Developer marketing examples

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.

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.

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.

How to write a "What is {MY CORE KEYWORD}" article that gets to the top of HackerNews? 👇

First of all, almost no one succeeds at that as you write those articles for SEO distribution, not HN distribution.

To get an SEO-first article on HN your content quality bar needs to be super high.

But you can do it.

PlanetScale managed to get their "What is database sharding and how does it work?" on the orange page (kudos to Justin Gage!).

Here is what was interesting about that article:

𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼.

• ❌ No "In today's fast-paced data-driven world enterprises work with data" stuff.
• ✅ Just  "Learn what database sharding is, how sharding works, and some common sharding frameworks and tools."

𝗛𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘃 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿.

💚 Speaking peer to peer, not authority-student:

• "You’ve probably seen this table before, about how scaling out helps you take this users table, all stored on a single server:"
• "And turn it into this users table, stored across 2 (or 1,000) servers:"
• "But that’s only one type of sharding (row level, or horizontal). "

𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗷𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲

Things like:

• "Partitioning has existed – especially in OLAP setups"
• "Sifting through HDFS partitions to find the missing snapshot "

𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸

🔥 Look at the section "How database sharding works under the hood" with subsections:

• Sharding schemes and algorithms
• Deciding on what servers to use
• Routing your sharded queries to the right databases
• Planning and executing your migration to a sharded solution

🎁 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀: 𝗽𝗹𝘂𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆

Section "Sharding frameworks and tools" shares open-source tools (every dev, but HN devs in particular like OS projects).

And there as an info box, you have the info that Planetscale comes with one of those OS projects deployed.

Just a beautifully executed piece of content marketing.

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.

Gonto shared an interesting play that they tried at Auth0 when he was running growth there.

So the story goes like this:

• They wanted to increase brand awareness of Auth0.
• They found influencers who were maintainers of open-source frameworks that had landing pages.
• They went to them and offered to redesign these landing pages for free.
• The trick is they redesigned it in the same branding (colors, patterns, layout) as the product (Auth0).
• That made people think those are related (even though they weren't) which increased the brand perception of Auth0.
• They also asked the influencers/maintainers if they could add retargeting pixel to the redesigned site.
• Which helped them serve relevant ads to visitors of those open-source frameworks.

I think that doing just the sponsorship for the retargeting pixel could work.

But when you add that branding consistency between the sponsored site and the product the CTR is better.

Interesting one for sure.

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 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.

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

Memes are good top-of-funnel, awareness-type content.

Many companies use them on socials as they can "go viral".

But.

You need to either:

• connect the meme to your company/product value
• make the meme so good that people follow your account

I like how Datree connects it to the product here.

They are a Kubernetes configuration tool and talk about exactly that here.

They do that with jargon too "k8", "config". When used well it can help you belong to the tribe you are marketing to.

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.

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 present benchmark results masterclass from RavenDB

The biggest problem with the software benchmarks that you run is?

People don't trust you. Especially when the results are good.

𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁. 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆.

People from RavenDB do it by:

• Showing where they ran it (AWS, Linux)
• Showing exactly what infra they ran it on. Extra points for making it interactive.
• Explaining how they ran it with code snippets and setup
• Copy is also very to the point, technical, docs-like

This looks solid because it feels like I could re-run what they did myself.And so I trust them and I probably won't ;)

The idea behind this conversion play is to put an "Aside CTA" that is unrelated to the content early in the article.

And get that clicked.

But obviously, if you do that it will be pushy and intrusive.

So?

Nevo David from Novu shared this idea on one of the podcasts:

• Put a small section right after the introduction
• Add memes to catch attention and disarm the "I hate ads" reader (a little bit)
• Make an explicit ask. Make it human and somewhat vulnerable

Btw, Nevo says that cat memes work best.

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.

Is this brand campaign 💩 or ❤️?

I like it a lot actually.

It gets attention, it is memorable, it gets reactions.  

And It does speak to a product message: that you have better developer experience than other tools.

It definitely beats flavors of "5x developer productivity".

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?

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

Simple but powerful and clear.

Well done templates gallery from Vercel.

For developer-focused products, having an examples/templates/code samples gallery can be a powerful growth lever.

✅ It helps people:

• understand what you do
• see if anyone did what they want
• get started with something real-life(ish)
• get a feel for a product without committing to it yet

Just a great touchpoint in the developer journey.

💚 And Vercel does this one really well IMHO.

