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. ย
How to present benchmark results masterclass from RavenDB
The biggest problem with the software benchmarks that you run is?
People don't trust you. Especially when the results are good.
๐ฌ๐ผ๐ ๐ท๐๐๐ ๐ป๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ผ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ฟ๐๐๐. ๐ข๐ป๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ด๐ต ๐๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐.
People from RavenDB do it by:
This looks solid because it feels like I could re-run what they did myself.And so I trust them and I probably won't ;)
When you promote your feature/product launch on Reddit, it can easily end up being "not well received" to put it mildly.
I am talking downvotes, negative comments that get upvoted ย and break the discussion. Or good old crickets.
But Reddit can also be a fantastic source of audience feedback, peer validation for your product, and some of the most vocal advocates you'll ever find.
I really liked how Tom Redman from Convex directed the discussion in the Reddit thread under their laucn post:
The launch post itself was great too:
"Open sourcing 200k lines of Convex, a "reactive" database built from scratch in Rust" that linked to the GitHub repo.
Doesn't get much more to the point and devy than that.
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.
๐ The team at Storyblok ran a Tetris competition:
Afaik it was a big hit and I can definitely see why.
๐ A few more notes:
btw, Iย read about it on DX Tips. You want to check out that article on dev conferences from DX Tips
A classic dev tool blog call to action that is somewhat underused these days.
Was going through Martin Gontovnikas blog and found a post from a couple of years back.
He called this "Aside CTA" and the idea is this:
Why this can work well with devs is:
Definitely a classic that is worth trying.
Beautiful growth loop that uses GitHub PRs to spread awareness even internally in the org.
And just one dev needs to sign up for the product to start it.
Works like this:
Heard about it onย Lenny's podcast episode with Ben Williams (the story starts at 20:53)
... and then signed up to see the actual PR.
I really love this one as it allows you to spread inside the organization even if everything is on-prem and you never get to see it.
Those PRs are just working behind the scenes doing marketing for you.
Brilliant!
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:
And folks behind React docs solved it nicely by:
Not groundbreaking maybe but a beautiful implementation that is just a delight to use.
"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:
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.
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.
โ It helps people:
Just a great touchpoint in the developer journey.
๐ 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.
Usage-based pricing is loved by devs. But has its own problems.
Ok, so first what are those problems?
Value metric:
Predictability and procurement:
But devs love usage-based pricing:
It is great for a dev tool company:
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:
Very interesting approach.
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"
Install code
Whatever I choose I will actually get my hands dirty.
I think this will be my default from now on.
What to put in the header when your dev tool does a lot?
I like how Appsmith approaches it.
In their case, they have multiple use cases they want to showcase.
But you could use the same idea for many features or products.
Show multiple clickable tabs:
A bonus idea is the "Try cloud" | "Self-hosted" CTA.
It communicates right away that you can deploy that dev tool anywhere.
If the self-hosted deployment is important to your customers let them know.
You don't want them to look for it and drop from the page trying to find the FAQ.
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.
How to do a dev-focused brand video and get 10M+ views?
Making a memorable brand video is hard.
Doing that for a boring tech product is harder.
Doing that to the developer audience is next level.
Postman managed to create not one but three of those brand videos that got from 4M to 10M youtube views.
The videos I am talking about are:
So what did they do right?
Honestly, I am not exactly sure what special sauce they added but those are just great videos that you watch.
And I definitely remember them and the company which is exactly what you want to achieve with brand ads.
How to present many features at once?
Sometimes your dev tool has many features/products that you want to show.
โ Showing all of them as separate sections doesn't work with more than 3. It just gets too long very quickly.
โ You can go with the tabs pattern where each tab has copy+visual for a feature.
๐ก But there is another option that makes a ton of sense when you have many features to show.
Interactive tiles of different sizes.
๐ I like the implementation of that pattern coming from Clerk:
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.
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:
Got me hooked and kept me watching for sure.
+ funny is memorable so you will get a better recall too.
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:
And looking at the results it delivers.
A great example of a dev-focused Linkedin post format from Khuyen Tran ๐
What I like about this:
Just great job!
What if your next swag was a donation? That's what Cockroach Labs did.
Ok, so the typical way of doing swag at a conference is to give out t-shirts for badge scans.
And then folks either wear them or throw them away (or keep wearing them when they should have thrown them away but that is another story).
After the conference you take leftovers with you, ship them home or, you guessed it, throw them away.
A lot of throwing away for a badge scan if you ask me.
Cockroach Labs decided to do something completely different.
They donate a few $ to a great charity @Women Who Code for every badge scan they get.
I love it.
An extra benefit (and where the idea originated) is that with this, you can do virtual badge scans too.
