DEVELOPER MARKETING
DOES NOT EXIST
The Authentic Guide to Reach a Technical Audience
ADAM DUVANDER
Copyright 2021
ADAM DUVANDER
DEVELOPER MARKETING
DOES NOT EXIST
The Authentic Guide to Reach a Technical Audience
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ADAM DUVANDER
First Edition 2021
For my father, who promised to read this book, even if he doesnt understand it
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Table of Contents
Introduction
There is no Spoon
If youve ever spoken at a large conference, youre familiar with that nervous energy before you walk on stage. For me, this often surfaces as last minute, usually irrational fears. Thats what hap-pened on my first trip to South America.
After 14 hours of flights, I arrived in So Paulo from my home in Portland, Oregon. Nice guy that I am, Id given myself an extra day to recover from jet lag. I spent it chugging coffee and tweaking slides. To orient myself, I practiced the short walk from my hotel to the convention center. My talk would start off a full days summit, so I didnt want any reason to be late.
The next day, I arrived before a single attendee had entered the place. Still feeling drained, I drank more coffee and watched the stage crew test the lights. It was an impressive setup, and I was about an hour from being the center of its attention.
I took note of the translation booththeyd have native speakers dubbing my talk into Brazilian Portuguese live. The language barrier hadnt concerned me at all. I knew to speak a little slower to give time for the translation. Maybe not every joke would hit perfectly, but I was confident theyd understand my message.
It was shortly after the sound crew put on my microphone and the room was full that it first occurred to me to question a piece of information central to the next 45 minutes and core to my entire intercontinental journey:
Will the audience understand my references to The Matrix ?
The movie was nearly 20 years old at this point. It had spawned sequels, comic books, video games, and likely increased the sales of trench coats. The first slide after my talk title would introduce the first of several analogies to the film. Then I would invite them, like Morpheus to Neo, to join me in a new reality. This was not a passing reference; it was important that they got it.
I checked the event schedule. There would be a coffee break after my talk. Worst case, I would go a little over time as I explained the plot to a decades-old, dystopian science fiction flick in translated Portuguese. As I imagined myself dodging slow motion bullets in pantomime, the emcee started my introduction. I took a deep breath and walked out to the expectant audience.
Fig. 1 APIX Conference Before the Crowds Filed into the So Paulo Auditorium
Developer Marketing Does Not Exist
In The Matrix , Neo visits The Oracle, who helps people navigate the reality of their artificial world. While waiting to see the clairvoyant, he meets a young boy bending a spoon. Though this utensil appears to be solid metal, he is able to make it flexible using only his mind.
There is no spoon, says the boy, referencing the simulation in which they live.
Developer marketing does not exist in the same way as the spoon isnt there. How you approach developers will determine whether the marketing is visible.
You arent reading a marketing book to learn Buddhist philosophy from a 20 th century movie. Despite the title of this book, you know developer marketing exists in your world. Its a partor, perhaps, the entiretyof your job. Chances are youve done a lot to market to developers already. Some of it has probably even been successful. Now you want to do more developer marketing and be more strategic about how you approach it.
Developers sniff out anything that smells like marketing. They are a tough audience, because theyll ridicule you if they sense inauthentic motives. Even when you have good intentions, you can come across otherwise.
Developers have high expectations and are extremely skeptical. For both of these reasons, a developer marketers job is difficult. If you approach it with the typical tactics youve used on other audiences, it will not work. Perhaps youve experienced the spam complaints on your lifecycle emails, the one-time use addresses pasted into your lead forms, or the Twitter callouts over technical inaccuracies in a blog post about your latest feature.
Your marketing messages to developers should not feel like marketing. You need to find ways to promote your product without promotion. With hype comes skepticism. The best developer companies have an authentic developer tone, which starts with really understanding where theyre coming from. Solve developer problemshelp them get betterand youll have perennial fans.
You can reach more developers if you shift away from seeing yourself as a marketer. Yes, that word may be in your title, but reframing toward education will help you find the mindset to attract a technical audience. Even if youre a career-long marketer, take at least a few moments every week to imagine yourself as a teacher. Dont hold back, either. Make yourself the best teacher you ever had; someone who meets their students where they are, guides them to higher knowledge, and challenges them to improve.
Share Knowledge, Not Features
Through the lens of education, marketing fades into the back-ground. In its place, your messages will intrigue developers to click, to dig deeper. You arent converting visitors to leads, youre enrolling them in your class. Each blog post, tutorial, guide, or other piece of content invites them to learn more. The next step could be another lesson or even a signup, as long as it feels natural.
When I was the editor of ProgrammableWeb, I covered technical product announcements. Companies would excitedly release an Application Programming Interface (API) for their product and want press coverage. These API companies would send me press releases and blog posts that often began with words I learned to despise: We are proud to announce. The problem was these were focused on the company or product, rather than the developers who would use the product. In fact, it was my job to find the actual story within these navel-gazing releases.
Developer marketers should be finding and telling that story themselves. Your product announcements will become much more impactful when youre sharing knowledge, not features. So will everything else you publish. Become that fantastic teacher who finds in themselves the energy to produce a spark within each student.
