[HN Gopher] How to advertise to developers: deep dive into paid ...
___________________________________________________________________
How to advertise to developers: deep dive into paid developer
marketing
Author : mooreds
Score : 248 points
Date : 2022-07-22 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.developermarkepear.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.developermarkepear.com)
| dangus wrote:
| Regarding the intro of the article: I agree, it's important not
| to heed any advice that tells you that you just can't advertise
| or market to any particular demographic.
|
| Advertising and marketing are essentially universal truths. If
| you are having trouble reaching someone, it most definitely isn't
| because "ads just won't work on them."
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Also many websites the product is not showing what it does on
| the front page. Many times they extol how amazing the product
| is. Best thing ever, customer abc built more whatamdongles with
| it, etc, etc. But what does your product actually do?! How
| would I use it? When buying a tool I am many times not buying
| fashion. I am buying a tool that does something. Be upfront
| what your tool is. If you are 1 of 5 competitors explain what
| your tool does that the others dont. Dont make me dig around on
| your site to find it or sign up for something just to look at
| your docs. It shows me you are not serious about helping me,
| other than helping money out of my wallet, and trying to setup
| a time to talk and waste my time.
| jph wrote:
| The Framework laptop team is doing developer advertising very
| well IMHO.
|
| I see their ads on multiple sites, and the ads are direct, clear,
| and advice-oriented i.e. the Framework ad explains a capability
| and why it's relevant and a differentiator.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| Interesting. I've never seen their ads.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| In my experience, high-quality educational content works much
| better than paid ads when targeting developers.
|
| One of the best examples I've seen is digital ocean. When ever I
| google a sys admin type question, there is a digital ocean
| article as the top result.
| catsarebetter wrote:
| Yup that's technically marketing but if it's an article I find
| useful then I win too.
| belval wrote:
| I never thought about it that way, but for sysadmin questions
| if I see a DigitalOcean article I always pick it. They are
| always high quality and they version them by major OS version
| (Ubuntu 18/20/22).
|
| Maybe that's why I have droplets, they got me by providing a
| good well priced service. /s
| jgable wrote:
| The "Interrupt" blog by Memfault is another example. They are
| adored by embedded developers.
| spallas wrote:
| A similar example is Neptune.ai, with one of their comparison
| posts ranking top for almost every query about any MLOps tool.
| It is very effective for visibility; even if the posts' quality
| is poor and marketing is a little aggressive.
| bluedino wrote:
| Linode seemed really good about that, what changed?
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I absolutely agree, and DigitalOcean does it brilliantly.
|
| I ran into a similar situation the other day trying to put
| together some apt packages in a way that was clearly off the
| beaten path. Found a company blog post that walked through
| pretty much exactly what I was trying to do.
|
| The marketing portion of it? At the very very end of the
| article was "And here's the single command you'd need to run to
| do this with our tool." I didn't end up buying the tool because
| it didn't quite fit some other requirements I had, but it did
| very effectively get me looking at their product and evaluating
| whether or not it'd be good for me.
| antonymy wrote:
| >devs don't want it to read like an ad (hate advertising)
|
| This is pretty much why I only use browsers with ublock origin
| installed, and avoid browsing on devices I can't filter out 99.9%
| of image/video ads. I don't see ads on youtube or google or most
| other common sites. The only way I get advertised to is sponsored
| segments in videos or podcasts, or reading a product review I see
| on a site like HN.
|
| In the case of the former, the sponsor is hoping my willingness
| to watch/listen to the content provider talk about stuff I like
| will transfer some level of tolerance to listening to them shill
| a product. In reality I either mute it until the segment is over
| or skip past it (if able). For the latter, I do sometimes look at
| product pages for gizmos and software posted to HN but I bee-line
| straight for the specs and ignore the marketing fluff, which is
| either a wordy summary of the specs, or else completely lacking
| in substance.
|
| So I think some audiences are simply not targetable by their own
| choice and you have to accept it. I have certainly tried pretty
| hard to make myself impossible to advertise to (at least in a
| consistent and reliable way), and I don't think this mindset is
| uncommon in the industry.
| jrockway wrote:
| I skip most of the sponsorship on YouTube. I used to use an
| extension to do it (i think this one:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-
| for-y...), but mostly just press the right arrow key until it
| looks like it's not the ad anymore. Let's be honest. I'm not
| going to buy your graphical website builder or VPN. I can get
| both of those in other ways.
|
| For me, you basically have to have good organic search results,
| or I won't hear about it. Or write something interesting and
| put it on HN. Works quite well for Tailscale and Fly.io.
| stewx wrote:
| I jumped through a lot of hoops to earn a free t-shirt that says
| "Everything will be 200 OK". I had to sign up for a couple cloud
| services and set up some kind of automation, essentially demo-ing
| the product to myself to get the shirt. It was smart on their
| part.
| johns wrote:
| As the purveyor of this shirt, it warms my heart to read this
| comment. We pretty much copied New Relic's model for this, and
| it worked really well. For awhile it felt like we were more a
| t-shirt company than a software company.
| mooreds wrote:
| My company sponsored a coding livestream recently that featured
| a dev integrating with our product and I was astonished at how
| excited folks were to have a chance to win a t-shirt.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| the t-shirts are the best part of working in tech
| mooreds wrote:
| Haha, hopefully there are other good parts too! But I
| confess, I'm wearing a "Enjoy Code" t-shirt (like "Enjoy
| Coke") I picked up at a conference right now.
|
| And, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out anyone who wants a
| free FusionAuth t-shirt can go to
| https://fusionauth.io/download , install it, and share a
| screenshot and we'll ship you one. Further instructions
| there.
