🍐#52: Learnings from Supabase growth AMA, fresh idea for a conference giveaway, and a viral Reddit post.

Hey,

What do you do when you break a pear? You repear it 🍐;)

This week on the agenda:

• Learnings from an AMA with a Head of Growth at Supabase

• Great Reddit post format (with an implicit CTA)

• Coconut water giveaway from Datafold

• + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

Developer marketing insights

1. Learnings from an AMA with a Head of Growth at Supabase

Came across this AMA where Rory Wilding, from Supabase, shared some tips for growing an amazing brand.

You can read the whole thing here ->

But here are some of my takeaways:

• Getting technical founders involved in marketing is a huge level. Most tech founders don’t want to do that. They want to leave marketing to marketers. This is why those who do get involved have an upper hand. And to resonate with devs on Twitter to such an extreme you need that insider knowledge. (I also wrote about how Tailscale gets on Hackernews because of that).

• Early days focus on feedback, not scaling channels. They went over GitHub profiles of folks signing up and reached out to as many as possible to gather feedback. They used the approach from “Mom Test” to understand the dev workflow and jobs to be done best.

• Launch weeks make a difference. Some of it is pushing the velocity of output with a static deadline. Some of it is company culture and rallying the team around promoting what you built. Some of it is condensing promotion and landing that dev mindshare even if for a few days.

But the one that we should never forget is this:

Also, Florent Merian put together an awesome summary here (this is how I came across that AMA in the first place, great find Flo!)

2. Coconut water giveaway from Datafold

Thinking about your next conference giveaway idea?

‍How about a coconut? Datafold did just that!

And I bet it didn't cost an arm and a leg too.

It goes to show how creativity matters when planning those things.

Thinking about doing a similar thing in Poland... with potatoes of course ;)

See more dev tool swag examples ->

3. Great Reddit post format (with an implicit CTA)

Reddit dev communities are notoriously hard to market in.

You need to have something really valuable to say to that dev crowd.

But even if you do, it is so easy to screw it up and get trolled or downvoted for "obvious promo".

I know that from experience. So painful to watch.

This is a really nice example of how to do it right:

• Start with an interesting, attention-grabbing but not yet a clickbaity title.

• Say who you are and why you have something (new) and valuable to say here.

• Go straight to the point, to the (technical) value. I like the obvious numbered list delivery.

• Drop emojis, bolding, and extensive formatting if you want to "keep it real".

• Make sentences short. Cut all the fluff. State your opinions and facts "as they are".

• Do implicit CTA. Drop the explicit one but hint at something that those interested may want.

Try something like that next time you post and see what happens.

Obviously, it is nearly impossible to do when:

• You have no real experience to share

• You have nothing really valuable to say

• You don't have opinions and/or facts on the subject

But then why would you even post something?

See more dev tool Reddit post 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

1400+ 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

• ✍️ Startup marketing for noobs, by noobs – our most valuable lessons (Posthog)

• 🍊 Benefit Layers: How to avoid sales fluff in devtools | Hacker News

• 📺️ The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta - YouTube - SaaStr