Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Some thoughts on marketing strategy

On 09/03/2012 08:50 AM, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> Hello Jean, 
>
> Thank you for picking this up.
>
> Le lundi 03 septembre 2012 à 15:59 +1000, Jean Weber a écrit :
> > I'm sorry I've not responded to Charles's thread on marketing
> > strategy. I've got notes but haven't organised my thoughts
> > sufficiently to share them.
> >
> > Meanwhile, I found some good ideas in here to consider when defining
> > the "what and how" part of our marketing strategy. With examples. Most
> > of us know this, and we're working on some aspects, but we probably
> > should and could do more. Though that depends a bit on who we consider
> > our primary target audiences. Clearly the methods mentioned in the
> > article are relevant to individual decision-making, but if one's
> > target is government or business, perhaps not so relevant.
> >
> > http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/marketing_is_dead.html
>
> Interesting read. It somehow fits into the point I was trying to make,
> which is that our marketing team must be able to market our community
> (through the community) while serving specific marketing needs. Let me
> give you an example: marketing should not be "just" about a message, as
> elaborate as it could be. It ought to provide information about
> features, but at the same time being able to advertise and communicate
> about our ability, as a community, to help people in their daily tasks
> or to get specific features included. 
> On another level, distribution as an autonomous team is important: it's
> a community based, community powered team giving the tools and the means
> to any potential distributor of LibreOffice DVDs, USB keys, CD ROMs,
> torrents to spread LibreOffice. 
>
> In the paragraph above (again, just as an example, but as an identified
> need), we can identify two tasks that need specific contributions:
> * Features communication and advertisement: Only with out last versions
> did we start to have a real features page . We should make sure to have
> one for each release (sorry, at least for each major release such as the
> 3.x 3.y), people blogging about one or several specific features coming
> up in a non technical way, etc.
> * Distribution team: we would need  a bunch of people making sure that
> DVD, CD-ROMs, USB Keys and torrents are kept up to date, possibly with
> special packages. The NA DVD is a great example of that. 
>
>
> Last but not least, coming back to "marketing the community". Our
> community is our biggest asset, not just because traditional marketing
> is dead, but because our "product mix" is largely relevant on what the
> community wants (by opposition to one vendor, or one specific product).
> Hence we could not really be advertising a coherent product strategy as
> if we were selling software even if we wanted to. But we can certainly
> talk about our community and how it strives everyday to be a friendly
> and proactive community helping out users, reporting and fixing bugs,
> etc.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Charles.
Hi,

IMHO the evolving marketing paradigm appears to place a heavier emphasis
on independent brand champions, reviewers, etc. rather than mass
marketing.  It appears to place more emphasis on "word-of-mouth" from
trusted sources rather than an advertising. The trusted sources can be
independent reviewers in a magazine, blog, social media, or someone you
personally know. This is a slower method but probably more stable method
for growth and definitely less costly. Amazon built their reputation by
customer service not advertising, their advertising was delivery on
their promises and thus early customers became their best advertisers. I
do not remember ever seeing an ad for Amazon but hear a lot of chatter
about them in the media.

For example I originally heard about Open Office many years ago in a
review, I believe by Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, and LO
more recently in a post (I forget where) saying that LO might be worth
checking out. I first heard about Ubuntu from an acquaintance who is
very knowledgeable and suggested I look at as an alternative to Windows.

As far as business and governments, IMHO the same rules apply. They are
going to be less sensitive to traditional advertising going forward
because people make their decisions in similar manners whether for their
employer or themselves.

-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


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