Developer marketing examples

Conference activation idea: Tetris competition at the booth.

It is hard to get devs to your booth if all you offer is a "do you want to see a quick demo" spiel.

You need to get a bit more creative than that.

💚 The team at Storyblok ran a Tetris competition:

• Playing station at the booth to make sure people come by
• Live leaderboard for when people were not playing + to get folks to play again
• Branding around the playing station for those who take photos to share it on socials
• A cool devy prize (mechanical keyboard) to build some additional reason to play talk about it

Afaik it was a big hit and I can definitely see why.

📒 A few more notes:

• make it live at the booth, not available online -> you'll get no buzz for it otherwise (made this mistake)
• try to get organizers to give you a few minutes of the schedule to give away prizes
• if you can connect the game to your product in a memorable way do that.  

btw, I read about it on DX Tips. You want to check out that article on dev conferences from DX Tips

With infrastructure tools, it is notoriously difficult to show people the value quickly.

To really see it they would need to set up everything at their company infra, create dashboards for their use case, and so on. 

A lot of work.

That is why creating a sandbox experience is a good way of giving people a taste.

I like the way Axiom calls it a playground and says "Play with Axiom" and "Launch playground".

This copy is good because:

• they acknowledge it isn't a real thing (but a playground)
• it conveys that it will be interactive and you'll be able to click around
• it makes it feel like less work and more, well play :)

Why not highlight your free plan?

Most companies highlight their middle paid plan saying it is "most popular".

First thing, yeah, sure it is your most popular plan.

But more importantly, most visitors will not convert to your paid plans right away.

So why not try and capture as many devs as possible on the free plan?

If they like your dev tool there are many things you can do to convert some of them to paid plans.

But if they leave that pricing page and go with some other free tool, you are not converting anyone.

@CircleCI highlights free and they are in the mature, competitive market of CI CD tools.

Idk, it really does make a lot of sense to me.

If people need more advanced features they will choose higher plans anyway.

But if they want to get things started with the basic plans they will choose free or go elsewhere.

I'd rather have them choose free than none.  

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀?

The general tip is simple. Create content that the HN audience finds interesting.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀:

• Something that feeds curiosity (how does X work, why did Y happen, what is it like to do Z)
• Something real, transparent, and written in first person (real stories)
• Something technical and focused on the dev or founder crowd

But how do you actually do that?

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀:

• Get your technical founder or core developers to write articles
• Those articles are focused on the technical challenges of building your product
• Again, don't write what your product does but rather how you build it. Mistakes you made, ideas you tried, technical challenges you had to overcome.
• Share real value with that dev audience. And to give people real value, you need to have folks who actually understand their problems. Those are typically senior devs/founders.
• You will inevitably hint that you are building a product and the folks who are interested in your product and you will go deeper.  

That was exactly what folks from CockroachDB did at the beginning.  Heard about it on one of the episodes of the Unusual Ventures podcast with Peter Mattis from Cockroach Labs.

𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗡:

• "CockroachDB Stability Post-Mortem: From 1 Node to 100 Nodes"
• "Serializable, lockless, distributed: Isolation in CockroachDB"
• "How CockroachDB Does Distributed, Atomic Transactions"
 
Kudos Cockroach Labs team and thanks for sharing!

Need one more call to action idea for your dev tool blog?

How about starting an article with it?

Sounds weird but if done right it can work. Even with devs (or maybe especially with devs).

Earthly did and they are known for great dev-focused content.

Ok, so how does it work?

You start your article with a contextual call to action where you explain:

• Who you are and what your product does
• And how that is relevant to the content of the article
• Link out to more product-focused pages, ideally relevant to content

And then you let people read.

Those who find the topic important will remember you and/or maybe click out to see more.

I like it. It's explicit, transparent, and actually noninvasive.

A freaking developer TV.

They took this "be a media company" to the next level.

They created entire TV around their company, audience, and products.

I respect people really going all in.

How to show integrations on your dev tool homepage?

Every dev tool needs to integrate with other libraries in the space.

And you want to show how well integrated with the ecosystem you are.

But you ctually want to do a bit more than that.

You want devs to see how easy / flexible / clean it would be for them to use it.

That is why instead of showing just logos from your ecosystem it is good to show the code too.

Meilisearch does that beautifully:

• They show a big list of integrations that show the breadth
• For each, there is a code snippet on a relatable example
• + call to action to all integrations and selected one

I am sure this is getting more clicks than just a list of logos.

VS competitor ads are hard to pull off with devs. Not impossible though. 👇

So the problem is that:

• You want to list problems people have with the competing tool.
• But you don't want to come off as too negative and aggressive.
• And you want people to not think those are just "some bs claims to sell your tool"

@Convex does it really nicely here:

• They start positively by acknowledging that some people do "Love Firebase"
• They tag the competitor to build trust in the claims they are making
• They list problems people have with the competitor explicitly in voice of customer: "request waterfalls", "weak react support", "managing end-to-end consistency"
• And they link to a deeper vs competitor page for details

And even though this is by a "aggressive" competitor marketing hundreds of devs liked/bookmarked this tweet.

Good job!

This is a cool story coming from the GOAT of all docs. They added a signup button to their header and the conversions and revenue followed.

All they did was added a "Create Account" button and saw a huge jump in conversions.

Interestingly, Peggy shared that when they added it to Apollo GraphQL docs, signups went up by 20%.

It sounds like a good thing to try out.

Good format of the tweet copy.

Start with the hook.

Then validate it with more story.

Then open a knowledge gap with a thread.

Funny and memorable competitive billboard ad from @Statsig 👇

You have a big incumbent, everyone knows them. Use it to anchor your brand.

And tell the story of how you do things differently.

👀 But first, make people see you. And remember you in the next conversation when the big known brand or a category comes up.

And being funny is one of the best ways of getting attention and being remembered.

💚 I love how folks from Statsig did it here. Such a playful pun on the feature flag category incumbent Launch Darkly. Job well done.

Btw, this was shared by Oleksii Klochai in the Developer Marketing Community (you joined yet?).

Not sure how to find developers for audience research interviews?

Sometimes all you need is ask.

I really liked what the founders of this startup did:

• Found relevant subreddits where folks working in MLOps/DevOps and ML are (for example r/mlops)
• Clearly explained why they wanted it: building a startup and doing exploratory analysis
• Clearly explained what they wanted: interviews with mlops/devop/data scientists
• Clearly explained what they will give for it: cash, as simple as that

Sometimes you don't need to overthink it and can just ask.

Make login our problem. Not yours.

This is a beautiful messaging of Auth0 solution.

Login

Simple explanation of what it does/gives you.
Simplified of course

Our problem. Not yours.

You "outsource" this boring but important problem to someone else.
It also has a feel of SaaS in there.
They will take care of it.

