Developer Marketing: The Essential Guide

Check out our second edition "Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide", it's bigger, richer and a more complete guide.

Software developers are gaining increasing influence within every company they work for and work with. Engaging at C-level is no longer sufficient: the software developer is now a powerful force in decision-making.

This book is intended to be the “textbook” for those working - or starting - in developer marketing. It will teach you how to engage with developers to build a two-way relationship that is informative and empowering. The book is a timely guide to essential best practices in developer marketing, which is a nascent industry and quite unlike other areas of B2B marketing.

All profits are donated to a worthy cause, details of which can be found on the website for the book at https://sdata.me/dev-marketing-guide.

Topics covered include: running successful developer events, building and maintaining a solid community of developers, how to get the most out of email marketing, how to nurture IoT / hardware developers, how to encourage experts in your community to advocate for you and how to generate a mindset for content marketing in your organization.

This book, the first of its kind, is from leading developer marketing practitioners in some of today’s largest technology companies. It collects the insight of a generation of thought leaders within the field, sharing them to the benefit of all who are working, or planning to work, in the industry as it finally takes off. The goal is to accelerate best-in-class developer marketing, which ultimately benefits users and customers.

The authors of this book reflect a diversity of experience from those working at some of the world’s most auspicious software companies. It includes chapters by developer marketing thought leaders at Accenture, Arm, Atlassian, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, SalesForce, SAP, Unity and VMWare, and a foreword by the Head of Worldwide Developer Marketing for Amazon Web Services. The book was produced by SlashData, the company behind The Future Developer Summit, where the most prestigious technical companies in software development come together to share their insights and best practices on developer marketing. SlashData are also the the leading analyst firm in the developer economy, tracking global software developer trends via the largest, most comprehensive developer surveys worldwide. Their research helps the top technology firms understand who developers are, what tools they are using and where they’re going next.

You will find this book essential if you’re working in developer marketing and want to learn how to build your ecosystem to attract, support, and grow your developer base. You will learn the fundamentals if you are a new hire entering this domain. You will pick up new and deep insights if you are already working in developer marketing and want to advance your career. It isn’t a step-by-step guide to writing a developer marketing strategy, but instead a toolbox for you to gain the knowledge and practical understanding needed to work with your audience.

Whatever your experience, you know, or soon will know, that the developer audience is a tough one to market to, because they dislike aggressive or repetitive messaging and prefer to gain early, hands on experience with a product, making up their own minds by experimenting and talking to existing users. If you take away the insights of our contributors, and absorb their tips and best practices you will be well on the way to handling any B2B marketing role!

Foreword
Adam FitzGerald: Head of Worldwide Developer Marketing, Amazon Web Services

Introduction | Developers Are a Big Deal. Marketing To Them Shouldn't Be
Jo Stichbury: Technical Editor, SlashData

Chapter 1 | Using Developer Personas to Stay Customer-Obsessed
Cliff Simpkins: Director, Azure Developer Marketing, Microsoft Corporation

Chapter 2 | Successful Developer Email Marketing
Desiree Motamedi: Head of Developer Marketing, Facebook

Chapter 3 | The Power of Community
Jacob Lehrbaum: Vice President of Developer and Admin Relations, Salesforce

Chapter 4 | Repositioning Your Brand to Developers
Siddhartha Agarwal: Group Vice President, Product Management and Strategy, Oracle

Chapter 5 | Connecting Developers With Experts
Thomas Grassl: Vice President, Developer and Community Relations, SAP

Chapter 6 | Hands-on Labs for Effective Developer Relations
Larry McDonough: Director, Product Management, VMware
Joe Silvagi: Director, Customer Success, VMWare

Chapter 7 | Growing Up By Scaling Down: How A Small Developer Event Can Make Big Impacts On Your Ecosystem
Luke Kilpatrick: Senior Developer Programs Manager, Atlassian
Neil Mansilla: Head of Developer Experience, Atlassian

Chapter 8 | How To Connect With Developers When You Can't Meet Them
Pablo Fraile: Director of Developer Ecosystems, Arm
Rex St. John: Senior IoT Ecosystem Manager, Arm

Chapter 9 | Hardware Is the New Software - Building a Developer Community Around a Chip Instead of an SDK
Ana Schafer: Director of Product Marketing, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
Christine Jorgensen: Director of Product Marketing, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Chapter 10 | Behind the Scenes of Great Developer Events
Katherine Miller: Cloud Developer Relations Events Program, Google

Chapter 11 | Developing the Right Mindset to Create Great Content
Matthew Pruitt: Head of Global Community & Social Media, Unity

Chapter 12 | Closing Thoughts: How to Attract, Engage and Retain Developers
Stephen Donnelly: Technology Lead, Software & Platform Industry Group, Accenture