How do you balance messaging to developers when (in b2b) they are usually not the buyers?

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

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 the ...Read More

While developers may not be the buyers in B2B, they are most certainly influencing the purchase decisions. Developers also influence purchase decisions in their personal and professional networks outside their organization. Your executive and buyer audience will care more about ROI, scalability, no. of integrations, and security posture. Whereas the developer and end users will care more about technical details like performance, feasibility of implementation and real use case examples with demos ...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