Developer Product Marketing

You have to message and target both, with different messages/tactics.  Example: Let’s say the platform team evaluate the product themselves. If the developers don’t see enough value in the product then they won’t use it, and the product will fail. My guidance is to understand the end user (developer) and the buyer needs and arm them with both. Target the developer as your champion if they are the end user by making a product that solves their use cases, and stay out of the way. Don't bombard them with sales, gradually let them find product value and then enable them with content for the...

1. Be literal instead of aspirational 2. Speak tot heir pain points and really understand what those pain points are 3. Say more with less - whitepapers and really long form blogs that are not helpful will not work. Leverage the community aspect as much as possible here and use code snippets, real life get your hands dirty demos

Camtasia is a great screen share tool that can record your product demos. Infer has a pretty nice demo video that used to be on their website (I found it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aovjy510gJk) I think it does a good job of mixing in slides and the actual product demo with a nice voiceover.

  +1 for Camtasia.    This is probably my favorite example   https://youtu.be/B4bj9HD887M?list=PLnobS_RgN7Jb-JxB-PisH4i5njW2Waj0L

I have recently really liked ScreenFlow for making our own videos. It is very easy to use and even someone who has never recorded of edited videos before can learn fast. 

+1 on Camtasia.   

The best demos are like good plays. They have a happy ending. They aren't Greek Tragedies. A good demo connects with a buyer's needs, pains, and desires. They can see themselves using the product and are eager to learn more. ScreenFlow and Camtasia are good tools for recording/editing demos.  Pro tip: storyboard and script the demo when you record. Humans are more perceptive to subtlies in the audio than the video. Plus a script helps to prevent ums, ahhs, repeating, and searching for the right words. 

I've just used QuickTime that came with my Mac to record videos that are a combo of me talking and screen recordings of the product, but you'd have to use some type of editing tool to put all that together (we have an experienced video editor on our team, but you could probably use iMovie for basic editing). If you're looking for more on-the-fly video tools, Soapbox by Wistia is pretty cool because you can show yourself and your screen in the same window. Also, Vidyard makes a free Chrome extension that lets you record a video and embed it in an email right from your browser. 

I have used QuickTime (free on Mac) to record product videos off an iPhone, iMovie (free on Mac) to make simple transitions/edits, and PowerPoint (likely provided by your company) to add copy and display the video on the same slide. I've built complete product videos using these readily available tools. It can look really clean and is highly cost-efficient to create.

As David mentions above, planning out the "story" – even in a simple product demo – is essential. I like to write a documentary style script, which has a table with voiceover audio on the left and corresponding video on the right. As far as the tech, Camtasia is a great product, though I usually want a little more control than it provides and thus use Adobe Premiere Pro to cut the videos after recording like many above using Quicktime. I add in some standard highlighting and click/tap animations to draw the viewer's attention to certain parts of the screen (if there's a lot onscreen, you...

Similar to David’s and Tom’s suggestions a well scripted (storyboarded) demo can save a lot of time and headaches down the road, as well as improve your viewer engagement, if you study the analytics data and want to improve the length at which people watch your demos and ultimately take action. I record screencasts using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), then cut the clips in Adobe Premiere Pro. If I know I’ll be making a series of themed videos, I make intro and outro templates or use/modify Premiere’s motion graphic templates to save time and simplify my workflow. Here’s a matrix of co...

Rather than name the best product demos, I think I will tell you what makes a good product demo. (for what it is worth, Atlassian's demo den series on Youtube from product managers is an exampel of a fantastic product demo series). Your ultimate goal is to educate, inspire, and convince the view to act in a product demo. 1. Show, don't tell. Rule number 1 in a product demo is showing the product 2. Nail the messaging - be very clear about what the product does, how it will solve pain points, and who it is for 3. Do not make it too long - it will become a snooze fest 4. We are in ...

I like the spirit of this question, as it's not just relevant to API products but also any product that has a similar onramp due to it being technical. You also touch on something that many inadvertently forget--that it's not enough to launch a product, you also have to think about the "landing" and how to drive continuous engagement. Here are the few things I've seen teams do:  * At the product level, you want to monitor API usage, and depending on the behaviors you're trying to drive, figure out whether they're hitting the points of interest that don't just denote that they're ...

Newsletters are great--to a developer or not, email marketing has a ton of value. At my last company, email was the #1 driver of actions–that was consistent with web and mobile customers as well. But there are a handful of other mediums you can lean on as well. YouTube, Stack Overflow, Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have done pretty well. Also at my last company, someone on my team had the idea to run Google Display ads, and they performed really well. Depending on the size of your organization you may also have a Developer Relations team. Hosting events or webinars/livestreams a...