‍

This is a nice little touch in the last step of the signup process.

Linear asks you to do two things:

• Subscribe to the newsletter with updates
• Follow-up on their main social channel

The beauty of it is while this is an ask it is done so gracefully:

• balances promotion with value for the user
• It is explicit in what it asks for and explains each ask with a one-liner
• makes the ask small enough that it makes sense to be an "impulse buy"
• the CTAs are clear -> not only "follow us on Twitter" but also gives you their handle

Nice and simple and I am sure it gets some folks to subscribe/follow.

Algolia gets over 80% of referral traffic from a single free tool they created called Search Hacker News.

But why does it work so well for them?

Hacker News doesn't really have a native search experience.

Algolia gives devs an amazing search experience out of the box.

So folks from Algolia created their own website where you can search Hackernews... with Algolia search engine.

Of course, when you click on "Search by Algolia" you get directed to the website and can learn how to set up a similar search, which you have just used yourself.

What I love about this:

• solves a real problem for the audience Algolia is after (many software devs read hacker news)
• it shows rather than tells how Algolia's search works. And it works amazingly.
• it feels almost like an extension of HackerNews with the same brand colors and design.

And looking at the results it delivers.

One of the top-performing conversion flows in dev-focused articles.

"Aside CTA" in the "How to do {jobs to be done}" article.

You know the drill:

• Explain how to X without your tool
• Add an "Aside" CTA showing that it can be done with your tool

And Export SDK executes it (almost) perfectly:

• They subtly move you from article to CTA but show that the article ended
• They explain what the tool does and what the offer is
• They show a visual of how the tool solves it
• And they give you a clear link to click

One thing that could be tested and changed is putting this "Aside CTA" mid-article and not at the end (tip from Martin Gontovnikas).

A good thing to try if you are running the "How to do {jbtd}" article strategy.

I love the design of this crossover section on the Tailwind homepage.

I see the code and the result next to each other.

I see how I can get that result with code.

It is interactive and catches my attention.

It makes me feel inspired.

Great job Tailwind team!

Classic Auth0 campaign coming back in 2023.

I love how simple and powerful this message is.

You can outsource a dull but important problem of authentications to them.

That is all the say.

But it is enough to get you interested and understand what they do.

I love this video ad format from Hygraph.

They are reading and reacting to bad reviews.

I saw this in B2C but not in the dev tool B2B. Love it!

So basically how they did that campaign is:

• The marketing team finds bad product reviews.
• Most of the reviews are technical and speak about some features.
• Their employees (at least some devs in there) read them out loud on their phones.
• They react to the reviews, typically explaining what the product does and why.
• They serve it as YouTube short ads and link to the whole 5-minute video on their channel.

Through all that, you get entertained and learn something about their product. This is such a fun format to test out!

Showing code and UI in an explainer video is always a dance and rarely ends well.

You want to show the code to make it devy.
But you don't want to show everything not to overwhelm.

The same goes for UI which should look like your UI.
But show only what is necessary.

It's a struggle but CircleCI does it really nicely in this explainer:

• They blur out all code
• But use colors to make it really look like code
• And the file sits clearly in a text editor (as it should)

They do the same for the UI later in the video.Just a really clean way of explaining things. Nice!

Simple yet powerful CTA in the navbar resources section.

The resources section in the navbar is mostly navigational. Well, the entire navbar is ;)

But you always have that one action that is more impactful than others.  

💚 And I think that a Plauground  is a great option. You get people to see how your product works. You let people play with it and see for themselves.

Not many next actions can be as impactful as getting people to experience the product.

Especially if you are a heavier infra tool that people cannot really test out in that first session. I mean, you won't really create a realistic example of your core database in 15 minutes to see how that new tool that you just saw works.

🔥 Making this CTA "big and shiny" and showing a glimpse of what will happen after clicking is great too.

🤔 2 changes I'd test out:

• Making the copy more descriptive performs better.  Like "Launch playground", "Play with Sandbox", or something around "Run an example project/app/environment".

• Showing something more exciting about the product (or playground/tour) on that visual

But the core idea behind making the playground your core navbar resource section CTA is just great.

Classic remarketing ad. But things are classic because they work 👇

Youtube remarketing is one of the most popular ways to stay top of mind with devs who visit your site.

Lots of devs spend time on Youtube so it is a solid match.

But, "buy now" style ads rarely work because if they wanted to try/buy they would have already.

They need something more.

That "more" is often trust.

They simply don't trust you, your product, and your company.

They don't think you are the real deal and will solve their problems.

But you can build that trust. And to do that you can use testimonial-style ads:

• use case explained in the voice of customer/developer
• real user sharing their story
• clear product branding

That is it.

Show enough of these and % of people will trust you and convert.

I like that this is both strong and subtle.

It comes right after I've delivered a smell of value with a technical intro.

And I can see that there is more value to come after thanks to the table of contents.

The CTA itself feels like an info box in the docs rather than a typical subscribe CTA.

Good stuff.

What to say when you have many products? 

Dev tool companies over time grow from one product to suite of products to platforms with products built on top of the core one.

The result is that it is harder to communicate without going full-on fluff mode (my fav "built better software faster").

But for most companies, there is this core capability/product where people start.  The entry product. Why not use that?

I really liked what Stripe did on their docs page here:

• They have maaaany products: billing, tax, radar, identity etc.  
• But all of them are built on top of their core payments product
• So they focus on getting folks to start with the payments
• And make it clear that there are many other products

Even though this is docs, the same applies to homepages and other dev comms.

If you have many products, figure out what is the most important one, the one where most people enter. Focus on that. "Upsell" to other products later.

Which feature/product to show in the header?

How about all?

Many dev tool products are feature-rich. And you want to show those awesome features.

But it is easy to overwhelm the reader when showing so much info.

That is why I really like the header tabs pattern that @PostHog uses:

• You have clickable tabs with product names + descriptive icons
• Copy + Supporting visual (UI, code etc) and a call to action in each tab
• Supporting visuals are in vastly different colors to make it obvious you switch tabs.

This pattern is especially powerful when you want to communicate completeness.

Posthog definitely wants to do that. If you are on that train I'd strongly suggest considering/testing it.

Pre-roll ads are obviously invasive and annoying, especially to devs. But they are also prime real estate in the ad ecosystem.

You can choose not to do them at all (fair option). Or try and make them more fun and less annoying ;)

I like how Sentry handled it in this 16-second video:

• They start with a funny, disarming hook. A pic of a cat pic ;). It catches my attention and stops me from clicking "skip ad" as I want to understand what it is about.
• They show how those pics didn't come off well and introduce the company saying "Sentry can't fix that". That keeps me interested enough to see what it does.
• They show a straightforward, short product video with the actual application screenshots and zoom-ins to show pieces of the product for the rest of the video.