They start with an easy-to-find CTA in the navbar resources section. Bonus points for adding one-liner descriptions that make it clear what is on the other side of the click.

On the templates library page, they give you solid use case navigation with tags. And each template tile has a result thumbnail and a one-liner description. The beauty of this is in the simplicity and what they didn't put in here.

Each template page shows the result, gives you a tutorial on how to use this, and clear CTAs to either see this live or deploy yourself. Bonus points for the "Deploy" action copy (instead of "Sign up").

Kudos to the Vercel team. They are one of my favorite inspirations.

Devs like diagrams.

When you explain a complex concept in one diagram it is just very shareable.

If you are interested in reading more there is an entire "blog post" when you click see more.

Just a very solid content format.

An ad that doesn't feel like an ad.‍

I like that this is almost a meme.

But it still explains what the company does.

Love 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.

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.

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!

If your dev tool's USP is that it is faster -> Show it in the header

I like how folks from Bun focus on the fact that they are a faster library.

They show the benchmark as the key visual on the homepage header.

I love it.

If you think about it how else do you really want to show that you are faster?

This is believable, especially with a link to the benchmark so that I can dig deeper.

They show competitors, they don't pretend they don't exist.

And they talk about being faster left right and center.

I mean, they drive this "we are faster" home for me.

If that was important to me, I'd check it out.

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!

‍

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

There are many things that I like about it.

• A clear value proposition: Explains what it is: an open-source alternative to a well-known product Shopify.
• Shows code and what the code does visually. Great product explanation.
• Adds a social proof with "#1 JS ecom platform on GitHub:". When you have 16k stars you should use it!

Overall with very little effort, I understand what it is, and what it does.

And I can go and dig deeper for myself or spread the word with my circles.

If you want to get your post to do well on HackerNews you may want to break some "marketing rules" you'd expect to work elsewhere when it comes to titles.

And the titles are really important on HN.

People will start a discussion and fight viciously on both sides of the argument without even reading the article.

I even tested it one time by putting an article "Why people on Hacker News comment without reading" on HN. It went to the first spot in 5min and got a few people talking before it got flagged ;) The article obviously had nothing in it. Just an ask for people who clicked out not to comment saying it was empty.

The point stands though. Titles are crucial imho. They set the tone. Good titles give you a better chance.

And no, in this case, Karma didn't play a role here:

• ssivark 5804 Karma got 2 upvotes
• gregsadetsky 5625 Karma got 3 upvotes
• stefanpie 1223 Karma got 219 upvotes

What I think mattered was the titles. Very similar theme but a vastly different vibe.

• "Your Paper Is an Ad" is punchy, authoritative
• "How to Get Your Paper Accepted" is actionable, authoritative
• "Getting a paper accepted" is understated, builds curiosity, it feels like a story

Imho this is what happened here. The Hacker News crowd lives on good hacker life stories, on feeding curiosity. On titles that don't feel like a marketer would post.

So when in doubt go understated.

btw I have a good story of helping an infra startup get to the top of HN Show if you are interested. Added a bunch of links to resources/learnings in there too: https://www.markepear.dev/case-studies/glassflow

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!

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.

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.

In a mature category, it is safe to assume that people know about other tools.

Especially devs.

I love how Axiom owns its unique selling point and how it stands out from the competition.

• They explicitly say how much more scalable they are vs well-known brands like DataDog, Splunk, SumoLogic, and others.
• They don't pretend to be the only company in the observability space.
• They just own their unique selling point and make it easy for people to understand why choose them not others.

Takes guts but I love it.

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.

Your dev tool is faster/more scalable/more X -> show it with benchmarks.

For some tools the entire unique selling point is that they are faster.

You build your messaging around that, put a flavor of "fastest Y for X" in the header and call it a day.

But devs who come to your website cannot just take your word for it. They need to see it, test it.

For some tools it is possible to just see it for themselves, get started.

But you cannot expect devs to really take a database or an observability platform for a spin.

As to test the speed or scalability on realistic use case you need to...

... set up a realistic use case. Which takes a lot of time.

But you can set that use case and test it for them. With benchmarks.

I really like how Astro approached it:

• they list out known competition by name
• they hint at technical reasons for why they are faster
• they shows those benchmarks high on their homepage
• they link out to the full report and mention the trusted source

If your usp is that you are faster/more scalable/ more whatever. Back it up. This is the nr 1 thing devs on your website need to trust you with to move forward.

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.

