Developer marketing examples

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).

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

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.

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.

Super short dev tool case study on a single viewport.

Many case studies follow a Hero -> Problem -> Solution -> Results framework.

Many try and do it on a one-pager.

But what @Resend did is next level and I like it.

Especially with devs, you want to be technical and succinct.

And Resend took all the possible fluff out of it.

• They put a strong quote up top
• They highlight the benefits for easy skimming
• They explain the problems and results succinctly
• They show who said it and make it more believable
• They show the customer: logo/ name + what they do

I'd like to have some before or after probably or a stronger results (or pain) ) focused headline.

But I think this is great actually.

Great above the fold

The subheader explains the value proposition.

Header handles major objections:

• is it easy to implement?
• can I extend it?

Then we have 3 CTAs but they are super focused on devs: 

• Signup (using action-focused copy)
• See docs which is exactly what many devs want to do before signing up
• See examples, again exactly what most devs want to see before signing up

Then it goes on to explain how it works with a simple, static graphic.

This whole thing makes me feel peaceful.

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.

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.

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?

Pushing cold blog readers to try your tool rarely works.

So you need a transitional CTA, something that worms them up.
But it needs to be aligned with the goals of the reader.
And I think pushing folks to a community discord is a solid option.

I like the copy "Discuss this blog on Discord" as it is very reader-focused.
Some folks read the article and have more questions.
They want to discuss it somewhere.

And while you could just do a comments section, a community gives you more options to get people closer to the product.

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.

Nice post format.
I like it for dev tools that have both API and UI components.
You show code and what it produces in one view.
You can add additional things to the vis part of it for more context.

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.

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.

Adding CTA in dev-focused articles is hard.

You don't want to be too pushy, but you do want to get conversions.

DigitalOcean strikes a great balance with its in-text article CTA design.

They make this CTA look like an info box that you'd typically see in the documentation.

It is clear that it is a Digital Ocean CTA but it doesn't feel pushy.

It feels like a piece of potentially useful information.

Love it.

Create a connection with your ideal customer profile.

"Wrong answers only" questions are great for that imho.

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.

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.

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.

Usage-based pricing is loved by devs. But has its own problems.

Ok, so first what are those problems?

Value metric:

• users don't understand your value metric
• even when they do, they cannot map it to their usage patterns.

Predictability and procurement:

• it is easier to predict the headcount than the usage
• per user pricing is obvious, everyone across the org understands it

But devs love usage-based pricing:

• it is "fair", you pay for what you use
• you can scale up/down as you need

It is great for a dev tool company:

• you align user adoption, the value created, and monetization
• as org-wide usage so does the invoice

But pulling it off is not as easy as you may think.

Choosing that value metric, packaging it, and presenting it is a struggle.

@Appsmith solved it in the following way:

• give people an option to go with a usage-based pricing
• but cap a per-user cost at $X a month
• it guarantees a better deal than a flat per-user pricing
• but gives you the predictability of a per-user pricing

Very interesting approach.

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 ;)

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.

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

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.

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.

Sometimes your pricing is just complex. But you can still make it work.

If you want devs to convert, make it possible for them to estimate the cost.

@Mux does it nicely with a calculator:

• They give sliders for dimensions that are obvious to the dev
• They give (pre) select boxes for things that are a bit less obvious
• They show additional costs
• They give you a clear final price estimate

What is crucial is that the calculator dimensions need to be understandable and familiar to the reader.:

• If you use expected industry concepts (view count, upload, users) you should be fine.
• If you use weird obscure concepts the best calculator will not help.

The goal of this is to make it possible for a person to get an estimate right here right now.

Not have to setup a meeting with half the team to figure your pricing out.

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.

‍

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.  

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.

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!

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.

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.

I love this copy. It answers:

• what it does -> "authentication and authorization"
• how is it different -> "simple to implement, easy to extend"

It doesn't talk about the value as it is obvious to devs.

Obviously, it will save time and make things safer.

Don't talk about it.

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.

Make it about belonging.‍

Something some people can deeply connect with.
Nostalgia is a very strong emotion.

It feels good to be a part of something as well.

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 ;)

If you have an API product presenting it in an exciting visual way is hard.

But Deepgram managed to do just that.

They go for an autoplay presentation that has four acts:

1. Context: playing an audio file showing a spectrogram -> sets the context that this is something audio
2. Code: They show the code from one of the SDKs being typed. And they show tabs at the top with other important SDKs to convey that this is not Python-only.
3. Result: Shows the output of running the code, a transcript, and an AI-generated summary and topics.  
4. Layers: Takes the points above and layers them in one viz to communicate that this is all part of one product, just different "views" of it.

And the delivery is just slick and elegant. Kudos team!

btw, Mux, the video API has a similar design of their visual. I think it is just a great visual element for API products.

This is a sandbox experience folks over at Sentry.io created.

I like the navbar CTAs with a big "Documentation" button in there.

Reminds me that I can go and see it when I need it.

But I also get those conversion focused "Request a demo" and "Start a trial" for when I am ready.