In product is good, but only if it is helpful. Do not make your product times square. Release. notes, blogs, social leading to blogs, whats new section in product, office hours, newsletters, etc. work well. Just give them the option to self serve the information they need and stay out of their way for a solid product led growth funnel for developers. 

There is not really a difference if you are working at a product led growth company. You should drop developer sign ups the same way you would track any marketing funnel: * Site visits * Evaluations * first day usage * second week usage * monthly active usage * feature usage * upsell * customers * revenue The real difference is the channels you use to market to them. See some of my answers from channel questions in the AMA for where to go for those!

I don't :) Not my job to hire developers. It is my job to evaluate the role of product marketing and developer advocates, however. I don't typically look at the cost of hiring them, but I do look at the typical business metrics and marketing funnel metrics to ensure we are ROI positive. I partner with a buyer experience team who has developers, designers, product managers that are dedicated to my team to help with our marketing web activity. 

This is a big question! It would be impossible for me to detail all the ways we work with these teams, but at a high level: * Sales & CSM: I'm bundling these two together, as the type of work we do with each is similar at a high level. We work closely with sales leaders and the sales enablement team to understand sales' needs, develop messaging and content for them to use with both existing and prospective customers, understand how that messaging is resonating, and creating training and other enablement materials. We have a sales enablement group within PMM who drive the...

Cross-functional work is Product Marketing's middle name!  PMM <> Sales * Key deliverables: Pitch decks, enablement assets (internal resources like battlecards and personas, external resources like one-pagers and case studies), and trainings  * Key goals: Improve win rates, improve competitive win rates, increase ASP, shorten sales cycles, improve demo request to demo held rates, generate pipeline, improve sales team confidence  PMM <> CS * Key deliverables: Same as sales, but with an existing customer upgrade / health / cross-sell / retention angle. Add in enablemen...

These are some of the main stakeholders a core PMM would work with.  With Sales, I tend to like to see what is resonating with prospects. Is there a specific line or way of telling our story that clicks? I tend to like to use this insight to guide early funnel materials to proactively talk to prospects in a way that resonates.  With CSMs, I’m looking for how current customers are using products and how we can tell stories of unique wins. I think it helps overall positioning if you can factor in real world usage, and customers may leverage a product in a way that you or your PM may not...

Regular engagement and alignment in key. I meet with my cross-functional leadership team bi-weekly to ensure we’re aligned on the needs of each team as they evolve and areas of focus. Key goals and deliverables: PMM with Sales: Drive sales success by developing content needed to support the pre-sales customer journey and business goals, such as use cases, pitch decks, customer case studies, and other prospect facing content. PMM with CSM: Drive customer success by developing more in-depth content needed to support the post-sales customer journey and business goals, such as detailed use...

1. PMM with Sales: I ask for links to chorus/gong calls to listen to customer's positioning. We tackle enterprise needs on-going and jam on enablement materials + content market fit. I also pitch new concepts/messaging to sales for reaction and ask for on-going market feedback on concepts/campaigns. Success is measured by revenue attainment but more specifically, how PMM can influence closed/won rate - deal velocity - pipe gen - upsell/expansion and AVC. Deliverables: pitch decks, one-pagers, enablement content, demo overview videos, snippets, outreach templates...

The best products are built with the market in mind–and product marketing should contribute long before anything gets put on a shelf. It is an expectation that product marketing is involved way before the feature gets built and can answer "can I sell this?" with product. It definitely helps to have joint goals with product so work is not at odds. Product and product marketing are a true partnership and PMMs/PMs who realize this and don't treat the relationship as transactional are far better for it.  Product marketing lives in 3 worlds — customers, product, and marketing (of course). And...

Yep, a question that's near and dear to my heart because accurately representing your developer journey is such a clarity boost for everyone on the team. I like to think of the developer journey as a developer funnel. That's why developer marketing is still marketing at its heart.  Traditional funnel, as always: * Top of funnel: Awareness, Interest * Middle of funnel: Consideration * Bottom of funnel: Preference, Sale Developer funnel, is very similar, with the exception of BoFu: * Top of funnel: Awareness, Interest  * Middle of funnel: Consideration * Bottom of funnel: Adopti...

I don't think that marketing to developers takes you away from the classic marketing funnel. You still need to drive awareness, adoption and advocacy. The difference is that the personas change across the funnel and the steps taken before progressing change. In my opinion, developers have a goal in mind but are task oriented. If you split that statement up, and focus on the goal in mind section–it's about solving a problem that will help their company, drive new user interactions, create a monetization stream, etc. That requires thought about the end user and how to influence the business t...

There is not really a difference if you are working at a product led growth company. You should drop developer sign ups the same way you would track any marketing funnel: * Site visits * Evaluations * first day usage * second week usage * monthly active usage * feature usage * upsell * customers * revenue The real difference is the channels you use to market to them. See some of my answers from channel questions in the AMA for where to go for those!