Beautiful mockery of classic conversion tactics from PostHog website.

So what do we have here:

• "3 people would have..."
• "Not endorsed by Kim K"
• "Eco-Friendly"
• "$0 FREE"
• ">1 left at this price"
• "Act now and get $0 off your first order"

I have to admit I chuckled ;)

And I bet many devs who don't think of marketing very highly chucked too.

That builds rapport. (hopefully) makes you one of the tribe rather than another faceless corpo.

BTW, they used it as a bottom of the homepage call to action.

I like it.

Most of the people who scrolled there are not going to buy anyway.

But they may share the website with someone who will.

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?

The "Resources" tab is the most loved and hated tab for developer marketers.

Ok so the common problem is that you have lots of different resources:

• docs
• product videos
• meetup videos
• recorded webinars
• learning center guides
• blog articles that don't talk about your product
• and so much more stuff

You want to showcase them in the navbar but where do you put them?

Under product? Company? Docs?

How to make sure that people don't go to your blog to read about your product just to find out that you talk about the industry problems there?

Enter the "Resources" tab. The "Miscellaneous" of the navbar world.

And typically it is just crammed with all stuff that doesn't fit anywhere. Just like any respectable misc folder would.  

How do you deal with that?

Snyk approached it in a clear and logical way:

• Add sub-navigation
• Make it clear to devs which parts are about the product and which ones are not
• They use "Using Snyk" and "Learn & Connect" that could be extended to "Using {Product} and "Learning {Category/Problem}"

I love this (and already stole the idea for our site).

Code-style ad format on Reddit.

Code can speak louder than words (sometimes).

It makes your value prop real and concrete to the right audience. 

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 ;)

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.

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.

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 ;)

Copy that lands makes a huge difference in dev tool website conversion.

Earthly proved it with this "tiny" change.

So I am a huge believer in good copy.

Not the clever one but the one that is written with words that your customers use.

That is rooted in product and research.

But I often hear devs or founders say things like "it's just copy".

It is not "just copy" it is your message, it is your positioning.

It is the difference between  "cool, let's try it" and "now for me, whatever".

So some time ago I came across this article from the Earthly CEO Vlad Ionescu.

He shared that at some point they decided to run this A/B test with just a "tiny" change.

They changed the word "CI" -> "Build" across the homepage.

• Control -> "Earhly makes CI super simple"
• Test -> "Earhly makes builds super simple"

And their core website conversion doubled.

So next time you work on website copy give it some more thought and you may be surprised that "just copy" made a huge difference.

Pricing in your docs? That is how @Fly.io does it.

You click a pricing page link on their homepage and you go to the docs!

No 3 boxes with the "most popular" being the middle paid plan ;)

They just give it to you how it is. Exactly what you'd expect from the docs.

There are tables, explanations, and links to other docs pages.

Very bold decision imho. It definitely makes them feel super developer focused.

Plus if you do want a more standard, enterprise stuff you see:

"If you need more support or compliance options, you can choose one of our paid plans. These come with usage included and additional support options."

And that page looks like a classic pricing page.

But they focus on the developer buying experience here. Super interesting.

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.

Say what we are all thinking. ‍

This tweet is great as it states something that most of us feel.
It is something that you may have had a discussion about with someone recently.
You might have fought about one tool or another.
But at the end of the day tools don't matter.

You can share it with someone as:

• sorry, we had a stupid fight
• rub it in your face :)

‍

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.

Articulate a deeper thought.‍

Sometimes you want to tell the world something but you don't know how.
When somebody articulates what you were thinking you just want to share that with them.

This is what this tweet is about.
A deeper thought with some parallel examples to back it up.

Dorky joke right?

But it does two very important things beautifully.

It gets a smirk (from some people) and when it does you know you just moved someone closer to your brand.

It has a clear CTA which is hard to do with joke-format ads.

This subtle call to conversation/check us out does the job.

Love it!

What to put in the header when your dev tool does a lot?

I like how Appsmith approaches it.

In their case, they have multiple use cases they want to showcase.

But you could use the same idea for many features or products.

Show multiple clickable tabs:

• It invites the user to click and see.
• It hints at all of those different use cases
• It doesn't overwhelm your audience with too much info

A bonus idea is the "Try cloud" | "Self-hosted" CTA.

It communicates right away that you can deploy that dev tool anywhere.

If the self-hosted deployment is important to your customers let them know.

You don't want them to look for it and drop from the page trying to find the FAQ.

