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 how the whole thing was built and why it will work. Therefore, get on their level. Approach content in a way that adds value to them vs trying to push jargon down their throat. And, meet them where they are. 

Start with the facts. Then add in what actual customers or prospects have said. Or if you don't have that yet - a respected third party - like a Gartner. And only then try to make it clever. I think too often marketing folks start with the clever and work backwards - but especially developers, they want to know it works, they want to get into the weeds right away, and they will be put off or blow past any overly clever, overly fluffy marketing. 

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 research on all of these audiences. Developers don't like being marketed to and will see through any fluff, so how you nuance your message to resonate with this group is important, you’ll want to be more sure of your message than with other audiences so you may need to do some extra validation. 

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's the thing. The minute you win them over with the quality of your solution/tool, they will evangelize the f out of it. Because your solution (dev tool, API, client, platform) if it works well, gives them the ability to do something faster, better and/or in ways that saves them tons of time and headaches from a support, maintenance or non-recurring work standpoint. Better yet, you'll make them look like geniuses for implementing and betting on your tool.

So my main advice is focus on winning their hearts, not wallets, by striving for a great developer acquisition experience, a company brand that simply shows that you care, content that's written for them, ideally by them. 

• 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 promotions.

• Be authentic and humble in everything you do; it is easy to lose trust and credibility with this audience and hard to earn it back.

• Align on KPIs/OKRs with all cross-functional stakeholder teams. Tie KPIs to NPS, adoption, and retention.

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 developers. If you're not a dev, consider attending a coding BootCamp or taking some online coding tutorials to build empathy for your customer and keep a tight relationship with developer advocates and community marketers that have a software engineering background.