OSP client benefits and highlights

OSP gives you strategic insight, content expertise, and execution across long-term partnerships with open source and B2B technology clients, helping elevate your marketing efforts.

Whether you are just starting to market your fantastic product or service or you’re a marketer looking to add capacity or tech expertise to your team, OSP is a good choice.

We come from tech. We care about tech. We’re tech marketers. 

Our earliest clients were peers, friends, and fellow technologists from B2B and open source technologies. Our commitment to their success was personal. As we have grown and developed—adding new tools and processes—that has not changed: We leverage our expert teams, technologist-communicators, and tested methodologies to create lasting, impactful communication strategies for you.

Highlights that our clients tell us they love include:

• Strategic support: OSP helps you create and refine communication strategies and create impactful, goal-aligned content, from RFP responses to brand guides and content planning.
• Structured processes: OSP’s unique frameworks, such as our Value Map, Value Case, Trust Signals, Editing Codes, and others—combined with the best of digital marketing—bring clarity and cohesion to your messaging and support long-term growth.
• Native-level English expertise: For non-first-language speakers, OSP produces professional, high-quality English content, allowing you to engage effectively with international audiences.
• Team-based approach: With a single retainer, you benefit from access to our whole stable of experts. This provides greater consistency and depth in your content marketing while being cost-effective.
• Autonomy for growth: OSP adapts to your evolving needs, with options for surges and one-off projects on top of any retainer.
• Elevating brands: We love polishing and celebrating our clients’ through polished presentations, content, and consistent marketing aligned with your brand values.

Common top-line challenges in technology marketing

• Marketing maturity: It can be challenging to identify the content marketing milestones needed to communicate the value of a new or complex technology offering effectively.
• Shared vision and understanding: Different stakeholders have different perspectives and priorities. Decision-making and stakeholder buy-in can be difficult when internal teams—developers, designers, sales and marketing, finance, and leadership—are not on the same page.
• Confidence in communication: Without a unified product vision, marketing teams won’t feel confident about creating and executing a marketing plan.
• Communication of value: Without access to fact-based resources about product value and how it resonates with their target audiences, sales teams will struggle to be systematic and effective.

OSP top-line tech marketing solutions

OSP addresses these challenges through structured, repeatable, result-oriented processes and strategic frameworks. Our strategic workshops, playbooks, and reports provide insights many clients can’t easily achieve on their own, enabling them to build confident, clear marketing strategies.

• Strategy Work: We use proven methodologies to guide our clients through a 360° understanding of their stakeholders and market needs.
• Insightful Workshops: OSP delivers empathetic, consultative workshops that identify knowledge gaps and provide clarity and unity in articulating the value of your product or service.
• Tailored Frameworks: Our analytical frameworks lead to confident, well-informed marketing plans and deeper stakeholder engagement.
• Unified vision and source of truth: We enable technology sales and marketing with fact-based resources to express the value of their product or service in a way that resonates with their audience.

Common bottom-line challenges in technology marketing

• Lack of internal content capabilities: Many companies lack internal content creation skills or simply prefer not to build these capabilities in-house.
• Time constraints: High-value teams focusing on delivering a product or service know content is important but don’t have the time to manage or produce it on top of their core responsibilities.
• Hiring delays and costs: Finding and training technology marketers internally can take a long time and be cost-prohibitive, especially when you consider the time and effort it will take to bring them up to speed on your technologies and products.
• Balancing the need for marcomms against the costs and benefits: Tech companies can quickly grow to need the expertise of a complete marketing and communications team. That also brings challenges, like controlling costs, managing a complex team, and efficiently utilizing those resources.

OSP operational solutions

OSP helps tech companies with these challenges by offering structured, efficient content production processes built on a solid foundation of technical truth and strategic insight. Our expert technologist-communicators deliver high-quality content that’s consistent, technically accurate, and impactful.

• Content production expertise: We expand your marketing bandwidth by producing content based on modular, repeatable processes that ensure quality and alignment with your strategy.
• Rapid, systematic onboarding: OSP can capture your unique situation and needs and start delivering business-relevant content faster than hiring and training new staff. We start working on your first content on day one of our engagement.
• Flexible team configuration: We provide a mix of expert talent tailored to your needs at any given time, delivering the value of an entire team at the cost of a single headcount (or less). Strategists will guide you through our structured strategic discovery and help you make initial content plans. Project management and content teams will work with you on content operations. Beyond our core offerings, we have specialists and partners who can help you with everything marketing, from paid advertising, conference sessions, audiovisual production, and more as needed.
• Efficiency and cost: Get all the benefits of an expert technology marketing team for a simple retainer (often for less than the cost of a single headcount). That retainer with OSP gives you a single point of contact to coordinate multiple expert skill sets, deliverables, and project management.