How do you make your dev tool pricing simple?

I really like this one.

Saw someone share a pricing page from Userfront some time ago and really liked it. They changed it now but I really like the thinking behind the older version.

It is just remarkably simple while hitting all the boxes:

• You have tiers aligned with buyer persona: Free, Self-served (team), Custom (enterprise)
• Your usage metric is obvious (Monthly Active User)
• For Enterprise you just go with "Contact us" CTA (which is what enterprise buyers expect anyway)

Just a very good baseline.

𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹?

Hard, but Run.ai did that.

Infra products are not "obviously cool".

There is no shiny UI, no happy people wearing your sneakers,

So what do you show on your ads?

First off, the rules still apply:

• Catch your audience's attention
• Say what you do in their language
• Better yet, show how it actually does it

And Run.ai ai and MLOps infra tool managed to create a beautiful Linkedin ad IMHO:

• They catch attention with the code visual
• They say what they do quickly with "Dynamic Fractional GPU using One Command"
• They extend on that in the post copy with an action-driven "Open Terminal -> Run Command -> Boom"
• The code shows what it feels like to use the tool
• And it shows you the result -> fractional GPUs

Job well done!

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.

"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.

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 a solid swag copy template that resonates with devs.

"I did X and all I got was this lousy Y"

Why this works imho is:

• it is snarky
• it is a little self-deprecating
• it brags a bit about the work/expertise

Very solid start if you run out of ideas.

Handing #1 dev obstacle: "We can do it ourselves".

Check it out from second 0:35:

‍"I bet you're like
We can do it ourselves, it's not that hard.
We know what we're doing.

First, I hear you.
Second, are you sure?"

This is mastery.
Pointing out ignorance without alienating people.

One of the best types of developer content is a debugging story.

"What is X" or "How to solve Y" work in some situations, especially when you focus on SEO distribution. But a good debugging story is something that even senior devs want to read.

This is an old article from the GitLab and is such a good example of thos format:

• Set the scene: Say what happened, what results you managed to get, and introduce the problem. Skip the fluffy intro and invite devs into the story
• Go deep into the problem: show what happened and go into technical details. Address the obvious solution that unfortunately didn't solve the problem. Showing profilers, charts, UIs. Make the problem more concrete.
• The journey: explain what you tried, how it failed, and what you learned, go technical and detailed. Take people on that journey
• Close the loop: Close with a win, show the improvements/results, summarize what you learned

The downside of using this format is the same as with most good developer content. You need a real situation, explained by an actual dev in a technical language.

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.

Fantastic all-text Reddit ad from Latitude.

Dev ads are hard. Promotion on Reddit is harder.  Running a dev ad on Reddit that gets 50 comments and 90 likes is expert-level hard.

But folks from Latitude managed 🔥

They used one of my favorite Reddit ad formats: all text.

Here is what I liked:

• They start with who you are and what your product is. I love that they put it right in the title. Having open-source in the title helps too, it just makes you more trustworthy by default.
• They introduce themselves as a technical founder. Makes it more likely to get comments as you are technical, you are a founder, you are a human (not a brand) so you will answer questions.
• They apologize for the ad. Acknowledging that this is an ad makes people less combative.
• They explain technically what it is. Use technical terms. It's very dev to dev.
• They give  devs an easy way to try it. And they chose Github, not their website. That is great. It makes it even more developer-centric. More trustworthy.
• They ask for feedback and contributions.  Not signups. And the more feedback they get (as comments) the more visible and trustworthy the ad will get.

Great execution. Chapeau bas Latitude.

Say what you do and how you do it.

What:

• Supabase owns it with an "open-source firebase alternative"
• They don't streamline project delivery or anything. ‍

How:

• Value proposition around speed of set up
• Then jargon that hits the spot with your ideal developers
• Short, and to the point. 

CTA (bonus):

• "Start your project" action-focused
• Documentation. With devs, this is always a good alternative CTA

7k likes on an event promo post to the dev audience.

I don't think I've ever seen 7k likes on a developer company post on Linkedin.

Ok, this is Github, but still.

This is a 26sec video where they go:

• "What happens when a CEO..."
• "... builds an app LIVE in 18 minutes ..."
• "... in front of 15000 people..."
• "... with Copilot X for the first time?"
• "What could go wrong?"
• "What it Live"

This is a job well done:

• Super slick but minimal design. Feels a bit like that famous nextjs prisma conference tickets.
• Offers a live coding session which is one of the event types that devs like cause it is real.
• Plays powerful music, but no voiceover that would make it feel more corporate.
• Dev to dev, conversational copy. + this final snarkiness appeals to devs.

