Marketing

In the busy market,  there are shops selling similar items. Standing outside, our subconscious evaluates each shop and helps us choose one to visit. The filtration criteria could vary from person to person, based on their socio-economic background. It could be the shop's interior. It could be discount tags. It would be a welcoming and open design of the shop. It could be interesting samples.

The learning for us is, are you doing things which fulfils the criteria most of the customers apply which stand out?

The nature of business and services we offer as ERPNext service providers are B2B. This means, we don't have a shop, but do have virtual instances of shops, which become our gates and window to the world, from where we give a shout-out that, yes, we exist. 

Hence, online marketing becomes a powerful tool that will help you highlight your accomplishments and convey your true potential to prospective customers. You can be as creative as you can while creating your marketing material so that you can connect with potential customers and build a solid bridge between their expectations and your offerings. Here are some of the suggestions which you can follow to create a strong online presence.

Website

Your website is your window to the business world. It should contain answers to the questions prospects with which prospect is visiting your website with. So, what are the questions generally a prospect needs an answer to?

• Is there a reliable ERPNext partner who is an expert at ERPNext / Frappe?

• Do they have relevant experience in my domain / industry?

• Do they have a presence in my city/state?

• What their existing customers are talking about them?

• Can I approach them easily for further inquiry?

Just keep these questions in mind and review your website. Does it easily answer the questions listed above for a prospect? If not, it’s important for you to revamp your website, and ensure it contains some of the following elements.

Here are some of the websites of Frappe and Community partners. The best part is, they are built using Frappe/ERPNext only, and hosted on FrappeCloud.

• Tasker, Philippines

• Navari, Kenya

Customer Stories

You can use a blog to list implementation stories on your customer.  Here are some of the sub-pointers around which a story can be framed.

• About customer (name, industry, domain)

• Their problems (Stocks-outs, Receivables, approvals, delayed customer deliveries, unplanned production cycle, multiple SaaS)

• How your team implemented ERPNext

• How it impacted in solving the customer’s issues

• Enter customer’s testimonial and add images of customer’s officer / factory

Social Media Marketing

We are sure that the power of social media is not hidden from you and you have already experienced its benefits. It’s more so important in the ERP business, as businesses choose for an ERP solution by relying on the expert solution. This is because of the complexity of the product, that decision makers trust on an individual who has experienced the product earlier.

Further, since ERPs are mission critical, it’s important that you and your team also build credibility in the ecosystem. It boosts the confidence of the decision makers and allows them to reach you for their ERP needs. It’s all about being out there, standing the crowd, proudly wearing the batch of Frappe Partner and sharing your stories creatively.

Here are some of the interesting examples on Linkedin and Twitter.

Profile Mentioning ERPNext / Frappe

Social Media Card on the Occasion of Valentine’s Day. Yes, when it comes to creativity, sky's the limit.

Connecting with community counterparts on a mass scale. Our community members are always excited to catch up with their counterparts wherever they go..

Partner Listing

For the Frappe Partners, this is an additional and awesome channel to generate more leads.

When we asked a partner about the most valued outcome from the Frappe Partner, they said Partner Listing! It helps them  Stand out from the crowd of open-source service providers, help them build trust in the eyes of the prospect, and close deals faster, at a premium value. Here are some of the check-lists a partner must follow in order to ensure their partner listing is up to date.

Certification

We learnt above that credibility matters a lot when it comes to winning the trust of partners and customers. Certification is another smart way to establish it.

To vouch for your functional as well as technical knowledge pertaining to ERPNext, Frappe has introduced multiple Certification Programs for the partners and made it mandatory for them to complete relevant ones within the stipulated time in order to get listed on the website and receive leads.

Apart from the Company level certification, you can also consider getting each of your teammates offering services on ERPNext / Frappe to get certified. Here are some action items to start with.

Newsletter

Newsletters are a great way to say hello to your old contacts, and update them on what’s happening in your company. It’s absolutely worth doing this exercise once in a quarter. Through this medium, it’s very likely that you will activate some contact / old prospect who wants to close earlier, but in dire need of a business solution. 

At Frappe, over the years, we have accumulated a list of more than 100,000 emails, with whom we touch-base every quarter. A newsletter often leads to reviving an old contact into an active lead. Here are some of the action items you could target on this front.

Webinar

During the pandemic, we have seen lots of Frappe Partners (and business in general) using Webinars as a medium to expand their reach. Given the wide scope of ERPNext, you can easily pick an interesting topic and organise an educational webinar around it. Also, you can organise it around the expertise you have built in a particular domain or industry. It’s very likely to attract the generalist in that industry to learn about this new technology being presented by you. Detailed ideas for conducting a successful webinar are here.

Here are some of the todo and examples to drive it effectively.

Following is the post of the community member who organises regular webinars for the community and has garnered quite a few customers on FrappeCloud.

Another webinar organised from the community member over LinkedIn itself.

Networking

One of the core reasons why Tally has an adoption it actually has, huge credit goes to CA and the auditing community. The companies trust their words the most when it comes to accounting applications. Similarly, there are industry chambers and business associations which come together with the networking agenda and operate better with shared learning. If you are catering ERPNext to a specific domain or region, it is important to also join the community of business owners within that group. Slowly and steadily, you can build credibility for yourself, and later start consulting other business owners on what you are good at.

One nice example I would like to share is of Wahni Solution, Kerala, India. Since ERPNext is known for one of the best open-source software, it often finds support from the FOSS community. In Kerala, the group ICFOSS community offers their support to other entrepreneurs who are promoting open-source. Wahni Solution initiated as an incubator project at ICFOSS. Being associated with ICFOSS helped in getting projection and few initial projects through the ICFOSS network itself.

Similarly, we have seen partners who are partners of their industry association, organising sessions on ERPNext to create awareness. Here is a video where our partner from Surat, Hard n Soft organised an event and promoted ERPNext as a brand.

Tele-Marketing

First thing first, Frappe’s code of conduct does not support spamming and wasting people’s time for getting business. However, there are ethical ways to approach an individual and propose our offerings to them. Speaking to some partners, we realised they are getting good 20%-30% of their business through calling. Hence, we have included this marketing approach, which can be driven respecting people’s time.