|
| Unfortunately we can only ship to the USA and Canada for
| this offer.
| ghaff wrote:
| People get unreasonably excited about swag. I try not to take
| T-shirts any longer unless there's something unique about
| them. If it's just some random company's name I'll pass. I've
| given away huge trash bags of lightly worn or unworn T-shirts
| and I still have massive piles of them.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| This has been one of my favorite shirts for years. I also did
| the same thing :)
| [deleted]
| Frost1x wrote:
| Advertising itself isn't a bad communication strategy and I think
| many developers are fine with it, they simply don't want
| propoganda. Raise my awareness of something useful I'm not aware
| of and then be honest about it, don't make absurd claims and
| don't skip cons (I know, business types only want to ever speak
| in the positive, especially in marketing).
|
| If you give me a fair assessment of something without BS, I can
| be happy with the benefits when I understand the shortcomings.
| The second I see all these omissions, which is everywhere, is the
| second you're put in the BS until proven otherwise box by
| default. Developers trust other devs because other devs tend to
| give you this information and don't paint everything as rosy
| perfection.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The problem is when the dev is not the one being pitched to.
| I've been in calls where the dev team are the ones being
| pitched to and we ask for the cons and get useful answers.
| eropple wrote:
| There's real value to going "huh, yeah, this isn't a good fit
| for you right now", too. Honestly's valuable. I've had
| potential customers come back later when the thing I was
| working on was a better fit for their needs because I'd been
| up-front with them.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| > Most of those things haven't worked for me.
|
| Most of the listed ad networks are blocked by uBlock Origin.
| SponsorBlock is crowdsourced YouTube ad flagging. It is not
| surprising that those paid channels would not be effective for
| firms not willing to commit the $$
| closewith wrote:
| SponsorBlock is unfortunate, as sponsorships are the "good"
| form of advertising. No invasive tracking or targeting,
| contextual targeting only, and generally vetted by content
| creators (as least far better than ads sold on exchanges).
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Problem is a) it is the same stuff that is being sold all
| across youtube, b) aside from maybe audible none of that is a
| good offer, c) the claimed benefits are non-existent or
| bullshit (see all VPN ads) and finally d) the problem is not
| advertising, it is terrible products. Good products should
| not need creators to sponsor them, they should get creators
| so excited they can't stop talking about it.
| closewith wrote:
| A) Youtube is a big site. It's more likely that you're
| seeing the same ads on the channels that you watch. It's
| very unlikely to be the same set that I see.
|
| b) Apart from the products you like, none of it is a good
| offer?
|
| c) Are you sure this is true for all sponsors?
|
| d) Is advertising ever justified in your mind?
|
| Overall, I think you just don't like ads, so have decided
| to arrive at that conclusion. Your arguments don't seem to
| hold water.
| elashri wrote:
| NordVPN and the other VPN, Military grade sponsorship ads
| will strongly disagree with you.
| closewith wrote:
| How so?
| cercatrova wrote:
| They're really not vetted by the creators, usually.
|
| Edit: I mean the products aren't usually vetted, they just
| make an ad saying how great it is, all the while most likely
| not having even tried it. How many YouTubers do you think
| actually played Raid Shadow Legends or used NordVPN?
| closewith wrote:
| Well, they are vetted in the literal sense. The creators
| have to approve the ads. Most exchanges have no human in
| the loop at all.
| ajayyy wrote:
| Sponsorships encourage deception (tricking the user into not
| skipping) and building up parasocial relationships with the
| audience to abuse their trust, the worst of the influencer
| world
|
| I made SponsorBlock, and over the years working on it, I have
| been able to see how horrible some of the techniques people
| use are
| closewith wrote:
| Two questions for you:
|
| Do you believe that sponsorships are worse that targeted
| digital advertising?
|
| Do you believe there are any Youtubers who have acted
| ethically in accepting sponsorships?
|
| > I made SponsorBlock, and over the years working on it, I
| have been able to see how horrible some of the techniques
| people use are
|
| It seems somewhat hypocritical to pretend that SponsorBlock
| is an ethical reaction to bad sponsorships when the clear
| ethical response would be to simply not watch the content.
| To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with
| SponsorBlock, but let's be honest. It's purpose is
| convenience, not any higher moral objective.
| ajayyy wrote:
| > Do you believe that sponsorships are worse that
| targeted digital advertising?
|
| With podcasts, it seems people are now trying to get the
| worst of both worlds, with dynamic advertisements from a
| pool based on who you are + the ads are read out by the
| podcast creator. I can't say that either case is worse
| than the other, but they are bad for different reasons.
|
| > Do you believe there are any Youtubers who have acted
| ethically in accepting sponsorships?
|
| There exist some that have clear transitions, declare in
| the first sentence that it is a sponsor, repeat at the
| end that it is a sponsor, and say explicitly in the ad-
| read that it is not their opinion but a script. That is
| certainly less deceptive. But unfortunately, this is not
| usually consistent. Some of their videos will do it well,
| and some do it poorly.
|
| > It's purpose is convenience, not any higher moral
| objective
|
| With "full video" labels (https://blog.ajay.app/full-
| video-sponsorblock), I've started to delve into the
| fixing bad declarations world. Full videos don't skip
| anything, but just inform the viewer what to watch out
| for. I want to make a wiki-like system for organising
| more precise biases in the future as well, and allow
| people to know which where each opinion in a video comes
| from.
|
| Another fact I'll point out is that we sometimes get
| complaints that certain sponsor sections are incorrect,
| even though they totally are correct due to them not
| knowing it is paid promotion. An example is dbrand, which
| pays many top tech people to randomly mention their name
| in reviews, usually without much disclosure.
