Or: A practitioner’s guide to winning the hearts (and wallets) of developers
TL;DR: Developer marketing is the art, and frankly the street fight, of getting cynical, caffeine‑fueled engineers to notice your tool, try it, and recommend it to someone in Slack. If you think that sounds like regular marketing, kindly step away from the buzzwords and keep reading.
Why Another “What Is Developer Marketing” Post?
Because I’m a content marketer, and most of the top‑ranking answers are either (a) dictionary definitions wearing LinkedIn makeup, (b) listicles with the nutritional value of styrofoam, or (c) whitepapers that confuse word count with insight.
I’m not here for any of that. I’m here to translate over ten years of building content and DevRel programs at developer tool companies, with the associated bruises, into something immediately useful. (“Just be useful.” You’ll discover quickly that this is my personal mantra.)
If you lead product, engineering, or GTM at a dev‑tool org and still treat marketing like Voldemort (or JK Rowling), buckle up.
What Developer Marketing Actually Is (Minus the Fluff)
Developer marketing = creating the awareness, activation, adoption, and advocacy loops that turn developers into successful, vocal users of your product.
Three qualifiers that matter:
- Useful > Persuasive. Developers reward utility. They punish hype.
- Fast path to “Hello World.” The shorter the ramp, the higher the retention.
- Community over campaigns. You can buy clicks. You can’t buy trust.
Yes, DevRel is a flavor of developer marketing. And no, acknowledging that won’t turn you into a pumpkin. It might just fund your budget requests.
Why It Matters (Right Now)
Developers and their Ops cousins approve or veto over 60 % of technical‑stack decisions. Miss them and you’re marketing espresso to people who already built their own roaster.
With PLG, usage‑based pricing, and an AI-tooling gold rush underway, getting devs to sign up and actually use your product is THE growth lever. This holds whether you’re Seed or post‑IPO. Your north star metric? It’s sign ups, every day, all day.
So why focus on useful content? Because I’ve watched so many great tutorials outperform ad campaigns for this persona. Ask me about the six‑line Node snippet that tripled conversions versus paid search. I have charts. They’re sassy.
Inside the Developer Mindset
Developers hate two things:
- Wasting time
- People who waste their time
They’re allergic to corporate adjectives. They adore specifics, working code, and anything that saves them spelunking Stack Overflow. Respect that and you’re halfway to advocacy.
Tangent: This is also why AI took over so hard and fast. It actually gives developers working code.
Full disclosure—I work at Builder.io now, and yes, I’m biased. But that’s the whole reason I joined. I think the best place to be is at a dev tool that’s deeply, intrinsically useful to developers.
Wanna talk about how Builder’s Fusion engine rewrites your frontend life? HMU.
The 4A Developer Journey
| Stage | Dev Need | Your Job | One Metric That Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | “Why should I care?” | Speak their language where they hang out | Qualified traffic (search, communities) |
| Activation | “Show me it works.” | Zero‑to‑running tutorial, sandbox, free tier | Time‑to‑Hello‑World |
| Adoption | “Make it production‑worthy.” | Deep docs, patterns, community answers | Weekly Active Developers |
| Advocacy | “I’ll tell my team.” | Community highlights, swag, CFP coaching | Net New Dev Referrals |
DevRel and marketing duties are braided through every stage. Separate them and you’re trying to climb a wall with half a rope.
Pillars of High‑Impact Developer Marketing
1. Education‑First Content
Not fluff. Not SEO mush. Real answers to real developer problems.
This means multi-layered content: conceptual explainers for decision-makers, step-by-step tutorials for builders, and reference docs for when anyone hits a wall at 1 a.m. Every format should reduce friction, not introduce it.
Your headline should tell a dev why they should care. Your first code block should compile. Your “advanced guide” should solve a problem more elegant than “add logging.” If it doesn’t pass those tests, you’ve built a bounce generator, not a funnel.
2. Immediate Playground
Your tool’s “first date” should not involve installing a dozen dependencies, setting five environment variables, and sacrificing a goat to the YAML gods.
Every modern dev tool needs an “instant try” path. That might be a sandbox, CLI scaffold, in-browser REPL, deploy-to-Render button, or just a good old Postman collection. Whatever lets someone poke your product without signing a blood oath.
