The document outlines the key differences and strategies between enterprise and open source marketing, emphasizing their respective focuses on community growth and sales support. It highlights the open source marketing journey, which involves stages of awareness, consideration, adoption, and advocacy, while contrasting it with the enterprise marketing funnel aimed at lead generation and revenue. The document also stresses the importance of defining success metrics and ensuring a seamless transition between open source and enterprise marketing efforts.

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The Mystical Nature of
Open Source Marketing
Swarna Podila

2. skpodila@mstdn.social
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
Photo by James A. Molnar on Unsplash
Photo by Carlos de Toro @carlosdetoro on Unsplash
A Collaborative World

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Source:
https://bonkersworld.net/organizati
onal-charts

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Typical Enterprise Teams
Engineering
Research
Product
DevRel /
Community
Marketing
Post-Sales /
Customer
Support
Pre-Sales /
Sales
05
01
02 03
04

5. skpodila@mstdn.social
Typical Enterprise Teams
Engineering
Research
Product
DevRel /
Community
Marketing
Post-Sales /
Customer
Support
Pre-Sales /
Sales
05
01
02 03
04

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Enterprise Marketing Funnel
Awareness
(Top of the Funnel)
Consideration
(Middle of the Funnel)
Purchase
(Bottom of the
Funnel)
Reference

7. skpodila@mstdn.social
Enterprise Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Reference
Product Marketing
Technical Marketing
Field / Regional Marketing
Growth / Revenue Marketing
Technical Marketing
Customer Experience
Customer Marketing
Product Marketing

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Enterprise Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Field Marketing
Regional Marketing
Growth / Revenue Marketing
Events
Product Marketing
Technical Marketing
Analyst Relations
Press Relations
Marketing Ops
Demand Generation
Brand
Creative Design
Web
Digital
Social Media
Customer Marketing
Reference

9. skpodila@mstdn.social
Enterprise Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Reference
Product / Solution Web Pages, Use
Cases, Case Studies, Tutorials, etc.
Documentation, Reference Docs,
Benchmarks, etc.
Field / Regional Events, Landing Pages,
Webinars, Workshops, Meetups, etc.
Case Studies, Analyst / Media /
Peer-to-Peer References

10. skpodila@mstdn.social
Open Source Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Adoption
Advocacy

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Open Source Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Adoption
Advocacy
Developer Advocacy
Education / Docs
Developer Advocacy
Community Management
Developer Advocacy
Technical Community Support
Developer Advocacy
Community Programs
Certifications

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Open Source Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Adoption
Community Management
Developer Advocacy
Education and Docs
Product Marketing
Technical Marketing
Technical Community Support
Technical Writers
Events
Regional Marketing
Demand Generation
Marketing Ops
Creative Design
Brand
Digital
Social Media
Advocacy

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Open Source Marketing Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Adoption
Advocacy
Comparative Overview, Best Practices,
Use Cases, Architectural Overview,
Intro-level tutorials, Downloads
Guides: Implementation, Getting
Started, Troubleshooting, Upgrades,
and Migration, Office Hours
Project Web Pages, GitHub ReadMe,
Docs, Events, Livestreams, AMAs
Champion / Ambassador programs,
Conference talks, Speaker programs,
Certifications and Badges

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Marketing Strategy: Be Clear.
● What is your priority?
○ Open Source success? Enterprise success?
● Open source success:
○ Focus your marketing activities to drive community and project growth.
○ Build + Grow your Community!
● Enterprise success:
○ Focus your marketing activities on growing and supporting sales.
○ Contribute to Revenue!

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Marketing Goals: Open Source vs.Enterprise
Enterprise Marketing
focuses on
● Product awareness/sales
● Lead generation
● Brand awareness
● Customer acquisition,
expansion, references
● Marketing nurture
● Sales
Open Source Marketing
focuses on
● Project adoption
● Community growth
● Community contributions
● Project awareness and
education
● Community nurture
● Education

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Open Source to Enterprise Journey
● Open Source efforts can feed into the Marketing Funnel.
Caution! Do not “bait and switch” your open source audience.
● Build a compelling user/customer journey based on the starting point.
● Iterate based on engagement metrics and content performance.
● When the time is right, assess steering open source audience towards an
enterprise journey:
○ Use metrics to determine the right transition points and pathways.

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Enterprise Marketing
● Lead Lifecycle (generated ->
followed up / nurtured ->
MQLs -> SQLs)
● Length of Sales Cycle
● Revenue Contribution
● Web visits and interactions
● Content performance
● Funnel -> Sales Pipeline
conversion
Open Source Marketing
● OSS Downloads
● GitHub Stars
● Tutorials access
● Certifications completed
● Engagement metrics (active
users, returning users, video
views, interactions on docs
sites, livestream attendance,
etc.)
Define Success Metrics

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Collaboration => Success