| Varqu wrote:
| So basically your expectation is that your favorite podcast
| authors create the content for you free of charge and don't
| earn a dime?
|
| (I assume from your message tone that you are not a fan of
| paying for the content, either)
| ajayyy wrote:
| I am perfectly happy paying for content
| marssaxman wrote:
| "Less evil", maybe, but there is no form of advertising which
| is "good"!
| closewith wrote:
| That's a fairly fundamentalist take. Are signs outside
| shops evil? Window displays? Brochures?
| marssaxman wrote:
| "Fundamentalist" is a fair description; I do feel quite
| strongly about this.
|
| The function of advertising is to intrude on your
| awareness, stealing attention from whatever it is you
| actually care about, in order to create a desire for
| something you were previously content without, in hopes
| of enriching the advertiser at your expense. Ads are a
| tax on your attention which hope to to take a toll on
| your pocketbook; they benefit advertisers by making
| everyone else's lives just a little bit worse.
|
| In Seattle, billboards are forbidden (with a few
| grandfathered-in exceptions), but stores are still
| permitted to post signs. This seems like a reasonable
| compromise; labeling the contents of the building
| provides useful information, which seems beneficial
| enough to outweigh the advertising function of the sign.
|
| I suppose brochures are fine if you go in and get one
| because you are curious; but someone walking down the
| street bothering people by handing them out at random
| would be an asshole.
| closewith wrote:
| Thanks for responding.
|
| Where do you feel the line is online, specifically in
| Youtube videos/podcasts, where SponsorBlock is effective?
| marssaxman wrote:
| I don't spend a lot of time on Youtube, and rarely have
| the patience to watch the sort of videos people make in
| hopes of earning money, so I don't have much of an
| opinion there. I did install SponsorBlock recently, just
| in case.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is good. Very good.
|
| As far as expanding customer use I think having really good and
| actually helpful docs are critical. The services that I use that
| have great docs get used a lot more and integrate with apps much
| deeper than services with okay or shitty docs that feel half
| assed.
| mooreds wrote:
| Docs are critical! This article focuses on awareness, but if
| you create awareness but developers see out of date, missing or
| incorrect docs, they'll bounce.
|
| I ran a twitter poll on whether devs would prefer missing or
| out of date docs; was interesting to see the results (N was
| small though):
| https://twitter.com/mooreds/status/1517508537945001984
|
| That said, it's a struggle. Sure, there are some pieces of doc
| you can generate (API docs, for sure) but others are more
| conversational and can get out of date.
| stratigos wrote:
| One problem the advertising industry fails to understand is that
| an advertising agency, or whatever source the ads originate from,
| is a socioppath.
|
| Developers are logical and practical thinkers and despise
| sociopathic behavior.
|
| Developers have a very strong resistance to this sort of
| manipulation.
|
| Advertisers are unable to cope with this reality or understand
| their true nature in our economy, so they continue to do more
| "research" on how to engage developers, who in turn, learn how to
| better detect and evade sociopaths
|
| Im also very surprised that in 2022, there are developers that
| see ads at all, outside of glancing at some non technical
| person's youtube tab.There are browsers now that are completely
| ad free, even without add-ons or extensions. Ads are horribly
| toxic in nature and an offense to the human psyche and to any
| person's dignity.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > talk values, not features
|
| Be careful. I've seen lots of ads that try to convince me how
| valuable a certain product is; but the ad itself doesn't answer
| the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" that I need to know.
| So:
|
| 1: Make sure it's 100% clear what your product does (and doesn't)
| do.
|
| 2: Make sure that it's super-easy for me to find out high-level
| specifications. (For example, if you're selling a computer, it
| needs to be super-easy to find out what ports it has.)
| franze wrote:
| I was the organizer of Austrias biggest developer meetup for a
| few years. Took it from 5 people in a cellar to a monthly mini
| conference with 100+ attendees each month. When it became to
| expensive to pay for Pizza and beer out of my own pocket, I got
| sponsors.
|
| the sponsor got logo and link to their job boards in the
| newsletters, and they HAD TO give a talk: 5 (to 10 min max), then
| 4 min Q&A, then 3 for their pitch (mostly looking for devs). hard
| time limit, hard format. only if they agreed to this they were
| allowed to sponsor our pizza and beer.
|
| oh, and the talk HAD TO include some real world code. Q&A was non
| negotiable.
|
| the HR department (the sponsor initiators) was surprised.
|
| the audience loved it. as the HR did send lead devs / CTO to give
| the talk. some of the best talks of the meetup we got that way.
|
| after some time I had waiting lists for sponsorships as the
| format worked so well.
|
| the secret to advertise to developers? show some real world code!
|
| meetup was called ViennaJS
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Pushy pop-ups, "do it now", flashy colors, and all that stuff.
| Things that work like a charm in e-commerce or fashion will most
| likely not work on devs.
|
| Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. A popup chat bot or a
| survey form request (during or after using a website or software
| product) or anything not germane to the task that has a shadow or
| notification highlight has slowly but surely become a form of
| wart that elicits a deep, instinctual disgust from me. I'd even
| say an unhealthy and unreasonable level of disgust.
|
| It's enough to get me to instantly despise a product almost
| nomatter how well it does its original job.
|
| But 100 folks who actually click ads or interact with these
| distraction baubles (mistakenly or otherwise) are worth thousands
| of people like me, so I understand why it won't ever change for
| the better out of a company's own volition.
