Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » TAG: Marketing

February 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Open source marketing--going from project to business

TAGS: Economics, Marketing, Open Source

Over the last few years we've seen the benefits that open source provides to distribution and development. We've also seen the impact that a quality community has on a project or company's growth. One of the things that still isn't clear (or at least not quantifiable) is the impact non-community marketing efforts have on the growth of open source businesses.

As part of my company's growth process we at MuleSource decided to experiment with what might be called more "traditional" marketing (at least in the internet age.) We've put a banner ad up on TheServerSide.com (our analytics say that TSS drives a great deal of traffic for us) that links back to our new GetMule.com mini-site.

The Get Mule program is designed to do several things:
-Drive traffic to a vanity URL (getmule.com) that creates a brand imprint
-Encourage people to register with us for a great whitepaper from RedMonk or take a survey and get a cool t-shirt (the back says Don't be a dumb-ass. Get Mule.)
-Provide market data (via the survey) that we can fold back into the product roadmap
-Ultimately the goal is to get people to try Mule and convert them into subscribers.

My explanation above is a bit academic, but considering the fact that our advertising budget for 2007 was exactly zero it was a big move for us to decide to launch a campaign. Especially when you consider that there are four components once you hit the landing page:
1. Download Mule
2. Get a free analyst report (we paid for reprint rights)
3. Flash screencast (cost us a bit of money for the flash)
4. Survey (we're giving away t-shirts)

In one fell swoop we went from spending zero dollars on advertising to spending a big chunk of dough to get all this stuff together. As such, here are the questions I keep asking:
-Can we get more then branding from this exercise?
-Will developers always be our target?
-Would it make more sense if we did our marketing by vertical segments or by product category?
-What is the click-through rate for any of the pages in the jump site that would make the campaign a success in general?
-Should I have just bought a new car with the money we are spending?

Travis did a further write-up on this as he is terrified of the whole thing.

Previously:
Tough Marketing $$$ Decisions for a Tech Start-Up
The voodoo of marketing an open source project
Where are all the open source marketers?

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on February 19, 2007 09:47 PM

April 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Marc Fleury-truly hated, or just annoying?

TAGS: Applications, Marketing, Open Source

Last week I noted Sarah Lacy's profile of JBoss CEO Marc Fleury. It seems that Fleury felt that Sarah got some things wrong and is addressing them in this blog post.

One of the advantages of achieving a little notoriety is that you get to spend time telling young journalists about what a "bad boy" you are. The aftermath: you get to read the ensuing portrait of a money grubber who's "clawed his way" to the top of the open source pile (of what, kaka?) and who communicates via a "fervent, almost preachy and completely self-serving blog."

Funny thing is that Sarah couldn't have been too wrong--every person I have ever discussed JBoss with has said the same thing. And my sources are far less reliable than hers.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on April 3, 2006 02:23 PM

March 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Windows Vista won't make Xmas-Santa switching to Linux

TAGS: Business, Marketing, Microsoft

Microsoft announced that Windows Vista is being pushed back to January 2007. If ever there were a time for Linux on the desktop to make it into the mainstream it's this holiday season.

"We're trying to crank up the security level higher than ever," Allchin said. "This came down to a few weeks. We're trying to do the responsible thing here."

Does that mean that Microsoft occasionally acts irresponsibly-releasing applications and Windows versions that are inherently insecure?

The group that will suffer the most from the Vista delay are the PC vendors who need to sell more gear during the holidays. While it's easy to say "I told you so" when it comes to reliance on Microsoft everyone recognizes the vast power MS has over manufacturers. Let me suggest that PC vendors once again consider alternate operating systems. Ubuntu and Linspire are obvious choices for both consumers and business users. We just need a good office suite and then it's time to starting shorting Microsoft stock.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on March 21, 2006 04:10 PM

March 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Uptime, weak Apple customer service and my 5th Treo

TAGS: Marketing

We in the technology world buying world love to hear about 99.999% uptime for data and online services and in fact can penalize providers if they don't meet the agreed to numbers. And yet, when my cell phone barely works in downtown San Francisco, or my G5 has its third meltdown in one year, I have no recourse. Same goes for the Windows servers that we have to reboot weekly just so that they don't blow up on their own.

I am Mac user since 1994 and continue to support the company's products despite a customer service attitude that is as abusive as that of Microsoft. The impact is different for consumer vs. enterprise users but both companies punish users when the products they sell don't meet the minimum level of performance. Right now I am re-installing OSX for the 4th time on the same machine. I ran the hardware tests (no problems), repaired the disk (no problems) and fixed the permissions but the machine still hangs during startup. So now, several hours later I am reinstalling yet again.

Now, you might ask if I called AppleCare, the answer (this time) is no, because I have already had this problem and the first time I called about it (paying $39) they told me to take the machine to the "Genius" Bar in SF. If any readers have been to the SF Apple Store, suffice to say I ended up fixing it myself anyway. Add to this the fact that Matt still doesn't have his Powerbook back for over a month and I am not going anywhere near Apple support. It's fortunate that Macs tend to be reliable because if MacOS was as flaky as Windows the support costs would drive Apple out of business.

