Marketing Plan

This Wiki is read-only for reference purposes to avoid broken links.

Bear with me while I fill in this page. The process to adopt this idea needs to be determined. At this point, it is just an idea. Comments and contributions welcome. MJMcKay 03:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

ADempiere and the community that supports it needs a clear marketing strategy and plan that will

• brand - ensure a distinct brand message is communicated to all stakeholders and customers,
• build - attract and foster a strong community of people and companies who contribute to and benefit from ADempiere,
• sell - attract customers and refer them to partner companies through established rules, processes and methods by which contributions to the community are rewarded, and
• support - develop a platform on which contributors can build and leverage strategic partnerships targeting enterprise sales

The ADempiere Brand

"Brand: It ain't the Logo - Its what people think of you.(tm)" [1]

The title of the book is quite good. The ADempiere brand is not a logo, its the sum of every interaction anyone has ever had with ADempiere. All the good times and bad times, all the successes and failures and every exchange on the forums. The brand exists in peoples minds and despite our best efforts to control a message, we will not control their perceptions. The best we can do is give them every opportunity to hear the correct story and form the correct perceptions. Consistency is critical. Consistency of message and consistency over time. The brand message has to be evident at every touch point of interaction. The brand will become a summary of the organization and has to be based on something real like the core values and purpose of the organization.

Who are We?

ADempiere is a great software application. But more than that, it is an open collaboration - the voluntary and collective efforts of a community of people who share a common interest in Free Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning software. The ADempiere community is made up of various categories of people, and we are sure you must fit into at least one of them. There are contributors, developers, testers, writers, users, as well as businesses, authorities, experts, newbies and students. There is also a Council of trustees to be responsible for this community and the project's well-being.

Core Purpose - Why do we exist

Each community has its own history and culture. This particular community has its roots within the Compiere SourceForge project over the last 3 years. We started as users and implementors of this great software project, and began to progress in leaps and bounds in our own capability to master it and even extend it for various end-users.

The community was generally grateful to Compiere's creator, Jorg Janke, and tolerated his business model of charging users for priority support, training and the user manual. Many of us contributed code, bug reports, fixes and recommendations on how this premiere Open Source ERP/CRM solution could continue to expand. And though Jorg Janke hardly responded to the forums' messages (even those that were directly aimed at him) the Compiere community enjoyed ample support and encouragement from other community seniors on a voluntary and vigilant basis.

Trouble set in soon after ComPiere Inc, USA, the commercial entity behind this project, purportedly obtained some USD6 million funding from an "angel" investor who soon joined its Board of Directors. Many among the paying partners of Compiere began to question new policy directions, this led to the Forking Debate, and eventually sparked off the Adempiere community.

Forkings are expected in Open Source, and for Compiere, this is probably the 4th or 5th fork, as stated by Jorg Janke, its creator in the private Partner's Forum.

But for this latest fork, we regard ourselves to be the Last Fork as we conduct ourselves from the onset in an open and unabated manner, as can be clearly seen here red1.org/forum thread. This thread is now refered and linked worldwide by many online news and regarded to as the Famous Forking Debate by the Compiere community.

The core purpose of the community, expressed in the forking debate and re-iterated over time in the forums, are as follows:

1. a stable, high-quality software application that can be provided to customers
2. a place to contribute where the contributions will be valued
3. a place to be heard where ideas and requests will be respectfully considered

Values - What we believe in; our principles

The name "Adempiere" is an Italian word related to "Compiere" (which means "to deliver or fulfill"), but also semantically reflects the core ideal of this community: "to fulfill towards completion, with respect and honour".

Adempiere seeks to demonstrate the best such a community can offer - in terms not only of world class open applications, but also selfless community support. We are voluntary and believe in publishing all information about our work freely, with latest source codes, tutorials, and free forum support with no commercial hooks or developer lock-in.

The Brand Master

Controlling the message.

Brand Usage Rules

Add a link to the rules.

Building a Platform

An onion - a layered model with ADempiere at the core surrounded by the community and value added support and services. At the center, the software is free. As you move to higher layers, the value added increases, the size of the customers increase and the size of the contracts increase. Partnerships and collaboration become more important the higher you go.

Marketing and Sales

Goals and Targets

• Attract contributors and community members
• Foster partnerships
• Attract and encourage customers
• Foster sales in the community

Where to Market

• Web sites
  • Adempiere.com
  • Adempiere.org
  • Source Forge
• Social Media
  • the usual suspects

Building the Brand

• Stories, Blogs and Testimonials
• White Papers and marketing material
• Conversations - forums and the wiki
• multi-national multi-lingual

Search Engine Optimization

Goals:

• ADempiere.com in top ten for the following search terms:
  • ERP software - currently around #250. I lost count.
  • ...

• ADempiere.com page rank > 7/10

Partner Advertising

No free advertising.

Partner Advertising could be a set of web pages that advertise services from partners. These pages can be searched by customers looking for consulting support by location or type of service. Only community approved advertising would be included. The goal would be to use ADempiere.com to drive traffic to the partner site. The customer would choose based on the partner page info. Co-branding and reverse linking would increase the importance and relevance of ADempiere.com and make the whole approach more effective.

We need:

• Rules and prerequisites for becoming a community recognized "partner" able to add a partner page. May include:
  • Monetary contributions (membership)
  • A contribution history
  • A quality standard for the partner web site
  • Return links on the partner website
  • Customer recommendations, testimonials
• Rules that permit a partner page to be removed (i.e. the company is insolvent)
• A process for requests and recognition - who decides
• Possible levels of recognition - formula based perhaps or by vote - providing priority listings
• Support for co-branding where this is beneficial.
• Rules for paid advertising - at what point/amount does this override all the above?

Limitations and Constraints

Partner advertising limited to the above or the user pages in the wiki. Everything else needs to appear as the brand - in other words a true community contribution with no corporate flag waving. Recognition of the contributions does not require special mention - its evident in the logs and history.