February marketing thoughts

Heard an interesting statistic this weekend, that computer shops tend to do the vast bulk of their new system sales in December and January. Which definitely jibes with my experience, and the dynamite business we’ve been doing in the last 45 days or so.

So now February’s just around the corner, and I’ve noticed business tapering off a bit (although a big part of that is that I’m damn near dry of donated machines, which is our biggest seller any time of year; if anyone’s got a line on some cheap parts, clue a brother in). So I’m sitting here thinking, given this interesting datum, which I cannot verify but am willing to believe, how do we turn this into an advantage?

And then it hit me. All those people that just bought a new computer over the last couple of months ended up with Vista. Which has been such an easy target for me lately that I almost feel bad; seriously, comparing any modern Linux distro to that lemon is like beating up a third grader. And as I’ve long maintained, fair fights are for suckers. Always kick a man when he’s down.

So with that in mind, I think it’s time to start brainstorming on marketing again. “So you finally got that new computer you’ve been waiting for, great! You rushed home, opened the box, dumped the packing peanuts all over the living room floor, plugged it in and turned it on and discovered… Windows Vista. And now, a month later, you’re wondering why this shiny new laptop that you paid top dollar for takes five minutes to boot? Getting the suspicion that you could do better? You’re right. And Guerrilla Tech Support has the cure.”

Discuss