Marketing plan

Marketing Plan

This page falls under the Marketing/Tasks page: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Tasks

It is now set as a placeholder until action items get assigned.

SUMMARY / BACKGROUND

SITUATION ANALYSIS

TARGET AUDIENCE

PRIMARY TARGET

• Free and open source software enthusiasts, developers, and remixers.

SECONDARY TARGET (AS NEEDED)

• General desktop users
• Enterprise users, developers, and organizations interested in tracking the development of RHEL or participating in it

BRAND POSITIONING

MISSION

The Fedora mission: to give to our users the best free software experience in the world, and to teach our users to become the best free software contributors in the world.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

• Innovation. Fedora seeks always to be the leader in the development and distribution of new technologies in all areas: security, virtualization, usability, etc.
• Expertise. The best developers in the free software world work on Fedora, and working in Fedora is a means of learning directly from these developers.
• Freedom. Fedora is completely committed to the growth of free software in a way that no other operating system can match.

POINTS OF PARITY

• User Experience. Fedora offers a user experience that is unsurpassed.

CORE BRAND ESSENCE

• Freedom. We care about software freedom.
• Friends: We care about the people around us, especially those who are devoted to freedom
• Features. We care about bringing new features to free software.
• First We care about being the first to tackle important challenges.
• Foundation We care about providing a foundation of freedom in software and content

(See also .)

BRAND PERSONALITY

Fedora is the defender of the free software world. Always making the tough decisions, always giving to others, always doing the right thing, even when it's hard.

STRATEGIES & TACTICS

PRODUCT

Fedora Project - Not just the operating system but the community and ideology that accompanies it?

PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Fedora is a set of projects sponsored by Red Hat and guided by contributors. These projects are developed by a large community of people who strive to provide and maintain the very best in free, open source software and standards.

• The operating system is the main product
• Fedora Hosted is also significant
• Fedora People
• Transifex too
• Fedora TV
• Gobby/Koji/General Infrastructure pieces
• Non-DE orientated spins? e.g. CC LiveContent

RELEASE INFORMATION

The operating system is released every six months, once in October (Halloween) and once in May (May Day).

• 20 March 2008 - Beta Release
• 02 April 2008 - Release Candidate
• 10 April 2008 - Preview Release
• 29 April 2008 - Fedora 9 Release

KEY CHANGES TO PRODUCT (FUNCTIONALITY, ETC.)

Detailed list of planned changes available from here .

Summary of the changes made so far is available from here .

PRICE

RELEVANCE?

Obviously Fedora is freely distributed, and as is promised, will always be this way.

Price is perhaps a valid point to promote to those who are from outside the free/open source community and don't have this as an expectation, but it shouldn't be promoted over and above the principles that lay behind the project (freedom etc).

PLACE

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES

• Fedora Free Media
• Open Source / Linux Conventions
• http/ftp/bittorrent
• commercial re-distributors of printed discs
• magazines

PROMOTION

FWN/news.fedoraproject.org

• Great way to keep the community informed
• Also, possible to use n.fp.o as a central site for outsiders to discover what we're up to (i.e. Press/laypress)

Word of Mouth

• Ambassadors

• Fedora Free Media

• Fedora Forums

Social News sites

• Submitting Fedora Related Stories

• Commenting for corrections/praise etc

Publications

• Nothing stopping us from writing articles for various publications (online or offline) that talk and praise Fedora - I've done it!
• E-mail authors if they're factually incorrect, or have overlooked Fedora.

Podcasts

• Figure out popular Linux/FOSS-centric and other relevant podcasts
• Arrange for podcast interviews - maybe set up a media contact site for this

Be Fedora Promotion Page

• Self service page where you can learn how to promote Fedora personally
  • email sigs
  • phpbb/other forum sigs (upload Fedora forum sig graphics to popular sig graphic sites?)
  • AOL / Livejournal / Other buddy icons/avatars with Fedora logos
  • social network groups you can join (facebook linux app, facebook fedora group, linkedin fedora group, etc)
  • web banners you can add to your personal website

EVALUATION

MARKET RESEARCH

Raw dump of the above showing the original nesting:

1 SUMMARY / BACKGROUND

2 SITUATION ANALYSIS

2.1 CUSTOMER

2.1.1 TARGET AUDIENCE

2.1.1.1 PRIMARY TARGET

2.1.1.2 SECONDARY TARGET (AS NEEDED)

2.1.1.3 OTHER TARGETS (AS NEEDED)

2.2 CATEGORY

2.2.1 MARKET NEEDS

2.2.2 MARKET ANALYSIS

2.2.3 MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS

2.2.4 MARKET TRENDS

2.2.5 MARKET GROWTH

2.3 COMPETITION

2.3.1 DIRECT COMPETITION

2.3.2 INDIRECT COMPETITION

2.4 CHANNELS OF DISTRIBUTION

2.5 COMPANY POSITION / CAPABILITIES

2.5.1 RELEVANT HISTORY

2.5.2 SWOT (STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, THREATS) ANALYSIS

2.5.3 MARKETING ORGANIZATION

3 BRAND POSITIONING

3.1 MISSION

3.2 POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

3.3 POINTS OF PARITY

3.4 CORE BRAND ESSENCE

3.5 BRAND PERSONALITY

4 KEY MARKETING MESSAGES

4.1 MESSAGE 1

4.2 MESSAGE 2

4.3 MESSAGE 3

4.4 ETC.

5 STRATEGIES & TACTICS

5.1 PRODUCT

5.1.1 PRODUCT OVERVIEW

5.1.2 RELEASE INFORMATION

5.1.3 KEY CHANGES TO PRODUCT (FUNCTIONALITY, ETC.)

5.2 PRICE

5.2.1 RELEVANCE?

5.3 PLACE

5.3.1 DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES

5.4 PROMOTION

5.4.1 STRATEGY 1

5.4.1.1 TACTIC 1

5.4.1.2 TACTIC 2

5.4.1.3 TACTIC 3

5.4.1.4 ETC.

5.4.2 STRATEGY 2

5.4.3 ETC.

6 BUDGET / FINANCIALS

7 EVALUATION

7.1 METRICS / KEYS TO SUCCESS

7.2 MARKET RESEARCH

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