🍐 #78: A tip for conferences, dev tool website design principles, and the intersection of data science and marketing

Hey,

In 2022, 285 people recorded peeling and eating a Japanese pear called nashi 🍐. They won a Guinness world record for “largest online video chain of people peeling and eating a piece of fruit”. Nice.

This week on the agenda:

• Metrics, strategy, and the intersection of data science and marketing

• Dev tool website design principles

• Tip for your next conference

• + a few bonus links at the end

Before we start, a word from a sponsor:

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Basically:

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Developer marketing insights

1. Dev tool website design principles

When Gonto shares something I read. And this was another great one.

Here is the full article but TLDR:

• The first viewport that includes your header AND navbar should cater to ALL your focus personas.

• Make the “Solutions” part of the site something devs can send to their boss. This part of the site is focused on the buyer not the user (dev).

• Don’t have the “Developers” in the navbar, especially early to communicate your main focus is devs. Potentially add it later when you move to the enterprise.

• Make the dev-focused part of the navbar hoverable with one-liners to scan.

• Have transparent pricing. Without it, devs become skeptical about your credibility.

• Design as a feature: “A visually appealing, modern design can significantly enhance user engagement and perception, making your product more attractive to potential users.”

2. Metrics, strategy, and the intersection of data science and marketing

This interview on “Let’s talk AI podcast”, is a bit different than other podcasts I did. Thomas, who is an AI/ML engineer (as I used to be) pushed me to explore the angle of data science and marketing intersection. I loved that.

I speak a lot about my past pre-marketing and entering marketing as an ex-chess pro, ex-trader, physics major, soon-to-be-ex data scientist.

Had a lot of fun reflecting on this and how all those past experiences shaped how I see marketing including measurement (physics), budget allocation (trading), decision making and strategy (chess).

We spent a ton of time talking about my data scientist views on metrics, attribution, and goal setting. And some of the data science work we did internally at Neptune for marketing and growth.

Listen on Spotify ->

3. Tip for your next conference

We’ve started going more to conferences this year and had a ton of success getting people into the booth and talking to us.

So if you are having trouble getting interest here is a tip.

I think I’ve read this on dx.tips and it stuck with me. Keeping that lens of “is this a fun experience?” changes how you approach your conference activities.

For example for a conference in June, we went with branded coconuts and funny t-shirts with copy adjusted to the theme of the conference.

People came for the coconut and stayed for the product/problem conversation. And they loved the experience.

And yes our booth was full. We had more conversations than we could handle (and some of them converted to pipeline).

Oh, if you want to get your logo on coconuts, talk to Harrison, he is fantastic.

See other fun conference ideas ->

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.

See how it works ->

2. Bonus links to check out

• 📰 I Spent $5,000 Advertising My Free Book to iOS and Android Engineers 

• 📰 👓 11 Growth Channels for Developer Tools 

• 🎧️ The Role of Sales in Early-Stage Startups with Barry Dauber (Databricks/Mosaic ML)

3. Join our Slack community

1800+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking shop.

Check out marketingto.dev ->