Basically they managed to "buy" 11 seconds of attention with 5 seconds of a pattern-breaking hook.  In the world of pre-roll YouTube dev-focused ads, I'd say this is a win.

Also, I don't know the results of the "Sentry can't fix that " campaign, but I like how this builds curiosity. Even with that slogan alone.

Looking for a good dev-focused case study format?

People tell you to follow a classic Hero > Problem > Solution > Results.

They tell you to show numbers, talk value, etc.

And it is true. Great format.

But packaging this for devs is hard.

For example, putting numbers in there, and framing it in a "save 28min every week" is a recipe for losing trust with that dev reader.

That is if you can even get those numbers from your customers.

I like how @LaunchDarkly solves it.

Hero section:

• Change that customer saw (no numbers needed)
• Additional description of the use case (this seems to be optional for them)
• Before and After boxes with bullets (no numbers needed)
• Clear customer logo

Case study body:

• About: one paragraph about the company and use case
• Challenge: why they started looking for a solution
• Solution: why they chose their product
• Results: what they got from it
• They kept it short and focused on the team leader imho

They keep the content down to earth and devy but still frame it in a value-focused way.

I like that that they speak in the currency that devs care about.

Wasted time.

Before: "Took 2-3 weeks to ship"

After: "Can ship experiments every day"

The cool thing is you could actually use this  hero section format and then have a more technical user story below. By doing that you could speak to the why and how.

That depends on your target reader for this page of course.

Anyhow, I do like this format and I am planning to take it for a spin.

"There are two types of companies": Just a beautiful piece of copy from Fly.io

Doing us vs them doesn't always play out well.

But folks from Fly made it snarky and playful and fun.

And they basically said that they are:

• are developer-centric in the way they sell (self-served)
• are actually easy to use
• are great at the developer experience

And this is just such a nice brand play as well.

You just show personality and confidence in this devy snarky way.

I dig it.

Vs pages are a classic SaaS marketing.

But I like how Ably adjusts them to the developer audience:

• For each criterion, they say why it matters
• They link to their resources to extend further why Ably works great there
• They use a lot of developer jargon to make it feel like a dev wrote it for devs
• They go over a lot of different categories to make this comparison deep enough to be valuable for the buyer

A classic "It doesn't suck" campaign.

Afaik, Barebones ran the first version of this campaign 20 years ago and it was a huge success.

It is so simple, it just speaks to that inner skeptic.

It doesn't say we are the best, we revolutionize software.

It says it doesn't suck.

That is way more believable and makes me think that there is a dev on the other side of that copy.

And there is something cool about this message that makes me want to wear it to the next conference.

Good stuff.

This body cross-section is just awesome.

It makes it obvious that I can connect it to my workflow.

This is a must for dev-focused pages imho.

What I like:

- there are many integrations listed

- I can see the code and that it is easy to use

- The CTA is to integration docs, awesome!

‍

I like how it has a proper "hero section" feel to it but it adds a developer-focused twist:

• Explains in simple words what the tool is
• Adds a lot of navigational links (website, docs, examples, blog)
• Then it goes into detail about what it does

The rest of the Readme is great as well but the hero section is gold imho.

Really good product navbar tab from Supabase.

The product tab in your navbar is likely the most visited one on your site.

And there are a million ways of organizing information in there.

But ultimately, you want to help people understand what this product is about at a glance.

Even before they click. Even if they never click.

And how do you explain your product to devs?
By answering common questions:

• "What are the capabilities/features, specifically?"
• "What do people use it for in producution, specifically?"
• "Ok, so how is it different than ... I used before/use now?"

Supabase does it really nicely:

• They show features + give a one-liner explanation
• They show customer logos + a one-liner on what they got from it
• They list the most common competitors with links to deeper comparisons

Very solid pattern imho.

What I'd improve:

• Make the third testimonial copy more dev-centric, more specific -> It reads "... to become top 10 mortgage broker"
• I'd add a link to a page with all comparisons -> what if I don't see mine?

I like this idea of showing how your dev tool works.

With developers, you almost have to explain how it works on your homepage.

Many products do some version of Step 1 -> Step 2 -> Step 3 -> Success.

I really like how @SST approached it with a timeline.

I find it more engaging than those disconnected steps.

And when I follow this journey the final and logical step is to try it out. Get started.

Modal with updates.

Adding a modal with "what happened lately" for users who come back to the app.

Good idea for re-activating users by showing new features or examples.

+ a link to a deeper resource.

What if your next swag was a donation? That's what Cockroach Labs did.

Ok, so the typical way of doing swag at a conference is to give out t-shirts for badge scans.

And then folks either wear them or throw them away (or keep wearing them when they should have thrown them away but that is another story).

After the conference you take leftovers with you, ship them home or, you guessed it, throw them away.

A lot of throwing away for a badge scan if you ask me.

Cockroach Labs decided to do something completely different.

They donate a few $ to a great charity @Women Who Code for every badge scan they get.
I love it.

An extra benefit (and where the idea originated) is that with this, you can do virtual badge scans too.

Hacker News developer audience doesn't love promotion to put it mildly.

But some dev tool companies manage to make this audience their biggest ally.

Fly.io is one of those companies.

And they had a super successful product launch a few years back.  

So how did they do it?

• "Who"
• "Problem"
• "What" and "How"
• *Speak "dev to dev". Spec no fluff.

Let's go through these in detail.

Who are you? Why should I listen?

• show your face
• Say who are you and
• hint at why should I trust you

What is the problem really?

• Describe how you discovered the problem
• Agitate that pain, explain technicalities deeply
• Share your stories dealing with that problem (ideally obvious solutions that didn't work)

What does your product do and how does it work?

• Say what it is, like a technical spec.
• Say what it does, like really, low-level job to be done
• Explain how you solve it, be deeply technical

Speak "dev to dev"

• use technical jargon and relevant terms: "docker image", "global router", "VMs", "root filesystem"
• don't explain like I am 5, explain like I am 5 years in my dev journey "we convert docker images into a root filesystem, boot tiny VMs..."
• Don't use words that don't really mean anything and just take space. Speak MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive)

By doing it this way you have a chance of gaining love from the prolific HN crowd.

Fly.io definitely did, and is still reaping rewards with constant HN exposure.

Testimonial ads are a format that helps you move people from "I know what you are doing" to "I trust you enough to do business with you".

Video testimonials are even better.

You see the person who has a similar role that you do saying things about the product you are considering.

CircleCI did a solid job here.

And so if you are running remarketing to people who went to pricing but didn't sign up, or signed up to a free trial but haven't converted yet this is a good format candidate.

Just watch it.

This is one of my favorite header patterns for dev tools lately. Layered video visual from MUX.

