What advice could you share for people marketing to developers?

Developers don't want to be marketed to. Developers are a sharp, no-nonsense group. They work under deadlines and stress that comes from being asked to deliver on the (next to) impossible. They can smell jargon and insincere messaging from a mile away. Since they play a critical role in choosing tools and solutions, it’s essential that to approach developers with thoughtful, engaging, and helpful content. So, with that in mind, developers want to know just what you can do for them and understand ...Read More

My biggest piece of advice is to not forget about decision makers and end-users. Developers are a hugely important persona that has a unique set of needs, but they are ultimately not the sole decision maker in most organizations and they build for users. So if you can know about who the developer is building for and who else the developer is going to interact with to make a decision, you can build a pretty sound developer marketing strategy. Oh and do persona work and potentially external resear ...Read More

Lol, yes, marketing to developers and technical audiences like data scientists is not for the faint of heart.  They are naturallly suspicious of glitzy marketing, and have very low tolerance for buzz words (e.g. "business transformation", "collaborative intelligence", etc). Wining and dining them will only take you so far (to this day, engineers are the only employees who get a free meal at Apple). And when you ask for feedback, boy will they give you feedback. Brutal. Honest. Feedback. But here ...Read More

Developers like a see-try-buy approach. Find ways to make that happen as seamlessly and frictionlessly as possible. Cut through the fluff and get to the ‘how,’ the examples, and the tutorials faster. Be helpful; do not sell. Do not gate content to get leads. Think about what you are offering in return and if it’s substantial enough for developers to share their information with you. Ensure you have the right foundational content, documentation, and tutorials before starting big campaigns and pro ...Read More

Marketing and Product have the same job - to delight their users. Product teams delight users with features and marketing teams delight users with content. Like any segment or persona, developers want to engage with content that is helpful and entertaining. Technical how-to guides, top-notch documentation, and interesting "weekend project" coding tutorials don't often feel like marketing because they are helpful and fun.  The key is credibility. Solid developer content needs to be created by dev ...Read More