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Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

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Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#11
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…

I assume you're working in a big company? In small company as a dev I have almost all the decision power regarding which software to choose, at the end I just need to justify the cost to management.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#12
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…

Isn't there some kind of common threshold for higher management approval, like five hundred bucks, that enterprise software sales try to slip under ?

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#13
The software that I've seen advertised and then introduced myself to corporate environments is software that I can play with at home first. I'm not going to go through hassle of the purchasing department if I don't have extremely high confidence it'll be solve real problems and be worth the effort.

I have multiple cases where there's software I know works, but I don't know if it works for my situation. Not being able to test it means that we're going with the default "safe" option, which is almost always someone else.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#14

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

Holy hell this.

If more software companies put effort in documentation, web environments in the browser were is it possible to try the tools, provide many and good examples they would instantly push themselves way ahead of the competition.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#15

The replies to the tweet that say some variation of ‘no marketing strategies work on me’ crack me up. If you think you’re too clever, it suggests to me that you could stand to be more introspective.

100%. If you've ever found yourself buying something (a rather likely event, in most lifetimes) the goods most likely didn't just magically end up in your cart (virtual or real) and you made the purchase. Somehow you ended up looking at that product in particular, and made the decision to buy it. You may not think about all the steps that occurred along the way as marketing, but they are. Whether that be how the results showed up on the search engine or the shelves in a store, to the names and descriptions that let you know what it is and what you'll get out of it, and so on.

Marketing is a massive discipline, it isn't just the cringy ads we see all the time. As with many things in life, you don't tend to notice those who are doing it well, just those who are doing it poorly.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#16
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…

Isn't there some kind of common threshold for higher management approval, like five hundred bucks, that enterprise software sales try to slip under ?

The problem isn't usually dollar amounts, but stuff like security, data storage, compliance.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#17
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…

I assume you're working in a big company? In small company as a dev I have almost all the decision power regarding which software to choose, at the end I just need to justify the cost to management.

Yes, but then marketers and sales reps are mostly trying to sell to big companies. Smaller deals are usually self serve.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#18

The replies to the tweet that say some variation of ‘no marketing strategies work on me’ crack me up. If you think you’re too clever, it suggests to me that you could stand to be more introspective.

Developers saying marketing doesn’t work on them while wearing a free Datadog T-shirt from some conference.

Re: Developers, what marketing strategies work on you?

#20

The replies to the tweet that say some variation of ‘no marketing strategies work on me’ crack me up. If you think you’re too clever, it suggests to me that you could stand to be more introspective.

"Marketing never works on me" – guy who is carrying a dozen Apple products on their person at any given time, whose grocery cart always has Coca Cola, Oreos, Doritos, Fruit Loops, Kraft mac and cheese, who uses Colgate toothpaste and Tide detergent, buys Pampers diapers, has State Farm insurance...
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