[Typo3-marketing] Another marketing paper

[Sander Vogels]

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for you extensive reaction. At the moment I lay sick in bed with 
a flue so I'm not able to respond to all you're saying. But it is a good 
piece and I'll surely come back to it later. But what strikes me in your 
introduction is the big gap in marketperspective in the US and the EU. 
But I still have hope for TYPO3 in the US cause when I read the piece 
from the T3 UG from Austria, this seemed of another Planet to from a 
Dutch perspective. It was a good piece but as a Dutchman I didn't 
recognise one tiny bit of the Dutch market in their analysis. But still 
T3 is doing great here and in Austria. So I still feel good about the US 
market cause we start to win some ground there.

More later, warm regards,

Sander

PS Michelle, last year I joined CM-Pros. All the big US cms names are 
member. Since they are heavily American based I suggest you join also 
and start pushing ;-)
http://www.cmprofessionals.org/

Michelle Heizer wrote:
> Thank you for the article. Very nicely written!
> 
> 
> The problem I have with some of the ideas tends to stem from my experiences
> in the US as both a marketing person and a consultant.
> 
> We have to face the fact that TYPO3 is a Euro-centric CMS and will always be
> that way. Having a different portal or a different arm of the association
> won't change that. You take one look in the extension repository, the
> websites, or even the software itself and you will see datestamps in
> dd/mm/yyyy (and when you have a lot of extensions, it's a lot of work for
> US-based consultancies to overcome), text in other languages, or even text
> with broken English. There are hundreds (thousands?) of CMSes whose
> companies are based in the US. TYPO3 will always have a problem competing
> with that because the US is a fickle bunch of people. They tend to want to
> buy products based solely in the US. You've probably seen the "Made in the
> USA" stickers before. While I don't agree with this, unfortunately I'm in
> the minority. Can this perception be changed? Honestly, I'm not sure it can.
> But later on in this email, I'll explain why that might not really matter.
> 
> I believe there should be two types of marketing for TYPO3: One for
> enterprises, developers and consultancies, the other for small to mid-size
> businesses (SMBs).
> 
> How does one find TYPO3? Right now, a business, developer or consultancy
> would have to know they need a content management system, they would have to
> know what a content management system is and what it does, they would have
> to research the different types of CMSes, then they would come to typo3.com
> by finding the link via a search engine, a site like CMS Matrix, a press
> release, etc. For the majority of SMBs, this will never happen. SMBs don't
> even know what a CMS is, let alone understand why they need one. They do not
> have the time to research CMSes and they would probably get confused in
> doing so. Most SMBs don't have an IT department and if they do, it's very
> small.
> 
> So how should we market to SMBs? I really believe SMBs are an untapped
> market. There are millions of SMBs in the US and each one could benefit from
> TYPO3. I have read many articles about what SMBs are looking for. They want
> low start-up costs, in favor of a monthly or annual fee. During the last two
> years, large companies have been focusing in on them. If you look at the CRM
> market, for example, most are turning to hosted applications. Even Microsoft
> just lowered the price of its CRM and opened it up to the hosting market.
> Hosted applications are very attractive to businesses will little to no IT
> departments.
> 
> So with this theory in mind. Let's say you have a town with 500 local
> businesses. If you pulled each of them into TYPO3 and charged a monthly
> hosting fee of $100 (or whatever), you can quickly see how much this would
> be worth it to a consultancy. My company has been moving in this direction
> and it's been very successful. Remember, TYPO3 is a wonderful application
> for hosting several domains in one installation and the extensions provide
> the modularity and features SMBs are looking for. SMBs may not be able to
> afford a large extension up front, but they like that TYPO3 has the
> capability of handling future additions as funds become available to them.
> 
> So how can consultancies attract these type of clients? Currently, TYPO3
> consultancies find projects by being listed on TYPO3.com. They wait until
> someone looking for TYPO3 goes to the list, picks them, goes to their
> website, contacts them, and then they bid on a project. A customer sends out
> the same email to several consultancies and just chooses the lowest bidder.
> This is a bad practice to get into. I completely understand what Sander
> meant about "fixing" the work of other consultancies. We've had to do this a
> lot lately. We've even had customers who wanted us to fix the work of other
> T3 developers except they didn't have a lot of money left or time because
> they had already given both to the previous developer. We need to move away
> from this because it's not benefiting anyone, not to mention this is doing
> nothing to spread TYPO3! Consultancies need to be more proactive. They need
> to start going to local businesses and explain to them in layman's terms why
> they need a CMS and how their company could benefit from it. Most businesses
> just use off-the-shelf products like Frontpage or Dreamweaver or have some
> local web design company create a site for them that never gets updated.
> They don't understand the benefits of a CMS, database or an extension. They
> don't even know what they want in a website or what kind of technology is
> available to them. This is the perception we need to change.
> 
> Most SMBs will never want to attend a conference, buy a t-shirt, join a tug,
> attend a snowboard tour, etc. They just want a product that works. They
> won't fall in love with the T3 name, they will fall in love with the
> software itself and how it will quickly benefit their business. I've been
> working with small businesses the last few months and they had no idea that
> you could even edit a website through a browser. Once we explain to them in
> ordinary, non-technical language how easy it will be to update a site
> without having to purchase additional software, plus all the special
> features their site can have, they get excited and sign up. We've been
> training people with little to no computer experience. The results have been
> pretty interesting.
> 
> This leads us to the group that needs the "TYPO3 marketing" the most.
> Consultancies! They need to be the ones to support the T3 name, through
> marketing efforts and donations. The only way to get TYPO3 to grow in the US
> is to get more consultancies using it. SMBs will only want to work with an
> actual person or company. They like the interaction, the training, the
> support a consultancy has to offer. If we had thousands of US consultancies
> (as opposed to the two on typo3.com) moving all the businesses around them
