ProductCamp Boston, April 2011 ********* A simple method that focuses your marketing initiatives on what matters - your audience. ********** Rich Sands, the founder and principal consultant for RSands Consulting, is an experienced software marketing and business strategy executive who helps organizations drive business success through software platform adoption strategies and initiatives. Rich honed his knowledge of developer initiatives leading the marketing effort behind the successful open sourcing of the Java Platform for Sun Microsystems, one of the biggest open source happenings in the history of the software industry. He has brought a wide range of software products to market, initiated high-impact competitive intelligence programs, shepherded technology and joint marketing agreements, and implemented a variety of effective marketing programs across a diverse set of audiences, employing a wide range of tactics and communications channels.

1. Think Feel Do Product Marketing That Matters

2. Product Marketing is a thankless task.

3. Lead Generation? Downloads? Pilots? What are your goals? Awareness? Opt Ins? Participation? Recommendation?

4. ROI hurdles? Management incentives? Sales targets? Why? Competition? Industry metrics? Because we always have? Magical thinking?

5. Does it fit within the budget? Does my boss like this stuff? Will sales use it? How do you decide what to do? Will it hurt the competition? Will it get analysts to be nice? Is it easy to explain? Is it easy to measure?

6. Online marketing Give-aways Communities Roadshows Events and conferences Social media PR/AR Contests Choices APIs and downloads Ad Words Whitepapers and data sheets Try and buys Email newsletters Blogs Forums Webinars Sponsorships Media buys Partner programs

7. Too Much Choice?

8. Drive behavior? Predict market impact? Influence key opinion? What if you could: Create brand love? Power long-term success? Deliver value to customers? Build relationships that matter?

9. Our Goals Their Goals

10. Personas Who are these people anyway? Don’t we care about manydifferent kinds of customer,prospect, developer, influencer? What are they like? How do they think? What are their challenges, motivations, decision criteria? Make it personal:understand them as people.

11. Lets assume you’ve researched and created personas for your key customers andmarketing stakeholders Creating personas is outside the scope of this presentation, so…. And then a miracle happened…

12. Anton – Enterprise Developer “Give me the right tools, get out of my way, and I’ll deliver.” “Application security keeps me up at night. Theconsequences of failure are pretty awful, and getting it rightis hard work.” 34 years old, MS in Comp Sci or EE. Technical certification from Oracle, Microsoft,or other big platform vendor. Lives in Eclipse, codes mostly in Java. Contributes weekends and evenings to open source projects that create software he wants to use.

13. What do you want him to think, feel, and do?

14. Anton – Enterprise Developer Think: “SecureCo’sapplication APIs make it easy for me to incorporate proven security into my projects. When I use SecureCoproducts, I know it is battle-tested technology, and the company has my back with demos, comprehensive documentation, community, and support!” Feel:Empowered, understood, cared for, productive, smarter. Do: Evaluate SecureCoapplication APIs to include in his projects. Join SecureCoDeveloperZoneor another developercommunity, create a profile. Read and participate in forums. Sign up for a newsletter. Tell colleagues about the SecureCoAPIs he’s using,encouragethem to try them out.

15. Wendy – Thought Leader, Security Geek, Open Source Committer “Open Source is not just about bits and code and flamesand forums. It is about passion and community and doingsomething that matters.” “If I can’t see the source, I can’t trust the security.” 30s, advanced degree in Computer Science,works at a small OEM. Blogger, author, frequently quoted. A natural at development. Very fast, efficient. Knows how to work with people, leads withtechnical will and skill. Started building and contributing parts of GnuPG as an undergrad. Spends her free time coding, and in IRC.

16. Wendy – Thought Leader, Security Geek, Open Source Committer Think: “Lets give SecureCothe benefit of the doubt. They’re trying to reach out to developers and they’re making it easy to participate. They’re listening!” Feel:Curious, hopeful, included, positive, impressed, pleasantly surprised, participatory. Do: Join SecureCoDeveloperZone or another developercommunity, evaluate SecureCo’s motives and abilityto execute. Read and participate in forums. Sign up for a newsletter. Blog about SecureCo’spositive example, talk aboutSecureCo’sdeveloper initiatives with press andanalysts, with other thought leaders at conferences.

17. John – Industry Analyst “Tell me something I don’t already know.” “So many companies think they’re doing ‘strategic’ stuff,but its just more of the same. Doesn’t anyone thinkthrough the business implications of all this tech stuffanymore?” 40s, has worked as a developer or ITarchitect but moved on. Under extreme pressure to writestories/analysis to capture reader interest. Eager to look informed, intelligent, hungry fornew information, ideas. Deeply skeptical.

18. John – Industry Analyst Think: “SecureCohas their developer mojo back! Its about time – the industry needs a grown-up that can mix it up with the geeks and help make our whole world more secure.” Feel: Positive, impressed, pleasantly surprised, engaged, curious, investigative, smart, consulted. Do: Write articles, positive reports. Tweet what he’s heard. Tell his clients that SecureCo’s developer programs havepromise and they should get involved.

19. . . . Activities

20. “Lets do a Tweetup roadshowfor our Twitterfollowers around thecountry!”

21. . . . Activities ?

22. Metrics and Analysis Some marketing programs arenotoriously hard to measure. Temptation is to measurewhat you can, even if it isirrelevant to your goals. ROI: direct causal relationship between a marketing initiative and sales – often is not measurable. You get what you measure: if you measure something convenient but dumb, you’ll drive bad behavior!

23. A Bad Metric: Downloads Why measure downloads?Because you can! Why is it bad? Developersoften download, take a look,and move on. Downloadsdon’t equal engagement! At one company I know of, marketing management got bonuses on meeting a download target. They gave away iPods to random downloaders at the end of the quarter. The count DID go up! Download Now

24. Some Good Metrics

25. Don’t succumb! Measure only what matters, not just what is easy. (Easier said than done,but you must try!)

26. The Challenge

27. Can challenge expectations Isn’t always measurable Doesn’t always directly deliver $ Good Marketing… Can ruffle some feathers Can expose incompetence May upset some partners Puts customers first

28. Marketing Can’t Fix Everything

29. Our Goals Their Goals

30. Rich Sands http://RSandsConsulting.com Email: rich@RSandsConsulting.com Twitter: @richsands

31. Think Feel Do Product Marketing That Matters