Faster time-to-value isn’t just good UX. It correlates directly with higher activation, better retention, and fewer support tickets. And yes, the best teams A/B test it ruthlessly.
3. Community and Events
If docs answer “how,” community answers “what if?”
Developers don’t join communities for brand updates. They join to get help, swap solutions, or feel like they’re not the only person fighting the SDK. Whether it’s Discord, Slack, GitHub Discussions, or low-key Twitch office hours, the win isn’t volume—it’s velocity and vibe.
You don’t need 10,000 lurkers. You need 20 people who share their fix, link your docs, and drag their teammates along. That’s compounding trust. That’s word-of-mouth in commit form.
4. Open Source and Social Proof
Developers are natural skeptics. Marketing headlines get skimmed. Source code gets read.
If you want credibility, publish your sample repos, surface your changelog, document your uptime, and showcase what real teams have built. Screenshots of working integrations beat polished explainer videos every time.
Bonus: every time someone forks your repo or stars your SDK, they’re joining your distribution network—without you buying a single ad impression.
5. Feedback Loops to Product
Most marketing funnels end at “conversion.” Developer funnels don’t.
DevRel hears pain points. PMs prioritize them. Marketing updates positioning. Support feeds edge cases back into docs. When this loop runs well, your roadmap aligns with real demand—and your product improves faster than your competitors’ messaging.
Break the loop, and you’ll ship features no one asked for, while devs Google for alternatives that did.
Tactics That Work in 2025
- Rapid tutorial series (#JavaScript, #Python, #Rust, #LLM, #MCP)
- Sample repo with a
deploy with ...button - Community AMAs with engineers, not execs
- Usage‑based onboarding emails tied to actual product activities
Measure time‑to‑value, not open rates.
Mini‑Cases from the Field
Vercel: Docs as Distribution
Vercel doesn’t just treat documentation as a support artifact, it’s the top of their funnel.
Every changelog reads like a mini-workshop. New features come with tailored examples, usage guides, and full-stack demos. Their “Next.js Learn” tutorial isn’t hidden in a menu; it’s a flagship product experience. And the SEO? Surgical. Their docs regularly outrank competitors’ homepages for framework-related searches.
Lesson: When your documentation teaches better than your competitors’ landing pages sell, you don’t just convert devs—you earn their bookmarks.
Twilio: The Copy‑Paste Gospel
Early Twilio was infamous for one thing: dead-simple curl commands everywhere.
Their docs weren’t long, but they were lethal. Any developer could send themselves a text message in under a minute, often without reading past the second paragraph. That dopamine hit, “I made this thing work!” hooked users before a single salesperson reached out. Twilio’s revenue followed that activation curve, not the other way around.
Lesson: The faster you deliver a small, tangible win, the more likely a developer is to trust your API and come back for more.
HashiCorp: OSS to Enterprise Flywheel
HashiCorp built their entire business on a foundational insight: give the community real power, and the enterprise will come to you.
Terraform wasn’t a lead magnet, it was the product. Developers adopted it organically to solve real infrastructure pain. By the time HashiCorp approached an enterprise buyer, the dev team had already standardized on the tool. The only question left was: “How do we scale this securely and collaboratively?” Cue the commercial offering.
Lesson: If your open source solution solves real problems and builds real habits, enterprise monetization is less about persuasion and more about enablement.
Stormpath → Okta: Content Equity as Strategy
At Stormpath, every SDK shipped with:
- Dead-simple Hello World
- Copy-paste code sample
- Foolproof tutorial
Sign‑ups jumped massively (Don’t ask me for the number, do you know how long ago that was? Like I still have that spreadsheet…). When we joined, folks at Okta cited organic developer adoption velocity as one of the most exciting things about Stormpath
Lesson: A great tutorial scales better than a cold-calling army.
Scaling Inside Okta
Post-acquisition, we rebuilt Okta’s dev portal and started churning out excellent and search optimized developer content. We built a community. We added open source tools like JWT Inspector to the world. Monthly users doubled. And then doubled again. And again. You get the picture.
Lesson: Build trust with devs and the rest of the org will follow.
These companies didn’t just get lucky. They built systems where education, community, and product feedback were tightly woven.
Which brings us to the org question no one wants to ask:
How Do You Organize for Success?
