AMA: Figma Director, Developer Marketing, Chase Wilson on Developer Product Marketing

When my team has little bandwidth (or in roles where I was the only marketer), I start by understanding the state of the business via metrics. An easy way to kick off this process is by using a Metric Tree. Establish where your users are coming from today, which channels have been most effective, and establish where in your funnel you're losing users. Once you've created this framework, you can decide whether to double down on well-performing channels / tactics or focus on improving poor-perform ...Read More

While each company and product will have its own unique user journey and experience, developers often follow a slightly different path. Think about it this way — developers are generally able to create software themselves, understand the nuances of why software works in specific ways, and can build in-house versions of publicly-available software. With all of that context and capability, developers typically like to have deeper knowledge and how and why your product operates. Traditionally, this ...Read More

In the AI-first era, companies are moving and building extremely quickly. It's easier than ever to create the actual software and features, which means knowing your ICP has become that much more useful. With that said, the traditional concepts used in building out an ICP are changing rapidly. PMs of three years ago function very differently to PMs who can now create code-backed prototypes on their own. Designers can ship code directly to production from their designs using the Figma MCP server. ...Read More

I don't view developer marketing and "traditional" marketing as being all that different. It's a helpful classification to hire employees interested in technical topics with similar mindsets to that of developers, but ultimately you'll fall into the same patterns — think strategically about positioning and packaging, create helpful content to communicate your positioning, distribute that content across the correct channels, and design an enduring business model. With that said, I tend to focus m ...Read More

In situations where developers are not the buyer — but remain an influencer — in the sales process, I think it's helpful to think from the developer's perspective. They may need to implement aspects of the product. Is the documentation around this process clear? How difficult is the implementation? How long will it take? Can they easily find answers to these questions? They may need to maintain aspects of the product. Is there ongoing work to integrate the product into the company's codebase? Wh ...Read More

Documentation is probably the most popular example. It can be useful for learning how to set up a product, extend it via plugins or API integration, and understand how the software works. I tend to view docs as the developer equivalent to a marketing site. Make sure the docs are clear, easy to navigate, and helpful. The same principles as any other content you would create. Beyond docs, I think tutorial and guides are particularly helpful. Explaining how to get the most out of a product and how ...Read More

Developer marketing is simply marketing to a specific type of user. In this case, developers. The only reason it tends to get a different title and classification is because the software targeted towards these users is, generally, more technical. And, the channels and tactics most effective with this persona differ slightly from other, non-technical users. Fundamentally, though, the basics are identical. Create a useful product, package its capabilities in a compelling way, price it according to ...Read More