ERPNext conference 2017 in Mumbai saw interesting debate about growing the product adoption. Should we spend more time and resources on product improvement or on marketing? Well, both are important! So today during the foundation weekly call I volunteered to lead a new marketing blitz at the global level to generate awareness about ERPNext and to drive a lot more adoption.
How much more growth we should target? Which markets to focus on? What channels and tactics to use? How much resources do we need? All these questions and more will be discussed by the new ERPNext Marketing Team.
If you have marketing expertise, or just a penchant for marketing, and you like to support this new initiative, then just signal yourself here. We will then organize weekly conference calls (gotomeeting) and start to strategize.
All points you listed are good to increase general awareness of the ERPNext brand. What I like to add to the scope of our discussions is how to convert this positive awareness into trials and active use of ERPNext. The ultimate target is not to only grow the fan base but to grow the active users base who generate revenues to the ecosystem so we can make ERPNext sustainable.
Note: I believe there is no conflict between Open Source and selling things for a profit. Open Source is both:
1- A philosophy that benefits society by spreading affordable software and
2- A sustainable business model that can breed a healthy profitable ecosystem
Hi Sami…Please sign me up for any marketing efforts…
I have marketing expertise: Strategy (research, identifying needs and developing plans) & Execution (social, PPC and other digital formats), and i’d love to give back to the project and the team which has given us so much!
Hi Chabito. Thanks for joining the marketing team.
One thing that would be nice is to build this team to include representatives of various geographies so we can have variations of the marketing message and tactics to match local markets. So each volunteer can mention the region(s) they are most familiar with.
@umair where exactly on erpnext.org is that blog? The User Forum on .org points back to discuss.frappe.io . I also suggest since we are launching a substantial marketing drive that we make it prominently positioned and easy to find on the .org site.
I agree, it was difficult to find good end-user references and case studies for ERPNext. An experienced user’s opinion will be relate-able to prospective clients and users.
The blog should also be a place where service providers share and discuss their contributions.
This will help people understand new features
This will make new features more visible
It will encourage service providers to contribute, because they get exposure
“Responsible” service providers will get more visible than others, so they will be able to get more business and contribute more - its a virtuous cycle.
I think the challenge is to get the stories from the users of ERPNext. For content, we can first start with the blogs and then may be have separate section as suggested by you. Perhaps just a blog category also d the trick, like on our current blogs.
May be we can, but let’s use this thread to discuss even broader issues, like how to get new case-studies and other marketing initiatives suggested by the other members above. Will be great to see members taking initiative in taking lead in each of these ideas. Or perhaps we can also plan for the call of marketing team to discuss and give structure to the ideas suggested here.
Yes I am also facing some difficulty remembering where all the marketing volunteers, discussions and collateral are. Simple is beautiful. I hope we can organize it so there is one marketing home for us to come to and find everyone and everything.