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  • 🍐 49: Tip for developer market research, great Reddit ad, and disarmingly simple pricing page

🍐 49: Tip for developer market research, great Reddit ad, and disarmingly simple pricing page

Author

Jakub Czakon
January 21, 2024

Hey,

Who is my least favorite character from Ted Lasso? Rupeart 🍐.
And yes, I should binge less and write more but what else is new ;)

This week on the agenda:

  • How to run dev market research quickly (with no product/users/audience)?

  • Stack trace Reddit ad from Sentry

  • Simple pricing from Userfront

  • + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

Developer marketing insights

1. How to run dev market research quickly (with no product/users/audience)?

One of the first things I do when starting working with a dev tool startup is to search Reddit.

Consistently it is the simplest and quickest way to get actually usable market insights.

Here is what I do:

  • Search “company” and “product”

  • Read comments, take notes.

  • List out competitors that come up in the comments.

  • Do the same Reddit search for “competitor”, take notes.

When taking notes I am looking for:

  • How high was the tool when it comes to upvotes in the “what do you use for X” threads

  • What people liked, what use case do they recommend it for.

  • What people didn’t like, stories where the tool failed.

You can extend that information with other sources like HackerNews, Slacks, Discords.

If you want to do that consistently for you market/product, there are social listening tools that can help you do that. Syften is a good dev-focused option.

But even if you just searched your product on Reddit every now and then and read through the comments you’d be surprised how much you can learn about the market.

“Wait, isn’t it better to just talk to our users?” you ask.

You should absolutely do that too.

But your users self-selected (on use case, on your marketing channel mix, on integrations and SDKs you have) by coming to you and they represent just a pocket of the market.

You may be leaving a lot of money on the table by not knowing what the wider market is thinking.

2. Stack trace Reddit ad from Sentry

I really like this Reddit ad from Sentry.

Powerful simplicity.

They don't do:

• long value-based copy
• fancy, in-your-face CTAs
• creative that feels "professional

They go for:

• focus on the pain
• creative that speaks to that pain
• low-key CTA ", get Sentry" rather than "Get Sentry Free!"
• building rapport with the dev with copy "If seeing this in React makes you 🤮"

And through simplicity and focus they deliver a message:

• Stack traces in React are not much fun
• They seem to understand that
• Sentry helps you solve that

Good format.

3. Very simple pricing from Userfront

How do you make your dev tool pricing simple?

I really like this one.

Saw someone share a pricing page from Userfront some time ago and really liked it. They changed it now but I really like the thinking behind the older version.

It is just remarkably simple while hitting all the boxes:

  • You have tiers aligned with buyer persona: Free, Self-served (team), Custom (enterprise)

  • Your usage metric is obvious (Monthly Active User)

  • For Enterprise you just go with "Contact us" CTA (which is what enterprise buyers expect anyway)

Just a very good baseline.

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

1300+ 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.