|
| ---
|
| When it comes to advertising, say, developer tooling, I think a
| large part of the problem is that there's just not going to be a
| lot of relevant tools out there, for my job or hobbies, that I
| either don't already know about (and aren't using because I have
| already evaluated its prospects) or... I am already using it.
| Conversely, seeing ads for something I am already using has
| potential for negative effects (see above). Tasteful advertising
| is thus useful for the rare case of something I don't know about,
| but I don't think it's worth it when 999/1000 of these ads are
| detrimental and irrelevant.
| mike_hock wrote:
| There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively reward,
| at most there's marketing that I fell for.
|
| Anything that comes from the primary source is an automatic
| nope, I'll only take positive accounts from third-party
| sources. Unfortunately, not even that is enough, so I've become
| wary of HN comments praising any particular product.
|
| What's even more unfortunate is that you have to apply the same
| skepticism to open source "products" these days as it has
| become common even for open source projects to exaggerate the
| project's capabilities and be dishonest about its limitations.
| motoxpro wrote:
| So I am assuming you are putting Hacker News in the "fell
| for" category?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I used to be a bar manager 16 years ago and would often see
| the Anheuser-Busch marketing rep for our region out and
| about, and she would never fail to use her corporate credit
| card to buy me some free drinks. I liked that form of
| marketing.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| TIL open-source beer...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Beer
| retcon wrote:
| >There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively
| reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for.
|
| For very high value software licensing agreements there's
| huge financial rewards for performing the marketing dance
| with the vendor. Paying list for enterprise software doesn't
| happen. Customers who even know what Oracle RAS is , or SQL
| SERVER Parallel, are numbered in the hundreds. The
| expenditure on manpower to design and commission a new major
| database installation is two to three orders of magnitude
| greater than the license costs. That's per database not
| enterprise wide. You embark upon a courtship from the outset.
|
| This isn't what the article nor what most everyone's
| discussing, but I thought it worthwhile to offer a real
| illustration of a very viable means of sales and marketing
| that can be made to work if you have a high value application
| or service and can identify a small finite number of
| customers.
|
| Edit: I probably should have said the number of customers who
| know what they're doing with the most sophisticated databases
| is very likely in the hundreds. Arguably the market is rather
| larger but if the behaviour F500 generally is any indication,
| there's a lot of nameplate and marquee buying driven by C
| suite egos. If you're selling a unique and expensive
| application this is where your margins are. And where tales
| of sales excess and bad reputation / hubris attaching to your
| product originate.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| When I was younger, I sold turquoise jewelry at the Grand
| Canyon and I feel about the same towards sales and marketing,
| I mean they are the same with different levels of scale. I
| found an exception though, the way we sold in the shop I
| worked at would only teach people interesting things if they
| showed interest, explain the history, the nuances, give some
| background on the artist who made it, things like that. Even
| if there wasn't a sale the ones who took the time to listen
| still learned something interesting, and those who did buy
| now had something cool to tell to people who would ask them
| about it later.
|
| So I guess I'm saying that tutorial style marketing is ok,
| but that's such a small amount of what passes for marketing
| nowadays, and marketing tends to always take anything and
| everything too far to the point of ruining it and whatever
| platform supports it.
| Torwald wrote:
| > There's no form of marketing that I "like" or actively
| reward, at most there's marketing that I fell for.
|
| You don't like Paul Graham's essays? Because they are
| marketing. One of the best I've ever seen I may add.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| I would personally say that while marketing elements exist
| within the essays, they are more like an attempt to
| influence the industry he operates in (tech focused venture
| capital) to as much an extent as he is capable with words
| alone.
|
| His essays strike me as appeals promoting a certain manner
| of thinking that he wishes to impart, while also naturally
| acting as marketing simply due to his own default mode of
| thought being deeply entrenched in entrepreneurship.
| lysp wrote:
| > Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'.
|
| Exactly. If I see something like that I'll often add a custom
| ad-block rule so it never shows again.
| throw10920 wrote:
| It'd be _very_ interesting to see the results of some A /B
| tests where they looked at the effectiveness of a marketing
| funnel with some of these distracting features on and off.
|
| I mean, I think we all know what the results would be, but I
| think that a lot of bean-counter types will only listen to
| beans counted...
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think everyone would be surprised at the results. Humans
| are so good at thinking they are representative of other
| people.
|
| The marketers would be surprised because they believe people
| need the shit they advertise.
|
| Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective
| at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not
| efficiency, is most of their goal.
|
| Most devs would be surprised that it's even something people
| talk about.
|
| And the regular citizen like my mom would be surprised that
| such a thing even exists.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is
| effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel
| volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal.
|
| This is a short-term/long-term tradeoff. If you have the
| choice between:
|
| - N people into the funnel, 10% decide to join, the rest go
| away without a negative opinion, some of them even with a
| "not right now but maybe later" opinion
|
| - 10*N people into the funnel, 2% decide to join, the rest
| go away with varying degrees of negative opinion
|
| Short-term, the second choice will give you 2x the users
| joining. Long-term, the second choice will give your
| company a bad reputation.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Fortunately(?), most companies aren't expecting to
| survive long enough to see a bad reputation come back to
| bite them.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| A/B testing creative is pretty typical. I'm certain "flashy"
| ads that _get your attention_ perform better. Of course, they
| change the style of your page, and if _you don 't like they
| way_ they make your site look, don't use them.
| [deleted]
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'.
|
| Anything connected to ads or marketing triggers a visceral
| response of disgust in me.
|
| Not just towards products or companies that try to show me an
| ad, but for the advertising/marketing industry itself, the very
| concept of ads, and all the professions staffed with people who
| make it their life's work to promulgate it all. It _reeks_ to
| me of hot air and lies.