And they could have done:

• Copy: "We are happy to announce our CEO streamlining business value for the enterprise"
• Design: Show people at previous events and stuff that you saw a million times
• Offer: Talks from industry leaders (that  are customers using your product)
• Voiceover and music: Boring corporate classic.

This is how to promote an event. LOVED 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.

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.

What CTAs should you choose for your open-source project homepage?

Was always wondering what is my default.

There are many options: "See docs", "Get started", "Sign up", "Start X"

But in open-source you want people to start playing with it, install it.

So what should you choose?

Recently came across Astro homepage and loved what they chose.

"Get started"

• Takes you to the quickstart in the docs
• Is action-focused copy
• Sets obvious(ish) expectations

Install code

• Gives you copy-pasteable install command
• + it shows the code to make it more devy

Whatever I choose I will actually get my hands dirty.

I think this will be my default from now on.

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.

The problem with presenting API is that it is hidden. It gets the job done in the background.

So it is not "attractive" in the way some other dev tools can be.

But you can:

• show the end result and how it gets the job done.
• show how easy it is to use.
• let people play with something interactive to make it real.

That is how Mux, video API, solves it.

Found this awesome crossover on their homepage.

They give you:

• devvy language that just says what it does without high-level fluff
• code, input/outputs
• end result of your API call, to make it real
• demo to get the feel real-time

Love it!

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.

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.

How did this super basic ad get so much engagement on Reddit?

First of all, the value prop is succinct, to the point, and says what it is.

No "streamlining", "boosting", or "democratizing" is involved.
No clever tagline or pains, benefits, or values just says what it is.

But what it is, is "free and open-source" which is what many devs, especially on Reddit want to hear.
And Heroku is a known brand so if you know what Heroku does, you know what Kubero does.

I liked that they linked out to the GitHub project too.

Not 100% sure if that would perform better than a landing page or home.  But I see how it feels more in sync with the channel you are running your ads on.

The screenshot? I don't like it but perhaps it doesn't matter as much here?

What do you think?

Oh, and if you read the comments, you'll see that people actually talked about the project, said that they liked the ad etc.

Good stuff.

"See docs" is one of my favorite secondary CTA on dev-focused pages.

TailwindCSS takes it to the next level by inserting docs search right into the header CTA.

This takes devs directly to the page they are interested in rather than have them try and find things for themselves.

They could have searched the docs in the docs, of course.

But this is just this slightly more delightful developer experience that TailwindCSS is known for.

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.

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.

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.

A great example of a quote-style ad.

I like it because:

• Trust: it builds trust via G2 crowd reference and an actual person mentioned
• Value/benefit: the quote talks about what the tool does and what is good about it
• More trust: links to G2 crowd profile, NOT your page -> more trust especially when I don't know the brand yet

Great stuff.

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.

Devs are builders.‍

Make your home page for builders.
Go directly into the "how" instead of the way.
Many devs when they land on your home page, already know the "why".

I love that it:

• shows the step-by-step right away in the hero
• CTAs are links to integrations with particular frameworks and libraries
• the hero copy is very toned-down

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?

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.

Nice and clean code example.

Clear copy, what it does etc.

Calls to action with links to Github and website.

Really long code example which looks great when clicked on.

Sometimes you have an article, report, or event you want to drive people to.

And it is important that they read it.

What Plaid did here is an interesting way of putting it right in the hero section without making it overwhelming or distracting.

I like it.

In dev tools, you really can solve the problem for a narrow market and extend to adjacent markets over time.

‍Use that -> Snyk did.

Their value proposition stayed pretty much the same for 7 years!

"Find and fix vulnerabilities in open-source software you use."

But the market they served got so much bigger over time:

• They started super narrow with just one Javascript framework, Node.js
• They focused on solving that pain very well before moving to the entire Javascript language
• Then to other popular languages like Ruby, Java, and Python
• Then to the entire Open Source dependencies
• Then fast forward to today and they do Open source + containers +IaC

Again, their core value prop is the same in 2023 as it was in 2016.

But their target market (and revenue share) grew by... a lot ;)

Isn't that just beautiful marketing-wise?

So the takeaway is this:

Start narrow, solve the problem, and extend to other frameworks/languages/tech can still work.

