HOWTO Go About Marketing to Developers?

byrnereese asks: "My company has finally realized that one of the keys to our success will be to create a strong developer program (IBM's Developer Works, and Palm's PalmSource come to mind as examples). It just so happens that I have been appointed to lead this program. Now I have a lot of my own ideas, but I wanted to ask a large developer community directly the one question I know I am going to have to articulate a coherent answer to at some point: 'What is the most effective way to market a toolset, or development platform, to a developer in order to encourage them to build products using your product, without turning them off at the same time?'"

Comments

Relevance, Integration, Samples

[brio-dude]

Relevance

Show how your product solves problems that developers face when implementing their solutions. Describe how the product works in terms of how a developer sees it. At the same time, describe how it works in terms of the business benefit it provides since the developers will probably influence their manager to purchase the product. Perhaps issue an evaluation guide for developers, and one for their managers.

Integration

Show how your product integrates with programming languages, dev tools, and platforms. Focusing on productivity gains, for example, that result from using the product can help developers and their managers make more informed choices - it also gives your product a tangible result (cost savings) that just about anyone can appreciate.

Samples

Provide lots and lots of samples - Samples for really simple things and samples of complete, working systems. A lot of a developers' product's success lies in its samples since the samples can be easily modified and integrated into an application, or in some cases, used as the basis of a new application.

Top ten

[iamsure]

1. No lock-in. Make it easy to switch between tools from rivals, to prove that you care about the developer and want them to try it.

2. Non-crippled evaluation - No time limits, no nags, none of that. If someone sends me software thats crippled, I let them know thats what I think of their software! (Its crippled).

3. Downloadable, or overnight shipping - Dont put artificial limits between me liking the idea of trying it and getting to try it.

4. Unbiased, widespread public reviews of the software. Dont buy reviews. Just hand it out, let em try it and write about it. Stand on the value of the product.

5. Open-source. I prefer open-source software. I *DEEPLY* prefer free(dom) software, but I know thats rare in the commercial sector. At least let me know that the source is well formatted, well designed, and open to contributions from outside your company by opening the source.

6. Standards-compliant. I dont care WHAT the product is, there are standards it should follow. Html editor? You betcha. Perl IDE? Absolutely. Follow standards, and shout about it!

7. Price - Make the price compatible with a developer budget. In other words, super cheap to use at home, and fairly pricey for commercial use. Get me hooked on a product at home, I *will* tell my boss I have to do it to get work done.

8. Freebies - shameful but true, companies that send me cool freebies do get a little bit extra attention, or at least get a look. I'm NOT talking about magazines. Think toys. Think polo (business) shirts. Think posters.

9. "The spokesman effect" - Ensure that your company has good spokesmen. Whether in sales, in service, on the phone, or even corporate spokemen.

10. BABES - I love booth babes.

Re:Don't lock them in

[Lechter]

That brings up a good point: if you have good documentation that's also open, so developers can see before they pay, than I think coders will be much more likely to adopt your product. After all, one of the great advantages to Java is the excellent documentation that Sun freely provides.

Re:FREE, As in Beer.

[A Commentor]

Doesn't have to be FREE, just provide a nice discount, both Palm and Sony has developer programs that provide nice discounts for the products. They have a 3 per item limit, which is fine to avoid abuse.

They are also quite open with the specs, Palm provides/helps with free tools (GCC) to compile. This helps the student/hobbiest not feel guilty about spending hundreds for development tools that they haven't used as much as they thought they would.

Re:Don't lock them in

[2Bits]

2) If there are file formats, document them.
3) If there are APIs, expose them.


This is especially important. Good documentation is the best you can offer to developpers. Ok, most of them won't read, but eventually they will, and they expect good docs to be available, when they need it.

Also, publish examples, a lot of examples, and nice examples too. Publish advanced tricks to do things with your tools. The worst thing I hate about some vendors is, they try to keep everything secret, and hope that you will pay $3K for a 2-day introduction /concept training, then another $3K for first level training, another $3K for second level training, and so on.

As soon as I find out this, I don't use their products, period.

Last, and not the least, make your knowledge database searchable on the web, and accessible to everyone, including people who have not paid for the license (yet).