Great SEO tactic.
What folks from Cronitor did is:
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
โ
How to write a "What is {MY CORE KEYWORD}" article that gets to the top of HackerNews? ๐
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:
๐ฆ๐๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ผ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ถ๐ป๐ ๐ถ๐ป๐๐ฟ๐ผ.
โข โ No "In today's fast-paced data-driven world enterprises work with data" stuff.
โข โ
Justย ย "Learn what database sharding is, how sharding works, and some common sharding frameworks and tools."
๐๐ถ๐๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ธ๐ฒ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐น๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐ฝ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ.
๐ Speaking peer to peer, not authority-student:
โข "Youโve probably seen this table before, about how scaling out helps you take this users table, all stored on a single server:"
โข "And turn it into this users table, stored across 2 (or 1,000) servers:"
โข "But thatโs only one type of sharding (row level, or horizontal). "
๐จ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ท๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ด๐ผ๐ป ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐๐ฎ๐ป๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฎ๐๐ฑ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ
Things like:
โข "Partitioning has existed โ especially in OLAP setups"
โข "Sifting through HDFS partitions to find the missing snapshot "
๐๐ฐ๐๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ฒ๐ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ต๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ต๐ผ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ป๐ด๐ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ
๐ฅ Look at the section "How database sharding works under the hood" with subsections:
โข Sharding schemes and algorithms
โข Deciding on what servers to use
โข Routing your sharded queries to the right databases
โข Planning and executing your migration to a sharded solution
๐ ๐๐ผ๐ป๐๐: ๐ฝ๐น๐๐ด ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐ ๐ด๐ฒ๐ป๐๐น๐
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.
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:
By doing that they seem to have billboards everywhere, fight ad fatigue, and stay top of mind.
Love it.
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.
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.
Most dev tools have two deployment options:
And then companies present it on their pricing page with some flavor of two tabs.
And you need to name them somehow.ย
And how you describe those things sometimes adds confusion for your buyers:
I like how nice and simple solution Retool used on their pricing page:
Explicit, obvious and to the point.
Love it.
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 Iย need it.
But Iย also get those conversion focused "Request a demo"ย and "Start a trial"ย for when Iย am ready.
On top of that Iย get tours and help in the sidebar for when Iย get stuck.
.... and the whole thing is gated behind a work email which Iย 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 Iย can feel compelled to type in that email.
I love this video ad format from Hygraph.
They are reading and reacting to bad reviews.
I saw this in B2C but not in the dev tool B2B. Love it!
So basically how they did that campaign is:
Through all that, you get entertained and learn something about their product. This is such a fun format to test out!
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:
What is crucial is that the calculator dimensions need to be understandable and familiar to the reader.:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
Just an awesome billboard/ad format for a dev too company coming from Vercel.
What I like about it is:
Simple and beautiful.
Btw, they actually run similar ads on Reddit and it makes a lot of sense IMHO.
This is such a fantastic ad creative because it is just so different.
So basically what Kinde it does is:
๐ That timer is such a great way of catching attention and keeping it while landing your product message. It seems raw and "whatever" but I think it is very intentional in its dev-friendly delivery.
So if you have a dev tool that has awesome devex and can get people to that aha moment quickly then give it a go (and tell me how it went ;)). ย
Digital Ocean went for an ad for the Hactoberfest in a tricky place.
To keep it in the medium that fits YouTube shorts they:
I think doing YouTube shorts is an interesting opportunity in a yet unsaturated market (as of 2022).
And doing ads that fit that medium so nicely is an art.
Good job DO!
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. ย
๐ And I think that a Plauground ย 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.
๐ฅ Making this CTA "big and shiny" and showing a glimpse of what will happen after clicking is great too.
๐ค 2 changes I'd test out:
But the core idea behind making the playground your core navbar resource section CTA is just great.
Which feature/product to show in the header?
How about all?
Many dev tool products are feature-rich. And you want to show those awesome features.
But it is easy to overwhelm the reader when showing so much info.
That is why I really like the header tabs pattern that @PostHog uses:
This pattern is especially powerful when you want to communicate completeness.
Posthog definitely wants to do that. If you are on that train I'd strongly suggest considering/testing it.
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:
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.
This is a very nteresting approach from PubNub.
They could have published an article on their blog and posted a link to Reddit.
Instead, they just posted an entire article, 3851 words . That post got 360 upvotes and made it to the top of r/rust. Wow.
Never seen anyone do that before but I like this. It could be great:
Some things I also liked:
Super interesting approach that I want to test out myself.
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. ย 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.
Newsjacking is a great marketing tactic.
Especially when you can connect it nicely to your product.