On top of that I get tours and help in the sidebar for when I get stuck.

.... and the whole thing is gated behind a work email which I don't love.

But having that work email let's you nurture (and Sentry is known for awesome emails).

Plus it does help sales. If anything it is an additional signal for your account scoring models.

But if you are going to gate a sandbox, make sure to show all that value behind the modal like Sentry did.

With that I can feel compelled to type in that email.

I really like this Reddit ad from Sentry.

Powerful simplicity.

They don't do:

• long value-based copy
• fancy, in-your-face CTAs
• creative that feels "professional

They go for:

• focus on the pain
• creative that speaks to that pain
• low-key CTA ", get Sentry" rather than "Get Sentry Free!"
• building rapport with the dev with copy "If seeing this in React makes you 🤮"

And through simplicity and focus they deliver a message:

• Stack traces in React are not much fun
• They seem to understand that
• Sentry helps you solve that

Good format.

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.

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.

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?

How to bring attention and trust to a feature section?

Add a testimonial.

Ideally, it should talk about that feature to make your message even stronger.

I like how Appsmith made it animated and it just makes you look.

And you read the testimonial and look at the feature above it.

Good stuff.

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 :)

‍

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/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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

It's a nice template for ads on socials.

So you have:

• Value
• Testimonial about the value/benefit
• Person
• CTA

Ideally, I'd make it dark to stand out in the feed and make the CTA about that value as well.

But still, great ad imho.

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 !!!

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.

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!

Architecture diagrams are awesome.

They have this smell of value that makes you want to share them with others.

This one is particularly good-looking imho.

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

Simple but powerful and clear.

I love that it is static and it blurs everything I don't need to get the concept.

For the dev audience, static graphics, when done well, are better than

• videos
• screenshots
• or happy faces of happy customers :)

Tell me what you do in 1 sec, not 60

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.

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.

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.

Funny ad, that makes fun of ads.‍

But it actually communicates that you don't care about the ads but more about something else, like:

• docs
• code examples
• integration
• backend
• UI

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.

Good in-place code pattern.

I can go and see different code snippets without moving to other parts of the website.

At the same time, I can read explanations and value propositions.

I like how "view documentation" is such a strong CTA with so much going on here already.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Show how product components fit together.
‍
A good diagram is such a good solution to that.
‍
They use the same colors and eyebrow copy that was used for body sections.
It all clicks now, I get the full picture.

‍

‍

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?

Very nice design solution on the homepage.

Classic communication of the world before using your tool and the world after.

Really liked how it felt messy before.

And is nice and clean after.

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.  

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.

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 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 ;)

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.

Sometimes your product just wins on price.

I like how New Relic owns it on this page:

• They show you price comparison graphs
• The CTAs are focused on helping you compare the prices
• They use jargon specific to the category to drive the price argument: "peak usage", "overages and penalties", "SKUs"

After reading this I'd trust them to give me a solid price estimate and that it will likely be cheaper than Datadog.

Obviously price is not the only reason why we choose tools, but if that was a problem I had with Datadog, they have my attention.

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.

Funny dev newsletter CTA. From shiftmag .dev by Infobip.

It starts with a chuckle-worthy:

"Sarcastic headline, but funny enough for engineers to sign up"

Then they follow up by disarming the "is that spam" and building more rapport with:

• "Written by people, not robots - at least not yet."
• "May or may not contain traces of sarcasm, but never spam."

They end with an alternative call to action. RSS feed.

Most newsletters don't do RSS.

But for many devs RSS feed is the preferred content subscription.

Great job!

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.

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.

Funniest dev tool explainer ever? Coming from Wasp.

Let's face it, introducing a problem in an explainer video is often boring. Especially if the problem is

How do you introduce a SaaS boilerplate? Good luck pitching faster time to value or something.

Wasp did something out of the box:

• They start by googling "how to buy a Lamborghini"
• Go to a Rebbit thread where people talk about starting a SaaS on boilerplate. But it is paid.
• Go to Google again and type their positioning ;) "Free open-source SaaS starter".
• Go to their product and show it.

Got me hooked and kept me watching for sure.

+ funny is memorable so you will get a better recall too.

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.

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Great SEO tactic.

What folks from Cronitor did is:

• For every combination of "cron +" they created a website
• Those simple websites rank for particular keywords like "cron every 11 minutes"
• When you land on the page you get a command you need that solves your problem
• And you get a nice explanation of their paid tool for monitoring cron jobs

This can be used for many dev-focused tools as by definition they use commands which can be templated.

I've heard about it originally from Harry Dry over at https://marketingexamples.com/seo/cronitor

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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?).

Share an idea about a new concept.

Explain the concept in simple terms.
Back it up with a visualization.

I like the "hand-written" style of this viz that makes it less formal.

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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!

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.

Using memes in the product release.

If you understand your ICP (in this case open-source backend devs) it may be a great idea.

An additional benefit is that people may share a meme... that actually has a link to your announcement.

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.

"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.