Developer marketing and DevRel might live on different teams but they’re ultimately one engine. Split them across your org chart and you risk wheel spin instead of forward motion
That means someone has to own the whole system: community, content, sample repos, social media, metrics all of it. Yes this is mildly terrifying. Especially if you’re from DevRel and someone starts talking about funnel math or SEO.
We’ll talk later about how to survive that hybrid role and why it’s worth it.
For now ask yourself:
- Can they understand enough code to ask smart questions, and enough funnel to act on the answers?
- Do they have the mandate to build developer trust across touchpoints, not just chase traffic?
- Can they explain what’s slowing down developer activation in plain English, to people who think in spreadsheets?
If not you don’t have a leader you have a traffic jam.
Common Pitfalls (and Fixes)
| Pitfall | Actual Problem | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Gating every PDF | Treating devs like MQL vending machines | Ungate. Track activations |
| “Revolutionary” feature copy | Hype ≠ trust | Lead with pain solved |
| Docs disconnected from funnel | Devs can’t find what they need to activate | Build a handshake between docs, DevRel, and marketing on what gets surfaced and updated |
| Measuring vanity traffic | Page views lie | Define and track product activation metrics |
30–60–90 Starter Plan
Days 1–30 Audit top search terms, social and community threads, GitHub issues. Identify friction in “Hello World” paths. Map existing content to the 4A journey.
Days 31–60 Launch a dead-simple quickstart in two or more popular languages. Ship a “starter repo” with a one-click deploy. Kick off your first community AMA or livestream.
Days 61–90 Wire product analytics to onboarding content. Build a reporting loop from DevRel and support into marketing. Propose one recurring artifact—a changelog digest, a usage milestone newsletter, or a monthly dev report.
Outrun 80 % of Series A startups with just that.
Developer Marketing Metrics That Don’t Make Engineers Roll Their Eyes
| Stage | KPI | Reality Check |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Search impressions, community joins | Organic > paid unless you hate money |
| Activation | Time‑to‑Hello‑World, sandbox completions | The shorter, the stickier (yes, literal ones) |
| Adoption | Weekly Active Devs, usage per seat | Usage-based billing loves this |
| Advocacy | Referrals, content contributions | GitHub stars are nice. Revenue is nicer |
Bonus: Instrument everything. Swag is the only part of your booth they’ll take home. Make it count, then show Finance the conversion rate.
The Thing No One Says Out Loud
DevRel is marketing, and that’s okay.
Saying that out loud doesn’t diminish the craft. It doesn’t turn your meetup talk into a billboard or your community post into a press release. It just acknowledges reality: if your work drives awareness, activation, adoption, and advocacy, then congrats, you’re doing marketing. High-trust, high-impact, high-context marketing.
Pretending otherwise just limits your budget, your headcount, and your leverage. It forces you to beg for scraps from GTM teams who don’t understand what “time-to-first-200” means.
Put DevRel and Marketing in the same Slack channel. Share metrics. Share strategy. Share wins. Watch activation time drop. Watch retention climb. And when your boss starts quoting your metrics in the all-hands, try not to smirk.
FAQ
Q: Can an engineer run developer marketing? A: Yes, if they can think in funnels as well as functions. The best ones bring technical credibility and learn to ship campaigns, not just code. Just don’t assume that knowing the tech is the same as knowing the audience.
Q: Isn’t DevRel already doing this? A: Sometimes. But if DevRel owns awareness and support while Marketing’s off writing gated eBooks, you’re splitting the atom with a butter knife.
Q: What if we already have DevRel—why do we need both? A: Because DevRel without marketing becomes reactive support. Developer marketing sets the runway so DevRel can scale, not scramble. It’s not either/or. It’s load-balancing.
Q: Do I need a technical background to run a hybrid DevRel/DevMktg team? A: No, but you need taste. Can you tell the difference between useful content and polished nonsense? Can you spot a bottleneck in onboarding without installing the product? Be curious. Learn the product, at least enough to be dangerous. Be useful.
Related Content
- Good Developer Content is a Conversation, Not a Broadcast — Why content that listens earns more trust than content that only talks.
- Building Docs with an Arc-Reactor (and a Bit of AI) — How I turned technical writing muscle memory into reusable playbooks and an AI assistant.
- I Built a Custom AI Assistant Because My Brain Refused to Use Notion — A look into how I built an AI system tailored to my ADHD brain and productivity needs.