So that video design pattern in here is this:

• A looped video on the right that...
• Starts by showing code (MUX video): right away I know this is for devs
• Then it shows me a player (MUX player) that shows the result of that code
• Then it goes to show the analytics (MUX data) of people viewing/interacting with that video
• Ends with all parts of the video code/player/analytics layered on top of each other to drive that this is part of one

There are a few bonus learnings here as well:

• "video infrastructure": that framing communicates that there are many tools I can pick and choose from. + it feels like Stripe for video which is a good framing in dev circles.
• "stream billions of minutes of video every day" hints at their benefit and core use case (streaming at scale)
• They show all the products Video/Player/Data right in the header making it clear what this video infrastructure means. And the layered visual explains it further.

btw I really like that branding. Custom font makes it so memorable. It is, isn't it?

Subtle but effective dev blog CTA -> info box.

Basically a plain article in-text CTA but there is something special about it.

It looks like a docs info box.

It is not a "buy now" style call to action but rather a subtle "you may want to know about X" push.

But for it to really feel like an info box it needs to connect to the section of the section of the article around it.

Otherwise, it will just feel like an intrusive ad anyway.

PlanetScale does a great job here.

They link the part of the article about the sharding library Vitess with their product that was built on top of it.

It feels natural and I am sure it gets clicks and if not then product awareness.

Mixpanel primary CTA is to take an interactive tour.

They take you to a 30min video + a guided UI tour.

Not a signup.

That is because with products that have long time to value (like analytics, observability etc) dev will not see value in the first session.

I mean to really see value you need to see real data, real use cases. And if you were to actually test it would take weeks.

That is why many companies do demos. But demos have their own problems (and most are bad).

Interactive tools make it possible for me to explore the value without talking to anyone.

I love this option.

Make a {X} cry in 5 words or less.

Great Linkedin (or Twitter) post format.

This is one of those fantastic self-selecting mechanisms as well.

People who understand the joke are the people you are looking for.

You may get the exact people you want to follow your profile.

With a nicely targeted joke.

Love it.

How to get people to sign up for your office hours?

Why not put it on your docs homepage?

Btw, I really like the concept of office hours.

• You give people the option to "get a demo" and answer their questions
• But you don't make them schedule anything, they can just come (or not)

You get your devrels or product to do those weekly and then you just have to figure out how to get people there.

Classic options are to put info in onboarding sequences, in the app, or on the website hello bar.

But Flatfile had another idea. They put it in their docs homepage header.

I find this idea brilliant as many people who browse your docs (especially for the first time) are in that evaluation mode and would actually want to do that.

Plus calls to action in the docs get more respect by design ;)

How to do a dev-focused brand video and get 10M+ views?

Making a memorable brand video is hard.

Doing that for a boring tech product is harder.

Doing that to the developer audience is next level.

Postman managed to create not one but three of those brand videos that got from 4M to 10M youtube views.

The videos I am talking about are:

• "I am gonna push some buttons"
• "Together"
• "We did this"

So what did they do right?

• They are all short playful stories touching on values coming from a centralized API platform.
• They hint at the motif of space which is a clear part of Postman's branding
• They do show the actual UI of the product

Honestly, I am not exactly sure what special sauce they added but those are just great videos that you watch.

And I definitely remember them and the company which is exactly what you want to achieve with brand ads.

A docs header worth a thousand words.

For a dev platform or infrastructure tool it is hard to explain where you fit, what you do quickly, and how you connect to existing components quickly.  

Hopsworks docs team does a great job here.

So instead of using words, they use a diagram:

• You get a solid overview of where your tool/platform fits larger context
• It shows you which part of the workflow/infra the platform solves
• Every part of the diagram is a clickable docs link
• Shows where you can deploy it
• Shows what backend you can use.

All of that in a single diagram.

Now that is a dev-focused header visual.

How to do a dev-focused brand video and get 10M+ views?

Making a memorable brand video is hard.

Doing that for a boring tech product is harder.

Doing that to the developer audience is next level.

Postman managed to create not one but three of those brand videos that got from 4M to 10M youtube views.

The videos I am talking about are:

• "I am gonna push some buttons"
• "Together"
• "We did this"

So what did they do right?

• They are all short playful stories touching on values coming from a centralized API platform.
• They hint at the motif of space which is a clear part of Postman's branding
• They do show the actual UI of the product

Honestly, I am not exactly sure what special sauce they added but those are just great videos that you watch.

And I definitely remember them and the company which is exactly what you want to achieve with brand ads.

How to run developer-focused Reddit ads that get upvoted?

Reddit is well known for anti-promotional sentiments.

Just post something along the lines "you can solve that with our dev tool" and see.

So running ads on Reddit feels even more like a no-no.

Especially if you add problems with bot clicks and attribution as most devs will have some sort of blocks.

But you know your audience is on Reddit.

And for some of us, it may very well be the only social platform they are on.

So what do you do?

This is how @Featureform approached it to get almost 100 upvotes on an ad:

• They start with a simple conversational copy pointing at their target users pains
• They agitate target users pains in their language (lots of jargony terms, tools and problems)
• They use very devy language, likely rooted in deep user understanding (voice of customer)
• They don't talk about their product in the meme
• They show clear branding so that you can connect the dots.

If you are going for brand awareness rather than a direct conversion those types of ads can work very well.

I liked it for sure.

Digital Ocean went for an ad for the Hactoberfest in a tricky place.

To keep it in the medium that fits YouTube shorts they:

• made it into an actual short vid
• used a comic book story

I think doing YouTube shorts is an interesting opportunity in a yet unsaturated market (as of 2022).

And doing ads that fit that medium so nicely is an art.

Good job DO!

Came across this classic What is Segment brand video while watching an interview with one of the folks behind it, Maya Spivak (she is awesome btw).

What I like about it is that:

• it is fun, not formal, builds rapport
• it introduces the core problem the tool solves
• it shows the tech and explains it in a way that is simple but not simplistic

And it follows a flavor of the classic AIDA format:

• Introduce problem
• Agitate it, make the viewer feel it
• Explain obvious solutions + problems with it
• Show how your product solves it
• Tell people how to start

Putting all that in 90 seconds is hard.

And even though this video is 4 years old it could easily still work today IMHO.

Really solid baseline to s̶t̶e̶a̶l̶ get inspired by ;)

How do you show "save time" to devs?

It is often hard as it is not objective.

But there are options.

Spotlight does it beautifully by showing two implementations next to each other solving the same task.
It is obvious which is faster and saves time.
Great stuff!

A nice example of making navbar more developer-focused.

Ask for GitHub stars with a link to the repository.

It does three things:

• shows where your repository is and that you have something I can see
• lets me see that you have a popular repository
• reminds me that I can star it (if I am a returning user)

Devs have a love/hate relationship with "Book a demo" call to action.

Mostly hate though.