Unique strategic tools and approaches

Along the way, we have created some strategic tools and methodologies unique to OSP. They help us live up to our own expectations, and deliver value—as strategic insights, high-quality content, and more—to our clients and communities.

• The OSP Value Case.
• The OSP Value Map: a strategic insight and content enablement delivery platform
• The OSP Trust and Vibrancy Signals Audit: An actionable assessment of the cues your project, company, or product puts out into the world.

How we write, edit, and learn

We combine empathy, clarity, and trust to create compelling AND technically accurate content. 

We follow and share open and shared standards and practices. And we enthusiastically share our knowledge and experiences to enable others:

• OSP Writing and Editing Guide
• OSP Editing Codes
• Blog: What is product communications?

Based on these principles, we have gained our clients leads, customers, and advocates with

• thousands of articles,
• hundreds of talks, sessions, and keynotes for clients, communities, and conferences, and
• hundreds of hours of audio and video.

Informed by experience

OSP’s approach to designing and creating strategic materials and content assets is informed by:

• Long experience in open source, B2B technology, agency, and product companies.
• Knowledge and experience in the tools of digital marketing: personas, target audiences, buyers’ journeys, CTAs/CTVs, etc.
• And most importantly, we are constantly honing our structured, repeatable processes by helping clients as Open Strategy Partners since 2017.
  • Structured means our processes are consistent, repeatable, and under constant improvement.
  • Modular means our processes are flexible and extensible. 

We founded OSP to bridge the communications gap between the business and technical sides of the house.

• Our approach to communication was born in Jeffrey A. McGuire’s nearly 20 years of communication work, hundreds of presentations and interviews in and around open source, content management, agencies, and startups.
• Our strategic practices grew from Tracy Evan’s three business degrees and real-world experience from digital startups to leading and managing international teams.

Open Strategy Partners has decades of collective experience in business, technology, startups, enterprise, and open source— with big doses of media, culture, communication, and community thrown in.

• We’ve been on both sides of the client/vendor equation … working with people like you :-)
• We’ve produced thousands of content pieces: writing, audio, video, and images
• … and done the strategic work to make them effective.

Discover how Palantir.net partnered with OSP to streamline their marketing efforts, enhance RFP success, and drive impactful business results.

Palantir.net, a leading digital consultancy, struggled with inconsistent marketing efforts after internal team changes. OSP stepped in to provide critical short-term support for a conference presence. The relationship has evolved into a long-term strategic partnership. OSP helped Palantir.net refine their brand messaging, develop a system for RFP responses, and improve overall marketing efforts. Their collaboration led to measurable success, including increased RFP wins and streamlined content creation. OSP’s comprehensive support allowed Palantir.net to focus on delivering technology solutions while maintaining consistent communication and brand presence.

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Learn how OSP helped b13 redefine their brand, shift the spotlight onto their exceptional team, and expand their reach internationally.

b13, a German TYPO3 agency, faced the challenge of shifting their brand focus from one of the founders to the broader team. OSP partnered with b13 to overhaul their website, create a consistent content strategy, and produce high-quality English-language content to drive international growth. The collaboration led to increased team visibility, successful case studies, and a stronger brand presence in the TYPO3 community. Over time, OSP has taken on a more strategic role, helping b13 set and achieve medium- and longer-term marketing goals. The partnership has transformed b13's image from a “web shop” to a digital solutions provider and increased their recognition beyond Germany.

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Discover how OSP helped Cellar Door, Source, and Lockr clarify their value propositions, reach both technical and executive decision-makers, and create an extensive library of high-quality marketing content.

Cellar Door and its subsidiaries, Source and Lockr, partnered with Open Strategy Partners (OSP) to address the challenge of conveying complex technical value to both technical experts and executive decision-makers. Through OSP's value mapping and content creation services, Cellar Door gained a clearer understanding of its own products. At the same time, OSP crafted targeted messaging that bridged the gap between technical stakeholders and business leaders. This partnership resulted in efficient content execution, a library of marketing materials, and a more focused communication strategy. Cellar Door envisions OSP playing an even greater role in managing future marketing campaigns as the relationship evolves.

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Learn how Sulu CMS leveraged OSP's expertise to professionalize communications, improve content execution, and drive steady growth.

Sulu, an open source CMS provider, partnered with Open Strategy Partners (OSP) to address the challenges of managing content and marketing without a dedicated internal resource. OSP provided a team-based approach, taking over content creation, social media management, and website publishing. Over time, OSP became Sulu's "CMO-on-demand," allowing the company to focus on its technical work. The partnership resulted in consistent content output, increased international engagement, and steady organic growth in Sulu's install base. OSP's autonomy in managing Sulu's communication strategy has been instrumental in maintaining regular engagement with their audience.

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