AMA: GitHub Senior Director of Product Marketing, Lauren Buchman on Developer Product Marketing

Developer journeys can vary, especially based on the nature of the product, but generally the journey looks something like:Connect > Engage > Learn > Adopt > Advocate The key difference between this journey and a classic funnel is that rather than investing money from a company's budget, developers are making an investment in their time and energy to learn how to use your product. During the "engage" phase, developers are poking around - checking out documentation, looking at what ki ...Read More

Great documentation, a robust and engaged community, a high quality developer experience, and engaging demos are all important when marketing to developers. If you can only invest in one of these, great documentation rules the day. The quality of your documentation is a bellwether for the quality of the product. It makes or breaks trust with developers. So if you're evaluating what to include or invest in for product launches, content, or other motions, always pick documentation. It should be cl ...Read More

Developers can be highly influential to the buying process so I wouldn't count them out just because they don't own a budget. That said, I would look at persona-driven campaigns as the best place to split out your developer-centric messaging vs. buyer-centric. Take a look at your channels with the largest following of developers and speak to them there. If you don't have channels to reach them, look at 3rd party channels and engage with developers there - Reddit, Stack Overflow, developer confer ...Read More

The skills are the same to be a great marketer for either - knowing your audience, curiosity about people's problems, and a solid understanding of your product's value proposition and differentiation points. For developer-focused PMMs, it is helpful to understand the different types of developers and how they have been changing over time. Popularity in languages, software development methods and trends over time, etc. But mostly, you need to feel comfortable diving into technical topics and stay ...Read More