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Drupal Marketing Dissected

Sandro Groganz 2 Comments

Let me share some of my analysis of Drupal marketing efforts while getting prepared for my talk Marketing Open Source Software at Drupalcon. Comments are highly welcome, be it to this blog entry or during my talk or any day while I am at Drupalcon.

Drupal is a great brand

The Drupal brand is highly visible: For example, a Google search for Drupal generates 19 million results. Compare this with Alfresco, generating just 1.8 million results (including the Alfresco Grill).

The Drupal brand is vivid: A big part of the Drupal brand is in the people in the community.

Drupal is a registered trademark: That allows VCs to justify a $7 million investment.

Drupal is successful

There will be a whopping 800 attendees at Drupalcon – sold out – wow! That’s double the amount of the previous conference. Nice growth rate.

200 000 registered users at drupal.org, 300 signing up each day, Drupal downloads approaching 100 000 a month, and more impressive Drupal statistics.

Comparing this with the statistics of other Open Source CMS, it clearly places Drupal in the top league.

Drupal marketing is community-driven

Drupal joined the forefront of Open Source marketing. Not only is the product Open Source, but marketing Drupal is itself being managed and performed like an Open Source project. Everyone is invited to contribute to Drupal marketing by helping craft a marketing strategy, positioning statement, marketing collaterals and all.

This leads to a load of valuable information created by enthusiastic volunteers which would typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. For example, take a look at the Drupal 6 landing page and you will be greeted by plenty of information and many videocasts.

Drupal is not the first when it comes to community-driven marketing. The Typo3 Communication Committee and its members such as the excellent Daniel Hinderink are doing a great job in volunteer-based marketing. The Plone community is also following that marketing path.

Balancing interests of Drupal stakeholders

Drupal Association and Acquia, the VC-backed startup of Drupal lead Dries Buytaert, are the backbones of Drupal’s success. Both organizations are being lead by Dries, which is good, because it ensures a balanced strategy. In Dries’ own words:

Since the health and vitality of the Drupal project at large is extremely important to us, we’ve taken great pains to make sure that I am able to continue to act for the best interests of the Drupal community at large as I have done for the past 7 years.

Drupal marketing challenges

Sounds like the sun always shines in Drupal land, but there are severe challenges ahead for the Drupal community.

Let’s look at the issues from a strategic point first:

  • Does the Drupal community want to grow? I guess so.
  • How do they want to grow? I have no clue and did not find any public information or discussion yet. Do they want to appeal more to business professionals (e.g. system integrators) now that there is a Red Hat style support subscription for Drupal within eyespot?
  • What are the means for growth? Drupal Association invests what they get from donations and sponsors. Apparently, they can raise quite some money e.g. for Drupalcon. Will they be able to raise money for marketing if necessary?

It is clear that Drupal needs to focus its marketing if they wanted to communicate to business professionals. This is presumably in the interest of Acquia. It is of course also in the interest of Drupal Association and all other members of the Drupal community, because clear messages will attract more pragmatists to Drupal’s Open Source market place – this is where the money is.

Some concrete suggestions from my perspective, which is somewhere between a visionary (I still feel young-at-heart) and pragmatist (I do have some experience):

The impression I have of Drupalcon up-to-now is: chaos.

The schedule was made available only two weeks before the event happens – much too late! A friend of mine who wants to meet with me at Drupalcon asked me a few days ago: “Sandro, I would attend only two days, which days would you recommend?” Well, I could not tell him, because there was no schedule available.

I was happy that I knew very early that my talk was accepted, but I felt uncomfortable that I did not know the exact day and time. Drupalcon is not my only concern, I have an open source marekting company to manage and some work to do myself. I rather book flights late, because some urgent work or customer meeting might require me to depart later or return earlier then planned.

