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Moving Promote Drupal Initiative forward

In April 2018 at DrupalCon Nashville, Dries and Megan Sanicki announced the launch of an initiative to help promote Drupal in the market. This initiative will support agencies world-wide with marketing and sales support that unifies the Drupal brand and provides standardized materials that can be customized to each user's needs.

It was stated in early communications that while we are fundraising for $100,000 we would begin work on this initiative when we hit $75,000 and are able to hire staff to help support the Drupal Association in this organizing effort. We’ve hit that mark - $76,000 as of July 2018 - and are now actively hiring to backfill the communications team work as Director of Marketing, Rebecca Pilcher (that’s me!) shifts focus to work on the initiative to promote Drupal.

Purpose

One of the Drupal Association 2018 goals is to grow adoption of Drupal. The audience for Drupal is broad and varied, depending on what part of the world you talk to. So are the decision makers choosing to adopt Drupal, as well as the people and agencies selling Drupal services.

Our enterprise market competition has deep pockets for product marketing and heavy sales support. Even our mid-market open source competition’s marketing is heavily backed by corporate funding.

So how can the Drupal Association help grow adoption of the product, across such a diverse market, with our limited budget? It won’t be easy, and it won’t be perfect for everyone, but an ideal outcome will create a source for standardized Drupal materials and stories that the world-wide community can use in their own regions to promote Drupal to new audiences and grow adoption.

To that end, this initiative will be focused on creating materials targeted to the decision makers that choose to adopt Drupal for their business.

Kicking things off

As it was originally conceived and outlined by Megan and Dries, the Promote Drupal Initiative is:

This volunteer-based initiative will globally orchestrate a compelling and consistent message into the marketplace, helping business decision makers and influencers fall in love with Drupal. We will empower agencies, local Drupal Associations, Drupal.org, and other channels with the marketing and evaluator resources needed to promote Drupal and help organizations quickly see why Drupal is the right choice for them.

This initiative has four phases:

Phase 1: Update Drupal's brand and strategic messaging to connect with new decision makers and influencers

Phase 2: Provide sales and marketing materials that everyone can use (and translate!)

Phase 3: Coordinate PR campaigns

Phase 4: Create "marketing campaigns in a box" to support localized ad and industry event marketing

This fundraising campaign will support Phase 1 & 2.

At the end of May 2018 Drupal Association Marketing Director, Rebecca Pilcher (again - that’s me) held a brainstorm meeting with a handful of business-marketing leaders from different sectors of the Drupal community and around the globe. We discussed needs of the Drupal business community and desired outcomes of a limited-term Drupal marketing initiative and outlined some of the following:

  • Community support and resource needs
  • Range of objectives
  • Ideal outcomes - what does a win look like
  • Possible solutions

Many community members have stepped forward to volunteer time and energy towards this initiative - one of our biggest questions was “how to organize, so that we are using everyone’s strengths in the best way possible”. We think we’ve come up with a creative solution, and have outlined it in the Phase I plans below.

Phase I

July - mid-September 2018

Phase I includes planning and creating the infrastructure needed to carry out the initiative, as well as creating an updated brand book with strategic messaging to connect with new decision makers and influencers.

Specifically, in this phase we will work on several key tasks:

  1. Creating Drupal brand book
  2. Building an open source marketing infrastructure for collaborative projects - and governance to guide its use.
    • Will include a mechanism for sharing completed projects on Drupal.org for Drupal agencies to use - organized by purpose, audience, other important demographics.
    • Outline clear governance for participation and contribution
  3. Distributing press releases as they come up - sharing finished releases with international regional associations for translating and sharing in their own communities.
  4. Redesigning the submission process and template for case studies and how they are selected to be turned into Drupal business case studies, as general Drupal brand collateral.

As part of a separate Drupal Association initiative, we are planning a redesign of drupal.org/community. The redesign will do several things, but specific to this initiative it will better reflect ways (outside of code) community members can support Drupal and highlight drupal.org/community/marketing as part of that. drupal.org/community/marketing will include work done in sub-point 2 above.

Let me elaborate below on those deliverable points from above.

Brand book

With the help of volunteers, we will create a Drupal Brand Book. A brand book generally includes the following:

  • Brand introduction: what is Drupal?
  • Logo use guidelines
  • Color palette
  • Fonts
  • Tone, voice and style for copywriting
  • Key messages/value proposition and selling points
    • By persona
    • By industry

The brand book will act as the backbone for all of the marketing and sales materials developed through the larger initiative, and will be a resource for all community members and agencies - to better align Drupal messaging and marketing, for a stronger overall market presence.

Completion goal: mid-September

Open Source Marketing Infrastructure

Creating marketing materials for a world-wide brand is no small feat. We see the need for many different types of materials, and have volunteers offering time and energy to create a good portion of what's needed. But how do we organize all of it?

In much the same way Drupal code contributions are made through issue queues and commits, we will create a system for marketers and business members in the community to organize and participate in their own form of issue queue and project management for marketing materials.

Borrowing some organizational ideas from WordPress, we’ll create a space for people to submit the materials they need, and for others to create those materials - from writing and design, to case studies and sales sheets. This space will include a mechanism for sharing completed projects on Drupal.org for Drupal agencies to use - organized by purpose, audience, other important demographics.

During Phase I of the Promote Drupal Initiative, we’ll build out this space and organize the systems for it to run smoothly. Part of that means, defining clear governance for participation and contribution, so that everyone knows how things work, and understands the expectations attached.

