Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Glyn Moody's article

On 18 October 2011 12:53, webmaster for Kracked Press Productions <
webmaster@krackedpress.com> wrote:

> Here is a marketing question that came from this thread;
> If we do not capture a large market and following - larger the better -
> what will happen to LO's market share when AOO comes out and they spend the
> marketing dollars that LO does not have?

Why do you think AOO has a large marketing budget? I don't know but I doubt
it has at present.

For this year, LO was lucky.  Without OOo producing a package after 3.3.0,
> LO started to get OOo people looking for a package that is continuing to
> update its package.  I truly wonder how many OOo users LO got because OOo
> was no longer issuing updates.  When AOO comes out, how many will switch
> back?

Probably depends on the distribution channels.  LibO has the advantage on
Linux of being packaged by default eg with Ubuntu. I bet a lot of OOo users
are still on whatever they first downloaded on Windows.

Then there is the question on how do we keep our users instead of them going
> back to the "original" version, not under Apache?  Right now, open-source
> users have an older OOo version and the much more developed LO package.  LO
> is the only way to go is you want to use the best MS Office compatibility.
>  That was a major issue with the older OOo.  That is currently LO's biggest
> feature with our marketing, besides the price.  LO now can read/write .docx
> documents [and the other formats] better than any other free alternative
> that I know of.  If you do not have a MS document/spreadsheet/etc. filled
> with complex micros, you can use LO with all your old MSO documents and
> create all of your new ones as well.  This seems to work with everything but
> Access [so I have read in these lists].

> From a marketing point of view the issue is how many end-users know this?
Ok, geeks might but probably only those with a specific interest in desktop
office products.  Probably brand name is more important in terms of numbers
and that is something in OpenOffice.org's favour but not necessarily Apache
Office or whatever ASF decide to call it. Anything other than OpenOffice.org
runs the risk of reducing the brand effect.

LO needs to gain marketing shares and do such a good job at explaining why
> people and businesses should use our product, when AOO comes out, we will
> have a market share that is very happy with out product and will not be too
> willing to try AOO.  When it finally does come out, we need to make sure our
> package is still the better one.  All of the initial articles stating that
> LO 3.3.0 was much better than OOo 3.3.0 went to our favor.  Now we do not
> need to have articles saying AOO is now better than LO.

I should think distribution factors are probably more important. Unless you
have a very good education strategy for end users I doubt many will get past
which is personally easier for them to install.

So
> ramp up marketing to get more loyal users
> ramp up services to keep them loyal
>
> When AOO comes out, we need to be the better product by a big margin.  They
> can send a lot of cash with marketing, while LO cannot.  We to keep growing
> and marketing at every event and show available.  We to get the public to
> back out package to the point that they will not go to a big company's
> version.  Now the work really begins.


In terms of the cost of a global marketing campaign, I doubt ASF has
significantly more to spend that TDF, even if it was 10 times as much it
would still have little impact unless there was some killer way of
presenting things. Strategy to generate marketing funds is at this point
probably more important than any small amounts of mney either project has at
present.

-- 
Ian

Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications (The Schools ITQ)

www.theINGOTs.org +44 (0)1827 305940

The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth,
Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and
Wales.

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