Especially if what they want is:

• know what they will be paying for your tool
• just see a golden path of how this thing works

Let's just say that sitting through an hour demo call with a salesperson just to get the pricing is not what most devs love to do with their time.

But there are moments in the buyer journey when devs do want to have that live session:

• they tried it, went through the golden path, and have deeper questions
• they know they have specific needs and are unsure/couldn't find it in your docs/website.
• they want to customize the pricing plan to their needs.

Then, having a live session/demo is the fastest way to move forward.

@PostHog handles this dev journey reality nicely with:

• recorded, ungated product demo -> if you want a generic demo just watch it
• transparent pricing and a free plan -> don't need to sit through the demo to ask for price
• if you want a custom demo or just talk to a human -> just schedule a call

This approach solves both scenarios really nicely.  

How to present many features at once?

Sometimes your dev tool has many features/products that you want to show.

❌ Showing all of them as separate sections doesn't work with more than 3. It just gets too long very quickly.

✅ You can go with the tabs pattern where each tab has copy+visual for a feature.

💡 But there is another option that makes a ton of sense when you have many features to show.

Interactive tiles of different sizes.

💚 I like the implementation of that pattern coming from Clerk:

• Each tile is a combo of feature name + one-liner description + an interactive visual
• When you hover over each tile it starts playing the visualization explaining the feature even more

• Some of the tiles are bigger which makes the entire section more interesting. It could be one (core feature or differentiator) or a few if you present many.

That pattern can work really well on blogs or learning centers too but I think we're going to see more of it on dev tool websites.

When you promote your feature/product launch on Reddit, it can easily end up being "not well received" to put it mildly.

I am talking downvotes, negative comments that get upvoted  and break the discussion. Or good old crickets.

But Reddit can also be a fantastic source of audience feedback, peer validation for your product, and some of the most vocal advocates you'll ever find.

I really liked how Tom Redman from Convex directed the discussion in the Reddit thread under their laucn post:

• Transparent intro: who you are, what you know

• What you like about the tech: why you think it is valuable to the community

• Community-focused call to action: helpful, feedback-first (not conversion-first), disarming with "if I can't answer I'll ask"

The launch post itself was great too:

"Open sourcing 200k lines of Convex, a "reactive" database built from scratch in Rust" that linked to the GitHub repo.

Doesn't get much more to the point and devy than that.

Ideating how to do dev tool billboards?

I like these from Snowflake.

Especially the customer showcase ones as the format can almost be copy-pasted ;)

One more interesting thing about those billboards though:

• folks from Snowflake placed just a few of them strategically in the cities
• And changed content of the billboard often

By doing that they seem to have billboards everywhere, fight ad fatigue, and stay top of mind.

Love it.

OK, the best way of getting GitHub stars is by creating a project that solves real developer problems well.

I assume you have done that already and the metric that people love to hate ⭐ is growing organically.

What do you do now?

I mean you got to ask people in one way or another.

Many companies put it in their navbars or hello bars.

Posthog adds a sticky banner at the bottom of the page that follows you as you scroll.

It also shows a start count which at their size (11k + stars) acts as social proof.

You can close it and the next time you visit the page it will be off not to push too much.

I like the concept makes sense to test it out this way imho.

Just wanted to share this classic dev tool branding campaign.

There is even a book about this from Jeff Lawson at Twilio.

But I recently saw someone share on HN that it got changed to "How can I reduce acquisition costs by 65%". Made me a bit sad.

But perhaps after years and years of working it stopped delivering any additional brand awareness/affinity.

Could they have come up with another flavor of "Ask your developer."?

Maybe. But maybe at their levels of mind share you are playing a different game.

The good thing is, you are not at that stage ;)

And f you pull off something that is 1% of the success of that famous Twilio campaign you can make your brand noticed and remembered.

I know we are in the year of doing what brings results right now. And branding campaigns may not make the cut.

But maybe we can (and should) afford to do something that helps us deliver that pipeline next year or a year after that?

An interesting option to push people to read the next article.

You use a slide-in triggered on a 75% scroll with a "read next" CTA in the bottom left.

On the aggressive side for sure but when the article you propose is clearly technical it could work.

And if your articles are not connected to the product explicitly you do need some ways to keep people reading and see more of your brand.

Scrolling through many feature/capability sections of a dev tool website mostly sucks. But dropping things to make it shorter can suck even more.

This is a cool design pattern that deals with that problem.  

Single section that switches subsections on scroll. And folks over at @Graphite did a great job with that on their homepage.

It works like this:

• as you scroll the progress bar moves to make it clear what is happening right away
• eventually, as you scroll down, the subsection switches to the next one
• each subsections has a headline + one-liner description + call to action + a visual

Also, I saw variants of this that also looked great:

• without the one-liner or Learn more
• auto progress/section switch if you don't act

What this design helps you achieve is:‍

• you get to show many features/capabilities (Graphite showed 5)
• the site feels shorter than it is and you don't feel as tired/lost as you scroll
• because it is all interactive it is easier to drive your attention to a section header

I really like this pattern and I have already recommended it to some folks working on their sites recently.

Action-focused copy is usually better than "sign up".

But sometimes it is hard to find a good copy for this.

Some teams like Vercel or Auth0  do "Start building "  

But that doesn't always work.

I really like this "Get API keys" CTA copy.

Now for the Hero section I really like those two CTAs:

• Main CTA: Sign up, again expressed with action-focused "Get API keys" copy
• Secondary CTA: See docs, I like how "See API docs" makes it even more concrete.

Really great job imho.

I like how this post shows:

• what the library does
• shows how to install it
• gives the option to read more in-feed

All in one visual post.

Mux does a few things beautifully in this header.

Value proposition:

• The "what" is explained right away: "Video API", "live and on-demand experiences"
• Super clear on persona "developers" and job to be done "build online video"

Animated visual that is really good for dev tools:

• that have an API/SDK
• that have a UI where the results of that API calls go

How to communicate the flexible part of your plan?

Many dev tools have 3 plans:

• Free
• Team
• Enterprise

Especially the ones doing some flavor of product-led-sales or open-source go-to-market.

Now, the Team plan is often a self-served version.

And for many dev tools, this part is partially or entirely usage-based.

So how do you present it?

You can just have "+ what you use" and explain it in the big table below.

But if you have just one usage dimension then why not do it here?

Resend does it beautifully communicating right away that it starts at 20$ / month and grows with the amount of emails you send.

Very clear. Very nice.

Many dev tools have complex pricing and packaging.

Say your dev tool/platform has many product offerings.

And you offer usage-based pricing but also enterprise plans but also per-product options, and additional customizations.

But you want to present it in a way that is manageable for the developer reading your pricing page.

