Branding and Positioning

From Sandro Groganz, Open Source Marketing Consultant

To define a clear identity of your company and products, there are several elements of branding you need to take care of. I'll just highlight the most important ones.

Make sure you have a unique company name, one word. This makes it much easier e.g. to search for you in the Web and avoids ambiguities.

Clearly define your tagline or mission. Just being the most beautiful or easiest-to-use software is like being a nice, yet stupid person. No one wants to build long relationships with you and pay huge amounts of money for your customization or consulting services.

Ask yourself: Why did I start this project? How did it help myself? How does it make my life easier? Find your niche by analyzing your competitors as well as your motivations - it's all in you.

Don't let yourself get seduced by consumer marketing of large corporations. A slogan such as Philip's "Sense and Simplicity" does not work well for a young OSS company with a very specific application.

Instead, take care of your focus group. In the early days of your company, you will want to address innovators and early adopters - they will hate you for consumer-like slogans. They want you to speak the lingua which they also find in blogs of thought leaders.

Once you sorted out the fixed points of your position, the next point is: Tell a story! Not only about your company, but about every product, new software version, new advisory board member, etc. A narrative helps you to establish and deepen relationships, just like in the good ol' times when we were sitting around a fire after hunting mammoths.