> into TYPO3, the use of TYPO3 would grow exponentially and would filter into
> larger enterprises.
> 
> This is also where I agree with Sander. In the end, the people responsible
> for "selling" TYPO3 will be the consultancies. I think that TYPO3 training
> and certification will certainly help, but we also need to enable
> consultancies in their marketing efforts. TYPO3.com should be a repository
> for white papers, case studies, marketing materials, feature lists,
> presentations, videos, etc. Anything consultancies need to show to potential
> customers. This will ensure there is no misinformation coming from
> consultancies because we are controlling the information flow. I don't
> necessarily think SMBs even need to know the name "TYPO3", they just need to
> understand that they need it. :)
> 
> Ok, so why do I have reservations about breaking out the association into
> continental/regional and national/local groups?
> 
> 1. It's  not supportable. Since this is an open source project and we are
> all volunteers, our personal and work lives come first. Projects tend to
> take awhile to get completed or don't ever get completed. When things don't
> get completed, they fall back on the TYPO3 core group who are already
> overworked. If we extend ourselves more than we can handle, it will look
> very unprofessional, not too mention the core group may resent having to
> take over all these extra groups.
> 
> 2. Politically, the continental group probably won't work in the US right
> now and so we'd need to determine the ROI. I have to be honest. After the
> last presidential election, a large group of people moved north to Canada
> and south to Mexico, leaving behind many Americans that don't want to deal
> with these countries. From within the US, "America" means the United States:
> Canada is Canada, and Mexico is Mexico, and a Canadian or Mexican-based
> company is not "American". For example, I was at a Chamber of Commerce
> luncheon this week where two American soldiers were invited to speak.
> Politics have become really strange here, they transcend everything -- even
> business -- and everyone is worried about looking un-patriotic. Once again,
> I don't agree with this -- just relaying what I see.
> 
> 3. Vendors may help these groups in order to generate business for their
> consultancies. I have seen a TYPO3 site for the US that was nothing more
> than a forum and a banner ad at the top for the consultancy. What message
> does this send to people? While they may have started it with good
> intentions, my opinion is that it may do more harm than good. We'd have to
> be very careful who we allowed to represent the name of TYPO3 to the general
> public.
> 
> 4. We would be thinning out our community. It seems that the people who do
> find and stay with TYPO3 like it because of the strong sense of community.
> If we thin out the group, we'd be losing this aspect of TYPO3. Instead, we
> may just need to funnel out the community more, getting the community more
> involved rather than less. Possibly with groups for US specific issues.
> 
> 5. Miscommunication and misinformation!! If we let the countries market for
> themselves, we risk even more misinformation about TYPO3. Keeping the
> information central while making it easy for consultancies to use in their
> countries will allow us to keep the information more controlled.
> 
> 
> I haven't mentioned enterprises yet, because I'm not sure how we can
> effectively market to them in the US. Enterprises are a unique breed. They
> have their own IT departments with developers and their own inner politics.
> Most already have contracts with Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc.
> They are skeptical of open source products, especially ones that aren't
> located in the US. They feel they won't get adequate support and if the
> project fails, their jobs are on the line. Most of the time, they just
> extend the contracts they already have with these companies to include a CMS
> or get recommendations for a CMS. They do attend conferences, but usually
> only large IT related conferences. It would be difficult for them  to
> justify travel expenses for a T3 conference. They aren't going to show up to
> work in a TYPO3 t-shirt, but they may take the information back to their
> company if we exhibit at one of those larger conferences. The problem is
> that these conferences are far from cheap and we'd be competing with big
> companies who themselves are sponsoring the conferences. On the plus side,
> many enterprises are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their CMS
> choices. The market is starting to open up again, but open source is still
> not taken very seriously. So we'd have to change the perception of open
> source, which is not an easy feat.
> 
> So to recap: I'd prefer seeing typo3.com be a resource for enterprises and
> consultancies. Get them interested in the product and explain why they need
> it, and how it will help their organization and clients with
> industry-specific solutions (very key point here).
> 
> Get consultancies in the association and let them know the benefits of being
> in the association. Maybe we could give them exclusive use of a marketing
> repository. Since many people here are marketing professionals, we could
> also add articles to the repository on how to market TYPO3 to SMBs or even
> enterprises.
> 
> typo3.org would stay the resource for developers/consultancies. I see no
> problem with that. 
> 
> TUGs, conferences, merchandise, etc. would be marketed to developers and
> consultancies. Each country would have one contact/organizer that reports
> directly to the association. The contact would be responsible for getting
> people to help them and for determining the ROI for each of these items in
> their respective country. For example, maybe there is not enough interest in
> a TYPO3 conference in the US right now, but having TYPO3 reps attend 5
> IT-related conferences would be much more effective. The specifics of
> marketing to prospective T3 users will be different in each country, but the
> information needed will be the same. By giving local consultants the tools
> they need to sell T3 to clients to meet their specific needs rather than
> trying to establish TYPO3 as a "brand name", we can help the consultants be
> successful even when the client has never heard the name. In this manner,
> TYPO3 will naturally develop its "brand name" the same way other OpenSource
> programs have, such as Linux and Apache. At the same time, by keeping the
> association more central, the efforts of those who are organizing and
> maintaining the information won't be duplicated by each
> continent/region/country/consultancy every time the information is
> distributed. The contact/organizer for a country would be able to simply use
> the information that pertains to their market.
> 
> Let me know what your thoughts are on this, or if you have any questions or
> concerns about marketing to the US market.
> 
> Cheers!
> Michelle Pfeiffer <-- just for Daniel ;)
> 
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