|
| Any I don't trust any company (looking at you, Google and
| Facebook) whose revenue comes primarily from ads - such income
| poisons everything it touches.
| groestl wrote:
| > or... I am already using it.
|
| For something I am already using and actively repel (because I
| have to use it but hate it) I do the following: I click on
| every ad I can find, because they advertise a lot, to make them
| pay 1.30 usd per click for nothing. I'm only seeing this ad
| now, everywhere.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Why are you seeing ads?
| paskozdilar wrote:
| > Not just 'not work', but 'actively repel'. A popup chat bot
| or a survey form request (during or after using a website or
| software product) or anything not germane to the task that has
| a shadow or notification highlight has slowly but surely become
| a form of wart that elicits a deep, instinctual disgust from
| me. I'd even say an unhealthy and unreasonable level of
| disgust.
|
| Same here. I've even setup a bunch of Firefox extensions just
| to keep the annoying ad-like stuff away from me.
|
| Sometimes, when I open up a browser on a computer I don't own,
| I get surprised by how filled internet is with annoyances. It
| feels like I've put on the glasses from They Live and can
| suddenly see all the bullsh-t.
| EddieDante wrote:
| > devs don't want it to read like an ad
|
| I hate advertising. I _especially_ hate stealth ads that are
| written to resemble a legitimate article, blog post, etc.
|
| Don't insult what little intelligence I possess.
|
| > devs want the ad to be relevant
|
| I have never, _ever_ seen a relevant ad. Not once in almost fifty
| years on this godforsaken planet.
| monksy wrote:
| Speaking about marketing to developers. Pushing your product
| through developer relations/advocates is pretty gross as well.
| It's frustrating to see all of the marketing content produced by
| those people. As a developer I'm trying to solve the problems
| sorrounding my domain. To see people acting as sales people and a
| dev is not something i want.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| > Reddit - find subreddits where your devs are
|
| yikes. We've been seeing alot of advertisers sneaking into
| discussion forums and stackoverflow posts lately. I wonder how
| much more astroturfed engagement is coming from advertisers.
| wheybags wrote:
| I think they mean actual platform ads, not ads posing as posts
| from normal users. That said, I do think writing genuinely
| interesting tech articles on a company blog and posting them on
| Reddit/hn is a totally legit and effective method. The quality
| needs to be there though.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Most tech-adjacent subreddits (even sports subs) have tech
| products advertising for my user. Now a lot of this could be
| based off my activity as a user, I'm subbed to a few programmer
| subs that I could get targeted through.
|
| That said all the ads tend to be from large vendors that seem
| to be targeting very senior engineering leadership. Not sure
| how great thats going for them.
| jrockway wrote:
| For me, the deal is often lost on the landing page. "Give us your
| phone number to get the one piece of technical documentation we
| have prepared." Nope. I do not want to receive a phone call from
| you and won't answer it. "Contact sales for pricing." I don't
| have time. I have more than enough meetings as it is, and I would
| rather use the time to put together a proof of concept. The next
| step would be building a consensus internally to get permission
| to give you the money. Some things I just can't afford, if it's
| $100k per year, then I'm not interested. If it's $5/month and the
| product is useful, then I can maybe build a case.
|
| I get why people want to funnel everything through sales; their
| entire day is meetings and if they have an empty slot, they're
| wasting money. I could, of course, dramatically misunderstand how
| to use the product and pass on it if I do an unguided evaluation,
| and that's a risk they want to avoid. But I think that's the
| nature of selling to developers; they are the types that want to
| explore on their own. If the docs don't cut it, your company is
| dead. They can't just issue a purchase order after a 30 minute
| phone call. ("Contact sales" also works around the "how much
| should this even cost" problem. I get that companies want to know
| if they're losing sales because of the price being too high and
| can't collect that information from a simple web visit. I say,
| that's kind of too bad. I want to solve a problem, not be a test
| subject in your A/B test. Start low, and work your way up after
| you have existing customers. Or start high, and sell to someone
| other than me.)
|
| Finally, if I do reach out, spell my name the same way I typed it
| into the "contact us" form. Nobody calls me "John" and those
| letters don't appear in my name in that order. I know you think
| you know better than I do, but you don't.
| khuey wrote:
| > the deal is often lost on the landing page
|
| In most cases the deal isn't being lost there, you're being
| qualified out. The products that do this are going to be a lot
| closer to your $100k/year that you can't afford than your
| $5/month that you have to build a case for.
| jrockway wrote:
| Qualifying out makes sense, but I don't think the companies
| are making the right decision. I was recently looking at a
| web UI that visualizes the output of your team's Bazel runs.
| No pricing information. That seems like a product that is
| going to be $X/developer/month, and when that's a lot of
| money, sure, invite them to a private Slack channel or
| whatever and charge an extra $30k/year. Otherwise, it's
| basically free money.
|
| The outcome of the no pricing information is that three
| options were listed on the Bazel website, so I looked at the
| other ones instead. They did the hard part of getting me to
| the website, not to mention typing in code to implement their
| thing. Now I just want to type in a credit card and use their
| thing.
|
| Not everything is an Oracle database for a Fortune 500
| company. The long tail is long, and contains a lot of money.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > But I think that's the nature of selling to developers; they
| are the types that want to explore on their own. If the docs
| don't cut it, your company is dead.
|
| Amen, if potential-customers _must_ schmooze with sales to get
| access to the docs or pair-program with a sales-engineer to get
| Hello World running, then I get worried (reasonably or
| otherwise) about things like:
|
| 1. The product is a tangled mess so a native guide is
| _required_ to get anything done, and they 've given up on
| making it independently-navigable.