This also supports my continuing view that there is an enormous opportunity for desktop Linux. I have written about this before but there are only a few things I need to get better in order to switch over to a Linux laptop:
- Easily managed Wifi
- A better version of OpenOffice
- Palm Sync
That's pretty much it.

Please welcome my 5th Treo 600
On a separate note, my fourth Sprint Treo soiled its diaper and I was pretty much ready to switch to the Crackberry 8700C on Cingular. That was largely due to the fact that my first Treo's screen went bad, the 2nd one had a bad mike, and the 3rd one was actually worse than the 2nd. I went through such hell at the Sprint store on Geary in SF (a pox on your heads, all of you) that I went to a different store who took care of the problem and gave me #4-it only took 3 days. When #4 broke on Monday I went to the Sprint store on Market and they replaced it with #5 in about a half hour. No hassles. Finally, a little justice. That said, it's pathetic that the Treo is so poorly made that I have had 5 of them as a business user. And how come Palm isn't giving me and Matt stuff to use anyway? We've both sworn off Blackberry and Windows, and yet Palm and Apple give us zero reason to stay with them.

With the exception of Linspire, I haven't received a single product for review or to evaluate. Sure, we tend toward software, but it's odd that marketers aren't taking advantage of our relative influence in the market. We may not be Scoble, but when I am sitting here saying that your product or company sucks, I would at least expect a comment. Every PR company is trying to figure out how to "control" bloggers. Here's my take: You can't control anything. You can develop relationships and make us your friends but you have to be prepared for a 2-way conversation. I will be waiting for Sprint, Palm and Apple to respond...

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on March 1, 2006 09:33 PM

February 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Marketing to Dilbert: Mini-analysis of Sun

TAGS: Linux, Marketing, Open Source

When I set out to develop the content for the OSBC panel "Marketing to Dilbert: Marketing Methodologies for the Open Source Crowd" I was fairly certain that something would get lost in translation. The topic itself is just so broad that I tried to refine it to what I considered the most important aspects. Therefore I focused on market research, communicating with developers and learning from other marketers. The thing I think most people continue to forget is that marketing is much more than brochures and websites. It's also pricing, brand positioning, communications and more.

In the presentation, the slide that I thought could easily make me less friends was the one about what companies are doing a good job and what companies are close but not really succeeding. Oddly there wasn't much disagreement from the audience though at least one person misconstrued something I said.

Who's doing a good job
RedHat
MySQL
SugarCRM

Decent branding, but not great marketers
Sun
JBoss
Novell

I think the companies who are doing a good job are fairly self-explanatory. RedHat has a virtual monopoly on Linux deployments, MySQL has a model community relationship, and SugarCRM has been unbelievably smart about their business model and how they interact with both customers and developers. You can also look at the pricing and branding strategies to see that they have all done well for themselves.

Let me clarify what I mean in the "decent branding but not great marketers" category. None of these companies are necessarily bad-in fact I like all of them, but they are all off in one area or another. With Sun, the struggle is transitioning from a generic strategy of differentiation (high-end specialized products) to one of cost-leadership (new machines that compete with commodity Intel boxes running Linux.) It's not easy to swing a ship that big, but there continue to be signs that things are going in the right direction. But they aren't there yet, hence my dubious trust of their marketing.

Let's take the oft-cited 4 Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place (distribution channels), Promotion) and apply them to Sun to see what happens. For the sake of this exercise we'll simplify using a high, medium or low rating. I will also throw in the notion of Community as the wildcard.

Sun Microsystems (SUNW)
Product: High
Sun makes quality products.

Price: Medium
Sun offers good low-end products at decent prices. However, Sun has traditionally based their strategy on differentiation, not being a low-cost provider. While its clear that they need to get into different markets (SMB, high-density data center etc.) this low-end pricing causes confusion as the perception is that Sun makes high-end systems with a high-end price tag.

Place: High
Sun's product distribution is excellent. Realistically, every open source company should get a high mark here since distribution is basically free on the internet.

Promotion: Low
This is where I feel that there is a great deal of confusion and mixed messages. Just a year ago Sun was basically against Linux-I would even say that the perception was that Sun was an enemy of Linux. Now they cite statistics of new servers running Linux.

Add to this the acquisition of StorageTek, which does not lean toward the open source future that Sun keeps talking about (though buying revenue and cash was not necessarily a bad thing.) Then take into account the purchase of SeeBeyond, which makes more sense but still doesn't tell a clear story.

Community: High
Sun is really exemplary in community building and maintenance especially in relation to Java. What I said was that I found it hard to trust Sun because there is no clearly visible strategy. I find it disappointing that Sun didn't embrace Linux, but I get why they stuck with Solaris. That said, they have pioneered the majority of the community models we see today.

You should be doing this stuff if you are in marketing
This is an extremely basic example of a marketing analysis. The point is that if you are running a company of any kind you should be looking at your competitors and figuring out their weak spots. With Sun, the weak spot is the flip-flop on Linux and the fact that it's an enormous organization that is responsible to shareholders. The fact that they have been good to the community that uses their products is admirable.

Previously:
Does free software necessarily lead to support revenues? (Jonathan Schwartz)
Sun's Grid Flop
E-trade on Open Source

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on February 26, 2006 02:01 PM