Mux solves it this way:

• they direct people to the proper parts of the page in the header
• they give self-served prospects a link to the calculator and metering
• they give enterprise/high volume people a "talk to us" CTA
• they give people who want just a single tool (not the whole platform) a CTA to a dedicated pricing page
• they squeeze in a "start free" CTA + info about free credits
• they give navigation to FAQ, features table, and the calculator

Extended headers on pricing pages are not common as they add friction.

But sometimes adding friction is exactly what you need to do.

Mux managed to make this page (and their offering) easy to navigate by adding a little bit of friction at the beginning.

Maybe you don't browse plans right away but at least you don't waste energy (and attention) on the parts of the page that doesn't matter to you.

Good stuff.

Thinking about your next conference giveaway idea?

‍How about a coconut? Datafold did just that!

Coconut + logo burned on it + a person who can open them up

=

A memorable, shareable, fresh (literally), and wholesome conference experience.

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 ;)

Just an awesome billboard/ad format for a dev too company coming from Vercel.

What I like about it is:

• you catch attention with something different
• those who are in your audience get it, maybe they feel more seen
• you reinforce that your brand is very developer-focused
• you don't forget to put the "obvious" branding in there
• and there is a CTA to get people to do something

Simple and beautiful.

Btw, they actually run similar ads on Reddit and it makes a lot of sense IMHO.

Socks as swag always work, but this twist makes it 10x better. From @Sanity 👇

So Sanity, a CMS that lives in the Next ecosystem, gave away socks at Next js conf. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it is a good idea if you have no other ideas. "People will always need socks" kind of a deal.

But.

They did a few things differently:

• The socks they gave away had different vendors/tools from the Next js ecosystem on them
• You couldn't take two of the same tool, you had to get two different ones
• One of the socks you got was always Sanity

This is brilliant. Fun, playful.

And it helps you convey that you play nicely with the Next js stack.

What I like about it is how reusable this is for other ecosystems and tools that are just a component of a bigger stack. Kudos Sanity!

How easy it is to get started is a big conversion factor for any dev tool.

Devs want to test things out and if it is hard to do they will be gone testing a competitor that made it easy.

And so a good how-to section on your homepage can make a big difference in getting devs to that first experience.

Appsmith does it beautifully with their 1-2-3 How-to section:

• 1-2-3 format: Connect data -> Drag and drop -> Customize with code
• Interactive GIFs with code snippets and UI elements
• CTAs to integrations, widget library, and docs
• Dev testimonial at the end to make it real

It is so engaging and just beautifully designed. And the CTA to additional resources like integrations, widget library, and docs make the message land. I do believe it is easy to set this up.

Great pattern to copy-paste imho.

Most dev tools have two deployment options:

• SaaS
• On-prem / private cloud

And then companies present it on their pricing page with some flavor of two tabs.

And you need to name them somehow. 

And how you describe those things sometimes adds confusion for your buyers:

• You put “your server” > then does it scale to a more robust infra?
• You put “on-prem" > then can I deploy on private AWS cloud?

I like how nice and simple solution Retool used on their pricing page:

• "Cloud (we host)"
• "Self-hosted (you host)"

Explicit, obvious and to the point.

Love it.

This has to be one of the better dev-focused headers I've seen in a while.

Headers should deliver your core product message and get people interested. That is true at any stage but early stage especially.

💡You want everyone, even those folks who just take a look and leave to remember. You want them to recall it in their next conversation around this topic.

There may be supporting messages for sure but there is always that one core thing. Make sure it lands.

In the case of Clickhouse, that core message is that they are a database that is fast at a huge scale.

Their supporting messages are:

• they are best at analytics and real-time apps use cases (where speed/scale matters)
• they are a very popular open-source project

💚And they deliver that beautifully with:

Headline

Clear as day headline speaking to value delivered at a level that builds rapport with their audience.

Not "Give users seamless web experience at scale" but "Query billions of rows in milliseconds". I like that little touch with "rows" which makes who they speak to obvious

Subhead

Subhead supporting it with "fastest and most resource-efficient DB"

+ talking about the use cases "real time apps and analytics" and it being open-source

Calls to action

These CTAs make the audience feel at home. There are docs in there + clear "we are open-source" CTA

Visual

That supporting visual is just amazing.

It shows the value in the most believable way you could deliver it here imho. Query and an Output that shows the size of the database and speed of the query

Social proof

Social proof in the navbar, almost 34k stars and a GitHub icon.

+ a way to get people to that repository, check it out and leave a star.

There is more social proof below the fold with big logos and stuff but the GitHub icon and stars make it immediately clear that this is a project that people care about.

It is remarkable how brilliantly simple it is all presented.  Just a fantastic work IMHO.

Awesome sponsorship ad from Trieve in the Cassidy Williams newsletter.

Not sure who wrote it but it must have been a dev ;) It is just so refreshingly to the point.

💚 What I like:

• "What is it": A product description gives you no fluff "what it is". Feels like something from "Hacker News launch"  almost.

• "What it compares to" | "Why should I care" : They compare vs a well-known dev tool in the space. And this is great, helps the dev anchor with something they know. Helps them understand why this could be valuable. They even give you a life app where you can see for yourself.
• "How can I test it for myself": They offer free credits to play with in a cloud version.

This ad does it so gracefully and quickly it is just hard not to love.  

Most devs want to explore products themselves.

They want to read the docs, see examples, play with the product, or watch a video.

They don't want to hop on a demo call, especially early on in the evaluation process.

And they definitely don't want to sit through the demo to learn what your pricing is.

But there will be moments when they will want to talk to you. They will raise their hands and let you know then.

Posthog speaks to this reality with this copy beautifully:

• They basically say "don't talk to us"
• They give you transparent pricing on the website
• They give you a recorded demo on the website
• They let you try the product for free without talking to them
• But if you want to talk to sales/support you can reach out

This is very developer-focused approach and I love it.

The homepage header is about landing your core product message.

For Modal it is basically LLM infrastructure with great developer experience.  

And they do a great job delivering it:

• Input/output visual: I think for infra products this is a great choice.  Show what code you run, show how to run it, show what you get. Ideally, this all looks nice and easy.
• Headline/subheadline: They explain "what is it" and "for whom is it" (or what use case): "what": Serverless infra platform, "whom" ML teams.

• Great calls to action: If you don't know what to put this is the best baseline imho. Get started (Signup) and Docs.

• Social proof: devs want to know if others like them and/or respectable companies use it in production. While dev testimonials do that better, logos is what people expect to see here. Don't have them and you raise flags, especially if you are unknown.

• Branding: if you can make your page/company memorable on top of landing  that message -> great. And with that green gradient and uncommon colours they definitely do.

Top job on that header folks!

Linked GitHub logo in the navbar

Adding CTA to your GitHub repo makes your company look more dev-friendly.

If you have a ton of stars I'd show those as well to play that social proof card.

