Developer marketing and the myth of the Rosetta Stone
Summary
Or the (non-)relationship is painted as being downright antagonistic, with oblivious marketers trying to crowd their unwanted messages into the attention space of contemptuous devs. But the notion that it’s a Faustian bargain (“Let me tempt you with this white paper, but at the price of your personal data so I can spam you into submission!”) — just (click)bait for the (sales)hook — is assumed to be one of the reasons “developers hate marketing.” But great content — for instance, relevant and informative e-books, guides and white papers — works as marketing tools because it truly helps a prospective customer be more successful. “What are the options out there for handling this part of my application’s data?” “Has anybody else worked around this bug I’m running into?” “What cool ways are other developers improving their toolchain?” What’s developer-focused content? Practice an attitude where you’re listening to what they’ve got to say, asking questions, while never breathing a word about A/B testing your tag lines or value propositions. Don’t waste their time, whether it’s by blathering in chat, spamming their inbox or using clickbait content that doesn’t offer anything original or useful.