|
| 2. The vendor's business-model is to lock you in and then bleed
| you dry. (Possibly by paying for said native-guides.)
|
| 3. The vendor is focused on selling to management rather than
| making a product that'll work well for engineers.
| okasaki wrote:
| IME you don't advertize to developers, you advertize to/court
| their clueless managers.
| altruios wrote:
| That is why Red won the digital camera wars: they marketed to
| producers. Same idea.
| 35mm wrote:
| Although Arri still do well by marketing to cinematographers,
| who would be the devs in this analogy.
|
| https://www.arri.com/news-en/2022-oscar-winners-rely-on-
| arri...
| zingplex wrote:
| Didn't Arri win the digital camera wars though?
| biztos wrote:
| I wasn't aware the digital camera wars had ended --
| somebody better tell Canon -- but "advertising to
| developers" sure sounds like what Blackmagic does:
|
| https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/developer/
| [deleted]
| boesboes wrote:
| Just don't. We will find you when we need you.
| munk-a wrote:
| Large corporations trying to be "cute" really deeply annoys me. I
| have received enough "Alexa find me a software developer" emails
| to last me until the end of days.
|
| Recruiters tend to be pretty nice to talk with generally - unless
| they're single client recruiters... and Amazon seems to be
| particular unchoosey about who they let wear their name around. I
| have a moderate amount of difficulty even comprehending why they
| advertise so aggressively, as someone in the Vancouver market
| believe me, I know that Amazon is literally always hiring, just
| like I know that EA would be happy to have me as a tester any day
| of the week. The issue isn't that we aren't aware that you're
| hiring, it's that working conditions and compensation are poor
| and most of us would prefer a job that lets us sleep at night.
| [deleted]
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Most of those things would be blocked by my adblockers. If you
| want to reach me, that's now how to do it.
|
| People that managed to reach me did so by either:
|
| - helping me solving one problem
|
| - creating something that looked really cool and fun
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| As someone who makes something solely for developers, I can
| attest to the fact that it's not easy.
|
| I've tried a lot of things, but for my money, podcast
| sponsorships have worked the best and it's not even really close.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| If I may ask, do you reach out to podcasts individually, or use
| a broker?
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| I just reach out myself
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I wonder if this is because podcasts don't have any popular
| adblockers yet, and I'd assume developers have the highest
| rates of using an adblocker.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| Certainly could play a role. Another benefit is they have a
| long tail effect, where people who listen to it a year from
| the original air date will hear it.
| diarrhea wrote:
| Probably one of the top reasons.
|
| I listened to a podcast the other day on Spotify on my phone.
| Last time I did podcasts was maybe 10 years ago. I was
| properly confused when an ad block appeared. I had forgotten
| what ads even were like, and there was no skip button! (For
| example, for YouTube there's Sponsorblock)
| dev_markepear wrote:
| I wrote this article.
|
| Thanks for all the comments. Learning so much.
| ayewo wrote:
| Congrats on landing on the HN front page! Good stuff, although
| a table of contents could make navigation easier for readers.
|
| EDIT: I originally read your article on mobile but viewing on a
| desktop, I see a ToC on the left-hand side of the page. So,
| scratch my earlier remark about a ToC.
|
| I'm working on something similar, but from a different angle:
| marketing to developers organically. Hoping to have it
| published soon.
| guzik wrote:
| How to sell to developers:
|
| 1. Go to your local Hackerspace (or makerspace). If you don't
| have a Hackerspace in your city - create one.
|
| 2. Sit there with your target audience. Don't be pushy.
|
| 3. Solve their problem with your solution, in real-time.
|
| Also, you should spend like half of my time on Meetup.com and try
| to attend all possible dev-oriented events where you could pitch
| my product. Time consuming, but rewarding. Worked with
| https://aidlab.com/developer
| guzik wrote:
| half of your time* pitch your product*
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Create a maker space in an increasing all remote working
| environment as a marketing tool? Slow, expensive, small user
| base....maybe if you convert a ton but that $$$ might be better
| used doing the digital ocean strategy mentioned above (ie be
| useful)
| [deleted]
| dqpb wrote:
| Dear author, please read each sentence you've written before
| posting your article.
| borissk wrote:
| Advertising effectively to developers is crazy expensive.
|
| At my last place they found most effective to sponsor a couple of
| popular podcasts - they were paying $15 to 20K per month.
| no_wizard wrote:
| The company for the ads or is that revenue from the ads?
| borissk wrote:
| For the ads.
| O__________O wrote:
| Surprised promotional prizes & swag were not mentioned.
|
| - (1) For example, YC startup had API integration contest with a
| real battle axe as the prize:
|
| https://www.wufoo.com/blog/win-a-real-battle-axe-in-the-wufo...
|
| - (2) Then there's the free developer swag promotions:
|
| https://iq.opengenus.org/ways-to-earn-free-cool-developer-sw...
| karmakaze wrote:
| I did the Hacktoberfest one for years getting a T-shirt every
| time. I liked the T-shirt and might have done it anyway, as I
| sometimes continued contributing for a while after the event.
|
| After a while the sense I got from Hactoberfest changed. Both
| from the projects and the promoters in ways that disagreed with
| the way I think about opensource and contributing to it. So I
| haven't participated since.
| PeterCorless wrote:
| Exactly. I'd love to hear about folks' most beloved swag and
| sticker acquisitions! This is where people's affinity and
| affiliation is shown.