But even without it, I think it's a good way to get more traffic to your repo and get those stars :)

Nice way to show code and results straight from the React docs that people love.

And this pattern can be used outside of the docs for sure.

Anyway, a classic situation:

• you want to show the code
• you want to show the result of that code
• you want to let people play with the code/results
• you want to make it easy to read and copy/use  

And folks behind React docs solved it nicely by:

• Giving you a spit screen of code and results
• Not showing the entire code but giving you the option to "show more"
• You can change the code and see the results change (and errors pop up)
• You can use buttons to reset the example, copy it, or fork on CodeSandbox

Not groundbreaking maybe but a beautiful implementation that is just a delight to use.

Beautiful growth loop that uses GitHub PRs to spread awareness even internally in the org.

And just one dev needs to sign up for the product to start it.

Works like this:

• New user signs up for Snyk
• they connect their GitHub account
• Snyk finds vulnerabilities in their repositories
• Snyk-bot creates Snyk-branded PR to fix them
• other devs in the org see and interact with the PR
• some follow links to check out Snyk
• some of them sign up for Snyk

Heard about it on Lenny's podcast episode with Ben Williams (the story starts at 20:53)

... and then signed up to see the actual PR.

I really love this one as it allows you to spread inside the organization even if everything is on-prem and you never get to see it.

Those PRs are just working behind the scenes doing marketing for you.

Brilliant!

Nicely done Reddit post that went viral on r/MachineLearning.

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?

I like how they use the black dot to show the mouse movements in the UI.

Simple but powerful and clear.

This is a simple but great header imho:

• they explain what it is clearly: Stock trading API
• they show the result: trading stocks
• they show the code to drive the "it is for devs" point

Love it.

People want to be valued by their tribe.

One of the ways to do that is by being helpful.

So they want to share things that have a "smell" of insight.

Tool stack/workflow/pipeline chart makes them feel that way.

‍

13% signup form conversion bump with a dev-focused trust/motivation builder.

Dev goes through your page, clicks the signup button, and sees a signup form. Now you want them to actually sign up.

The V1 approach is to go clean, a few social signup buttons like GitHub and call it a day.

The V2 is to add trust/motivation builders on the page:

• Logos -> big enterprises and hot startups using your product always feel reassuring
• Testimonial -> fellow dev talking about the product makes your claims real
• Value prop-> reiterating what the product does, key capabilities, makes what you can deliver clear
• How-to -> showing how you get to that value with a 1-2-3 steps removes friction, makes it feel easier

Now, Stytch went for an interesting V3:

Code snippet -> how about just show it? this is a flavour of that 1-2-3 how-to but extra dev-friendly. They also made the code interactive so that you can tinker with it, make it feel yours already.

And they saw a 13% signup conversion bump.

Definitely an interesting thing to test out.

Check out Stytch CEO talking about it here.

I really love this hand-drawn feel.

It makes it super authentic.

Also, starting from scratch (not a ready diagram) makes following it more fun and less overwhelming.

Great stuff.

BTW the tool used for this is called excalidraw.com

Classic widget PLG loop.

Algolia really crashed it with these. Here is how they made it so successful.

Some time ago I did some research on Algolia marketing looking for gems. Found quite a few as they are truly amazing at this.

One angle that is bringing a lot of traffic to their site is that classic PLG widget.

So what they did is:

• They gave away their search box for free (under conditions)
• They made sure that folks who do get it for free have some (ideally a lot of) overlap with their target audience.
• People who added that search box got the branded "Powered by Algolia" version of it
• Some devs who used the sites with the Algolia search box liked the search and went to their site
• Some of them started using it and spreading the word further

And the sites that brought the most traffic were:

• Hacker News search (that is not exactly the widget but a standalone site)
• Fontawesome (site with fonts for devs)
• Open-source documentation sites (they give away free docsearch to OS projects)
• SteamDB (gaming site)

I love this tactic as it aligns:

• the value their product provides
• the value that site users get
• the value that the company gets from developers finding out about it

Win Win Win

When you find those "Win Win Win" tactics/strategies you are golden.

I like the simplicity of this announcement.

What: "Vercel Edge Middleware"

Why: "Start delivering dynamic, personalized content without sacrificing end-user performance."

Visual supports this but is super minimal.

What if you not only posted entire articles on Reddit but also promoted them?

This is what WarpStream did and I like it.

A few weeks back I shared an example of a company posting not a link with a snippet but an entire article on Reddit.

WarpStream is taking it to the next level by promoting it as an in-feed Reddit ad.

I love this trend 100%:

• Platform first: don't force you to click out, read the content here
• Ads as distribution: treating paid options as a distribution channel

By doing that you assume that if your piece of content gets read by the right people it will lead to business outcomes. People don't need to go to your site to be retargeted by ads and attacked by popup banners.

That is a very fair assumption, especially with devs.

But even generally in B2B SaaS and social channels like here on LinkedIn that concept of zero-click content, coined by Amanda Natividad, is gaining traction and I'm glad that it does.

Was scrolling LinkedIn the other day, minding my business and what do I see but a new dev marketing newsletter. DevPMM newsletter by Marek Nalikowski (dev PMM at Oxla).

In the first issue he talks about “Developer product positioning and messaging examples that slap”.

His devy explanation of positioning/messaging is just so cool. Will steal it and us it with eng founder for sure. Here it goes.

• Product = Core logic / backend
• Positioning = API
• Messaging = Component library
• Copy = UI / frontend

One idea that Marek goes into that I don’t see used enough is anchoring. You anchor on something your audience knows. Now classic example of “open-source Firebase alternative” from Supabase is one.

But there are other flavors of anchoring.

Funny enough just last week I talked to a marketer from one of the startups I advise about my personal framing for what they do just to see if I get it. Something along the lines of “If X and Y had a baby, that focused on Z, and had a developer experience of R”. So yeah I did anchoring positioning for myself.

Ok, I digressed. The example that made me want to share this with you is this beauty from Tinybird.

I am talking about this quote that anchors on three popular tools: ClickHouse, Supabase, and Postgres. This one sentence carries so much meaning to people who know them. Good luck landing that message in less words.

This is the tricky part though. You need to know your audience enough to know what concepts are commonly (enough) known by them to use it. So the non-dev audience will likely not get it at all. But this is ok. You should land messaging for the champion.

And Marek argues that this is how devs naturally think and talk about products.

Cannot agree more. I often ask dev founders “so what does the product do” (having read the website)? How do you explain it to dev friends? How do you explain it to other devs on a meetup or conference? Anchoring is surprisingly common in the way they explain it and very rare in their messaging.

Read the full article ->

Navbar is a hugely important conversion lever on the dev-facing website. I saw it move the needle by x times in some cases/conversion events.

So, what does a good one look like?