How I was hooked by Blitz Basic and what not to do

[growlydog]

I tried the demonstration edition of the Blitz Basic 2D programming language, which allows you full access to all of the features except compile-to-executable, and now I'm hooked. Some of the things that hooked me: 1: Free download of operational software. I'm able to develop using the demo, if I want to distribute, I have to purchase. 2: Active support. The programmer behind BlitzBasic 2D is constantly at work on the project, making it better, and he listens to and replies to feature-requests. If there was a bug, he actually worked at fixing it, and sometimes patches or fixes were up within a week or two of reporting them. That is awesome. 3: If I want to buy Blitz Basic 2D, it is not too expensive (~50USD). 4: A great user forum. Of course, nothing makes a great user forum but users, but if you make an "official forum", they will come. Things not to do: 1: Break the software. Blitz Basic 3D is limited to 30 uses. I never even downloaded that program, for that reason only. 2: Give customers shoddy or no support. I develop in a language called Visual Dataflex that has the worst documentation of any development system I've worked with (a lot!). It really ticks me off. 3: Lock up the forums. Blitz 2Ds forums were open to developers who had not purchased the software for quite a while, but were limited to only registered users after about 8 months. That was *almost* enough to make me quit Blitz altogether (if weren't such a good product by itself, I would have).

Marketing advice

[zangdesign]

1. Avoid strong ideological statements in your marketing ("We believe OSS is the wave of the future", "Free software forever"). I don't care about your politics, I want to know technical details about what your software does and how it will benefit me.
2. Be realistic in your marketing jargon - if it will improve produtivity, don't beat me about the head and shoulders with it, just say so and provide concrete reasons why.
3. Copious examples.
4. Reasonable price - I'll pay for something if I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off for something that is only used occasionally.
5. Multi-platform is nice (if possible), with equal levels of support.
6. Good technical documentation - consider having a third-party writer for this. The third-party books are usually much better than the company documentation for real world use.
7. Printed documentation. It's always a good idea to kill a few trees for our convenience. It shows you love us. (Seriously, a detailed reference manual is a good thing).
8. Download on purchase, and ship a CD later.
9. Good illustrations (if necessary). Sometimes a picture does say a thousand words, especially if it clears up a really wierd conceptual knot.

There's probably more, but that's all for now. Thanks for asking.

nVidia

[Screaming Lunatic]

Take a cue from nVidia. They have a great developer site. Great code samples, demos, papers. They are accesible to the public. You can catch them on a whole bunch of discussion boards and email lists around the net. They respond to problems if you send an email.

Not to mention they provide great drivers for both Windows and Linux. There is a CVS repository you can download other great stuff from. They support open standards such as OpenGL (we won't mention the whole Cg fiasco...I mean nothing).

Now compare that to the competition.

Disclaimer: I do not work for nVidia, nor own any stock.

Freeways as in Espial

[linuxislandsucks]

Let me le tyou know about Espial's experience from a devloper who uses Espial tools..

Espial wanted to get into the mobile dev market having develoeprs use their light gui toolkit, testing tools, and other tools..

What they did is started a developers website knwon as devicetop.com with year coding contests fro prizes in cash, developer boards to echange ideas and code, an application showcase board, and etc.

Whil ethe market is in a current slump Espial has managed to snare top honors with tis innovative java courses in mobile programming(some say better than Sun's own)..

Not only that they have snared some pretty big CE clients using their tools like Sony by using this approach..

By focussing on the developer they were able to sell their set box OS system which is where they make their money..

The important points:

-Make the tool set free
-set up developer boards and contests
-Make contest free to enter!
-Listen to developers

Dont make the Sharp Zaurus mistake

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,

above this thread is the thread about the new wireless option for the Zaurus.

When the Zaurus came out I was keen to get one as fast and soon as possible.

The price was not that high and they offred a developers discount and free training for the development environgment and/or OS.

However: they put me imediatly on a "hey he is german, lets forward him to our german department contact list".

Unfortunatly the german version of the Zaurus is about 30% more expensive, came at least 3 month later into the developers program and I lost intererst.

Most disappointing: they did not even let me buy the american version.

We do not deliver to europe ....

Sorry folks, no one can get here why american products cost us more than we would pay if we buy them on our own and pay the taxes at customs.

angel'o'sphere