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!

Developer-focused Reddit ad. 33 upvotes, 30 comments.

So @Zesty is a company that targets devops folks and helps with cloud cost optimization.

And they decided to run Reddit ads.

So they:

• Chose the format that works with devs on (some) subreddits
• The funny message that connects to their main value prop
• Made it clear that they solve that problem in the copy
• Added clear(ish) branding

And they got 33 upvotes and 30 comments.

Some of the comments were technical.

One comment that got 67 upvotes was actually

"Okay, this ad is pretty funny"

And I agree, this is a pretty funny ad that I am sure brought them some brand awareness and clicks.

When selling dev tools you typically have 3 "buyer" levels:

Individual dev:

• wants to experience your value prop
• ideally wants to play/test/use the free tool
• doesn't buy tools but strongly influences buying decisions
• wants to use it right now, not talk to his boss to get a credit card, not talk to sales

Team lead:

• wants to improve teams productivity
• collaboration, developer experience, and happiness are important
• buys tools at a team-level budget
• doesn't want to go through a lengthy sales process but  swipes the card and gets the team on this week

Org lead:

• wants to improve the security and compliance of the entire eng org
• security, control, governance
• buys tools for the entire organization/enterprise
• expects a longer sales process with a lot of moving parts and needs to discuss and negotiate

How does Postman solve it?:

• packages their plans in a way that aligns with those buyers
• different plans have features needed for Dev/Team lead/Org lead
• CTAs are exactly what each buyer wants: Use > Buy > Talk

They even go the extra mile. Something I didn't see too often.

They understand their customer's reality and identified one more level between Org and Team.

Basically a department-level unit that probably has multiple teams but is not at the organization/enterprise level.

I really like what they did hear. Solid.

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.

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.

Someone shared an old but awesome article with me recently:  “I answered 99 Stack Overflow questions and now 2 million developers know about my product“

And while chatGPT/Perplexity/co-pilots may be making the Stack Overflow less effective the rules of engaging in communities very much apply to your Slack/Discord/Reddit.

Also, I often talk about social listening, setting up trackers like Syften, F5Bot, or Gummysearch, and jumping into discussions around your problem space. But I haven’t really shared good examples of how people actually join in the conversation doing that. This is one of them.

So what you do is basically:

• Say how the problem can be solved generally
• Say how you can solve it with “a product like mine”
• Show an example of doing exactly that with code

Do that enough times, all in relevant discussions, and see how folks refer to your answers and drive more product signups.

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)

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.  

Marketing through free tools is powerful. And Auth0 implemented it beautifully.

In an old article from Gonto I read about some free tools that Auth0 created years ago.

And those tools are still generating traffic and leads today.

And they are helpful to developers and make the Auht0 brand even more appreciated by the community.

One of those tools is JSON Web Token Debugger.

So how this works for them is this:

• You understand that your target dev audience has a problem
• You realize that helpful blog posts can only do so much
• You create a small tool that helps solve that problem
• You create content that explain the concept to help build SEO
• You link out to that content on the home
• You add links to your core product/events or other offers in the navbar
• You wait for devs to come ;)

Now, Gonto suggested that is important to do it on a separate domain to make it less promotional.

I am not sold on that especially when I know there are companies like @VEED.IO that build "SEO tool clusters" in the /tools/ subfolder of their page and crush it in search.

But either way, if you can solve a real problem your target devs have, no matter how small, you should be able to get some developer love (and $) from the value you created.

Great flow of the explainer. 

Starts with the outcome "Build search UX".

Goes straight to code and 1-2-3-results format. 

Explains every snippet of code as it is added.

Ends with a nicely presented result: a working search on a website.

No voiceover just code and screenshots.

And it's only 45 sec !!!

Instead of giving away hundreds of small things that people will forget give away one thing that leaves an impression.

And a huge LEGO set is a great candidate for that one big thing. There is a big overlap between devs and folks who love LEGOs. They are both builders after in their hearts.

Now, some important considerations:

• Create a giveaway so that you can still get all your badge scanned, social mentions, GitHub stars KPIs
• Make the prize visible to conference participants. Put it out there. Make it obvious.
• Make participating relatively easy to complete.

You need to commit to it too.

Don't do 3 different things like that at a conference. Focus on one play like this at a time and try other cool ideas at another conference.

Folks from Sigma Computing ticked all these boxes.  Love it!

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.

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 :)

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.

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.