Furthermore, I did not receive an email telling me that my talk was accepted. Maybe this is because the organizers told me in advance in private email. What about other speakers? Did they first hear that their talk was accepted from the various blog posts? If so, then I recommend that Drupalcon organizers don’t assume that potential speakers read their blog, because some people might simply not have the time to do so. Just send them an email and make all other necessary information available on the Drupalcon Web site.

Speaking about the Drupalcon Web site … too much information at too many places and not properly organized. The most important piece of information, the week at a glance schedule is even unavailable right now. Similar issues exist with the Drupal 6 landing page, which provides too much information and makes it hard to grasp the major benefits of Drupal 6 in ten seconds.

In fact, there is also important information missing or hard to find (at least, I did not manage to find it quickly enough). For example, how can I get an idea of the Drupal business environment, because I want to make sure that there is enough support I can get for money? There is a list of Drupal hosting companies, but that is only a fraction of all businesses. What about system integrators, media agencies, training providers, and so on?

Community-driven marketing is a mixed blessing

All of the above issues show that community-driven marketing can have its downsides. What looks like an highly dynamic community from the inside can easily look like a chaotic bunch of volunteers from the outside. To avoid this impression, Drupal marketing needs to better take care of the limited time available to professionals who “just” do business with Drupal.

This means two things:

First, at the top entry levels (e.g. Drupal 6 landing page), always provide only very necessary information. This information should help the audience to decide:

  1. This is not of interest to me
  2. I will take a look at this later
  3. I want to jump right into it

Second, don’t mix up pull information (e.g. Weblogs) with push information (e.g. speaker confirmation), make sure you adhere to best practices, so that your audience is not being confused by unexpected behavior (i.e. there is no alternative to sending out speaker confirmation emails).

Wanted: Drupal marketing lead

Please, Drupal marketing volunteers, don’t get me wrong. I think you are doing a tremendous job, I think you stand out from the crowd and do your best with fantastic results. What you do need now is a marketing strategy as the basis for consolidation and a leader in Drupal marketing who thoroughly takes care of focusing the brand.

The saying goes that a good software developer can boil down 100 lines of code to at least a third, providing the same functionality with higher performance. This is what the Drupal marketing lead is supposed to do with Drupal’s marketing collaterals: Have her boil down information to a third or fifth to make the message clearer and Drupal marketing will perform better.

The tough part for the marketing lead will be to drive consensus among the Drupal community, such as picking the best slogan from a myriad of suggestions. Unfortunately, marketing is not like software programming. The wrong slogan will not throw an error if you run it, at least not immediately. The risk is that marketing-related discussions can last forever – with let’s say 20 000 community members having 40 000 opinions – if there is no accepted authority or biased skepticism against marketing amongst community leaders.

Marketing Microsoft's Open Source Partner Program

Sandro Groganz 5 Comments

Through our Open Source marketing consultancy, Stephe and I are currently in contact with Microsoft evaluating how we might help them with marketing their NXT partner program geared towards Open Source ISVs.

Very recently, Microsoft’s OSS partner program has been heavily criticized by Mary Jo Foley and Matt Asay (in reply, Stephe provides background information). Furthermore, the credo of InitMarketing is: “If you are Open Source, we will help you succeed”. Our corporate mission is to foster the success of Open Source in general.

Our first major concern was: Would an engagement with Microsoft foster the success of Open Source as far as their partner program is concerned? Could InitMarketing live up to its claim?

While Microsoft’s flagship products are not open source software, if InitMarketing helps open source ISVs to optimize their interoperability with Windows through the Microsoft partner program, then this will benefit Open Source vendors, opening up access to new customers and a higher distribution of their OSS products. From that standpoint, I believe InitMarketing can live up to its claim.

Our second major concern was that we might sacrifice InitMarketing’s yet young and innocent reputation as a trustful actor in the Open Source domain. To tackle this problem, we proposed to Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab and ISV team to make our work highly transparent to the Open Source community.

Microsoft supports us working in this transparent manner.

