked with Dokan and a few other WordPress plugins.
So I already had experience in product marketing and WordPress marketing. I had some ideas about how to approach the whole thing. In the beginning, we tried to do the basic things needed to establish ourselves, focusing on branding and design while keeping global standards. We had a very small team, so I had to do many things myself—from content writing to designing blog banners.
We tried to build a structure by breaking down and prioritizing tasks. This included product design, focusing on increasing sales, improving conversions, and creating features our users would appreciate. For Essential Addons, our first product, we actually didn't have much competition at the time. Which can be a bad thing, you know why? When you don't have competitors, you don't know what you need to do better. If you have competition, you know what you need, and what your competitors are doing, then you try to do better than that probably.
When you're doing something that doesn't exist, you need to innovate everything. Essentially, your users might not even know they need the feature. You have to think for them, build it for them, and then make them understand why they need this feature.
Ruhul: That's very interesting. As a follow-up, thinking about this classic startup situation of getting started with just a director and trying to set up a marketing structure, what lessons can we draw from your experience about how people in their very early days should think about setting up their marketing structure?
Afshana: My approach to building a marketing structure is quite different from most startups. I don’t believe in burning cash upfront. Instead, I focus on making the business profitable first and then reinvesting in growth.
At the start, we experimented with multiple channels on a smaller scale, carefully testing what worked instead of going all in blindly. The priority was generating sales and ensuring stability so we could scale sustainably.
Alhamdulillah, this approach paid off. When it came to expanding, whether hiring or adding new teams - we took a strategic approach. For example, in the early days, we didn’t have a dedicated QA team. Our developers, marketers, and support staff worked cross-functionally to maintain quality. Once the product became financially sustainable, we started investing in specialized roles and processes.
I strongly believe in starting lean, testing what works, and scaling smartly. Growth is a process - it’s about learning, adapting, and making the right moves at the right time.
Ruhul: Can you share any particular story or experience from those days where you tried a certain strategy and it worked, etc? Perhaps a challenge you faced, like growing the user base from 10,000 to 20,000, and how you approached it?
Afshana: Sure, I can share an example about Essential Addons. As I mentioned, we didn't have any existing examples to look forward to or direct competitors we could look for. We tried to look at examples from different industries and platforms to understand what they were doing to build a community.
For Essential Addons, Elementor itself was just starting. Elementor began around 2016, and Essential Addons was built right after that. At the very start, we believed in Elementor's potential. We all used Elementor and saw it had high potential but capabilities were limited at that time.
We tried to enhance the capacities that Elementor didn't have. For example, I don't have a technical background, so I loved using drag-and-drop tools to build websites. At that time, Elementor didn't have a theme builder. You could make pages with Elementor, but for things like menus or other elements, you didn't have the capacity to do that. I wanted to make a timeline for showcasing my viewers, and visitors, but they didn't have those things.
We tried to experience and develop what users needed. Since it was a new community, we tried to reach the global Elementor community and share what we had built for Elementor users—not just for our users, but for the WordPress ecosystem in general. . We were very active in the WordPress community. We checked forums and other spaces where WordPress people gathered to share their problems.
Many people loved Elementor but couldn't do certain things with it. We tried to identify those opportunities to do better for the community. Community engagement was a big approach we tried from the very start. It helped us understand where we stood and where we should go.
Ruhul: I think one clear takeaway from this is that product comes first. You have to figure out what works for your users, and that's your most important marketing task at the beginning. Take the product you have, take it to the community you're targeting, get their feedback, try to understand what works and what doesn't, and then refine it. This is a very very useful idea. Once you started growing, how did your marketing efforts expand? You launched the product in 2017, started interacting with the community, and slowly gathered a user base. Can you talk about reaching 200k or 300k users? That's a big number for many people.
Afshana: When we hit our first 100,000 users, it was the first of its kind for anyone from Bangladesh.
Ruhul: I think we can talk about the journey to first 100,000, then 500,000, then a million, and then 2 million users. What are the things you need to do to reach from say zero to 100K?
