Matthew Revell

Think about town criers:

• They grab attention: loud bell, booming voice, crazy outfit.
• They stick to a script: someone else pays a town crier to deliver news, advertising and so on.
• They’re broadcasters: their message is given indiscriminately to whoever can hear them.
• Their audience is small and local: in fact, it’s limited to the people within earshot.

Before mass-literacy and mobility, they served a useful function. Now that we have mass-media, town criers are inefficient.

Newspapers, radio and websites have wider geographic reach, allow people to develop specialised skills, can be targeted at specific groups.

Town crier marketers often do a great job. They speak with passion, they share common language and experience with their audience, they have authenticity. Word of mouth has long been one of the most powerful forms of marketing promotion and, as we all know, is ever more important now.

To bring the full benefits of marketing to an open source software project, though, we need to make a step forward similar to that from the town criers of old to the mass media of today.

A true marketing orientation allows to us gain:

• Empathy: know who you’re talking with, understand their expectations, desires, needs and world view.
• Specialisation: if your project is lucky enough to have several marketing team members, divide work amongst yourselves according to your skills.
• Targeted reach: blogging isn’t always enough. Find the people that need your software and take your message to them.
• Feedback: marketing isn’t just about promotion. There’s a hell of a lot more. Seek feedback and use that to improve your software and your marketing communication.
• Satisfaction: plan your marketing and it’s easier to see what works and what doesn’t.

Marketing is about matching people’s needs with ways you can help. It’s an attitude of considering what’s most appropriate to the people you’re dealing with and putting that before your own preconceptions.

If you find out what your users need, feed that into your software and consider how to take your message to those users, you’re already hundreds of years ahead of the town crier.