• newslepear
  • Posts
  • 🍐#27: Foundations of marketing, classic blog CTA, and a great Case study format.

🍐#27: Foundations of marketing, classic blog CTA, and a great Case study format.

Author

Jakub Czakon
July 08, 2023

Hey,

Why was baby pear crying? He needed a new diapear 🍐;)

This week on the agenda:

  • Foundations to scale marketing that helped Snyk 5x customers

  • Great case study format from LaunchDarkly

  • "Aside" call to action from Auth0

  • + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

Promo

You’d own the entire content operation. For us, that means blog (200k+ readers monthly), LinkedIn (14k followers), Twitter (7k followers). Plus, over time, Youtube, Podcast. The whole thing.

Fully remote, great team, not too crazy CMO ;)

Reach out if interested!
Or let me know if you know someone I should absolutely talk to.

Developer marketing insights

1. Foundations to scale marketing

Jeff Yoshimura wrote something really good. He shared 10 foundations that helped scale Snyk from 500 to 2500 customers.

Here they are:

  • #1: “Developer Security”: Category creation is hard.

  • #2: “Developer Loved, Security Trusted”: Brand anchors demand.

  • #3: Website as a Product: Treat your website like a product.

  • #4: Big Events > than just Leads: Go big or stay home.

  • #5: Global + Regional Field Marketing => GTM Alignment: Utilize field marketing as the connective tissue to the GTM team.

  • #6: Analyst Relations: Invest in a partnership with R&D.

  • #7: Customer Value and ROI: Focus on customer outcomes, not just case studies.

  • #8: Growth + Demand = Pipeline: Optimize the funnel for both PQLs and MQLs.

  • #9: Community 💜 💜 💜: Leverage your community as a force multiplier.

  • #10: Product Launches: Consolidate big features into seasonal launch events.

2. Case study format from LaunchDarkly

Looking for a good dev-focused case study format?

People tell you to follow a classic:

  • Hero >

  • Problem >

  • Solution >

  • Results

They tell you to show numbers, talk value, etc.

And it is true. Great format.

But packaging this for devs is hard.

For example, putting numbers in there, and framing it in a "save 28min every week" is a recipe for losing trust with that dev reader.

That is if you can even get those numbers from your customers.

I like how LaunchDarkly solves it.

Hero section:

  • Change that customer saw (no numbers needed)

  • Additional description of the use case (this seems to be optional for them)

  • Before and After boxes with bullets (no numbers needed)

  • Clear customer logo

Case study body:

  • About: one paragraph about the company and use case

  • Challenge: why they started looking for a solution

  • Solution: why they chose their product

  • Results: what they got from it

  • They kept it short and focused on the team leader imho

They keep the content down to earth and devy but still frame it in a value-focused way.

I like that that they speak in the currency that devs care about.

Wasted time.

  • Before: "Took 2-3 weeks to ship"

  • After: "Can ship experiments every day"

The cool thing is you could use this hero section format and then have a more technical user story below. By doing that you speak to the why and how.

That depends on your target reader for this page of course.

3. "Aside" call to action from Auth0

A classic dev tool blog call to action that is somewhat underused these days.

Was going through Martin Gontovnikas blog and found a post from a couple of years back.

He called this "Aside CTA" and the idea is this:

  • You write an article about a problem X

  • You don't mention your tool much (or anything) in the article

  • But your product helps solve that problem

  • So you add an "Aside" at the end (or in the middle) where you say that you could also solve it with your tool

Why this can work well with devs is:

  • You write a genuinely helpful article

  • You don't "pollute" the article with your product

  • You add value first with content

  • You let people "upgrade" their solution experience with your tool

  • You are explicit about what your tool does and what the content does.

Definitely worth trying.

How can I make this better?

I hope you learned something new. Did you, though?

What would you like to read more about?
Reply to this and let me know.

Talk to you next week,
Pears!

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me

  • I have a few slots every week for 60-min strategy sessions. We can talk strategy, tactics, brainstorming, whatever you need right now. Book a session ->

  • I also do longer-term advising. We meet weekly/biweekly and I help you hit your dev marketing goals. Reach out ->

2. Join our Slack community

800+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking about things like this:

3. Bonus links to check out

Join the conversation

or to participate.