🍐#79: Prepare for HN launch even if you never will, tips on pricing, and YouTube in-feed ads

Hey,

Saw black dots on a pear🍐recently:

Googled and it turns out that this is a pear scab: “fungal disease caused by the fungus called Venturia pyrina”. Scary.

This week on the agenda:

• Prepare for a Hacker News launch even if you never will

• Tips on B2B (Enterprise) pricing

• YouTube In-feed ads

• + a few bonus links at the end

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Developer marketing insights

1. Prepare for a Hacker News launch even if you never will

Launching on HN can drive a ton of traffic, new users, awareness, and feedback.

Plenty of dev tools you know had great launches. Some through an actual HN Launch, reserved for YC companies only. Some through Show HN.

1. It forces you to:

• Include your technical founders and devs

• Articulate your product and the problem you solve

• Articulate your company and founder's backstory

• Understand how are you actually different (they will ask)

• Design the core developer journey that lets devs try it out for free

It pushes you to put yourself into the HN dev reader's shoes.

2. And go through that first experience from:

• reading a product description they understand to

• explaining the problem better than they could to

• taking a look at the website including pricing and docs to

• giving it 15min to play with so that they could come back with feedback

And all of that delivered to the tough crowd that sets the bar high.

3. The materials you prepare while doing this can be used for:

• launches and ads on other places like Reddit with limited change

• blog posts and content strategy focused on problem explanation

• creating battle cards and comparison pages/blogs and sales convos

So I'd say if you haven't go do it. And once you have it maybe actually even launch it?

This article should give you insights on how to go about it ->

2. YouTube In-feed ads

This play is simple yet somewhat underused:

• You have YouTube content yourself (tutorials, influencer videos, etc)

• You pay to show up in the search and watch the next lists.

• This is a more natural way for people to discover your content (vs mid-video interruption).

Itamar shares his best practices in the post but my favorite is:

See more dev tool ads examples ->

3. Tips on B2B (Enterprise) pricing

While this video goes to all B2B founders it definitely applies to dev tool startups and founders.

My takeaways:

• Enterprise pricing should have “Contact Sales” call to action and be custom-built on the value equation. Otherwise, you’ll leave money on the table. And this is the expected way of buying enterprise software.

• The value estimation: Talk with the champion, and figure out what $value they (can) expect from your product. Whether it saves time/$, increases revenue, or decreases risk. The champion is a good person to talk to as they want to figure that out before talking to the CFO or CTO.

• For example, if your product is expected to decrease support queries by at least 20%, you can convert that to the cost of support staff.

• If you do the value equation right, you get success metric by design

• Once you have the value, price it at 25 - 50% of the value you deliver

• If that is tricky go with a price similar to competitors or other software they buy. And for every pitch, increase it by 50% until you start losing 25% of deals due to pricing.

• Figure out your cost. If your cost is higher than value estimation you are in trouble. This realization may push you to pivot to ideas that bring more value to customers

• Don’t race to the bottom vs competition. You want to provide more value, add 10x features. Not sell a cheaper product. Also, being the premium option actually helps you get into the consideration set.

• Keep it simple. Simple understandable pricing is better than complex but more “correct” pricing setup.

• To mitigate usage-based pricing risk, start with usage-based pricing with bigger customers and after say 2 months offer to move to monthly commitment for a year at a discounted rate.

• Don’t do (long) free trials with enterprises. Aim at short POC with clear success criteria, or get them to commit to a yearly contract up front with a 30/60 day money-back “no questions asked” guarantee.

See more dev tool pricing examples ->

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

• 📰 Mastering Signal-Based Marketing 

• 🛠️ Developer Research Discussion Guide + Email Copy at Stealth Startup — Reforge 

• 📰 📺️ Video the Best Medium for DevRel - Here's why 

3. Join our Slack community

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

Check out marketingto.dev ->