Afshana: The first 100,000 users? Easily the hardest milestone. It’s like pushing a car uphill—you’re trying everything, but momentum isn’t quite there yet.
Our niche market made it even more challenging. Unlike mainstream SaaS, we weren’t targeting everyone—our users were WordPress site builders looking for Elementor enhancements. That meant two things:
Instead of broad marketing, we embedded ourselves into the Elementor and WordPress community. We didn’t just promote our product; we contributed, engaged, and provided value. That was the turning point—when people started seeing Essential Addons as part of their workflow, not just another plugin.
Ruhul: I think two key things helped you grow from zero to 100,000 users. First, make your product complementary to the platform instead of competing with it, so that as the platform gains more users, your product will grow. And second, focusing on building the community by organizing meetups. Now, the second question around this is how do you build a marketing team when you're trying to go from zero to 100,000 users? What skills should you look for when hiring for marketing positions? What kind of positions should you create in those days?
Afshana: That was the most challenging part of my role as CMO at WPDeveloper - hiring people for the marketing team. Hiring people for marketing for a new tech product is difficult because we wanted to hire people for dynamic roles. One of the biggest challenges was finding someone who could work on a technical product, do testing, work with back-end systems, and use local servers—and then market the product.
I was looking for a marketer who understands technical stuff, which was almost impossible to find in Bangladesh, especially back in 2016-2017. There weren't many software companies marketing products globally. Most tech companies were marketing locally or managing clients. Global product marketing for software companies was still very limited. Right now, we can find some people who are working in different product companies, but at that time, back in 2016/2018, there were not many software companies that were marketing products globally.
Most of the time we couldn’t find people who had experience in content writing or marketing and then had basic technical know-how. The level of technical knowledge I expected was more than just using an app. It involved setting up localhost, testing multiple tools, and writing documentation for things that didn't exist anywhere on the internet. You couldn’t take a peak and then write your content, there was no scope for that. We couldn't find people with that specific combination of skills.
So what we did was hire smart, tech-savvy people and train them to learn the technical back end and understand our culture and how we wanted to promote our product globally. Most of our team members are trained in-house. We train them from scratch.
Interestingly, most of our marketing team members are not from Business Administration backgrounds. They're from Computer Science backgrounds.
Ruhul: I think that makes sense because since your product is technical, marketing is much easier to learn than understanding complex technical product content, technical skills or to understand a complex technical product, content writing, etc. If someone can write good English, it's easier to train them to write the way you want.
Afshana: Exactly. We can train people if they can write good English and train them to write the way we want to write.
What happened is that most people working with us are computer science graduates who aren't interested in coding and want to switch. Many are people who have completed their CS degree but don't want to pursue coding as a career.
Ruhul: One more question about going from zero to 100K. Many people talk about growth hacking, and I think a key skill for growth hacking is engineering—tweaking the product, changing colors, doing A/B testing, and those kinds of things. Can you talk a little bit about, apart from building the product so that the Elementor platform itself supports the growth and building community, what other growth hacking tactics you used? How did you communicate the nitty-gritty aspects, especially when reaching a global audience? I understand that most of your users come from outside Bangladesh, right? Can you share one or two tactical changes or initiatives that made a major difference in user numbers? Say, you tried 10 different things, and then two of them clicked and those two were like, that changed the game for you.
Afshana: I wouldn’t say there was a single game-changing tactic but rather a combination of small, strategic initiatives that made a significant impact. The key was adaptability and focusing on priorities, especially since we had limited resources in the early days.
For Essential Addons and our other products, content marketing was our biggest driver. We deeply understood our users as most were non-technical people looking for an easy way to build websites with drag-and-drop tools. So, instead of just promoting features, we focused on education and usability.
One of our biggest growth levers was simplifying the user experience. Everything from the UI to onboarding was designed to be intuitive for users who don’t code. If users struggle with your product, they won’t stick around, no matter how great your marketing is.