Auth0 did a great job on their developer portal. But the learnings can be applied to your marketing website too.

What I like:

• They have an explicit division between docs and resources (you can do without it but I like it)
• Community (with all the events, forums, support etc) is clearly emphasized and discoverable
• When you click on the navbar tab you get an extensive mega menu with many options
• Each item in the mega menu gets a one-sentence description of what you'll find there

That makes it easy for devs to explore. Without having to click out to see what each tab/item means. And when devs know what you mean they are more likely to actually click out. And convert.

With/without is a classic marketing campaign theme.

AhoyConnect does it nicely in this ad.

Obviously, not everyone loves memes.

But many devs do.

Those who do may smirk -> smirk builds brand affinity.

This is one of my favorite our dev tool vs competitor blog posts.

With these pages, you want to explain when you are better.

But you don't want to berate your competitor.

And above all, you want to help people make a decision.

Chances are (almost 100% ;)) that you are not better for every use case. And your developer audience knows it.

But there should be use cases, tool stacks, or situations when you are the best option.

Talk about those. Dev to dev.

@Convex did a great job in this post that I think can be a template for how to write these:

• They start by saying what is the same. That sets the context.
• Then they say good things about their competitor. Shows respect and understanding
• They follow by listing 3 key differences/situations when you should consider them
• And they go ahead and explain each of these differences deeply

After reading that post you are fairly convinced that if your situation matches the one described and if it makes sense to use it.

Love it.

Great example of programmatic SEO from Snyk.

They created a page called snyk advisor.

It is a repository of pages about open-source packages.

Each page is created automatically out of publicly available information.

Enhances it with Snyk-generated security scans and reports.

It builds awareness for other Snyk products in the security space.

A lot of those pages rank high in google for the {package} keyword which is incredible.

And when people land on the package report page the CTAs to Snyk products push conversions.

The main message you want to land on your homepage community section is:

"We have a big community of devs who love using the product"

🚧 That helps you tackle obstacles your dev reader has:

• "is this tool any good"  
• "do real companies use it in production"
• "are there people who can help me when I hit roadblocks"
• "where would I find others using the tool when I have questions"

💚 Modal solves it beautifully by going simple but smart:

• Join our community header and a call to action to join Slack makes it obvious where users are
• Wall of love style testimonials give a feel that there are so many users and they love it enough to share that with others
• They all look like Tweets even though (I presume) some of them aren't. That is a nice trick to boost social proof. People give more value to social post testimonials.
• They show a face, name, role, and company which builds trust and makes it obvious those are other devs (like me)

It lands the message that this section should land for sure. I really like it.

I like this Reddit ad creative that uses a classic, devy, bell curve meme.

This is a good creative to use when what you want to communicate is overcomplication. As in:

• there are simple "bad" beginner, obviously not working solutions
• there are complicated "you are so smart" overengineered solutions
• there are wise, pragmatic solutions... that look exactly like the simple beginner ones ;)

Plus, with devs, if you can make something not look like an ad you already won.

And there were a few comments suggesting just that:

• "Good job using meme as add on reddit kudos"
• "I only noticed after reading this lol"

LOVED HOW Flagsmith did it here:

• They start with a spicy controversial hook: "Test in production"
• They explain their product capability in super simple terms: "Decouple deploy and release with feature flags."
• Their call to action feels low commit, not pushy, no "do it now or..." but "Try Flagsmith open source". Having open-source in there is always good for places like Reddit, HackerNews
• The overcomplicated part of the creative shows that they get their audience. They use jargon that the tribe gets (this part can be tricky sometimes if your understanding is actually way off)

And they got people curious to see how Flagsmith makes this Test in production claim reasonable. I'd check it out if I was working on those workflows.

This is one of the more devy blog designs I've seen in a while.

It has this docs-like feel.

But is just a bit more fun and loose than most docs would allow.

Here is what I like:

• smells like there could be value with code all over the place
• shows visuals taken from another devy channel, Twitter/X
• hints at social proof through Twitter/X engagement

And if your posts are code-heavy, then a docs-like experience is where you want to be anyway.

But you can spice it up with things that wouldn't fit the docs.

Like a Twitter/X embed or a meme.

How to design the navbar product tab? This is what @PostHog does 👇

Figuring out what to put in the navbar is tricky:

• How should you name tabs
• What should go where
• Should you have "resources" or divide it

The "Product" tab is especially tricky.

It can get overloaded with a ton of content.

• Some teams put docs, and product videos there.
• Some show features, integrations, and code examples.
• Some go with solutions and per person per industry pages.
• Some just put everything in there ;)

I like how Posthog approached it:

• They use the word "features". Most devs like it more than other options.
• They show the data stack with which the tools integrate. That is an important obstacle handler pretty much always.
• They include customers in the product tab. Most devs want to see the product and may not go to the "customers" tab. This is a nice way to add social proof and increase conversion to user stories pages.
• They show customer logos and the results they got from the product. Again more social proof without clicking out.
• They use "customer stories" rather than "case studies" which again feels more devy .

I like it.

Explain a concept clearly.‍

Good visual with concrete numbers makes this example easy to understand.

Because it is beautifuly explained people want to share this with their network to be perceived as helpful (and smart).

"How fast do you ship?"

Not many dev tools answer that on their homepage. PostHog does.

In a typical (enterprise) sales process, people often ask:

• what is on your roadmap?
• how fast do you deliver new features?
• what has your product progress been like last year?

And you show them the roadmap or get someone from the product on the next call.

But I haven't yet seen dev tools talk about it on their homepage.

But why not?

Devs who want to buy self-serve want to know it almost just as much.

After all, they won't be able to twist your arm to build that custom feature cause "we are your biggest client and we need it".

I like it, it builds trust, it shows me you are transparent,

And it shows me that those features I can see on the public roadmap will come true.

I love this simple design.

They show:

• A GIF of code and console
• Have a few tabs with features, explained
• Social proof with Github stars

Simple, and powerful imho.

Nice Reddit ad from kftray.

This is a simple ad format 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.

There are a lot of boring vendor t-shirts at conferences.

And they get boring results.

I like this bold design from GitGuardian:

• they go for anime which is loved by many devs
• it feels and looks like an anime t-shirt, not a vendor t-shirt
• they use their core message "Keep secrets out of your source code"

Nice.

How to get more ROI from your dev conference booth? -> Add obvious CTAs.

Yes, giveaway stuff.

Yes, make it nice and branded.

Yes, make it funny, shareable, and cool.

But give people an easy and obvious option to give back and support you and your goals.

I really liked how Union.ai approached it at the recent MLOps World conference:

• A simple folded paper info with CTAs right next to your giveaway
• CTAs to GitHub stars, Linkedin, and Slack community

Just a nice little tactic but I bet it squeezed a bit more of that ROI juice that we all need in 2023 ;)