The benefits of open communication around the NXT program are clear for everyone involved:

  • InitMarketing can establish itself as a neutral facilitator.
  • The Microsoft ISV team can understand better the concerns of the open source community in general and ISVs in particular and gets valuable feedback which helps to improve the NXT program.
  • By having InitMarketing communicate in the Open Source style (= transparently), it raises trust in the NXT program in the broader context of Microsoft messaging.

We feel very comfortable entering this sort of working relationship with Microsoft. We still value your feedback: Would you do Open Source marketing for Microsoft?, asks Stephe – please let him know your comments.

Comparing Open Source Java CMS

Sandro Groganz 3 Comments

Seth Gottlieb of Content Here fame asked me a few weeks ago to review his report of Open Source Java CMS which he just announced in his blog. The report is a master piece of analysis covering business-critical aspects as well as technical details.

Readers of my Weblog get a discount: Follow this link, which automatically applies the coupon code saving you $150. In case of problems the code is: yq37we.

The report is profound and reaffirms Seth’s role as one of the best CMS consultants out there, especially when it comes to Open Source CMS. Seth actually compiled first-hand information from the project leads into the report, which is smart.

The report takes a close look at:

I basically share all of Seth’s valuations and imagine that anyone reading the report will have a very good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the above CMS.

As Seth can put it in much better words than I ever could, let’s read the master’s wisdom:

Even if the best technology fit is a commercial product, the technology decision maker now needs to be able defend his choice of commercial software by demonstrating a knowledge of open source alternatives that were rejected. The answer “we looked at open source and it was all bad” is becoming weaker and weaker as a response to a challenge to consider open source.

[…]

It is not that open source projects are secretive. In fact more information is available because coordination and communication usually happens out in the open. It is just that the information is spread thinly across many sources and people. Compilation and interpretation takes a lot of work and a different set of skills than your typical career analyst. In order to understand an open source application, you need to use it, configure it, and interact with the community (actively and passively). The source code itself also contains valuable information about the development standards and history of the project. It takes time to learn the personalities and group dynamics of the community. Not that it wouldn’t be nice to know all this information about commercial software – it certainly would. Just commercial software doesn’t allow you that access.

[…]

For each of the projects reviewed in this report, I have subscribed to the mailing list and monitored the volume and nature of the activity. I have talked to users of the software. I have built prototypes that involve defining content types, setting permissions, and developing layouts. To ensure factual accuracy, each evaluation has been reviewed by a project committer or company officer.

[…]

Web content management is not a turnkey solution.

[…]

Because company requirements are unique, web content management more like toolkits than out of the box business applications.

[…]

Market fragmentation is rife in the open source world too (especially in the content management sector) and comes at a great cost: developer resources are spread too thinly across too many projects. However, the absence of a “winner” in the commercial market takes away a safe, automatic choice and forces technology decision makers to look at alternatives. Every option appears equally risky from a market share perspective.

[…]

Unless a selection process is adapted to fully explore open source, the commercial products typically win because of the allure of a polished and well executed demo. Investing in an open source proof of concept typically levels the playing field but few companies make the investment unless there is a particular motivation such as a senior-level directive to carefully consider open source. This has essentially happened in many of the governments across Europe that have been mandated to use open source software wherever possible.

[…]

Social activity also creates the opportunity for non-technical users of the application to get involved. Building and serving a non-technical community is a plateau that only a few of the open source content management projects have achieved. It is an important milestone because it allows for user input to be contributed directly in the users own words rather thathrough a technical developer who filters the information through is own biases.

For a full overview of the contents, download the Java Open Source CMS sample which also contains the ToC.

I won’t disclose anything about the final conclusion in Seth’s report, because that’s like killing excitement when telling someone about the end of a novel or movie, but there’s one thing that’s for sure: the report is worth reading all 150+ pages!

InitMarketing Launches Open Source Marketing Services

Sandro Groganz 3 Comments

The Open Source marketing consultancy I have been setting up since several weeks has a name from now on: InitMarketingâ?¢. Plus, the InitMarketing Web site has just been launched at www.initmarketing.com.

