Marketing for open source companies mixes B2C and B2B

One of the complexities of an open source startup — indeed, the reason I find these startups so much more interesting — is that they have to mix marketing to open source users with marketing to potential customers. The companies I work with are fundamentally B2B companies, as are most (but not all) open source companies. But building an open source community and marketing to potential users has elements of B2C marketing, so companies that are serious about their community need to incorporate both B2C and B2B ideas into their marketing efforts.

The decision to try out an open source project is usually (though not always!) an individual one. Even when a project is rolled out in an enterprise setting, the “POC” phase is often an individual engineer playing around on his or her individual environment.

When thinking about how to market an open source project, it’s important to consider the individual characteristics of the users, including things like psychosocial characteristics. Are your users really paranoid about privacy and security? Do your users mistrust their colleagues? Are your users insecure about their job performance? All of those could be important characteristics that make an individual more likely to get value out of an open source project.

The point I want to make here is: Pay attention to individual needs, wants and desires, even if you think of your company as a B2B company. It’s especially important in evangelizing your open source project, because the adoption patterns are more similar to B2C adoption. But even in B2B deals, individuals make buying decisions, too. So pay attention to what those individuals want.