Marketing Plan Outline

This is and outline, any one can modify it, please help to improve this.

Executive Summary
Last thing to be done

The Challenge

 * What are OSGeo's Goals and how to achieve them.

Organization Analysis

 * Mission Statement
 * Vision Statement
 * Value Statement
 * Culture
 * Strengths
 * Weaknesses

Target Analysis

 * How many?
 * Who are they?
 * What drives them to OSGeo?
 * What areas of OSGeo are more attractive to the largest number of people?

General Trends

 * The geospatial industry is moving toward Open Standards. Open Standards facilitates:
 * Interoperability between agencies which increases availability of data.
 * Move to Standards based, Commercial Off The Shelf (SCOTS) software. In turn SCOTS software becomes a commodity item which brings the price of the SCOTS software down.
 * Without vendor lock in traps, Open Source successfully competes with proprietary software.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The OGC sponsors testbeds to develop OGC standards and will usually sponsor the development of an Open Source as well as proprietary solutions for a standard.

Spatial Data Infrastructure Programs
National and International programs like INSPIRE in Europe, Geoconnections in Canada.

These programs have key goals of making Government Geospatial data available to facilitate decision making. The programs have a strong emphasis on Open Standards in order to facilitate integration of data, and often prefer Open Source in order to maximize the reach of their programs.

Government Departments
National, State, Local Government departments hold a vast amount of Geospatial data. Traditionally Government has used proprietary applications like the ESRI stack to store and analyze their data.

Government departments are moving toward Open Standards in order to share their data with other government departments and general public. These agencies are often interested in access control to their services.

Open Source is often attractive based on its price and ability to be deployed free of cost to users.

Software Integrators
Companies building Geospatial solutions for various use cases. Open Source is an attractive based on its low cost. These companies often offer commercial support for Open Source as well.

Utilities
Use software to track assets, do spatial analysis, etc.

Competitor Analysis

 * What is a competitor for OSGeo?
 * Who are they?
 * Where are we in relation to them?
 * Strengths
 * Weaknesses

Collaborators

 * Developers, volunteers, employees, etc.

Macro-environmental PEST analysis

 * Political and legal environment
 * Economic environment
 * Social and cultural environment
 * Technological environment

Business Environment SWOT Analysis
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of the environment around OSGeo. To complete this it is important to organize the environmental factors as follows:
 * OSGeo's internal attributes (classified as strengths and weaknesses).
 * OSGeo's external environment (presents opportunities and threats).

Market Segmentation
Divide OSGeo's markets as follows:
 * 1) Segment 1
 * 2) * Description
 * 3) * Percent of the market
 * 4) * Characteristics of this segment (What their interests in OSGeo are)
 * 5) * How they use OSGeo
 * 6) * Support requirements (How can they be stimulated)
 * 7) * How to reach them
 * 8) Segment 2
 * 9) * Same as segment 1

Alternative Marketing Strategies
A place to discuss the alternatives that were considered before arriving at the recommended strategy. Alternatives might include discontinuing a product, re-branding, positioning as a premium or value product, etc.

Selected Marketing Strategy
Discuss why the strategy was selected, list the marketing mix decisions (4 P's) of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion.
 * Product
 * Brand name
 * Quality
 * Scope of product
 * Packaging
 * Price / Sponsoring (How can this be applied for OSGeo?)
 * Distribution (Place)
 * Who are the distributors?
 * How do we classify them?
 * Where are they located?
 * Promotion
 * Advertising, including how much and which media
 * Public relations
 * Promotional programs
 * Budget; determine break-even point for any additional spending
 * Projected results of the promotional programs

Short & Long-Term Projections
The selected strategy's immediate effects, expected long-term results, and any special actions required to achieve them. This section may include forecasts of revenues and expenses as well as the results of a break-even analysis.