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🍐#73: Learnings on running Reddit meme ads and a new book on dev tool startup marketing

Author

Jakub Czakon
July 07, 2024

Hey,

What do pears who spend their time in academic research complain about? That it’s all just publish or pearish 🍐 ;)

This week on the agenda:

  • “Developer facing startup” a must-read for dev marketers and founders

  • Learnings from running Reddit ads + a great meme ad example

  • Simple video Reddit ad format from Kftray

  • + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

Developer marketing insights

1. “Developer facing startup” a must-read for dev marketers and founders

Adam Frankl, the guy who was the first marketing guy at 3 dev tool unicorns, wrote a book on dev marketing!

Bought it, read it, and loved it.

It is focused on marketing for early-stage dev tool startup founders. Ideally for products that are solving a net new problem. But if you are marketing dev tools you’ll find it valuable either way.

I was thinking about doing a TLDR but then I thought, just read it. It will probably be the best $10 (and a few hours) you’ll ever spend.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything (probably a post coming) but it is a fantastic resource nonetheless.

2. Learnings from running Reddit ads + a great meme ad example

Ali runs a b2b growth agency, and as they started testing recently, Reddit turned out to be a great ad channel for developer personas.

My takeaways from his takeaways 😉 :

  • You can Target a very focused community by going after specific subreddits. Be intentional with grouping similar subreddits into ad groups.

  • Adjust content to the subreddit, post something that fits that subreddit

  • Run ads to things I can try/do right there product/repo/newsletter etc

  • Low cost to get reach, CPM around $5, CPC around $1.5. It also means you should probably focus on reach and delivering message in-feed rather than try and get people to click-out

A great implementation of that was a meme ad for r/ProgrammerHummor subreddit that Zach shared recently

3. Simple video Reddit ad format from Kftray

This is a simple ad format from kftray but lands the message:

  • Clear, transparent "What it is" and "What it does" in the Headline

  • Basic screen share video that shows both the code (terminal) and the  UI (product app)

  • Unblocked comments make it more confident and spark conversation

An interesting fact is that there is no call to action?!

They say "Kftray is an open-source" which is enough for those interested to google "kftray github" or just go to GitHub and find it. And makes the ad less pushy which is a nice touch on Reddit.

But the most important takeaway is this. If the problem is real to the dev audience you target you don't need to go fancy. Just show how you solve it.

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me 🍐

Every week I have a few slots for Workshops (60-minute session on whatever you want), Teardowns (audit+suggestions for your homepage/messaging/ads etc), and longer-term Advising.

"Thanks so much for your time and all the thoughtful feedback coming from the workshop.

I feel like we are in a much better place to start our website rebuild. "

Sarah Morgan, Head of Product and Customer Engagement, Scout APM

2. Bonus links to check out

3. Join our Slack community

1700+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking shop.

"Been here 20 min and already folks are sharing great advice."

Charles Cook, VP Marketing & Ops @Posthog

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