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📅 GEEKS OF THE WEEK

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• 👓 The PLGeek Guide to Engagement (Part 1)

• 👓 Are the stars aligned? (13 reasons your PLG efforts will fail)

• 👓 The importance of account level analytics in B2B

• 👓 Motivation as a lever for improving activation

• 👓 The PLGeek Guide to Product-Influenced Revenue (PIR)

🧠 GEEK OUT

Growth Channels for Developer Tools

It’s critical that developer tooling companies nail their acquisition channels.

These are the various methods and platforms used to attract and convert developers into users or customers, and while there is overlap, following playbooks for non-developer audiences is unlikely to be fruitful. Acquisition channels can broadly be categorised into organic and paid.

Organic channels include content marketing, community engagement, and word-of-mouth, while paid channels encompass advertising on developer-focused platforms, sponsorships, and paid search. The relevance and effectiveness of these channels often depends on your stage of growth - with each stage requiring a different approach to acquisition, balancing factors like budget, brand awareness, and product maturity.

By the end of this post, you'll have a clear understanding of the different channels, why and when they are best leveraged, and how to tailor your acquisition strategy to your current stage - and future growth plans.

Developers, Developers, Developers!

As we delve deeper, it's crucial to understand that the developer audience is unique. They're often skeptical of traditional marketing tactics and value authenticity, technical depth, and peer recommendations.

This makes some acquisition channels particularly effective - and others less so.

From my experience, the most successful developer tooling companies adopt a multi-channel approach that evolves with their growth. They focus on building genuine relationships with the developer community rather than just selling to them.

Never lose sight of the fundamental need to provide real value to users, in this case developers. The best acquisition channel will be redundant if you don’t have a product that genuinely solves developer pain points and improves their workflow.

The Channels That Matter

Choosing the right acquisition channels at the right time is crucial for scaling any company, but dev tooling typically differs from B2B software targeting non-dev users.

Here's the Geek breakdown of the most effective channels for dev tools, how to pursue them, why they work, and when they’re best applied.

1. Content Marketing

• How: Create detailed guides, API documentation, use cases, and technical blog posts. Focus on solving real problems developers face.

• Why: Devs value in-depth, technical content. High-quality blogs, tutorials, and documentation build trust and showcase your expertise.

• When: Start immediately, continue indefinitely

2. SEO

• How: Build for discoverability. Optimise your website, documentation, and content for relevant keywords. Create landing pages for specific use cases and integration scenarios. Leverage all the content from earliest marketing efforts. Investigate programmatic SEO opportunities to scale.

• Why: Developers often turn to search engines when looking for solutions. Being discoverable is crucial.

• When: Start early, but invest heavily once you have substantial content 

3. Social Media Marketing

• How: Share technical insights, product updates, and user stories on platforms like Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Engage in discussions, host AMAs, and run developer-focused campaigns. Use visual content and targeted ads to boost reach. Direct founder presence is important.

• Why: Builds community, increases brand awareness, enables direct communication with developers, amplifies content marketing efforts, and provides a channel for support and feedback.

• When: Start early with basic presence, ramp up significantly post product-market fit, and maintain continuous engagement.

4. Influencer Marketing

• How: Identify and partner with influential developers, reviewers, or thought leaders in your specific dev niche on platforms like YouTube and TikTok to showcase your product. Look for opportunities to coincide with events you are running to drive demand. Sponsor developer-focused podcasts or YouTube channels. Co-host webinars or live coding sessions with influencers.

• Why: Increases brand awareness. Leverages the credibility and reach of respected developers to increase brand awareness and adoption. Provides a source of authentic endorsement that resonates with the dev community.

• When: Start once you have a stable product and some initial traction, typically post product-market fit.

5. Open Source Contributions (if applicable, and particularly for open-core model)

• How: Contribute to open-source projects relevant to your tooling, create open-source tools that complement your paid product, and actively participate in the open-source community.

