Shiny, Happy Customers
Close your eyes and imagine your ideal customers. Are they all the same? Are they all working on the same projects, developing the same code, and facing the same challenges and frustrations? Chances are the only thing your ideal customers have in common is that (in your mind) they need your product. The reality is that not everyone needs your product. It’s best to concentrate on those that have the need and those that have the need, but don’t know it. To bring these high-potential candidate customers into focus, you have to exploit their similarities and differences. Let’s look at some of these areas and see what your ideal customers really want.
Start with the Demographics
Demographics have been around for ages (har!), but now, CRM systems are designed to help you capture more information to help segment your audience. Parameters like age, gender, education, and title are good to know, but industry, programming languages, and places of business are also essential. Many CRM systems have fields for motivations, challenges, and social attributes. Sift through the data and use it to create more complete properties for your content so you can segment your database more precisely for developers.
Identify the Need
What problem is your product going to solve for your ideal customer? How is it going to make their life easier? Will it make them faster, give them better quality, improve their performance, or help them sleep better? Frame your messaging from the customer’s perspective — it’s not what you want, it’s what they want.
Message
There are some simple rules to follow when messaging to developers, especially if you are engaging a developer-community. Be genuine and authentic so that you can connect with the intent of the community. Above all, be technical. The best way to learn is to visit community sites and understand the environment and the problems that developers are trying to solve. The “Marketing to Developers Field Guide” from DeveloperMedia offers good advice on messaging to developers.
Channels
Web, social, print, word-of-mouth, and direct marketing are five popular communications channels, and each of these offer different paths to reach your customer. According to the 2020 Developer Marketing Survey from Evans Data Corp., the most preferred method of receiving product information is by direct marketing (26%). Paid search advertising is not as effective as it used to be, but it needs to be considered, with the option to grow your search organically. Developer community sites offer the best safety and security for your products because they place your products in the proper context, among content which compliments your offering — and not in places where your brand is at risk of association with something foreign or jarring to the reader.
On the social side, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are being used extensively by professionals for more than networking. The key is to look at your demographics and pick the best channel for your audience based on their generational preferences.
Don’t Discount Word Of Mouth
People trust recommendations. Capitalize on your success by asking for reviews or success stories, and then use that content on your website, newsletter, blog, podcast, or in your advertising. Solicited and unsolicited recommendations are powerful motivation when it comes to product selection.
Hitting Your Target
Hitting your target audience requires research, focus, and execution. When you’ve done the upfront work of determining the attributes of your ideal developer audience by updating your CRM with developer-relevant properties, keyed into primary problems that audience is trying to solve, and then refocused your message, identified the best developer communities and channels, and amplified word of mouth, you can’t miss.
Resources
DeveloperMedia Marketing to Developers Field Guide |DeveloperMedia
2020 Developer Marketing Survey Evans Data Corporation | Developer Marketing Survey 2020
Evans Data Corp Evans Data Corporation | Homepage
