Developers Are Consumers First It’s tempting to characterize developers as a completely different species, rather than an audience with specific distinguishing characteristics. But the developers we interviewed in our Meet the Developer series have said many of the things you’d expect from any consumer — among them, that they are much more likely to click on links from brands they recognize versus brands they don’t. And so here we are, discussing how to make your brand recognizable and more importantly, memorable. Begin with Trust The author of the book Top of Mind, John Hall, wrote a blog post that [...]

“OK, Boomer. Whatever, Karen” Generation wars are fun to exploit for t-shirts and trolls, but are not much of an asset when building a developer community or reaching a developer audience (look here for the definitions of Boomers, Millennials, Gen Xers, Gen Z, and why you should care). However, the generational lens does inform your audience’s technical content preferences and motivations. Understanding those nuances can help you reach specific segments. The good news is that it is possible to craft a technical marketing strategy to reach millennial developers without alienating the rest of your audience. Focus on Motivation Multiple [...]

Developers DO Like Design Sure, if the answer to a question is buried in hard-to-scan, visually unappealing text and code, a developer will wade through it. But they’d rather not. So when it comes to your advertising, design with the developer in mind. The developers interviewed in our Meet the Developer series have said many of the things you’d expect from any consumer. (For instance, they appreciate visually appealing and easy-to-understand advertising.) But it’s important to keep in mind that the developer experience includes every touch point with your brand. That’s why the developer experience begins with your ad. [...]

Clarity Requires Technical Authenticity Successful advertising to developers rests on the same principles as advertising to any other customer — and first and foremost, you need to build trust. Brands interested in creating a productive relationship with a developer audience need to understand that the currency which builds trust in this audience is backed by technical knowledge. Advertising often distills complex concepts to simple messages. With technical audiences, this increases the need for technical authenticity. What Is Valuable To Your Audience? To develop an authentic voice for something as deceptively simple as an advertising campaign, you need to start [...]

The Developer Experience   If a developer audience is the target of your ad campaigns, you care as much as your brand’s product engineers do about the developer experience. If you are using advertising to attract developers to your brand’s product, tool, feature, or developer community, then the developer experience begins with your ad. The best intentions, however, can go horribly awry unless you avoid these developer experience advertising don’ts. No Walls Paywalls Nothing pisses off developers more than a request for a credit card number just to view technical content or to try a new product. Sure, once your [...]

Developer Experience Begins With Advertising If your goal is to use advertising to attract developers to your brand’s product, tool, feature, or developer community, then the developer experience begins with your ad.  It’s easy to focus on how that can go wrong, but what about best practices? Learn more about the best practices that promote a positive developer experience with your ad campaigns. Offer Value Developers are like many other professionals –– they are squeezed for time. Advertising that speaks directly to a true developer need is valuable (which means advertising a solution to a specific problem, not just [...]

Why You Need Trust First We learned a lot about how developers behave from Evans Data Corporation’s Developer Marketing 2017 and 2018 surveys. Surprisingly, the surveys found developers preferred to hear from a brand they didn’t recognize through email or snail mail. However, from our developer interviews, we learned how they think and feel about brands, advertising, and marketing. One important thing we learned from developers like Sacha Barber, Mahsa Hassankashi, and Sonko is how brand awareness, recognition, and trust influence their willingness to click on links in advertising, even in a trusted developer-to-developer (D2D) community website or newsletter. [...]

Context Builds Trust Successful developer advertising placement strategies prioritize placing ads in sources trusted by developers. Developers gravitate to developer-to-developer (D2D) communities, including developer influencer blogs, technology or programming communities, and coding platforms that offer peer-to-peer connections based on technical content, knowledge sharing, and skill building. Because D2D communities offer information and discussions that developers value, they trust the content in these communities. Trust, credibility, and authenticity transfer to your brand when you advertise in D2D communities. Trusted Developer Sources There are many sources developers trust, but not all offer the opportunity for brands to advertise. Code repositories like [...]

Ads With Value Ok, besides entertainment value, can brands offer valuable developer advertising? Absolutely. When you use a developer experience (DX) mindset to inspire your advertising campaigns, you pay attention to the experience across your entire campaign. The DX mindset means that your campaign inspiration is to provide value. And for developers, value translates to “useful.” Put the “Use” in “Useful” Really, this is at the center of any developer-focused campaign. Developers appreciate information they can use to become better programmers. They are naturally curious lifelong learners and problem solvers. Ad campaigns that alert developers to specific information, tools, [...]