Completion goal: mid-September

Press and media

Press releases and media were not originally part of the Phase I scope. However, based on resources that have been volunteered, we will begin to put out press releases that tell valuable stories as they become available beginning immediately and ongoing through the end of the year. We will also share releases with international regional associations for translating and sharing in their own communities.

Valuable story angles that would be considered for publishing on through our press wire, might include:

  • Prestigious awards won by Drupal projects
  • Strong brand stories that use Drupal to shift their market
  • Innovative partnerships that spotlight how Drupal stands out in the market.

This work will be ongoing.

Case Study submissions

Very soon Drupal Association will redesign the submission process and template for case studies shared through Drupal.org. The goal will be to more easily identify which Drupal community technical case studies could be easily turned into meaningful Drupal business case studies - for sharing with the broader Drupal community as general Drupal case studies with standard look and feel as outlined by the upcoming Brand Book.

Completion goal: mid-August 2018

Phase II

Beginning Sept 2018 - ongoing

Provide sales and marketing materials that everyone can use (and translate!)

Once the infrastructure for Drupal open source marketing is set up, we’ll begin recruiting community members - many who have already self-identified as ready to help - to participate in regular sprint calls and collateral planning. Within this ongoing phase of the initiative we will:

  1. Set a roadmap for the most needed marketing and sales materials in the community
    1. Branded assets
    2. Templates - sales support materials, agency co-branded case studies
    3. How-to’s
    4. Case Studies, Success Stories, use cases
    5. Maybe even videos depending on who volunteers!
  2. Begin implementing that roadmap through the online community interface
  3. Continue pushing press releases and media recognition

Audience

To ensure this initiative starts with focus and purpose, we have identified specific personas as the key targets for our initial work.

  • Marketing decision makers. While a few different personas might contribute to the decision to adopt Drupal, the most underserved in our community’s current work and materials, is the marketing decision maker. They are increasingly becoming the position with the budgetary discretion to choose an enterprise CMS, and our work will begin by creating materials with this decider in mind.
  • Sales materials to support Drupal Agency sales teams. We have heard from many in the community that generally branded Drupal sales materials would be incredibly helpful. To increase the reach and impact of the sales materials being used by Drupal agencies, we will unify the brand (through the brand book) and streamline efforts so that agencies can take advantage of centralized work, rather than each agency often duplicating efforts.

Drupal.org/community

(not part of this initiative, but associated)

Drupal.org/community is a valuable asset that can serve many purposes. Future (yet-to-be developed) sub-sections of it can be leveraged to better organize the work we’re planning on doing to promote Drupal in the coming year.

While the reorganization of Drupal.org/community is not part of this initiative, it is linked, and so we will share our goals specifically for the (forthcoming) sub-page that relates to promote drupal content and making business marketing connections.

We plan to incorporate the open source marketing infrastructure (issue queues, project management space, etc.) created into d.o/community/marketing to provide an easy to navigate 1-stop place for:

  • Contributing
  • Searching usable content
    • Branded assets
    • Templates: sales support materials, agency co-branded case studies
    • How-to’s for marketing Drupal
    • Case Studies, Success Stories, use cases
  • Downloading materials for use

Completion goal: to be determined by Community Liaison in the second half of 2018

Phase III

(not funded - details below are copy/pasted from past blog posts and are not currently being planned)

Coordinate PR campaigns

Phase IV

(not funded - details below are copy/pasted from past blog posts and are not currently being planned)

Create "marketing campaigns in a box" to support localized ad and industry event marketing.

What this initiative is not...

There have been a lot of really great ideas for moving this initiative forward. Many of them we’ve been very excited about - but they just don’t align with our current purpose or funding.

Just so we’re all on the same page, here are some items this initiative will not include:

  • Supporter lead generation. Lead generation is generally tied to Drupal Association revenue programs. This initiative is designed to support the global community.
  • DrupalCon lead generation. While DrupalCon may use some of the content created by this program to help promote the event - none of the funds from the promote Drupal initiative will be used to create lead generation programs for the event.
  • Public advertising/marketing campaigns. Well-funded, broad-reaching campaigns are effective at growing awareness and adoption. However this initiative does not have the funding to compete in widespread ad market. Additionally, each global region has specific needs and we believe the individual needs of each market are best served by providing valuable content to those market agencies/community members for use how they see fit.

A ‘Thank You’.

As we move into the implementation phase of this initiative, we want to be sure we say another “thank you” to all those who have helped make this possible. This includes partners, agencies, and individuals.

Thank you to those who donated. This would not exist without you. We ask you to visit our partner page and see all the names and logos. If you use any of the materials created by this initiative, and you see these people at events or in meetings, please be sure to thank them.

Thank you to those who advised us. We have a lot of ideas, but we couldn’t have sorted them all out without the help of the following people:

  • Michel van Velde, One Shoe
  • Josh Koenig, Pantheon
  • Scott Delea, Phase2
  • Ellie Fanning, Lullabot
  • Ricardo Osuna, FFW
  • Lynne Capozzi, Acquia
  • Paul Johnson, CTI Digital
  • Annie Miller, Drupal Association Board member
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About Drupal Sun

Drupal Sun is an Evolving Web project. It allows you to:

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  • Facet based on tags, author, or feed
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See the blog post at Evolving Web

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