|
| In my own career, I remember my first IBM "THINK" button back
| in the 1980s, as well as my first six-colored "Apple" stickers.
| Showed them off with pride.
|
| I saw the story above about the "200 OK" t-shirt. I still wear
| t-shirts for an industry I haven't worked for in over two
| decades.
|
| This is where brands aren't fighting for your attention. You're
| _happy_ to champion them. Because you are sold on their tech,
| and you consider yourself part of their tribe. Or it just has
| some sort of totally obscure geeky formula or tech reference
| that only you and others in the tribe will get the in-joke.
| O__________O wrote:
| No idea why, but just realized Apple's "Think Different"
| campaign was likely a direct response to IBM's "Think"
| campaign.
| dev_markepear wrote:
| Love the battle axe contest. Putting it on my backlog.
| shaburn wrote:
| jayroh wrote:
| Apologies for grammar-police'ing here but ...
|
| > Advertising to developers with feels like asking for trouble.
|
| ~with~. "Advertising to developers feels like asking for
| trouble."
|
| Looking forward to reading the rest of this :)
| dqpb wrote:
| And this amazing piece of text:
|
| > CircleCi is (or was) remarketing withyoutube pre-roll video
| ads to people who with case study testimonials to users who
| visited the page but haven't signed up
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Remarketing ads towards people based on past browsing history
| is stalking, full stop.
| dev_markepear wrote:
| Yeah, not my proudest moment -> fixed
| tomxor wrote:
| sounds like they had three cups of tea while writing that
| sentence.
| ccn0p wrote:
| maybe that was part of their marketing the article to you.
| jayroh wrote:
| Effective! Seriously!
| dev_markepear wrote:
| Thanks for finding those.
|
| Not sure how I fk it up when updating/editing.
|
| But I did...
| chatmasta wrote:
| Is this the nitpick thread? Here's mine: there's a horizontal
| overflow on iOS, so it's difficult to scroll vertically down
| the y-axis of the page without accidentally scrolling on the
| x-axis too. This is a pet peeve of mine and so many websites
| (my own included at times) do this.
|
| But thanks for sharing your site and this analysis. It's easy
| to trust your authority on the matter in the title of this
| post, considering its current ranking on the front page of
| HN!
|
| Will you post a follow-up with numbers analyzing today's
| success of marketing to developers who market to developers?
| :)
| [deleted]
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| We found for skilled workers it is mostly peer referral, as
| people already know who they prefer to work with on a team.
| Notably, assigning nontechnical staff to screen talent is going
| to exclude a lot of interesting folks, and still incurs a 3 month
| 54% attrition rate at some firms.
| andix wrote:
| I think JetBrains is doing it quite well. They have different
| subscriptions, but also an affordable All-Products-Pack. And they
| have discounts for individual developers over companies.
| chrsig wrote:
| Jetbrains succeeds because of their products, not their
| advertising. Mostly, I suppose. It was the mayan end of the
| world sale in 2012 that lowered the price point enough for me
| to make my first purchase from them.
|
| They're probably the only tool that I pay money for, and I'm
| generally happy to do so, because I get a _ton_ of value from
| it.
|
| My only complaint is in a polyglot environment it can be
| painful to have multiple jetbrains ides running in the same
| project root.
|
| A number of years ago they shipped all of the different
| products as plugins to intellij. unfortunately at some point
| that stopped. I wish they resolve it, because it's slowly
| driving me to vscode.
| xbar wrote:
| This is a forgotten time, and an important loss.
|
| It would really be lovely if the Jetbrains all-in license
| gave you each product as its own standalone and as an
| IntelliJ plug-in.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| Aren't the specific ides just plugins loaded into rebranded
| IntelliJ?
| andix wrote:
| To some extent probably, but I guess not completely.
| That's why you don't have everything everywhere.
| urthor wrote:
| The upside of different IDEs is they can change the keymaps
| and various options to cater for language specific
| preferences.
|
| My issue is the things they just don't do, Jupyter Notebooks,
| more than anything else.
| andix wrote:
| Only very few companies can build a working business model
| without a good product.
| tfigment wrote:
| This is same for me. It was great value in 2012 and product
| was good enough to keep using. I subscribed to Resharper
| before that but now use the other products like datalink. The
| fact that a personal license can be used at work also helped
| my adoption of the tools.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > The fact that a personal license can be used at work also
| helped my adoption of the tools.
|
| Same here, and because of that I sub to the All Products
| bundle, while if I had to convince my employer it would be
| for PyCharm only. The Personal All Products license is $50
| more per year than a Corporate Single Language license.
|
| Gaining a perpetual license after 1 year of subscription
| also makes the subscription an easier pill for me to
| swallow.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > A number of years ago they shipped all of the different
| products as plugins to intellij. unfortunately at some point
| that stopped. I wish they resolve it, because it's slowly
| driving me to vscode.
|
| Did they stop? I still use IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate for most
| languages (Go, Java, Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript). I had to
| use Rider for C#, AppCode for Swift, and CLion for C/C++, but
| those are the only special cases afaik, or are those
| languages the ones you use & have problems with?
|
| The plugin updates are sometimes a bit behind the dedicated
| IDEs in terms of feature releases which is annoying but I
| think you can often download an EAP build to get around that.
| chrsig wrote:
| I've been under the impression that there are significant
| capability differences between any of the plugins and the
| corresponding product
|
| I mainly use goland & clion, and clion definitely doens't
| have an equivalent plugin. It's been a long time since I've
| tried to use intellij though, so perhaps my impressions are
| antiquated.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You're right that you'd have to use clion for C/C++. I'm
| not sure why they don't have plugins for that.
