Sulu CMS drives growth with OSP's strategic marketing partnership
Sulu CMS partnered with OSP as their CMO-on-demand, elevating their marketing strategy and achieving steady growth—reaching 1M+ installations while freeing their technical team to focus on development.
Empowering Sulu with strategic content and marketing execution
With an entirely technical team and no dedicated marketing department, Sulu faced the challenge of professionalizing its communication and content creation, especially for English-speaking audiences. Sulu is an open source content management system (CMS) built on the Symfony PHP framework and a spin-off from the Austrian agency MASSIVE ART. Through a client recommendation, Sulu connected with Open Strategy Partners (OSP), who have since become integral to their content, social media strategy, and overall marketing execution.
“We were juggling too many priorities.”
As a small, developer-centric company, Sulu's primary challenge was managing consistent, professional communication without a marketing team. Their content was homegrown, and they struggled to maintain regular communication with their audience and developer community. While they had a website and technical documentation, the team lacked the capacity to deliver consistent blog posts, social media engagement, and structured content on a regular basis.
Additionally, Sulu needed content that resonated with English-speaking markets and authentically reflected its open source values. They told us that finding an external partner with the right mix of CMS knowledge, open source experience, and content creation capabilities was extremely difficult … but they found us in the end :-)
“We were looking for someone with a background in CMS and open source... and finding a partner who is able to support us and produce content was essential.”
Pay for a headcount, get a whole marketing team
Sulu asked OSP to help them address these marketing challenges. Our unique positioning, expertise in open source communities, and understanding of technical environments made us the perfect fit for Sulu. OSP provided a team-based approach, handling everything from content creation to social media management, offering a solution far beyond what a single hire could achieve.
Over the course of the partnership, our role has expanded from producing content to executing full-scale social media strategies and managing publishing on Sulu’s website. OSP took responsibility for planning, releasing, and publishing content, ensuring a steady and organized flow of communication that Sulu previously couldn't maintain on its own.
Autonomy and evolution of the relationship
Our partnership has evolved, and OSP's role has grown significantly. We are now Sulu's "CMO-on-demand," and have more autonomy in executing marketing strategies and approvals. With OSP's technical knowledge in PHP, the Symfony framework, open source software, and Sulu’s technology and brand DNA, the partnership has deepened to the point where OSP is responsible for driving the marketing strategy.
Sulu now fully entrusts OSP with content ideation and execution, working together towards results rather than just implementing predefined tasks. This has freed up Sulu's team to focus more on their core business delivering technology and client work, while relying on OSP to handle marketing with minimal oversight.
The value of proactive teamwork
Sulu found tremendous value in the organizational benefits OSP brought to the table. While having a skilled content creator is valuable, the true benefit came from OSP's ability to push the Sulu team to deliver ideas, stories, and content on time. OSP's systematic approach ensured that Sulu maintained a regular content schedule across blogs, social media, and their website, helping the company build and sustain organic growth in engagement and installations.
Sulu also appreciates how OSP provides them with a collaborative, multidisciplinary team to draw on. They leverage our multiple perspectives and areas of expertise—content strategy and execution, SEO, open source community, and more—rather than relying on a single internal hire who may not have had the same breadth of experience.
“OSP took over content execution, allowing us to focus more on delivering technology and client work. They push us to deliver insights, organize everything, and maintain regular communication.”
— Thomas Schedler, Sulu CEO
Benefits and transformation
- Steady organic growth: Since partnering with OSP, Sulu has seen steady organic growth in user engagement and the product installation base. While not aiming for hyper-growth, the consistent communication strategy has helped Sulu maintain a reliable growth trajectory. At the time of writing, in the last 12 months:
- Sulu’s followers grew on LinkedIn by more than 20%.
- Sulu CMS surpassed 1 million installations in total.
- Comprehensive content execution: OSP's team manages all aspects of content creation and social media strategy, including planning, writing, publishing, and promoting content. This allows Sulu to focus on their technical work without worrying about missing communication opportunities.
- Social media and website management: OSP drives Sulu's entire social media communication plan, curating posts, managing engagements, and publishing content on their website—bringing more attention to their product and community.
Increased autonomy: OSP's new role as CMO-on-demand has allowed us to take full ownership of Sulu's marketing efforts, from strategy to execution. This increased autonomy has freed Sulu's leadership from the bottleneck of constant approvals and provided more bandwidth for their technical work.
Trust drives efficiency
“OSP now also plans our social media communication, proposes what to communicate, and manages the entire publishing plan for our website.”
While the partnership has been valuable from the start, over time, Sulu identified opportunities to take the collaboration to the next level. One challenge has been the bottleneck caused by internal approval processes, where Sulu's leadership had to review and approve content before it was published. As trust grew between Sulu and OSP, more streamlined processes have led to faster execution. With OSP now handling the ideation and decision-making, the partnership is more efficient and aligned with Sulu's goals.
Consistent content, consistent growth
Sulu's collaboration with OSP has transformed their communication strategy, allowing the company to engage consistently with its community and grow organically. OSP's role in creating content and managing the entire communication process has proven invaluable. As the partnership has evolved into a more autonomous relationship, Sulu's leadership is confident in OSP's ability to drive their marketing forward while the Sulu team focuses on delivering cutting-edge technology solutions for their clients.
Ready to professionalize your content and communication strategy with a partner who understands the nuances of technology and open source projects? Contact OSP today to see how we can help your business grow.