🍐 #43: Developer marketing funnel, memorable billboard campaign, and a clever case study format

Hey,

What is the most pear name out there? Rupeart 🍐;)

This week on the agenda:

• Developer marketing funnel (deep dive)

• A case study in a single viewport from Resend

• "What good is bad data" brand campaign from Segment

• + a few bonus links at the end

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Developer marketing insights

1. Developer marketing funnel

Matteo Tittarelli is a startup growth advisor and his article on developer marketing funnel definitely shows that he worked with dev tools.

Here are my takeaways.

In classic B2B you have stages like consideration, awareness, and conversion. In dev tools, you have exploration, demo, and the internal sale.

Exploration. Help people see what your tool does, how it works with other tools, and what is special about it:

• Communicate clear and compelling differentiation. Whatever it is, speed, feature, price, let people know.

• Make navigation to the right content easy. Use interactive navbars that show more on hover. Explicit one-liner copy. Let people find things easily.

• Show that your tool works with their stack. Logos of tools you integrate with, SDK code snippets, and testimonials help with that.

• Make it easy to find quick starts and API docs. Use good navigation UX, search, articles, and CTAs to show it.

Demo. Show the result of how things will work when implemented:

• Show a working sample. Could be a sandbox, a working example or template, or a live app. Something that shows the result that they can experience.

• Speaking of templates. A library that is searchable by use cases, language, and framework can go a long way.

• You also need step-by-step guides for when people actually want to implement those examples or templates they saw.

• Show how your tool works within the ecosystem with architectural scenarios.

Internal sale. Helps devs sell it to other people involved in buying dev tools:

• Make use cases and solution pages easily findable for less technical visitors.

• Show all the enterprise features on pricing and/or enterprise pages.

• Prepare a “convince your boss” content pack. Include value prop, features and benefits, case studies, ROI calculators, pricing, “email this to your boss” templates etc.

Do all that and you will be fine ;)

Read the full article ->

2. "What good is bad data" from Segment

This is a really clever billboard campaign.

Show don't tell they say.

And Segment did exactly that by putting billboards with the wrong location printed on them (LA in SF etc).

The theme/message was "What good is bad data?" which was exactly what they wanted to convey.

What I like about is the alignment between:

• campaign creative

• campaign theme

• product value

This is hard to do imho so big kudos to them 🎉!

Downside?

Reportedly many folks who saw billboards didn't get that it was intentional and Tweeted at them about the error.

Or maybe they were next-level jokers...

Btw, found this campaign in a guest post from Maya Spivak in Elena Verna’s newsletter “Elena’s Growth Scoop”. Make sure to give them a follow!

See more dev tool billboard examples ->

3. Case study in a single view from Resend

Super short dev tool case study on a single viewport.

Many case studies follow a Hero -> Problem -> Solution -> Results framework.

Many try and do it on a one-pager.

But what Resend did is next level and I like it.

Especially with devs, you want to be technical and succinct.

And Resend took all the possible fluff out of it.

• They put a strong quote up top

• They highlight the benefits for easy skimming

• They explain the problems and results succinctly

• They show who said it and make it more believable

• They show the customer: logo/ name + what they do

I'd like to have some before/after probably or a stronger result or pain-focused headline.

But I think this is great actually.

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

• Why Do Developers (Actually) Hate Marketing? (🍊 Hacker News thread)

• How to find great tech writers who are also good at marketing (✍️ article, ✉️ newsletter)

• Five Reasons Your Ads Aren't Reaching Developers (✍️ article, ⚒️ tool)