Inviting people to use a service and eat your broth.

"I am providing FLOSS software installation/configuration and support to home/small business users and I want to be able to make 1000 € per month providing this."

This brilliant sentence was composed by our own penguineer.  He knows what he is providing, who he is providing it to, and how much he wants to make from this.  When I am boiling water and making a broth, I know what I am making and once I know who I am serving it to, now I need to know how best to invite them to partake of my soup.

Anyone who has hosted a dinner party of any sort will know the party is much better when people show up.  There are a variety of different ways to let people know there is a dinner party, what is being served, when it will be served, and why you should want to come to said party.  At the end of the day, this is an invitation.  At it's core an invitation does two things.  It creates awareness there is a dinner party and it entices people to come.  Marketing is the exact same thing.  At the end of the day you are creating awareness of your product or service and you are enticing them to use your product or service.

Now, there are good ways to invite people and bad ways to invite people.  A few months ago I hosted a party and had to borrow extra chairs and a table to accommodate all the RSVP's.  Conversely, I had an event at my home in which only 3 people showed up.

Penguineer knows he wants to invite SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) users to use his services.  I know I want to host a poker party at my house.  Let's play with the poker for a moment.  We will be playing poker.  I want to invite people who like to play poker.  There will be a buy in of $20 USD to play and a $5 contribution to the food provisions.  So I need to find people who can afford $25 USD to come over.  The winner and the second place person will take percentages of the total pot...so I need to invite people who like the opportunity to win money.

It would be wasted effort for me to invite an unemployed person who finds gambling reprehensible.  So now I need to seek out these people.  I can send a broad invitation out to all and hope those who have $25 and like poker respond.  I can seek out a target market and allow them to refer other people who share similar interests to come.  I can call people on the phone, send postcards, send e-vites, pass out fliers, talk to people on the street and other things.  I can stick with one method or try a variety of methods.

Each method will have a different level of effectiveness.  Each method will cost me something be it time, money, bandwidth, postage, and so forth.  Each method used should be tracked for effectiveness.  If I invite 20 people and 10 say yes, it helps me to know which method best enticed them to attend the poker party.  This allows me to focus my energies on what works and not spend time on methods that do not work..or possibly even analyze if there is something that could be changed about the ineffectual method.

Let's go back to consulting.  To make 1,000 pounds a month...pretend the fee is 50 pounds an hour.  To achieve this goal he has to bill 20 hours a month.  Yes, I know I am not accounting for costs, but this is an over simplification.  Pretend the average install and configuration is 5 hours.  This is 4 clients a month.  He has to invite people to his services and have at least 4 people RSVP (as it were) to use his services per month.  This is a relatively small amount so he will not have to rely on an expensive national campaign such as television or radio.  He can stick locally if he desires.  Now he has to know what will best entice a home user or small business that they need his services.

But before we put the cart before the horse..there is the enticement issue.  Why would they want to use his services?  Why would anyone want to come to my poker party?  Why would they want to buy my Linux PC's?  Before we can get the message out we need to know awareness is not enough.  Why they should use, buy, or attend is critical.

One of the lovely things about FOSS is that we are a community and we have a knack for answering each other's questions.  So, I would like to hear some compelling arguments as to why one would want to buy something, use something, or attend something.

No recipe today as we are exploring the invitation.