Another major factor was comprehensive learning resources. We didn’t just create a product and expect users to figure it out. We built an ecosystem of documentation, blog tutorials, video guides and walkthroughs for every single feature. Whether someone was a beginner or an advanced user, they had step-by-step guidance from day one.
At scale, these initiatives compounded. When people found our products easy to use and well-documented, they naturally recommended them to others. That word-of-mouth effect played a huge role in our early growth.
Ruhul: Going back to hiring, when looking for early marketing team members, what particular skills, attitudes, or traits were you looking for?
Afshana: To be honest, we tried to find people who were already tech-savvy and smart. We could find good content writers, but teaching someone how to use Google Drive doesn't make sense. We wanted to find tech-savvy people with an attitude to learn and adapt to technology. That makes it easier to teach them things.
Ruhul: I think that's the most meta-skill—the willingness to learn. If someone has that it solves every other limitation.
Afshana: Exactly. Since this is a very fast-paced company, and the digital landscape is changing every day, people who are interested in a dynamic environment and open to continuous learning are a better fit for our setup.
We tried to focus on core skill sets and cultural fit. From the very start at WPDeveloper, we tried to build a culture that was a bit different from other tech companies in Bangladesh. Cultural fit and adaptability were the main things we focused on when hiring new team members—whether for marketing, design, or any other team in our company.
Ruhul: Moving forward, I think we can now say that these are some of the basic things an organization can do when they're trying to grow from a small scale to something like 50k/100k users. Now that you've reached 100,000 users, it means your product has matured to an extent. There's still room for improvement and new features, but you've likely reached a point of product-market fit with a user base looking for a product like yours. Growing from 100,000 to 200,000 or 500,000 users is probably harder. Tell us about that experience.
Afshana: Definitely it's harder, but there are some competitive advantages. After reaching 100,000 users, you've already established your brand. When a new user comes, they see that 100,000 people are using the product and leaving good public feedback, which gives you an advantage in getting more users.
After 100,000 users, one key approach is leveraging your existing users—making them advocates for your brand. It's about building a community where they can talk about your product. Using these existing users makes it easier to expand your reach and acquire more users.
Ruhul: When you have 100k users, you can do referrals, and ask users to talk positively about you, and it creates word-of-mouth advantages in the market, helping you grow much faster than before. Can you talk about the differences between growing from zero to 100,000 users and beyond? What challenges and mistakes should people be careful about at different stages?
Afshana: The challenges at different stages of growth are completely different. What works when you have 1,000 users won’t be enough when you hit 100,000 and definitely not at a million.
For example, when we had 1,000 users if a new feature had a minor bug, only a handful of people were affected. But with 100,000 users, even a 0.01% issue could impact dozens. And at a million, that same mistake could break 1,000+ websites. The margin for error gets smaller as you grow. Every update, every decision, every small tweak - everything had to be far more structured and well-tested.
After reaching a certain number of users, retention became our biggest priority. Since most of our products follow a yearly subscription model, getting users to renew became just as important as acquiring new ones. We focused on showing real value to free users, nudging them to upgrade to the pro version with advanced features that made a difference in their workflow.
Another major shift was handling competition. At one point, we started seeing our product being copied—some even took "Essential" and swapped it for a synonym. That’s the reality of open-source. Instead of panicking, we doubled down on quality, reputation, and customer experience - things competitors couldn’t replicate as easily.
At scale, consistency is everything, I keep saying it all the time. Releasing new features, updating products, fixing bugs, and maintaining reliability—these are what separate products that last from those that fade out. That’s what kept us ahead and helped us sustain our growth beyond 100,000 users.
Ruhul: This is becoming a super interesting conversation. I think it is going to be useful for a lot of people. So I’m digging a bit deeper. Initially, before reaching 100,000 users, the focus is on acquisition—acquiring as many customers as possible through various channels, community building, working with the platform itself, and making it easy for people to discover, buy, and use your product. When you move to stability with 100,000 users, the focus becomes retention, references, monetization, scaling, pricing segmentation, optimizing operations, and amplifying what you've built for a global audience.