โ
And GitGuardian, a tool for secrets management does it beautifully here.
They ran a story on how Toyota suffered from a data breach.
Because they didn't manage their GitHub secrets properly.
โ
Brilliant.
A classic "It doesn't suck" campaign.
Afaik, Barebones ran the first version of this campaign 20 years ago and it was a huge success.
It is so simple, it just speaks to that inner skeptic.
It doesn't say we are the best, we revolutionize software.
It says it doesn't suck.
That is way more believable and makes me think that there is a dev on the other side of that copy.
And there is something cool about this message that makes me want to wear it to the next conference.
Good stuff.
Subtle but effective dev blog CTA -> info box.
Basically a plain article in-text CTA but there is something special about it.
It looks like a docs info box.
It is not a "buy now" style call to action but rather a subtle "you may want to know about X" push.
But for it to really feel like an info box it needs to connect to the section of the section of the article around it.
Otherwise, it will just feel like an intrusive ad anyway.
PlanetScale does a great job here.
They link the part of the article about the sharding library Vitess with their product that was built on top of it.
It feels natural and I am sure it gets clicks and if not then product awareness.
Nice Reddit ad from kftray.
This is a simple ad format but lands the message:
An interesting fact is that there is no call to action?!
They say "Kftray is an open-source" which is enough for those interested to google "kftray github" or just go to GitHub and find it. And makes the ad less pushy which is a nice touch on Reddit.
But the most important takeaway is this. If the problem is real to the dev audience you target you don't need to go fancy. Just show how you solve it.
This is one of the more devy blog designs I've seen in a while.
It has this docs-like feel.
But is just a bit more fun and loose than most docs would allow.
Here is what I like:
And if your posts are code-heavy, then a docs-like experience is where you want to be anyway.
But you can spice it up with things that wouldn't fit the docs.
Like a Twitter/X embed or a meme.
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 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 ;)
Vs pages are a classic SaaS marketing.
But I like how Ably adjusts them to the developer audience:
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.
Takes guts but I love it.
Classic remarketing ad. But things are classic because they work ๐
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:
That is it.
Show enough of these and % of people will trust you and convert.
Not sure how to find developers for audience research interviews?
Sometimes all you need is ask.
I really liked what the founders of this startup did:
Sometimes you don't need to overthink it and can just ask.
There are a lot of boring vendor t-shirts at conferences.
And they get boring results.
I like this bold design from GitGuardian:
Nice.
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?
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. ย
So how did they do it?
Let's go through these in detail.
Who are you? Why should I listen?
What is the problem really?
What does your product do and how does it work?
Speak "dev to dev"
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.
Say what we are all thinking. โ
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:
โ
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:
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.
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:
This is very developer-focused approach and I love it.
Need one more call to action idea for your dev tool blog?
How about starting an article with it?
Sounds weird but if done right it can work. Even with devs (or maybe especially with devs).
Earthly did and they are known for great dev-focused content.
Ok, so how does it work?
You start your article with a contextual call to action where you explain:
And then you let people read.
Those who find the topic important will remember you and/or maybe click out to see more.
I like it. It's explicit, transparent, and actually noninvasive.
I really like this Reddit ad from Sentry.
Powerful simplicity.
They don't do:
โข long value-based copy
โข fancy, in-your-face CTAs
โข creative that feels "professional
They go for:
โข focus on the pain
โข creative that speaks to that pain
โข low-key CTA ", get Sentry" rather than "Get Sentry Free!"
โข building rapport with the dev with copy "If seeing this in React makes you ๐คฎ"
And through simplicity and focus they deliver a message:
โข Stack traces in React are not much fun
โข They seem to understand that
โข Sentry helps you solve that
Good format.
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 โญ 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.
Awesome sponsorship ad from Trieve in the Cassidy Williams newsletter.
Not sure who wrote it but it must have been a dev ;) It is just so refreshingly to the point.
๐ What I like:
This ad does it so gracefully and quickly it is just hard not to love. ย
Is it better to do one big prize or many small prizes?
This is a decision you have to make when thinking about running a swag campaign.
Turns out that a ย small number of huge prizes can get you way better ROI on the same budget.
And NannyML has done it brilliantly here.
They are a monitoring tool and they give away monitoring setup.
This is something that actually can go viral. And it did.
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:
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.
The "Resources" tab is the most loved and hated tab for developer marketers.
Ok so the common problem is that you have lots of different resources:
You want to showcase them in the navbar but where do you put them?
Under product? Company? Docs?
How to make sure that people don't go to your blog to read about your product just to find out that you talk about the industry problems there?
Enter the "Resources" tab. The "Miscellaneous" of the navbar world.
