Duplicated from my reply to Marketing Offensive at Drupal.org: http://drupal.org/node/59170#comment-112184
I think the reason Mozilla was so successful was because they had a well planned approach resulting in a unified and focused effort. Prior to building a campaign, a company (eg: Drupal.org) will create a "Communications Strategy" which is then passed to the Advertising Firm (eg: Drupal Community). The following is an outline for a Communications Strategy:
1) Why are we doing this campaign, what are the goals?
2) What message are we trying to communicate?
- a) What is the product benefit?
- b) Who are we trying to talk to? (Programers, Consultants, General Public...)
- c) What does the customer want/need?
- d) How does Drupal meet this want/need better than the competition?
3) What do we want customers to think, feel and do as a result of seeing the campaign?
4) What are the constraints eg: name, logo, budget, timing ...
Having these questions answered would help unify the communities' efforts resulting in a more focused and thus effective communications strategy.
I would be happy to help produce this document if some senior Drupal members have the time to chat through it. I would also enjoy working on any overall strategy of the campaign; anything really to help Drupal and put these past 4 years studying Marketing to good use.
Comments
Segmented Target Audience
Nice outline and great start! IMHO, we need to be aware that the intended target audience for our marketing efforts is not a homogenous group. I can identify the following segments:
Developers/programmers. Particularly, those who were tasked by their bosses to build an intranet or website.
Managers or business owners. These could also include managers of IT departments who need to provide a content management solution for their companies.
Individual users. These want to put up personal home pages, blogs, etc.
Note that the segments above could still be further segmented. Developers, for example, could be coming from a different CMS and are shopping for a better solution.
I guess the common point on all these segments is that they go scouting around because they have a specific itch to scratch (in other words, a specific problem to solve). Maybe we could identify popular needs and demands and then position Drupal as a solution.
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Another target audience suggested
Hi,
I think a very nice and important target should be students.
Drupal is very attractive to students, because it can help them in many projects that they have.
Drupal is also a good opportunity to learn : webdev, marketing, communication... many students would probably find in Drupal a way to give something to the community and to learn back from it.
Also, don't forget that main companies have always big focus on relation with students. Because students are the workers of tomorrow. It is a critical issue for the success of a company on a long perspective and for Drupal as well I believe.
I want to do things in order to make Drupal more well known by the french students ! I would post a topic about that in this group.
Any help and suggestion would be appreciated.
Consultants
Don't forget that a lot of people who set up drupal sites are consultants. Growing the general cachet for Drupal among web consultants and contractors might to a lot to increase market-share.
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