Afshana: Yes, in that space, we did things like attending multiple conferences. I was a speaker at large conferences in Europe, the Philippines, and Singapore. Thought leadership added value when people were looking for us. People look for the brand, but they also look for the people behind the brand.
We were talking about WordPress and Elementor, meeting multiple people. I had a very good experience meeting users I'd never known before. Some would approach me at conferences and say, "Oh, you're from Essential Addons. I've been using this product for 100 of my clients' websites." Those experiences inspired us to do more.
Ruhul: To close this segment, I want to ask two somewhat redundant questions. First, in the early stage when you are trying to acquire customers, what are some best practices people should keep in mind? And what are some common mistakes they should avoid?
Afshana: I'll focus on common mistakes in our space, specifically for marketing tech products. One common issue is that product creators are often developers who think like developers. They deliver the product the way a developer would use it, but in the WordPress ecosystem, the end users are typically not developers.
For end users, the product needs to be easy to use. User-friendliness is crucial. A very common mistake is designing a product from a developer's perspective instead of making it accessible for anyone to use. This applies to everything from structure to user experience.
I actually gave a talk about this at a conference in the Philippines: why we should market products for end users, not for developers.
Ruhul: That makes sense.
Afshana: Yeah. I mean, when we are marketing, our target audience is people who might or might not be developers. So our messaging, the tone we use, and the way we explain our product, should be curated based on that. This is a common thing we see in the WordPress or SaaS ecosystem.
Another common mistake is the lack of consistency in development and updates. People make software with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement, but after releasing the product, they don't continue developing it the way they promised. Users get disappointed. I believe consistency should be key. These are two mistakes people should avoid.
And then what was your second question?
Ruhul: The second question was: What are the best practices for acquiring customers fast in the early days when you're trying to go from zero to say 100k or 150k users? Best practices and best strategy could be good to discuss.
Afshana: I mean, in general, if you are consistent about anything, it can bring you some impact right away. But when talking about marketing best practices, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It's more about A/B testing. It actually depends on what kind of product you are building and the audience for your product. Even for WordPress, for one of my products, the users are probably bloggers or affiliate marketers. For another product, the users are HR professionals. So I cannot market them in the same way. The strategist has to focus on the audience and do a lot of A/B testing, which will help you find out. But first and foremost, focus on solving a real problem. Start small and then scale smart.
When you are starting a software product, a lot of people make many features at the start. You don't need that. Make a small product. Share it with the community, build a community, and get feedback. Then prioritize.
One of the strategies I would particularly mention is the freemium business model. In the software ecosystem, anyone should deliver a free version that creates an entry point for users and provides upgrades for advanced features. That makes it easier to penetrate the market.
Another point is if your product requires localization, you should do it. For our products, we saw many users coming from Spain, Italy, and Germany. In these areas, people don't like using English even if they know it. So we tried to translate all of our products into Spanish, German, French, and Italian so people from those areas feel it's native to them.
Ruhul: These are very useful strategies and suggestions. Moving to the next level, when you mentioned going from 100k to 200k and reaching 500k, you focused on retention and referrals. For retention, you focused on giving excellent service support, building a support team, and creating extensive documentation so people can navigate the products better and get help immediately when needed. Apart from these two things, what are some best practices for retention and how can you get more referrals from existing users? Once you cross 100k, you have a huge opportunity for users to refer you to their friends, family, or community. But how do you tap into that referral opportunity? I think many people struggle to figure this out.
Afshana: For retention, you have to provide a good product so people stay and don't look for other alternatives. At the same time, it depends not just on features, but on consistency in support, bringing new features, and listening to users. You already have customers who bought products for specific features, but they need more extended versions of those features. If many people are talking about something and you're not building it, people will look elsewhere.
Keep innovating. If customers compare pricing and other aspects, make sure you're offering value to existing users. For us, we provide a 20% discount on renewal to ensure they stay with us.
