[libreoffice-marketing] Re: Marketing Budget

Le 2011-01-02 11:10, Italo Vignoli a écrit :
> I think we have to be clear, once and for all.
>
> We will not have a marketing budget, at least in 2011 and 2012.
> We will not have any money to spend on advertising and market research.
> If any, we will have some money for travels and events (but not before
> we have a legal entity set up).
>
> We have to find our marketing budget in several specific resources we
> can have for free:
>
> - brain (we have to outsmart the competition)
> - volunteer work (we can achieve wonders with our enthusiasm)
> - willingness to cooperate (we can achieve wonders as a team)
> - positive attitude (we cannot give up, never)
> - empathy with media (we are the nice guys to help)
> - learning from mistakes (we will make many of them)
> - learning from positive experiences (we have had many in the past)
>
> Our experience in Italy shows that a 10 Million Euro yearly marketing
> budget (Microsoft Italy) cannot win against these assets.

Thanks Italo. Having some money for marketing does have its advantages. 
However, not having any money for marketing, with a volunteer based 
organisation such as ours, is not necessary. We are making a good solid 
product, our marketing avenues (LibO official announcement messages; 
blogging, forums, advertisements through Facebook and YouTube) are free 
of use and the for-profit organisations such as magazines and newspapers 
will cover us anyway without our having to take out any advertisement 
space.

A good product always makes good news. We just have to make sure that we 
are efficient at delivery of our progress and values of our quality 
product where it counts. I am sure we can do this with our volunteers 
without any funds.

Maybe a day will come when we will be funded adequately for expansion 
purposes or travel subsidies to LibreOffice conferences. But for now, we 
can easily bridge all of this with the resources that we have on hand.

As you imply, there is no way that we can attempt to compete financially 
against a well funded group such as Microsoft. We can however compete at 
product quality and product marketing. At this level, we have certainly 
an equal footing with Microsoft. Money does not matter at this level.

Having no marketing funds will only make us more of a robust organisation.

Cheers

Marc


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