Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to OpenACS Marketing & Promotion Project
to take a view of the Big Picture. I did not consider adding ideas
related to the "inbound" component of marketing for OpenACS as it is
something I do every day, by watching how my customer's use their
solutions, asking them what they want, assessing their long term
goals, budgets, etc. My focus groups are my clients and their actual
work environments.
But again, I am talking from a Consultant's perspective, in that, my
clients are people who have never heard of OpenACS, or PHPNuke, or in
many cases Slashdot, Apache, or Zope. (Hard to believe, but these are
simply not topics that get discussed at the "T" with my clients.) As a
consultant, it is my job to do the "inbound marketing" and formulate a
solution that meets their needs/expectations. The collateral to which
I originally refer, goes into my "Grab Bag of Marketing and Sales
Objection" tricks. I never know what issues a client might bring up;
i.e. A question I received this morning asked me "Has OpenACS ever
been published in a major magazine?" and they meant Forbes, Money,
Inc., FastCompany, etc. Has it? Help! Don? Can we leverage off of ACS
publishings?
The "inbound marketing" idea is an excellent point, and essential for
the success of the OpenACS: Click-n-Use-Out-of-the-Box Solution. My
successful clients regularly research using "inbound marketing"
techniques, and those that are failing or have failed did not; they
never stopped to ask the customer what they want or need. In a sense,
if I am a "customer" to OpenACS (and I consider myself one), are you
(the OpenACS Community) not providing a forum to voice my needs and
expectations... is this not a form of "inbound" marketing? Funny, now
that I think on it, several of the OpenACS solutions I have created
result in "inbound marketing" for my clients. Perhaps this is another
"Solution" we can chalk up to OpenACS.
Again, Adam tells us to define our customer, and I agree. So set your
sights on me as a Web-Based Training Developer AND a Web Based KM
Consultant (or perhaps just a "Custom Database-Backed Web Applications
Hacker" but don't tell my clients this for it will scare them), and
then use my previous discussions as the results of a 1 person focus group!
Malte: Does my "consultant" situation fit into one of the three
primary customer types you referenced? Are there enough Web
Consultant/Developers using OpenACS to warrant a separate
classification? Would a Usage Poll makes sense? (If consultants do not
fit the customer model, this would explain why my marketing
suggestions may not fit the future direction of OpenACS, in which case
I have some serious decisions to make.)
Adam: In your experience... what do you think would be a good way to
start the "inbound" research for the open-install-click-run users?
What are your thoughts on who the best audience(s) is to target for
the longevity and exponential growth of OpenACS? How do you suggest we
determine the "top three" customer targets for OpenACS, assuming we
choose three?
-nate