Then and again, keep experimenting. Keep running A/B tests. There is no greater growth hack than trying relentlessly. We also use a multi-channel strategy, integrating with SEOs, social media, email, and paid ads to create a unified presence everywhere.
For referrals, there are many approaches. Right now, influencer marketing works very well in most industries. If you can build a community, you can reach the right influencers and onboard affiliates who want to promote you. Those will be very helpful in taking things to the next step.
When talking about multi-channel strategy, there's also a risk of wastage. If you explore channels blindly, you might do a lot without generating significant results.
Ruhul: That's super useful. You mentioned a multi-channel strategy. Multi-channel of course means you explore all the channels—social, SEO, influencer marketing, all the different things, etc. However, is there an ideal approach to multi-channel marketing from your experience? How should one approach multi-channel because when you're talking about multi-channels there is also a risk of wastage since you are exploring many different channels. If you explore channels blindly, you might do a lot of stuff without generating a lot of results for yourself.
Afshana: In Bangladesh, we don't share much knowledge. We're very conservative about sharing information as a nation. But globally, people share knowledge. I am not talking about secret data. You don’t need to share your secret but when you are talking about which channel works best for your company, that is not a difficult question to answer. If you talk with three people in a similar space, they can provide insights. If you don't have people doing similar things, try forums like Indie Hackers or Product Hunt to see what others are doing.
Pick probably two or three channels and try those first. Depending on the outcome, keep the best-performing one and try two more later. I think that is the most practical approach one can take because if you go all in then it can become chaotic to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Last week, I joined one of the largest podcasts for the WordPress ecosystem. The whole topic was about multi-channel strategy and which channels you should choose for your WordPress product.
In general, for the software ecosystem, Twitter is one of the good-performing platforms. But again, it varies depending on your product's audience. SEO and email marketing are mandatory for almost any product. Social media varies from product to product. It is hard to generalize but one good rule of thumb I would say is to keep exploring, do what works, and avoid what doesn’t. Start small, learn from each experiment, and don’t repeat the mistakes. That I think is a good strategy that you can use in almost all situations.
Ruhul: We are now at 500k users. How big was your marketing team when you reached this point?
Afshana: Probably around 10 people.
Ruhul: Only 10 people? And how long did it take to go from 500k to 6 million?
Afshana: We actually reach 500k within two years. From 500k to 1 million, it took another year. We reached 500,000 in March 2020 and reached 1 million in March 2021. So it took exactly one year to double. 6 million took some time but one million took just another year. By that time we were providing tools for people from 180 plus countries.
Ruhul: When you reached 1 million, you had only one product. Can you talk a little bit about that? Going from 500k to 1 million, what was the journey like? What were some of the things you did to escalate because, by the time you already had consumed, I am assuming, the low-hanging fruits, easy things? It means you had to escalate in terms of your initiatives, in terms of your channel exploration, and those things. Tell us about it.
Afshana: I would say it was almost similar to our growth trajectory from 100k to 500k and 500k to 1 million. A few things helped.
By that time, we had continuously developed features, provided 24/7 support, and had ready documentation and videos for everything. We received good reviews from existing users and got over 100 feature reviews in renowned WordPress publications, which helped us to reach a larger audience in general. Many well-known companies were using our products to build their websites.
We also tried to collaborate with other companies. We built multiple integrations with renowned companies like Mailchimp, Uber, and SEMrush. Those gave us visibility to different audiences. One of the biggest things we did was focus on e-commerce. At that time, Elementor didn't have many e-commerce features, so we emphasized those untapped areas.
We tried to create multiple fancy features like parallax effects, particle effects, and advanced extensions that didn't exist before. We realized users wanted more than just add-ons – they were looking for ready landing pages. So we introduced Templately. If you buy an Essential Addons pro license, you get free access to Templately, which now has 5,000 ready-to-use templates, which you can use with one click. That took the whole thing in a new direction for the users and made it more attractive.
Ruhul: This is very useful. What you mentioned now you have users, you can plug in other products as well. It's sort of cross-selling. It also increases the value of your existing product and creates opportunities for your new product. People who were using Essential Addons now have one more reason to use it and it makes it more difficult for other people to compete with Essential Addons.
