To market, to market...

Submitted by kattekrab on Sun 19th Feb 2012 15:02

 

My apologies for arriving a little late to the party. 
 
Thanks to the latest DrupalEasy podcast I've just read these 2 articles on Drupal Marketing, and most of the comments. 
I was also lucky enough to be present in London to hear Dries' call to the faithful to step up our marketing efforts and really help Drupal succeed.
 
There's been some attention paid to business focussed events, and the creation and collation of "marketing materials". But how much attention is being paid to the market itself?

 
Semiuniversal hit the nail squarely on the head by saying:
"There is a whole lot more to marketing than presentations, websites and videos. Those comprise the part of marketing called "communications", which is often associated with "branding" -- in a nutshell, getting people to recognize and remember your product. A competent marketing organization will have that covered, but it's completely subordinate to the  fundamental core of modern marketing, something called "customer orientation". It's the job of the organization as a whole to adopt a customer-centric stance, with marketing leading the way. The goal is to get inside the heads of end users, engineers, decision makers and shape everything you produce and promote to fill their exact needs. This is done by data analysis, interview, survey and a whole lot of conversation with every level of your market constituents."
What do we actually know about the market for websites? That's the real question we need to ponder.
 
That's what marketing is really about. Real marketing is about building strategic intelligence about the field of engagement.  Real marketing is about knowing your audience, understanding what their needs are, and delivering products that solve their problems. If you can actually solve their problem, they will probably find you.
 
But we also have to acknowledge that Drupal is special. We want to attract contributors, as well as consumers. It's just as important to the project, and ongoing health and growth of the community, that we understand how to solve their problems too.  We also need to understand the needs of developers and sitebuilders.
 
Funny pics like this one showing how different CMS communities think about each other can be useful places to start, because they address a core tenet of marketing - segmentation.
 
User profiles and scenarios are also a form of segmentation. So our usability experts already understand one of the key disciplines of marketing.
 
 Michael Anello reminds us that all too often we are just speaking into our own echo chamber.
"We need to start evangelizing Drupal outside of the Drupal ecosystem aimed at different industries (libraries, governments, small businesses, etc...)"
Yes! Perhaps we should be sending Dries and Angela to keynote at Webstock, O'Reilly, and Web Directions.  We should all be going to more industry events, and general web events.
 
Six years ago, whilst attending an education miniconf at linux.conf.au I noted there were very few teachers in attendance. Back then I said we should be going to teacher conferences, not expecting them to magically come to our conference.
 
The Web is indeed world wide... As Susan Rust said
"Here's to raising all ships on our rising tide."

Comments

Dave Keays (not verified)

Sun 19th Feb 2012 18:02

To a freelance web developer, marketing Drupal is a whole different game than to the Drupal Association. But we are partners and we need to understand each other.

I say quit marketing Drupal and push meeting needs first. My clients probably don't know or care if I use Drupal or flintstones to build a website so I don't push it when I have my marketing hat on.

I used to say "The site I'll build is based on Drupal which is used by Fast Company, Sony, and WhiteHouse.gov" but now I say "I will solve your needs in the same way Fast Company solved theirs".

Also, I love the pic you showed.

Heather (not verified)

Mon 20th Feb 2012 06:02

We need more developer evangelism. Since Lullabot took off in 2006~ the belief has been that we need more training. However, many developers are autodidacts. They would teach themselves- if they had the motivation. Most marketing initiatives are focusing on "decision makers in verticals".

It's great if we invite them to the party. But if there's no developers to dance with, they're going to leave early.

mthl (not verified)

Tue 21st Feb 2012 03:02

Drupal and WordPress have completely different markets, so it's really pointless to chase each other.

WordPress markets to webmasters of small companies or organizations, or even plain individual bloggers, while Drupal markets to web developers contracted by companies and organizations. The reason someone contracts a web developer is because what they need is too complicated to handle on their own.

You can't really run Drupal unless you are a professional. In theory you should, but in practice it's not possible. There are too many moving parts and too many choices to make.

WordPress is user-friendly because those choices have been made for you. WordPress is a user experience. Drupal is what you build a user experience from.

Drupal.org is the Drupal marketing mission. Every effort to improve the life of developers is an improvement in Drupal's marketing.

Dave Terry (not verified)

Tue 21st Feb 2012 03:02

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on marketing Kate and congrats on the DA Board position.

@Dave K. – as a freelancer, I assume your target audience is small to mid size businesses or you partner with other agencies that have a customer relationship, and they subcontract your services.

In my opinion, Drupal should and is clearly trying to position itself as the choice for the “enterprise”, while providing enough flexibility for an organization to standardize all of their web properties (including micro-sites, landing pages that would be used for ad campaigns, etc.).

The indifference on what technology is used is probably only applicable to small businesses that do not care as much about the inner-workings of their site - they just want it to work. However, most senior executives at larger companies (i.e. Drupal’s target audience?) are going to do a thorough evaluation of which CMS they select. In short, we have to go beyond name dropping. The best way to showcase this is to demonstrably highlight how Drupal solved problems for organizations that had similar use cases to them. This is our best form of advertising (and it is free).

Yes, we have to create a product that is intuitive, flexible, robust, secure, well-architected, etc. but there are now over 1300 CMSs that are making similar claims – it has been proven time and time again that there were plenty of slick software products that simply fizzled because of a lack of name awareness, branding, recognition, and overall marketing efforts.

Thanks, Dave Terry (Mediacurent)

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