Marketing to developers

Justin Hunter
9 replies
I'm working on a new project (developer tools for decentralized auth and storage). It presents two unique problems: 1) Marketing decentralization 2) Marketing to developers So far, me and my team have been focused on building example apps and writing tutorials to help attract developers. Any other tips out there?

Replies

Beatrice Leung
Former marketer now PM here (not a dev). I think example apps and writing tutorials are helpful. Showcasing how, where, and what the tool is good for is key. Many dev products are word of mouth, fostering a community of customers that are your advocates will go a long way. Keep in mind the messaging you have for marketing decentralization and developers may vary. Be very clear about your value prop to both groups. Developer products sell themselves really well through good user experience, once that is perfected, pour gasoline for marketing.
Justin Hunter
@b_wleung Thanks so much! This is really helpful.
Jun Gong
we're building a dev community atm and would love to try your new app once it's out!
Justin Hunter
@jun_gong That's fantastic. I'll message you directly. Thanks!
Shannon Maloney
Hey there @jehunter5811 👋 have you explored advertising on developer-heavy communities? BuySellAds offers a large network of developers and designers through a niche advertising platform and on a smaller scale you can run newsletter sponsorships, website features, etc with things like Larvel-news.com. Hope that is helpful!
flo merian
@jehunter5811 hi Justin! for your interest, @iammarcthomas wrote an insightful post on how to run PPC for developer tools. key takeaways
  • - run your marketing strategy by your own developers;
  • - don’t force demo signups; // free, usage-based trials are king
  • - avoid hyped-up ad and landing page copy;
  • - make docs, API status, and changelogs easily accessible.
hope it helps!
Justin Hunter
@shannon_maloney I'll definitely explore that. I've been hesitant to explore ads because I get the impression that developers tend to get frustrated by them or are more inclined to ignore them then other audiences. But if there are better-targeted approaches like the newsletter sponsorships and website features, that could work! Thanks so much!
Austris Balodis
Hi, I'm not a professional in marketing, but I think it could help you if you mentioned Blockstack when you are promoting your dapp, this way you can show people that there is a bigger community behind it. I've started to use Graphite instead of Google docs and I hope you keep improving it, thank you!
Justin Hunter
@austrisbalodis Thanks so much for using Graphite! This question is actually tied to a new project I'm working on though :)