And typically it is just crammed with all stuff that doesn't fit anywhere. Just like any respectable misc folder would. ย
How do you deal with that?
Snyk approached it in a clear and logical way:
I love this (and already stole the idea for our site).
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"
๐ง That helps you tackle obstacles your dev reader has:
๐ Modal solves it beautifully by going simple but smart:
It lands the message that this section should land for sure. I really like it.
Pre-roll ads are obviously invasive and annoying, especially to devs. But they are also prime real estate in the ad ecosystem.
You can choose not to do them at all (fair option). Or try and make them more fun and less annoying ;)
I like how Sentry handled it in this 16-second video:
Basically they managed to "buy" 11 seconds of attention with 5 seconds of a pattern-breaking hook. ย In the world of pre-roll YouTube dev-focused ads, I'd say this is a win.
Also, I don't know the results of the "Sentry can't fix that " campaign, but I like how this builds curiosity. Even with that slogan alone.
Developer-focused Reddit ad. 33 upvotes, 30 comments.
So @Zesty is a company that targets devops folks and helps with cloud cost optimization.
And they decided to run Reddit ads.
So they:
And they got 33 upvotes and 30 comments.
Some of the comments were technical.
One comment that got 67 upvotes was actually
"Okay, this ad is pretty funny"
And I agree, this is a pretty funny ad that I am sure brought them some brand awareness and clicks.
Copy that lands makes a huge difference in dev tool website conversion.
Earthly proved it with this "tiny" change.
So I am a huge believer in good copy.
Not the clever one but the one that is written with words that your customers use.
That is rooted in product and research.
But I often hear devs or founders say things like "it's just copy".
It is not "just copy" it is your message, it is your positioning.
It is the difference between ย "cool, let's try it" and "now for me, whatever".
So some time ago I came across this article from the Earthly CEO Vlad Ionescu.
He shared that at some point they decided to run this A/B test with just a "tiny" change.
They changed the word "CI" -> "Build" across the homepage.
And their core website conversion doubled.
So next time you work on website copy give it some more thought and you may be surprised that "just copy" made a huge difference.
How to get more ROI from your dev conference booth? ->ย 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:
Just a nice little tactic but I bet it squeezed a bit more of that ROI juice that we all need in 2023 ;)
How to design the navbar product tab? This is what @PostHog does ๐
Figuring out what to put in the navbar is tricky:
The "Product" tab is especially tricky.
It can get overloaded with a ton of content.
I like how Posthog approached it:
I like it.
Funny and memorable competitive billboard ad from @Statsig ๐
You have a big incumbent, everyone knows them. Use it to anchor your brand.
And tell the story of how you do things differently.
๐ 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.
๐ 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?).
This is how you write dev tool JTBD blog posts.
Masterclass of writing this type of content from @WorkOS imho.
Deep 2000 word guide that explains how to add webhooks the your application.
Goes into examples, best practices, everything.
One thing it doesn't do?
It doesn't push the product left right and center.
In fact, the only CTA is hidden in the very last sentence of the very last section.
Why?
Because most likely, the reader's intent is around understanding the problem at this point.
They want to understand what adding webhooks to their app really means from the practitioner's standpoint.
And they did that beautifully.
Could you have pushed the product a bit more? Sure.
But by answering the actual questions devs came here for they managed to build trust.
And I am sure got their fair share of click-throughs and signups anyway.
Navbar is a hugely important conversion lever on the dev-facing website. I saw it move the needle by x times in some cases/conversion events.
So, what does a good one look like?
Auth0 did a great job on their developer portal. But the learnings can be applied to your marketing website too.
What I like:
That makes it easy for devs to explore. Without having to click out to see what each tab/item means. And when devs know what you mean they are more likely to actually click out. And convert.
This is a really clever billboard campaign.
Show don't tell they say.
And Segment did exactly that by putting billboards with the wrong location printed on them (LA in SF etc).
The theme/message was "What good is bad data?" which was exactly what they wanted to convey.
What I like about is the alignment between:
This is hard to do imho so big kudos to them ๐!
Downside?
Reportedly many folks who saw billboards didn't get that it was intentional and Tweeted at them about the error.
Or maybe they were next-level jokers...
How easy it is to get started is a big conversion factor for any dev tool.
Devs want to test things out and if it is hard to do they will be gone testing a competitor that made it easy.
And so a good how-to section on your homepage can make a big difference in getting devs to that first experience.
Appsmith does it beautifully with their 1-2-3 How-to section:
It is so engaging and just beautifully designed. And the CTA to additional resources like integrations, widget library, and docs make the message land. I do believe it is easy to set this up.
Great pattern to copy-paste imho.