🍐 #37 How to create your ICP, great "us vs competitor" article, and a brilliant way of using testimonials

Hey,

Do you know which two states produce 80% of the fresh US pears🍐?  Answer behind this link.

This week on the agenda:

• How to write “Us vs Competitor” articles

• How to create ICP while looking for product-market fit

• How to use testimonials on the homepage from Appsmith

• + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

🪧 Promo

Anyone in San Francisco and thinking about what to do this Thursday/Friday?

Netflix and wine are always good, but Developer marketing summit is a solid option too ;)

The lineup looks great. Some of the previous talks were top-notch.

+You can get 15% off with this code “DMPEAR15”

Developer marketing insights

1. How to create ICP while looking for product-market fit

James Hawkins is CEO of PostHog and he shares great tips around product management.

But in this thread, he shared learnings from creating the ideal customer profile (ICP) for their dev tool startup.

Here is my tldr, but read the thread for sure:

• Having a clear ICP makes other product/marketing decisions simpler (pricing, positioning, branding, roadmap)

• Create a list of attributes of your ICPs: needs, haves/have-nots. Be really specific.

• Score your customers against those attributes and identify your ICPs and anti-ICPs

• Onboard first “reference customers” that fit ICP. Listen to them carefully. Optimize pricing/positioning/branding/roadmap for them.

• Tweak/repeat until you get to ~$1M ARR from your ICP

Read the thread and comments on Twitter ->

2. How to write “Us vs Competitor” articles

This is one of my favorite dev tool vs competitor blog posts.

With these pages, you want to explain when you are better.

But you don't want to berate your competitor.

And above all, you want to help people make a decision.

Chances are (almost 100% ;)) that you are not better for every use case. And your developer audience knows it.

But there should be use cases, tool stacks, or situations when you are the best option.

Talk about those. Dev to dev.

Convex did a great job in this post that I think can be a template for how to write these:

• They start by saying what is the same. That sets the context.

• Then they say good things about their competitor. Shows respect and understanding

• They follow by listing 3 key differences/situations when you should consider them

• And they go ahead and explain each of these differences deeply

After reading that post you are fairly convinced that if your situation matches the one described and if it makes sense to use it.

Love it.

See more dev tool “vs competitor” examples ->

3. How to use testimonials on the homepage from Appsmith

How to bring attention and trust to a feature section?

Add a testimonial.

Ideally, it should talk about that feature to make your message even stronger.

I like how Appsmith made it animated and it just makes you look.

And you read the testimonial and look at the feature above it.

Good stuff.

See more dev tool social proof examples ->

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me

• I have a few slots every week for 60-min strategy sessions and longer-term advising. We can talk strategy, tactics, brainstorming, whatever you need right now. See how it works -> 

• You can also promote your product/service/job in this newsletter. But I want to 100% make sure this will add value for the readers so… Let’s talk first ->

2. Join our Slack community

1000+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking about things like this:

Check out marketingto.dev ->

3. Bonus links to check out

• Running Developer Twitter Spaces ( ✉️ Newsletter)

• How we went from our worst month to our best in 60 days ( ✉️ Newsletter)

• Generate faux code in a jiffy ( ✍️ Article and 🔨 Tool)

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!