Before I walk you through the Web site, I would like to ask for help: InitMarketing does not have a logo yet, hence we invite the whole world-wide-web-world to the

InitMarketing logo contestInitMarketing Logo Contest

Win an iPod touch!
With 32GB
Plus $50 for iTunes

Submit your logo design

OK, back to http://www.initmarketing.com: There you can read about the excellent Open Source marketing team I was able to pull together. Please let me know if you would like to join us, because we need some helping heads due to a never ending stream of new clients.

You can take a look at the Open Source marketing services offered by InitMarketing to better understand how we can support Open Source companies and organizations in becoming more successful.

Yet, we cannot disclose the customers we already work with, but this is what I can tell you in confidence: They are all well-known Open Source vendors and contributors, some in the PHP world, others using Java. There are also some other great Open Source companies and one foundation we are currently negotiating with.

The InitMarketing Web site also hosts the Open Source marketing forum where we invite everyone to ask and answer questions – the InitMarketing team will do the same.

I am extremely happy that we reached this milestone and as promised before, I will continue to keep you updated about InitMarketing here in my Weblog.

The Brand Value of MySQL

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

Totally expectable, the sun has gone up and down for the past two weeks since Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion and we still trust in MySQL – do we trust in Sun?

In fact, Sun paid a high premium for MySQL’s credibility (aka brand value) to benefit from the high profile of the cute dolphin publicly. MySQL simply knows how to play the Open Source game right, that’s their largest asset. How high is it actually?

Let’s look at MySQL’s reputation management:

  • MySQL is everybody’s Open Source darling. Their consistent brand design created trust and allowed for the amortization of goodwill.
  • In the past 5 years, there was no proof of the viability of an Open Source business model without mentioning MySQL. MySQL is an Open Source thought leader.
  • MySQL is the M in LAMP. Any doubts?

Let’s look at some numbers:

  • MySQL’s revenue is assumed to be $65 million in 2008.
  • MySQL’s profit is paltry.
  • I estimate MySQL’s lines of code to be approximately that of PostgreSQL worth $8 million.
  • When calculating MySQL’s forward-looking revenues and optimistically assuming growth of 100% per year, revenues should reach $1 billion in 2012 – but that’s still not profits amortizing Sun’s acquisition costs.

None of these numbers really explain the $1 billion price tag: forget about revenue, forget about profits, forget about the code – all irrelevant. Forward-looking revenues? Maybe, but they rely on assumptions about the continued business relevance of MySQL – something that is highly related to its brand.

Together with Lars, I tried to find a way how to reasonably calculate MySQL’s brand value. This is what we came up with:

  1. Equate MySQL’s fictious market capitalization with the $1 billion price tag.
  2. Estimate MySQL’s profits to be $10 million (remember, “paltry”?).
  3. Let’s keep in mind that MySQL’s fictious market cap is a 100 multiple of its profits.
  4. Take Sun for comparison: Their market capitalization is roughly 15 times their profits.
  5. When applying Sun’s brand value to MySQL’s profits, the expected acquisition price would be $150 million.
  6. What about those additional $850 million that Sun paid?

As of today, a whopping 85% of MySQL’s economic value added can be attributed to its strong Open Source brand. If you are in general skeptical about the brand concept, The Brand Gap will open your eyes.

Let’s compare MySQL’s brand value with some of the top 100 global brands:

  • Xerox has a brand valuation of $6 billion accounting for 93% of its market capitalization.
  • Coca Cola is the leading global brand with $70 million brand value, that’s 60% of its market capitalization.
  • Hertz is bottom of the top 100 table, with a brand value of $3 billion.
  • Sun is not part of the top 100 and MySQL’s $850 million won’t qualify it either.

MySQL was able to negotiate a good price due to its brand value – and rightly so!

