Re: Print advertising

Hi all,

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, Josh Berkus wrote:

> Mike,
>
> I'm taking this back on-list because I think it's a critical discussion.
>
> > I have a fuzzy feeling that there are a few people
> > in the world that do not sit around reading
> > Information Week as part of their daily routine.  A
> > CEO of a 20 person company in Oneonta, NY may not
> > even know that there IS such a thing as PG..... but
> > he sure knows that he has needs and 1 of them is
> > saving money.  He probably DOES read the local
> > paper... because he may be in it.  And if he reads
> > some plain talk about PG, he may grab his "computer
> > guy" by the stacking swivel and say... "Why wasn't I
> > told about this?"
>
> I think you're absolutely right. However, I'm personally at a loss on how to
> reach these people without spending a fortune on print advertising. The
> problem is that small businesses simply don't read any national publications
> consistently. There are some key ones we could take on -- ComputerWorld,
> Philanthropy Journal -- but on the whole it would be hit-or-miss. And for
> small local papers, there are probably 25,000 of them in the US.

I second your scepticism here. I've had some experience of IT marketing
and marketing/advertising in general. Effective advertising, especially to
small business, requires a broad and long running campaign -- read:
expensive. In my opinion, the ad placed by the mozilla guys in a major US
daily was good for morale bit not an effective way of marketing the
project.

The thing that we're good at is attracting people to the project for its
technical features. This is our strength. One of the things that companies
surrounding PostgreSQL -- particularly the big ones -- are good at is
sales and marketing. I think most of the work involved in attracting small
businesses not looking specifically for an open source database can be
left to them.

That being said, I think there are some key areas we need to take care of:
case studies on the web site, testimonials on the web site and a kind of
'Why PostgreSQL' check list, which blends testimonials with a list of
features. I'm currently sitting on a bunch of case studies for the Web
site. Unfortunately, I have very little time to work on them. The first of
these should come through very soon.

Thanks,

Gavin