[TYPO3-UG US] US Marketing Plan

[Michelle Heizer]

Hi Greg,

> I've been thinking on similar lines however with a focus on various 
> vertical markets. 

I definitely agree. It is my hope this will make up a large part of the
new website. We need the site to be more solutions based as you see in
other enterprise-level CMSes in the US market. They already have a focus
on general markets such as business, healthcare, government, education
and nonprofit, but I'd like us to take this a step further and aim at
specific industries such as media (newspapers, magazines), communities,
real estate, retail, manufacturing, artists/photographers/designers,
consultancies, financial institutions, libraries, museums, etc. With
over 1000 extensions available today, TYPO3 could easily be packaged
into any one of these solutions and we need a section written to support
that. This is where TYPO3 excels above other CMSes -- the functionality
for specific industry solutions is already available or can be built
fairly easily. To extend many commercial CMSes, you have to buy a
license for additional products produced by third parties that aren't
even tightly integrated into the core or workflow. We have this
capability already freely available in the TER, not scattered about. I'd
even like to see a demo site built for each of these industries with the
extensions already installed and configured. ( wishful thinking... ;) )


> What about creating strategic alliances and partner 
> programs to economically benefit for those involved? Are we talking 
> about marketing TYPO3 both IT firms and end users (corporations, small 
> business, etc.)? More US based TYPO3 consultancies will help TYPO3's 
> popularitiy.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I had written a section in the
plan for a network of consultancies. My idea was to split the
consultancies from the "user groups" so that we could establish a
partnership program. I have a section about this on the survey and I'm
curious what others think about it.

In the same vein, the website should list the benefits to Web
consultancies, IT firms, design agencies and PR companies in
establishing partnerships with TYPO3 consultants and developers. Some of
these companies may not have even heard of TYPO3 or even a content
management system so they will want to understand the economic benefit
of using this system or partnering with a T3 consultancy. In my own
experience, I have worked with design and PR agencies in NYC,
California, etc that hadn't even heard of a CMS before and I sold them
on the idea of TYPO3. These companies already have a strong client base
so it's been a mutually beneficial relationship.

So I think the main people we need to target is IT departments and
agencies. When someone sets up TYPO3 in an organization with hundreds or
even thousands of employees, the content editors are not the ones that
made the decision to purchase TYPO3, nor are they really interested in
being in a user group or active members of the community. It's the IT
department that researches CMSes and either implements it themselves, or
hires an agency to do so. We need to market to both the IT department
and the consultancy. On top of that, we need to have a "toolbox"
available for consultancies to help them "sell" the system to their
clients. While there may be some users who will download TYPO3, install
it themselves, learn how to use it and build their own site, we don't
necessarily need to market to them because they would probably do that
anyway and they are already finding the system via TYPO3.com/.org.


> Mediatech.net subscriber base is closing in on 4,000 members. Many are 
> US based IT companies, web designers, etc. When I have time I'll begin 
> sorting through FE users to run a demographic profile. This may take 
> weeks dues to the manual process involved. I'll post results here.

I'd be interested in the results. This sounds like a great resource and
I hope we can enlist some of your subscribers to help build the portal.
It's been very difficult to gauge how many people use TYPO3 in the US
because it seems that only a small portion of the developers and users
are actually active members of the community. With this in mind, I think
we need to focus more on community relations and retention of members or
we risk a high dropout rate.

Ultimately, I'm hoping the survey will help shape the plan since
everyone has their own skills and experiences to bring to the table. 

Would it be possible for you to send out an email to your subscriber
base with a link to the survey when it becomes available?

Thanks!

Michelle