The engineer looked at my beautifully designed developer tool landing page and said: "Where's the documentation? I'm not reading marketing copy. Just show me the API reference."
I'd spent weeks crafting messaging, designing the perfect hero section, optimizing for conversion. Beautiful gradient backgrounds, compelling copy about "accelerating development velocity," customer logos from recognizable tech companies.
The engineer bounced in 12 seconds.
I watched the session recording. He scrolled looking for code examples or documentation links. Didn't find them. Left.
I'd come from marketing to business buyers who wanted polished messaging and compelling value props. Developers wanted none of that. They wanted to see code, read docs, and try the product themselves.
Every instinct I had about product marketing was wrong for developer tools.
Why DevTools Marketing Is Fundamentally Different
After three years selling developer tools, I learned that developers evaluate products completely differently than any other buyer:
Developers Hate Marketing
Not "dislike marketing" or "prefer technical content." Actually hate marketing.
They see marketing as:
- Waste of their time
- Fluff hiding bad products
- Manipulation
- Sign that the product isn't good (good products don't need marketing)
When I included testimonials on our product page, developers commented on Hacker News: "If your product is good, you don't need testimonials. The code speaks for itself."
When I wrote benefit-focused copy—"Ship faster with our integrated deployment pipeline"—developers said: "Just tell me what it does. I'll decide if it makes me faster."
When I created a product demo video, developers asked: "Why would I watch a video when I could just try it myself?"
Every traditional marketing tactic triggered skepticism.
The breakthrough: Developers don't want to be marketed to. They want to be enabled to evaluate the product themselves.
This required unlearning everything about product marketing:
Traditional PMM: Guide prospects through a marketing funnel with gated content, scheduled demos, and sales conversations.
Developer PMM: Give developers everything they need to evaluate independently—docs, code examples, free tier, API reference—and get out of their way.
"Show Don't Tell" Is Literal
In traditional marketing, "show don't tell" means use case studies and customer stories instead of feature lists.
In developer marketing, "show don't tell" means actual working code.
Developers don't trust words. They trust:
- Code they can run
- Documentation they can read
- API references they can test
- Open source repos they can inspect
I learned this when I created a feature comparison table showing we had better performance than competitors:
Our tool: 100ms response time Competitor: 300ms response time
Developer response: "Where's the benchmark methodology? What were the test conditions? Can I run this benchmark myself?"
They didn't trust my claims. Fair enough—vendors always claim to be faster.
I rebuilt the comparison as a GitHub repo with benchmarking code anyone could run. Developers ran it themselves. Some confirmed our results. Some found different results based on their setup. Both groups trusted the data because they'd generated it.
Words are marketing. Code is proof.
Developers Are Your Harshest Critics
Business buyers are polite in demos. Even if they don't like your product, they're professional.
Developers will tell you—publicly—that your product sucks.
On Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter, Discord. They'll dissect every design decision, criticize your architecture, find bugs, question your technical choices.
This is terrifying at first. Then you realize: Developer criticism is how you improve.
We launched a feature and got roasted on Hacker News for poor error handling. Developers posted examples of cryptic error messages our tool generated.
Old instinct: Try to defend the product or manage the PR crisis.
New approach: Engineer jumped into the thread, acknowledged the issues, and pushed a fix within 24 hours.
The thread turned from "this tool has terrible errors" to "respect for shipping a fix that fast based on feedback."
Developer communities respect responsiveness and transparency more than perfection.
Product-Led Growth Is the Only Growth Model
Business software sales: Build interest → Schedule demo → Go through evaluation → Contract negotiation → Implementation.
Developer tools: Sign up → Try it → If it works, use it → If you use it enough, pay for it.
There's no sales process. Developers won't take sales calls. They want to try the product themselves, in their own time, without talking to anyone.
This changes everything about GTM:
Old model: Optimize for demo requests and sales conversations
New model: Optimize for self-service signup, time-to-first-value, and activation without human intervention
We rebuilt our entire onboarding:
- Removed all friction from signup (no required sales call)
- Added quick start guides developers could complete in 10 minutes
- Created interactive tutorials in the product
- Built generous free tiers so developers could test thoroughly
Our conversion metric wasn't "demo to trial." It was "signup to first API call in under 15 minutes."
Technical Accuracy Is Non-Negotiable
Business buyers forgive minor inaccuracies in marketing if the overall message is true.
Developers will destroy your credibility for a single technical error.
I wrote a blog post claiming our tool "eliminated race conditions." A developer commented: "This doesn't eliminate race conditions. It reduces their probability but they're still possible under X scenario. This is technically incorrect and concerning."
They were right. I'd oversimplified for a non-technical audience.
The damage wasn't just one wrong blog post. It was loss of trust: "If they don't understand their own product's limitations, why should I trust anything they say?"
Now everything technical gets reviewed by engineers before publishing. If we can't explain something accurately in simple terms, we use more technical language rather than oversimplify incorrectly.
Developers will forgive complex explanations. They won't forgive wrong explanations.
