What are your lessons learned about successfully marketing to developers?

At it's core: it's not different from B2B or B2C when you strip it down to the pillars of what makes for any successful marketing. Understanding your audience: What are their drivers, their pains, their perceptions?  Where do they gather?  Who do they trust?  How do they influence the buying process in their companies? Are they highly influencial and going to drive product sales and adoption organically? Or is enabling them as a post-sales activity a critical pathway to success and a blocker? Wh ...Read More

Take everything you learned from marketing to typical consumers and throw it out the window. What works for most personas in B2B or B2C will not work here. 1. Developers majorly dislike being marketed to so you have to make marketing feel like it isn't marketing. Interview, interview, and then do some more interviews to understand their pain points. Record these interviews to reference the exact technical language they are referrring to for messaging. 2. Always message test before sending out me ...Read More

The biggest lesson that I have learned leading technical product marketing, is that developers value trust and transparency above all else. It’s better to let the product speak for itself, and encourage developers to play around with it and explore on their own. I’ve also found that developers want to be part of the process, not just end-users. Involving them early, whether through beta programs or open-source projects, not only builds stronger relationships but also leads to better products. By ...Read More

Build great relationships with DevRel, re-evaluate your perception of what channels work or don't work from your previous experience (because developers do act differently than other personas), and pay a lot of attention to the end user. Yes you're focused on developers, and yes developers have unique needs and actions, but they are driven by users. So think about the user because that's where the developer wants to go, and if you can meet the developer where they are going, you can focus on the ...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

Don't gatekeep access to hands-on learning While the org-wide value story is important, developer product marketing should focus a little more on "why now, why me" Ensure there are materials that help people ramp quickly and easily. Ensure packaging and pricing reflects an ability to not just try, but get sticky, with an incentive (product-based, as in it makes their lives easier) to share with others.  Be frank, be sharp, be honest Create visibile opportunities to contribute to making the produ ...Read More