Re: GNOME's Target Markets

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Sun, 2005-07-10 at 18:50 +1200, John Williams wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 22:25 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > > So, let's decide who our customers are (home users, corporates, distros,
> > > ISVs IIRC) and then test our branding materials on some of them, and see
> > > what they think.
> > 
> > Our customers are all these people, but it looks like we want to target
> > a few of them specifically:
> > http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fTargetMarkets
> > (surely we want fewer primary targets?)
> 
> It depends.  The accepted wisdom in marketing is to target the smallest number of market segments necessary in order to achieve well-defined goals.
> 
> Segments are selected in decreasing order of "bang-for-buck", i.e.
> maximum reward for minimum effort.  These considerations are based on
> the assumptions that the marketing department/organisation has finite
> resources, specifically, a finite marketing budget and number of
> workers.  These assumptions may not be true for GNOME, due to the
> volunteer nature of our organisation/community.  (OK, very large, not
> infinite ;-) 

While our manpower seems large, our conventional marketing resources are
very small. Usually there'd be a budget for advertising pages/airtime,
for instance.

> > Can you suggest concisely how our marketing might differ if we chose
> > different primary targets? Will our image really be radically different
> > or in conflict with other targets?
> Sure.  If our primary market is ISVs, we may want to emphasise
> stability, specifically API/ABI stability, and complete and
> comprehensive API documentation.

If we did this, surely we wouldn't look any different to every other
platform that does the same. Our ease of use is our differentiator.

> If our primary market was private end-users we may want to emphasise
> exciting new features, ease-of-use, accessible technical help etc.

But if we chose system administrators and end users then there would be
a large overlap of emphasised points.

> We would also use differing advertising and promotional media, and so
> on.

Would we in this case, considering that we have a very limited range of
media to choose from, because of our lack of budget?

> > I personally think we only need to target end users and system
> > administrators and we'll get everyone else as part of that. But I'm no
> > marketing expert so I'm happy to defer to any expert who actually gets
> > the marketing moving.
> I'm sort of an expert (I have a PhD in marketing, I should be!) and I can tell you this: I don't know.  I do know that we NEED RESEARCH before we can make any reasonable plans.
> 
> In particular, I am thinking of what we in marketing call "gatekeepers".
> These are people who actually make the purchase decision but who may not
> be the actual end-user.  (The classic example is a parent buying
> breakfast cereal for a child.)  In our context, these would be CIOs
> and/or CEOs, perhaps?

Yes, that's why we often mention the system administators, who are often
the decision makers.

> I have an idea that it may provide more bang-for-buck to tarket distros

I think it's a waste of time to target distros with marketing, because 
1. We've got all the major distros already.
2. The distros are defined by their choice of desktop, and will never
change.
3. We have never been able to influence distros.

However, we do want to create an image/brand that the distros can use,
as used in the "Intel Inside" and "Powered by Windows" campaigns.

> and organisations (corporations, universities, public sector...) because
> they in a sense make the decision to use GNOME or not for their users.
> If people get used to using GNOME at work they will probably want to use
> it at home.

Yes, and "Public Sector", "Enterprise" fall under this. "System
Administrators" is just another way of referring to these large
deployments.

> If they don't, this should send us a HUGE message!
> 
> > > Potential new users are a tricky one.  What impression do they form of
> > > GNOME when they see the logo?  If GNOME was a person, what would they be
> > > like?  Male, female?  Young, old?  Straight, funky?
> > 
> > Young, helpful, patient, anticipating your needs, not particularly male
> > or female, just funky enough to be confident of itself.
> That's what you think.  What do our target markets think?  Or is that what you want them to think.  Why?  Do others agree?

If this is a useful metaphor for you, then the wiki would be a good
place to encourage people to brainstorm, if you can interpet the
results.

> > Try to explain the issues to us, and suggest definite actions. There are
> > many people here who would love to help to put a plan into motion.
> 
> OK, I will try.  It is difficult to do this without access to
> information.  The issues, as I see them from a top-level strategy point
> of view, are this:
> 
> 1. Concentrate on the low-hanging fruit.  What can we do with minimum
> effort to get maximum results (number of users)?  Only people working
> with distros, governments, corporates etc. can answer this.  I don't do
> that.
> 
> 2. RESEARCH!  Ask users why they do or do not use GNOME.  Include users
> who have seen/used GNOME and also those who have not.  Measure the
> results of marketing actions in the only terms that matter: number of
> users.


> 3. Manage the corporate culture.  We cannot simply order people to do
> things.  Motivate the people who actually make GNOME (programmers,
> documenters, usability team, accessibility team, translators, ...) in
> terms they will respond to.  I am a marketing/market research person,
> not an HR person.  (But I think if you treat people as people and not
> pluggable production units you're probably on the right track.  Do unto
> others and all that.)

3. doesn't seem very related to marketing. It's also something that the
community does well already.

> I find myself repeating myself in many fora.  The bottom line is that
> you can't make rational decisions in the absence of information.

We don't have a complete absence of information. We know what our
product is, and we know how it's meant to affect the lives of users, and
why that should be attractive to them.

It's also a very non-specific product, but we've already seen similar
products marketed by Microsoft and Apple, so it's not all new.

>   I do
> not have access to the information at the moment.  I am working on it
> though.  

That's great. It'll obviously take some time, so surely we should plan
to revise our brand/image periodically as we get more research and more
feedback. It doesn't seem sensible to just wait on that research.

> If you want to help, visit the marketing space on live.gnome.org and
> make some constructive comments.

Yes, and I'm gradually trying to help make that more coherent. As a
start, we obviously need to choose just one or two primary targets from
here:
http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fTargetMarkets

It would be madness if we didn't choose "End User", and it'd be a bit
strange if we told the world we were more interested in "Public Sector"
than "Enterprise", so I'd rather group these together under "System
Administrator"

I'd understand why we'd want to split that up into "Public Sector" and
"Enterprise" if it was obvious that our marketing would be significantly
different for those two groups.

> Hot issues now are being discussed on the gnome-marketing list and the
> #marketing channel on irc.gnome.org.  I try to summarise these
> discussions, particularly at
> 
> http://live.gnome.org/CountingUsers
> http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fSurveyUsers
> and
> http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fSurveyDevelopers
> 
> See also
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeFeedback
> 
> That last link contains a new initiative to gather feedback about GNOME.
> Currently we have none (on those pages).  Please give us some.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com