It depends! A common pitfall in developer marketing messaging is that the marketers spend a bunch of time trying to put things into terms they can understand as a non-developer. The trouble is, what works for you doesn't necessarily translate for them. Focus on the problem that your product is solving for them, how they would describe it, and what resonates with them.  That said, the messaging is often times going to veer away from classic organizational benefits: cost, ROI, competitive advantage... towards an individual's benefits at work: reduction in friction, increased personal p...

Your documentation needs to be extremely thorough (technical), and your resources need to leave no uncertainty in how or why to use new products and features, but your topline message doesn't necessarily need to be "technical"-- at least not how I think of the word, which is detailed and revealing-full-complexity. It just needs to be frank. Exactly what is the thing, and what can you do with it. Eliminate unecessary superlatives that developers often find dubious like "best" "fastest" "end-to-end" "complete solution" and describe it exactly how you would describe it to a developer within yo...

Good question. You should definitely have the technical stuff at the ready, and usually docs will be your best friend for that, as would "Getting Started" guides, video walkthrough, etc.  But I tend to think of the technical stuff as the what and messaging as the how.  Developers are people too :) You don't have to throw the technical goobledygook at them outright. Especially when you're trying to convince them of your value props. That's where good messaging comes in. Be as straightforward and human as you can be. They'll know where to find information on your ESB, CLI, App Script, A...

Developers want to know what something does and how it works. They want to jump in and try it out themselves. They want to see something new and get their hands on it. I’ve seen some persona work that says developers like to be the smartest person in the room and value content that stumps them. So you can say it does need to be technical, but it's not really about how technical the copy is and more around are you creating a message that caters to how the specific persona engages. If you lead with the story arc of market problem -> winners and losers -> product solves problem, that won't rea...

Extremely. If you don't speak their language you will never be able to build credibility with them. Your messaging should also focus on education and explaining what your product does and how it does it instead of why your product is better. Developers tend to be skeptical of any such claims until they've verified for themselves, usually by playing around with the product. Your messaging also needs to be initimately familiar with their current worfklows, habits, and preferences so that you can highlight product capabilities that they might find missing today in other alternatives. 

I would say long form content messaging needs to be very technical towards developers and that is where developer evangelists are powerful at building brand trust and community. Short form messaging is the same as any other messaging: needs to understand the target audience and speak to their pain points, then give them the "so what" that your product can help them with. 

Great question. We actually have a third unit – Developer Experience. I'm sure it differs at other organizations, but at dbt Labs... Developer Relations is focused on growing the community (measured by Slack members and weekly active projects in the open source product), building lasting relationships with members, enforcing community guidelines, elevating diverse and marginalized voices, and highlighting the contributing work of members around the world. They build trust. Developer Experience is focused on creating content for developers that aid in their day-to-day work. Think playbook...

I'd say Developer Marketing + Developer Relations = Developer GTM. You'll want to pair these two functions as much as possible, and the way I've always thought about it is that Dev Marketing structures and provides the overall air cover (awareness, channel and content strategy, program management, measurement) and Dev Rel parachutes in for the high-touch stuff: enablement, evangelization, content production.  Dev Rel are the true subject matter experts, the most authentic voices behind your product who can speak and directly enable a developer and with whom she can relate. Ideally you re...

I tend to look at DevRel as a pretty unique role that's part CSM, part Marketing and part Pre-Sales. Developer Marketing is full-stack marketing around a technical product. To sum it up quickly, DevRel tends to have a great pulse on the developer community and how your current developer audience will feel about your launches or features. Dev Marketing tends to have a pulse on positioning, bill of materials, product management alignment, etc. So I tend to look for Dev Marketing to influence roadmap, build a product narrative / comms plan and execute GTM vs DevRel to engage the developer comm...

I think it's important to discuss the objective of investing in marketing to developers before answering this question directly. At Twilio, the Developer Marketing team described their mission as 'inspiring and equipping today's developers to build the next generation of communications'. Their goal was to make Twilio APIs an integral part of the toolkit of any developers, regardless of whether they had an immediate need from them or not. The thesis (which prove to be spectacularly correct) was that if individual developers know and trust Twilio products and use them in their side projects o...

DevRel and Dev Marketers are 2 sides of the same coin. Developer relations (or tech evangelists) are responsible for the truly technical content with the ultimate goal of building a developer community to market the product. Developer marketers partner with DevRel to distribute their content and drive funnel marketing goals. Examples: DevRel: * is go to for message testing and technical BS-ometer * Distill technical differentiation into positioning statements, messaging, and value propositions that will be leveraged throughout sales and marketing * Work with product management t...