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๐#30: Alternative way of running dev ads, "it doesn't suck" campaign, and how to show performance benchmarks
Jakub Czakon
July 29, 2023
Hey,
In Chinese โliโ means both โpearโ and โseparation". And people believe that friends should not divide a pear to avoid separation. But I say, share this newslepear๐ with whoever you like. Itโs ok ;)
This week on the agenda:
Running ads to your best dev content
โIt doesnโt suck campaignโ
How to present performance benchmarks
+ a few bonus links at the end
Letโs go!
๐ชง Promo
Not sure if you know, but a developer marketing conference is coming up later this year.
The lineup looks great. Some of the previous talks were top-notch.
If I was in the US at that time Iโd check it out.
+You can get 15% off if you use this code โDMPEAR15โ
Developer marketing insights
1. Running ads to your dev content
Oleksii Klochai is running a dev content agency and recently posted an interesting finding from their work.
When companies are running paid ads the classic approach is to link to a dedicated landing page.
They started advising companies to link out to their best dev content created by the devrel team.
By doing that they managed to:
CPC lower by 20-50%+
more sign-ups and conversions to paid
happier devrels who write that content
better internal alignment
Interesting. Actually, I wrote about some other options like linking to the docs when running remarketing ads.
Yeah, the takeaway is to experiment with different options cause, especially with devs, there is no one-size-fits-all all approach.
2. "It doesn't suck" campaign from Bare Bones
It's a classic.
Afaik, Barebones ran the first version of this campaign 20 years ago and it was a huge success.
It is so simple, it just speaks to that inner skeptic.
It doesn't say we are the best, we revolutionize software.
It says it doesn't suck.
That is way more believable and makes me think that there is a dev on the other side of that copy.
And there is something cool about this message that makes me want to wear it to the next conference.
Good stuff.
3. How to present benchmark results masterclass from RavenDB
The biggest problem with the software benchmarks that you run is?
People don't trust you. Especially when the results are good.
๐ฌ๐ผ๐ ๐ท๐๐๐ ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ผ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ฟ๐๐๐. ๐ข๐ป๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ด๐ต ๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐.
People from RavenDB do their benchmarks this way:
They handle typical developer obstacles by:
Showing where they ran it (AWS, Linux)
Showing exactly what infra they ran it on. Extra points for making it interactive.
Explaining how they ran it with code snippets and setup
Copy is also very to the point, technical, docs-like
This looks solid because it feels like I could re-run what they did myself.
And so I trust them and I probably won't ;)
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!
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