Good Day People: Last Friday June 1, members of the Florida Loco helped me (Mike Feravolo) sell Ubuntu to the East Orlando Business community at our local chamber of commerce trade show.
Given the limited resources of our small business Ad Spend and the nature of our business, we can't sell Ubuntu to the entire world. However, will do our best at our local level and getting out there and talking to as many people as we can one on one is the best way to do that. As an engineer I liked the way that Gerry Carr categorized people into types.: TYPE 1 a) new to Linux b) heard of ubuntu but not ready/capable of downloading c) wants reassurance that it is a familiar environment TYPE 2 a) familiar with linux and/or ubuntu b) wants to know what's new and cool in latest release However, all of the people which need to be sold on Ubuntu are "Type One", the others are already sold or they are hard-core users of another Linux distribution. Our motives are simple we are computer scientists and engineers and we sell our time and expertise. That's how we make our money. So why do we want to help "Sell Ubuntu"? Why Not! because it can save our clients money and we all are old UNIX hacks anyway. So forget giving a client with a small office a bill that includes $20,000 worth of software licenses when we don't get any of the money anyway. Now, We can give them an Ubuntu option that will save them that twenty "dimes" up front. There is your marketing right there. Wow! we didn't even have to say anything good or bad about [deleted], we just gave them a price comparison. That says it all! Walmart isn't the largest employer right now in the United States, because people here price shop for the highest price tag. But they don't want anything for free, because they are afraid there is a catch. Which means that you could put together an Live CD edition of Ubuntu that you could get out as an impulse buy for a token fee [of less then five dollars] and then people would buy it. Money collected from these impulse racks could be then be rolled back into the production budget to recover the costs of the media. People don't need to understand that software licensing is free, and just think they are paying for a disk. Walmart would be the place to put them, right at the check out line next to the five pack of Blank CD's. As long as the "Walmart Edition" both carefully eliminated any fear to try it, while protecting the new users from themselves. Many people have told me they were afraid to try the Live-CD, because "they were afraid that it was going to delete all their files". Now, the artistic talents of our marketing team are required to make these special Live CD's attractive and the copy writers get the message straight and eliminate any fears. Sorry we are software engineers and we can't hold a pen straight. Good thing for spell checkers or we would even know how to spell engineer. Thanks for Your Time Mike Feravolo Cocoa Beach, Florida USA -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