Afshana: Yes. That’s right.
Ruhul: Another question I want to focus on is that you mentioned hundreds of different industry blogs and others published reviews on Essential Addons at that point in time. How did you get hundreds of industry blogs to publish reviews about Essential Addons? Did you do anything to influence this, or was it organic?
Afshana: Some were organic since we were the number one Elementor Addon at the time. But we also reached out to platforms and media outlets. We didn't ask them to write about us directly. Instead, we offered them to try our product. We were so confident about our product that people who tried it ended up writing reviews on their own.
Ruhul: Let’s talk about running a marketing organization that deals with products that serve 1 million or more users. When running a marketing operation with 1 million users and constantly trying to grow, what are some key challenges? As you mentioned, you had only 10 people in your marketing team at the time which is a tiny team. How do you design a marketing organization when you have 1 million or 2 million users?
Afshana: We tried to differentiate roles. At the start, we only had content marketing. Then we developed multiple different roles like communications, SEO executives, and others. We focused on creating processes. For each product, we have a team of marketing, video, design, support, development, and quality assurance working together. The teams worked collaboratively.
We tried to plan everything in advance. For example, we decide and finish blog posts a month ahead. We break down the entire year into quarters, planning what we want to do in each quarter. This helps everyone know what to do and when making management easier.
Ruhul: So you built the process, made the specific rules, designed the systems, and then planning was great since you had planned everything ahead of time. That makes sense. Now getting into the final ramp: going from 1 million to 6 million. While I don't think there are many differences in terms of activities or otherwise, however, can you talk about that experience of going from 1 million users to 6 million? It's pretty rare to see that kind of growth, especially since many companies hit a wall around 1 million users. Could you walk me through that experience? What challenges and complexities did you encounter during this growth phase? How did you maintain the growth trajectory when many companies struggle to grow beyond 1 million users? What organizational and execution changes were required to support this scale, particularly considering managing multiple products simultaneously, handling infrastructure and scalability issues, and adapting processes and systems? Tell us about what allowed you to maintain the growth trajectory and continue growing.
Afshana: Scaling from 1 million to 6 million users came with a unique set of challenges. Growth wasn’t just about getting more users; rather it was about sustaining performance, scaling operations, and managing multiple products effectively.
One major shift happened in the WordPress ecosystem itself. The transition from Classic Editor to Gutenberg and from PHP to React meant we had to rebuild parts of our product architecture, hiring React developers, and restructuring our platform to stay ahead. Keeping up with such industry shifts was crucial.
Another key challenge was support scalability. As the user base expanded, so did the number of support requests. A support model that worked for 10,000 users wouldn’t hold up at a million. We had to refine processes, invest in automation, and build a 24/7 global support team, hiring team members from different countries to enhance accessibility across time zones.
With growth also came branding and perception challenges. Selling software globally while operating from Bangladesh meant we had to be mindful of how users perceived support, reliability, and professionalism. We worked hard to build a strong global presence, ensuring that our brand, resources, and customer experience met international standards.
Another big factor was security and compliance. Expanding into Europe meant dealing with GDPR regulations, which required additional compliance efforts and adjustments to our infrastructure.
Some of our products scaled rapidly, while others had a more niche market. We learned to adapt our strategies for each product, understanding that not all of them would grow at the same rate.
At this scale, growth wasn’t just about adding more users. It was about sustaining value, refining operations and continuously innovating. The biggest takeaway? What got us from 100K to 1 million wasn’t enough for 6 million. We had to constantly evolve, adapt, and optimize everything - from product to people to processes.