Everyone I ever met at MySQL is straightforward, honest, simply credible and focused on creating a trustworthy Open Source business. I am very sure that MySQL’s founders and top management agreed on the acquisition because they were able to develop a trustful relationship with Sun in the past years and realized that Sun is truly embracing Open Source.

MySQL will be able to provide a lot of input to Sun on how to become a widely acknowledged authority in the Open Source domain. Even better: MySQL will lead by example. You can tell from Kaj Arnö’s blog post about his new role as MySQL’s Ambassador to Sun that MySQL is well aware of their strong role within Sun: “We want to take Sun by storm”.

Does MySQL orbit Sun or Sun orbits MySQL? As MySQL’s co-founder Monty Widenius put it in his recently opened blog:

Sun is a hardware company who has been for a long time in a transition to also be a software company. In their software space they where first closed source but has lately started to change most of their software to open source/free software.

MySQL AB on the other hand is a company that was originally totally committed to free software / open source but who has lately changed to be more closed.

This deal will allow both companies to learn from each others successes and failures and build a stronger company than we would have been able to do separately.

I am very confident that MySQL will successfully help Sun become one of the main centers of the Web universe and it seems that some MySQLers hope for the best from sun. We will see Sun’s brand value grow significantly this year – not sure though if they will already make it into the top 100 global brands.

Progress of Open Source Marketing Consultancy

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

I am happy to share some exciting news with you about the Open Source marketing consultancy I currently build up:

  • I found a “f*****g awesome” (as Zak put it) company name. Thanks to Zak Greant, Lars Trieloff and Markus Nix for valuable feedback.
  • Luckily, I was able to register the related domain name.
  • European Patent and Trademark Attorney Dr. Christian Reinders helped me register the trademark.
  • Two great people will join the consultancy right from the start. They both are highly experienced when it comes to Open Source marketing and will add their specific expertise to the consultancy’s services portfolio. Their joining means that we will have offices in England and USA from day one.

The corporate Web site will go online mid February with a preliminary simple design. We will announce a logo contest at the day the Web site is up. The winner will receive an iPod touch and $50 for iTunes. Once we have a logo, the site’s design will be adjusted.

We also plan to provide a public forum where we will be happy to answer questions related to Open Source marketing.

As you might already guess: we intend to market the consultancy using the same Open Source marketing techniques which we recommend to and execute for our customers.

Emerging Sales Leads in Open Source Ecosystems

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

Open Source companies benefit from continuous lead generation in an open ecosystem. They can operate with lower direct sales efforts, because prospects most likely already tried out the OSS product and contact them to agree on a deal. OSS companies can furthermore increase the number of leads with a moderate marketing budget, because their ecosystem contributes to the buzz.

oss_lead_generation

Due to their open communication environment, Open Source ecosystems provide multiple access points to the marketplace for any type of individual and organization, be it do-it-yourself developers or enterprises in search for guarantees in exchange for money.

Potential customers can download and try out the software, consult documentation for instructions, ask in forums, write about their experiences in a blog, buy a book about the software, contact support for help, sign a service level agreement, use an on-demand flavor of that software, etc.

All participants steadily increase the abundance of information in an Open Source business environment and thus make it more likely for sales leads to emerge. Abundant information ecosystems make it more likely to please and sustain curiosity of entrants to the market place. Curiosity killed the cat and fuels Open Source.

In essence, Open Source lead generation is about monetizing the chain of knowledge production related to an OSS product.

It is important for those with a commercial interest, to draw a line between paid and unpaid work which still allows both sides to benefit from each other. For example, if an Open Source vendor receives a technical question per email which they will most likely not get paid for when answering, they should nicely point the questioner to the public forum.

Free support should only be provided via forums or mailinglists. The goal is to build a public knowledge base which allows to raise the overall knowledge of the community and to allow newbies a quicker entry. This leads to professionalization of the whole business environment, more capital in the market and thus to a more profitable business for all members of the ecosystem.

Find more Open Source marketing articles in my Wiki.