Developers, what marketing strategies work on you? • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#31

Post by yoyohello13 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:31 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #21

paxys wrote: post #7

I wish marketers realized that as a developer, and a senior one at that, I have no say in what software my company pays for. I have a daily flood of messages from salespeople on email, linkedin, even text and calls asking me to "try out for your team", and I get frustrated trying to explain that no, that's now how things work at corporations beyond a certain size. A simple software license or subscription that will m…

Lots of reasons to still talk to you. - it costs them nothing to 'reach out' - your company might not be so bureaucratic - you might be willing to set up shadow IT (run software without permission) - you might move to another company that is more permissive - they might be able to roll up developer interest into an enterprise-level sales pitch

Reaching out isn't necessarily zero cost. There are several software vendors I have blacklisted in my mind because they incessantly send me emails.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#32

Post by itamarcode » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:32 PM UTC

Seeing a good demo, and a credible influencer actually trying the product

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#33

Post by d--b » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

The single most important thing impacting developers is hype.

We may not fall for basic marketing tricks, but oh boy do we run behind hype trains.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#34

Post by saghm » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #31

1123581321 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of reasons to still talk to you. - it costs them nothing to 'reach out' - your company might not be so bureaucratic - you might be willing to set up shadow IT (run software without permission) - you might move to another company that is more permissive - they might be able to roll up developer interest into an enterprise-level sales pitch

Reaching out isn't necessarily zero cost. There are several software vendors I have blacklisted in my mind because they incessantly send me emails.

Yeah, "it costs nothing to reach out" when there's a low percentage of recipients who will be interested is exactly how we we got to the current equilibrium of "developers just ignore marketing emails". Individually, it might seem like there's no cost, but collectively they've all made their job a lot harder by making it not worth developers' time to try to sift through the noise and try to find signal.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#35

Post by jmyeet » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

This is an example of where you can't simply ask the users what works (or what they want). People don't know. People lie. People will tell you what they would like to work.

The truth lies in results, not simply asking "how can I make you buy my product or service?" You will need to try many things. You will need to measure their effectiveness with a fairly standard funnel (eg [1]).

If you ask people, they will tell you that advertising doesn't work on them and they simply skip all ads. This just isn't true. Not that I'm defending attention theft but even if you have a good product that solves a problem potential users actually care about, you need to make those potential users aware of it somehow and you will need a metrics-based approach to finding it.

Technical people in particularly tend to take a dim view of sales and marketing. The reality is that these fields tend to be very results-focused (eg you sold something or you didn't vs "we shipped something nobody used but we learned a lot") and way more methodical than most product planning.

[1]: https://planful.com/blog/how-to-calculate-your-marketing-fun...

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#36

Post by from-nibly » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

willquack wrote: post #6

Some trends in the responses for developers self reporting what influences their buying decisions: - Trusted peers using a product - Being able to test the product for free - DevRel with genuine developer chops and mindset - Good documentation - Guides and tutorials - No marketing fluff Also a lot of developers report that they think marketing doesn't affect their behaviour

Amen to good documentation.

Thats one of the biggest reasons to use open source these days. Most paid products have aweful documentation.

If you want me to use your product i need to be able to onboard myself.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#37

Post by Oras » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

Content I want to search for my pain point and find solutions.

Also some quick (30 seconds) videos showing the value.

And no “book a call” let try and I will buy if I like.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#38

Post by zzyzxd » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

Let me talk to your engineers, not salesperson.

I've never had good experience with salesperson. Almost every time I ask them "can your product do X?" I get answers like "yes" or "no but our engineers can make it happen", which is baseless promise. Last time I signed up with a vendor was when their engineer told me "No, we can't do that. And here's why that may not be what you want".

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#39

Post by BirAdam » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

First, be upfront about pricing and make it simple.

Second, have good documentation and make it easily accessible.

Third, either in your interactive demo or in your video, make it extremely obvious what problem you’re trying to solve. You don’t need to be clever about it.

Fourth, if you use more than two buzzwords, I am just going to laugh and leave your site or delete your email and forever think you’re a grifter.

Marketing works on everyone, but many people have been trained to hate certain things due to repeated bad experiences. Things with arcane pricing, tons of NIH terms and/or buzzwords, poor documentation, and hype driven not solution driven marketing is all at the top of that “repeated bad experiences” list.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#40

Post by 1123581321 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #31

1123581321 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of reasons to still talk to you. - it costs them nothing to 'reach out' - your company might not be so bureaucratic - you might be willing to set up shadow IT (run software without permission) - you might move to another company that is more permissive - they might be able to roll up developer interest into an enterprise-level sales pitch

Reaching out isn't necessarily zero cost. There are several software vendors I have blacklisted in my mind because they incessantly send me emails.

True. I wrote that from the perspective of a sales process trying not to waste time.

As far as risking being annoying, it's an unfortunate reality that you come out way ahead in sales if you talk to a lot of people, even if you make a fraction of them hate you along the way. That's even true when selling to programmers. But it does have externalities as all the sales teams collectively evolve their tactics to keep cutting through.