Developers aren’t a fan of marketing. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in developer marketing; these campaigns just look very different from traditional B2B marketing campaigns. You need to make it seem like you’re not trying to sell or market to developers.
With the developer population growing year on year, the need for developer marketing will increase and it’s likely to grow beyond just developer-centric companies and expand into the broader software industry. If you want to get ahead of your competitors, you need to fully invest in the right kinds of developer marketing campaigns.
We’ve put together a list of the most powerful developer marketing campaigns we’ve seen recently to help inspire you to create content that attracts and engages developers.
1. Stripe
Stripe hits the mark on many fronts when it comes to developer marketing campaigns. On its developer tools homepage, you can access educational materials such as tutorials that can serve as part of your developer marketing. Stripe also has links to its Twitter channels if you want to stay up to date with its latest updates and it has a developer chat on Discord, which is one of the most popular channels with developers, along with Slack.
2. MongoDB
MongoDB’s Developer Center is a hub of useful marketing information for developers. It contains:
- Documentation
- Tutorials
- Code snippets
- Integration information
- Videos
- A podcast
What makes the Developer Center stand out is the ability to segment the content by programming language. Targeting content to specific types of developers in this way increases engagement. It also provides a frictionless sign-up process as developers can quickly access relevant information.
3. Redis
Education is an important part of developer marketing, as is creating educational content that helps users solve problems or learn new skills. Real-time data platform Redis provides free courses that cover principles of databases, as well as advanced concepts and theories, in addition to courses that cover specific features within Redis’ products.
These courses not only serve as an introduction to the Redis platform for developers who aren’t already aware of it, but they also provide a learn-by-doing environment where developers can get hands-on with the product rather than listening to or reading about it.
Developers also trust the advice of their peers when it comes to choosing software, so enabling them to communicate is a must. Redis has a Discord channel for its courses where users can interact with other learners and get advice and help from their peers.
4. Dremio
Offering interactive developer documentation is an important part of developer marketing as it helps you educate your audience about your product’s features and accelerate their purchasing decision. By bringing together documentation and a hands-on product experience, you can provide additional learning content for the most difficult/popular topics on a product. That’s what next-generation data lake engine Dremio has done.
The company created Dremio University, which provides free online courses not just for Dremio users, but for the data analytics industry in general. For example, they created courses for data scientists to learn more about SQL and statistics courses for database developers.
They also provide interactive documentation to help developers better understand Dremio’s products and how to take advantage of all of its features, as well as software sandboxes, which enable users to get a hands-on, interactive experience with the product.
5. Snowflake
Building a developer community, or engaging in existing communities, should form part of any developer marketing strategy. Creating a community gives users a place where they can seek help regarding your product, gains the trust of developers, and builds a reputation for prioritizing your developers’ needs.
Speaking at and running events helps create an engaged community. Snowflake created an event targeted at developers, data engineers, and data scientists and showcased what this audience can learn. This event enables peer-to-peer discussions and creates transparency about the product’s capabilities while also giving back to the community by including sessions on how to solve developers’ problems.
6. Polygon
You can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to marketing to developers. You’ll need to segment your users and tailor your approach based on the platform and the audience if you want to attract their attention. You also need to focus on the platforms where your users are most likely to be active.
Polygon’s developer marketing campaigns target users on Reddit in the Javascript forum as they know the audience is relevant to their product. They also tailor the messaging to the platform, using the words “Hey Reddit Devs.” Developers viewing the campaign know that they aren’t clicking on a generic ad.
7. Twilio
Building a dedicated developer zone that speaks your users’ language and contains all of your developer-first, technical product content is important because your corporate website will have a different tone (that likely caters to a different audience). Twilio’s developer zone is tailored to the audience and brings together all of its developer marketing campaign materials in one place.
Twilio’s developer marketing zone includes:
- Documentation
- Community resources
- Sample codes
- Hands-on courses
- Information on how to become a Twilio Champion and advocate for the product
- Details on the latest product updates
- API status