Ruhul: As you mentioned, there are two key aspects. One is adding more products to the mix. The second is building out your brand since you're serving global customers and a global audience. You need to think about how those audiences perceive you as a brand and then build out that brand positioning across different markets. In fact, we could talk more about how to build that global market brand positioning. What are some of the nitty-gritty details you need to keep in mind? How do you prepare the guidelines? How do you sync teams across different markets? But since we're nearing two hours, we'll have to save this discussion for next time. This entire conversation is all lessons and very tactical, not like we are not talking about anything theoretical, we are talking about practical things that anybody can put to work. However, to cap our conversation today, a final question, could you encapsulate the journey from 0 to 6 million users? What are the key lessons from a marketing and organizational perspective? How can you be effective as a marketeer when you are overseeing an organization that reaches six million people, etc?
Afshana: One valuable lesson is that growing a company is like a marathon. If you solve a specific pain point and build trust by delivering real value, that's key to success. That may sound like a cliche but that is the truth and I think that is one of the most important lessons I have learned in this journey that you can apply in many different situations.
As a CMO, I've learned several crucial lessons.
First, having a clear objective for the team and aligning it with the broader company vision is crucial. If top management has a vision that the team can't relate to, it becomes impossible to execute and your growth will suffer.
I try to ensure every campaign, product launch, or branding effort comes with measurable outcomes – whether it's user growth, revenue, or brand recognition.
Another lesson that I mentioned earlier is taking a user-centric approach. Understanding the audience and what they want is the core of every decision. We try to listen to users, get feedback, and base our actions on their input. I think if you fail to do it, it can make things quite challenging for you.
The other lesson is the critical importance of cross-functional collaboration. The marketing team doesn't operate alone. Collaboration between product, design, support, and other teams needs to be smooth. From just two or three people, we've grown to around 120 people. Without smooth collaboration, we couldn't have accompanied this growth.
Another key is building everything – from product to team – in a scalable way.
Finally, adaptability. You have to be willing to change all the time because the world is changing all the time. If you don’t adapt to the changes in the market, it can create existential risks for you as a company.
Ruhul: This idea of building everything in a scalable manner is interesting. We hear people talk about designing a product/engineering/system in a scalable manner but rarely talk about taking a similar approach to team and organization. But I think it is critical to use the same principles in both instances. How do you design everything in a scalable manner?
Afshana: Scaling isn’t about choosing between strategy and execution, rather it’s about balancing both. It’s about keeping an eye on the long-term vision while making sure the day-to-day operations align with that.
For me, the biggest lesson has been this: businesses don’t grow just because they have great products. They grow because they adapt, stay consistent, and keep innovating. And at the heart of it all? People. The right team, the right culture, and the right mindset are what sustain growth in the long run.
Ruhul: These points are very useful, particularly what you mentioned about balancing day-to-day tasks with bigger priorities - both long-term and short-term. Usually, when we're in the thick of things, running a team or managing a product, we tend to forget about balancing these priorities. When designing your daily processes, if I understand what you mean, you have to design them with sustainability in mind. Sure, I could design things to achieve hypergrowth for the next 10 days or 3 months, but what we're really trying to do is design for sustainable growth - not just for now. The important thing is designing everything with long-term sustainability in mind.
Afshana: Marketing is about human connection as much as it is about strategies, data, and tools. You can have the most optimized campaign but if it doesn’t resonate with people, it won’t create a lasting impact. That’s why I always remind my team that behind every metric is a real user, a real need.
Sustainability in growth means finding the balance between scaling fast and scaling smart. It's not just about short-term wins but ensuring that every initiative builds towards long-term impact. And to do that, we have to stay adaptable because the only constant in marketing (and business) is change.
At the end of the day, the real competitive edge is staying open to learning, iterating fast, and making sure we are solving real problems; not just chasing numbers.
Ruhul: Now these are very useful lessons. In fact, we can perhaps talk more about each of them. But I think for today, this is almost two hours, and we can end our conversation here. Let's catch up one more time to talk more about marketing. Thank you so much for being so open to sharing your knowledge. I can’t appreciate it enough.
Afshana: Thank you so much for having me. I would love to continue this discussion, there’s always more to explore when it comes to marketing, scaling, and navigating the ever-evolving landscape of business. Looking forward to catching up again soon!
