Le 2011-01-02 11:10, Italo Vignoli a écrit :
I think we have to be clear, once and for all.
We will not have a marketing budget, at least in 2011 and 2012.
We will not have any money to spend on advertising and market research.
If any, we will have some money for travels and events (but not before
we have a legal entity set up).
We have to find our marketing budget in several specific resources we
can have for free:
- brain (we have to outsmart the competition)
- volunteer work (we can achieve wonders with our enthusiasm)
- willingness to cooperate (we can achieve wonders as a team)
- positive attitude (we cannot give up, never)
- empathy with media (we are the nice guys to help)
- learning from mistakes (we will make many of them)
- learning from positive experiences (we have had many in the past)
Our experience in Italy shows that a 10 Million Euro yearly marketing
budget (Microsoft Italy) cannot win against these assets.
Thanks Italo. Having some money for marketing does have its advantages.
However, not having any money for marketing, with a volunteer based
organisation such as ours, is not necessary. We are making a good solid
product, our marketing avenues (LibO official announcement messages;
blogging, forums, advertisements through Facebook and YouTube) are free
of use and the for-profit organisations such as magazines and newspapers
will cover us anyway without our having to take out any advertisement
space.
A good product always makes good news. We just have to make sure that we
are efficient at delivery of our progress and values of our quality
product where it counts. I am sure we can do this with our volunteers
without any funds.
Maybe a day will come when we will be funded adequately for expansion
purposes or travel subsidies to LibreOffice conferences. But for now, we
can easily bridge all of this with the resources that we have on hand.
As you imply, there is no way that we can attempt to compete financially
against a well funded group such as Microsoft. We can however compete at
product quality and product marketing. At this level, we have certainly
an equal footing with Microsoft. Money does not matter at this level.
Having no marketing funds will only make us more of a robust organisation.
Cheers
Marc
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