Understand Your Developer Audience Selling any type of product to software developers is a challenge. To be successful, you must intimately understand your developer audience. Are you selling to the developer, or are you selling to the company the developer is working for? These are two different audiences, with different needs, triggers, and motivations. The primary motivation for a developer to consider purchasing a software tool or service is to solve a problem. The problem can take many forms, it can be a technical roadblock or it can be related to improving efficiency of a process, for example. To [...]

A Quick Review of the Last Few Years Most of us once considered the tech sector bulletproof — impervious to layoffs and downsizing. History has proven us wrong. Infinite variables are constantly in play in business and in life, especially in modern society, and anything can happen. Looking back to recent history, some of the blame can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in Fall 2019. The pandemic led to shelter-in-place orders and rapid change in the way we work, with a heavy reliance on digital technology. As we’ve slowly returned to something closer to a pre-pandemic [...]

It’s More Than a Feeling Are brand awareness and brand recognition the same? Definitely not — and understanding the distinction will help you in your brand marketing efforts. Loosely described, brand awareness is composed of the sights and sounds a brand makes, or the cues which make a target developer audience aware of the existence of a brand, without necessarily knowing or understanding what it stands for. Brand awareness is the cost of entry into the market, and it supersedes brand recognition. Brand recognition follows awareness. When you’ve reached brand recognition, your target developer audience knows exactly what the [...]

Note: This is an update of a previous post. Newsletters remain one of the best means of communicating with your developer audience. They should be an integral part of your communications program, along with email, blogs, and trial offers. Newsletters are trusted by developers because they enjoy and find useful the content you provide. With so much potential, newsletters should be an area where you devote a significant number of resources to ensure quality and relevance. Lead with the Reader Newsletters are a significant commitment in that they must be maintained as an ongoing effort. They should be planned [...]

Website Annoyances Companies love to solicit feedback. Whether it’s used to simply check a box to comply with their Net Promoter Score audit, or it’s actually used to improve the customer experience depends on the company’s culture. Feedback can be brutal, but it’s one of the few things that lead to change. Websites really are the storefront of your company because they are the most visible manifestation of your existence. Your website should be perfect, and while most aren’t, they could be! Devilish Details The developer community is a tough crowd. When it comes to website interaction, they know [...]

Let’s Talk About the Developer Experience The developer community is a highly technical audience. Many developers hold advanced degrees and enjoy working with complex numbers. How can you market to developers who tend to be more skeptical than the rest of the general population? The secret to generating leads from developers is that you have to make a compelling offer. That said, if you’re making a pitch to developers, the devil is in the details — and those details are typically deeply technical in nature. You also have to be quick - developers have little time to waste on [...]

Start With Your Goal in Mind The choice between newsletters or eblasts should be predicated on your expected results because these two communication vehicles can produce very different (and desirable) results. Outbound marketing has lost some ground with the novelty of inbound marketing, but in terms of maintaining communication with your existing developer audience and attracting new clients, proactive communication has a place in your marketing plan. Eblasts and newsletters are not mutually exclusive; both eblasts and newsletters can be integrated into your strategy and campaign plans. Before we compare the two, let’s review the definition of each: Eblasts [...]

Is Email Still Relevant? Way back in 1971, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, unknowingly starting a communications revolution. Billions and billions of emails later, email is still an effective advertising channel for targeted audiences. As a best practice, you should periodically evaluate every marketing tactic in your bag for effectiveness and the value each brings to your organization, and that includes your email campaigns. Marketing experts agree that email marketing remains a cost-effective means of reaching your audience. Let’s look at some of the benefits of email in 2023: It still has a high receptivity [...]