|
| As far as Go, I've had a great experience with the Go
| plugin for IntelliJ. You do need the ultimate license for
| that though, iirc.
| ta988 wrote:
| A d they are giving away licences in meetups, conferences,
| discounts on podcasts. They offer licences for opensource, for
| academics... If I didn't have free access as an academic I
| probably would not be using it with a license today.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| For me the winner with Jetbrains is that I can see clear
| prices, the product is defined and I can cancel easily.
|
| With other enterprise products it takes forever to get pricing,
| scope of what you buy and how to cancel.
|
| A while ago we had to price Windows for 5000 custom devices and
| it was infuriating to go through a convoluted process with lots
| of different people, meetings and whatever.
| andix wrote:
| I once tried to buy 2 Windows embedded licenses for a
| prototype. All the official resellers in my country couldn't
| even connect me with a person who could give me a quote,
| without first getting a certification, finishing courses,
| signing contracts, etc.
|
| We rewrote our application on Linux then, it was much easier
| than dealing with MS licensing BS.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| This is, I think, most appealing. I do need to know a product
| exists but the most important thing is when I land on the
| product page am I going to find a free product that turns into
| a $10k/yr product? Is there going to be a price range that's
| suitable for my use case? Having a good range of offerings and
| skus makes a huge difference on whether I actually pull the
| trigger or not.
| davidfischer wrote:
| I work on EthicalAds, one of the ad networks mentioned in the
| post. We focus on targeting relevant developer-focused ads to
| content rather than to individuals.
|
| The post is great. My only nitpick is that the author mentions
| that they think retargeting will go away. The scope of
| retargeting might be reduced especially as third-party cookies
| stop working but I don't think retargeting will completely go
| away. Big ad companies with whom visitors have a direct
| relationship with (Google, FB) will always be able to do it. They
| know the pages on their sites and those linked from their site
| that visitors visit and they will use it to target ads. They
| don't need third-party cookies since they have first-party
| cookies.
|
| Networks that just do ads and don't have relationships with
| visitors except for advertising will find it harder and harder.
| At EthicalAds, we don't do retargeting at all because of our
| privacy focus, but many ad networks will find retargeting more
| challenging (less precise, they can always fingerprint users) to
| do. Doing away with it is a good thing from a privacy perspective
| but it probably will further entrench the big players.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| This is some sneaky good advertising right here.
| davidfischer wrote:
| Ads don't need to track folks to be targeted and effective
| =).
| charcircuit wrote:
| But ads that do will be more effective.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't know if it's a danger or just the illusion of one,
| but one of the things that targeted ads supposedly avoid is
| that of influence. In theory if the floor wax I'm
| advertising in my hypothetical home improvement content
| decides that they have a personal issue with some of the
| ethics I have espoused, then there is pressure for me to
| change or lose the endorsement.
|
| This could be either direction as well. We could disagree
| on anything from me showcasing work by a feminist or LGBTQ+
| carpenter, to me making a statement about fair trade goods
| and one of their suppliers is in a country known for
| rampant human rights violations.
|
| The problem I think is that life is full of compromises,
| and I don't know that the bargain we've made and are now
| experiencing the consequences of is a particularly good
| one.
| 300bps wrote:
| How to advertise to developers: write a blog post about
| developers and post it where they hang out.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Yeah the one that's been actively marketing me recently is
| tailscale. Good job of it too...consensual.
| algem wrote:
| I love how the article is one big collage of ads for developers.
| The irony in discussing this topic as a way of marketing to
| developers.
| austinpena wrote:
| How I've marketed to devs successfully (former YC head of growth,
| currently work in paid media):
|
| 1. Paid search.
|
| If someone is searching, give them a good product and good reason
| to sign up. Be relevant, be clear, and offer a no-risk way for
| someone to get started with your product.
|
| 2. Reddit
|
| If there is a subreddit _already_ talking about the problem your
| products solves, you've got a goldmine. Keep your ad simple. Keep
| comments on. Respond to comments.
|
| 3. Organic Search
|
| Have the best content on a specific topic related to your
| product. Add in CTA's in your content while being respectful.
|
| 4. Follow trends
|
| Monitor keywords on Hacker News/Reddit and see what's going on. I
| hit the top of HN twice in a row doing this.
|
| --
|
| General notes:
|
| 1. Understand your customer's problems. Lead with benefits then
| explain with features. Read books like "Breakthrough Advertising"
| by Eugene Schwartz or "Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves.
|
| 2. Talk to people who make it work. The more people you can talk
| to, the better.
|
| 3. Focus on testing messages. Find what resonates and scale that
| cm2012 wrote:
| I do B2B advertising for a living, and that includes a lot to
| developers. Fun article!
|
| Facebook is going to work better than twitter for direct response
| just be sheer volume, even though developers are less likely to
| use FB than the average person.
|
| Generally to target working developers you want to let them know
| your free trial exists so they can poke around in it. To market
| to the bosses you use gated content.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Simple, you're developing like a beast, and your app is ready to
| go live...
| exabrial wrote:
| Basically, devs are smart enough to call out the _actual lies_
| that marketing firms push on other audiences.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- been doing developer marketing for 20 years - it's very simple
| - developers are like cats - just make sure they know you're
| there - treat them well - & eventually they'll come sit with you
| - last thing you wanna do is be mauling them --
| goatcode wrote:
| > they only really believe other devs when it comes to tech
|
| I have an issue with this one. When it comes to tech, I've found
| other developers to have opinions as strong as their actual
| knowledge is weak. It's been a hard thing to learn from some for
| this reason, given how over-agreeable I am in real life.
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