• Why: Demonstrates your commitment to the dev community, builds credibility and goodwill, and can lead to organic adoption of your paid product.

• When: As early as possible, ramp up post PMF

6. Conferences and Meetups

• How: Attend events, give technical talks, host workshops, and have a presence on the expo floor. Sponsor selected events.

• Why: Face-to-face interactions build stronger relationships. Conferences provide opportunities for product demos, gathering feedback, and networking.

• When: Once you have a stable product and some initial traction. Start to sponsor events as you scale.

7. Communities

• How: Actively participate in forums like Stack Overflow and dev.to, and niche communities in forums, Slack channels, Discord servers etc. Always bias towards helping, and disclose your role as a vendor. Support growth by creating referral programs and highlighting user success stories / testimonials.

• Why: Word-of-mouth is incredibly powerful in developer communities. Satisfied developers become your best advocates. Meeting devs where they hang out and discuss your problem space is critical input to your evolving understanding of that space, and

• When: From early on participate in domain specific communities. Later consider managing specific sub-communities for your tool within larger communities. Establishing your own community is sometimes effective but beware that it’s a long play.

8. Integrations, Partnerships and Marketplaces

• How: Publish APIs to support integration use cases. Identify potential partners in adjacent spaces, create joint offerings. List your API on popular marketplaces (e.g. RapidAPI, APIdeck), ensure excellent documentation, and provide strong support for integrators.

• Why: Partnerships with complementary tools or platforms can exponentially increase your reach and provide integrated solutions that developers love. Devs often discover tools through marketplaces when looking for specific functionality or integrations.

• When: Once you have a proven product and some market presence and robust APIs. Prioritise 1st party integration efforts carefully based on growth opportunity.

9. Education

• How: Develop online courses, webinars, certification programs, and educational resources that align with your product's value prop.

• Why: Educating developers about problems your tool solves creates a pipeline of informed potential users.

• When: Later at scale when you have the resources to create comprehensive educational content

10. Product Hunt

• How: Plan your launch carefully, engage with the community, and be prepared to provide support and answer questions during the launch period.

• Why: Can provide a burst of attention and early adopters, especially for tools with broader appeal

• When: Around PMF and onwards, for major product launches or significant feature releases

11. Paid Ads

• How: Focus on developer-specific platforms (Stack Overflow, dev.to, reddit) and use highly targeted messaging. Ignore general purpose platforms until much later.

• Why: Can accelerate growth by putting your solution in front of developers actively seeking solutions

• When: Once you have a clear understanding of CAC and LTV, and payback period.

A note on DevRel

DevRel isn’t an acquisition channel, but is an essential investment for any dev tooling company to drive activity across many of the community-based acquisition channels.

• How: Hire passionate developers or community leaders as advocates, create content, speak at events, and engage with the community on various platforms.

• Why: DevRels act as a bridge between your company and the developer community, providing authentic voices that resonate with your target audience.

• When: Typically post PMF, when you're ready to significantly invest in community building, though your earliest multifaceted marketing hires may be the technical DevRel profile.

Conclusion

The developer landscape is ever-changing and typically moves faster than most other industries, so your acquisition roadmap needs to be flexible.

The ‘best’ acquisition channels for dev tooling companies evolve as you scale. Early-stage companies should focus on community-driven channels and content creation. As you grow, expand into broader marketing efforts, paid advertising, and eventually enterprise-focused strategies.

But there’s one thing that remains true throughout:

The key to successful acquisition in the developer tools space is to provide genuine value at every touchpoint.

Devs are discerning and will quickly spot inauthentic or overly sales-driven approaches. Focus on education, problem-solving, and community building, and you’re much more likely to get traction.

I’ll close with a quote from my friend Jakub Czakon - CMO @ Neptune.ai and author of the Developer Markerpear newsletter:

It’s an essential mindset to have as you seek to grow your dev tool business.

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