What Actually Works in DevTools Marketing
After three years of failed launches and harsh feedback, here's what works:
Put Documentation Before Marketing
Don't make developers hunt for docs. Prioritize documentation over all other content.
Old site structure:
- Marketing homepage
- Features page
- Pricing
- Docs buried in footer
New site structure:
- Docs link in top nav (most prominent)
- Quick start guide on homepage
- Code examples above the fold
- Pricing transparent and upfront
We measured docs traffic vs. marketing page traffic. Docs got 10x more views. We redesigned the site to reflect what developers actually wanted.
Lead With Code, Not Copy
Developers want to see code immediately.
Our homepage now opens with a code example showing the simplest possible use case:
# Install
npm install our-tool
# Use it
import tool from 'our-tool'
tool.doThing() // Works in 3 lines
This replaced three paragraphs of messaging about "revolutionizing developer productivity."
The code example did more to communicate value than all the marketing copy combined.
Build in Public
Developers trust transparency. Share everything:
- Product roadmap (public)
- Known issues (public)
- Feature requests (public GitHub issues)
- Response to criticism (public)
- Engineering decisions (public blog posts)
We moved our roadmap from internal docs to a public GitHub project. Developers could see what we were building, vote on features, and contribute ideas.
This transparency built trust that no amount of polished marketing could.
Create Actually Useful Content
Developer content marketing isn't about SEO keywords and thought leadership. It's about teaching developers how to solve problems.
Content that doesn't work:
- "5 Ways to Improve Your Development Workflow" (generic)
- "The Future of Software Development" (fluffy thought leadership)
- "Why You Should Use [Our Tool]" (self-promotional)
Content that works:
- "How to Handle Rate Limiting When Calling External APIs" (specific problem + solution)
- "Debugging Common GraphQL Performance Issues" (practical guide)
- "Building a CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions" (hands-on tutorial)
Note: None of these mention our product in the title. They teach something useful. If our tool helps solve the problem, we mention it in context.
This content built authority. Developers shared it because it was genuinely useful, not because it promoted our product.
Invest in Developer Experience, Not Sales
We reallocated budget from sales and marketing to developer experience:
- Better documentation
- More code examples
- Interactive tutorials
- Improved error messages
- Faster support in Discord/GitHub
One quarter we spent $40K improving error messages and adding inline documentation. No marketing spend.
That quarter had our highest growth. Because developers had better experiences and recommended us to peers.
Developer word-of-mouth beats all marketing.
Engage Where Developers Are
Developers don't read marketing emails or attend webinars.
They're on:
- GitHub (reading code, opening issues)
- Stack Overflow (answering questions)
- Discord/Slack communities (helping each other)
- Hacker News, Reddit (discussing tools)
- Twitter (following other developers)
We stopped email nurture campaigns and instead:
- Answered every Stack Overflow question about our category
- Participated genuinely in Discord communities (not promotional)
- Contributed to open source projects in our ecosystem
- Engaged thoughtfully on Hacker News (not defensive)
This wasn't scalable marketing. It was community engagement. It worked better than traditional campaigns.
Make Competitive Intelligence About Technical Differentiation
Developer competitive positioning isn't about business value. It's about technical differences.
Bad competitive battle card:
- Our tool helps you ship faster
- We have better security
- Easier to use
Better competitive battle card:
- Our tool uses X architecture vs. competitor's Y architecture
- We support async/await natively; competitor requires callbacks
- Our authentication is OAuth2; competitor uses API keys
- Performance benchmarks (with reproducible methodology)
Developers want technical specifics, not business benefits.
Managing competitive technical details—architecture differences, performance benchmarks, supported languages and frameworks—across multiple competitors required organization. I started using tools like Segment8 to maintain technical battle cards that sales engineers could reference during technical evaluations—saved significant time vs. updating spreadsheets every time a competitor shipped a new language SDK.
Price Transparently
Developers hate "contact sales" pricing.
We made all pricing public:
- Free tier (generous enough for real evaluation)
- Self-service paid tiers (clear pricing, pay with credit card)
- Enterprise tier (transparent starting price, not "contact us")
Hiding pricing creates friction developers won't tolerate. They'll choose a competitor with transparent pricing even if it's more expensive.
The Unexpected Advantages of Developer Marketing
Despite the brutal honesty and marketing skepticism, developer marketing has unique advantages:
Developers are vocal advocates. If they love your product, they'll recommend it aggressively. Our best acquisition channel is developer word-of-mouth.
Community compounds. Early developer advocates become contributors, then maintainers, then evangelists. Community growth is exponential.
Free tier users provide value. Developers using your free tier contribute to docs, report bugs, answer questions, and create content. They're not just lead gen—they're community value.
Technical credibility is durable. Once you establish technical credibility with developers, it's hard for competitors to displace you.
Two years after that engineer bounced from our marketing page, we'd rebuilt everything.
No more marketing fluff. No gated content. No "schedule a demo."
Just:
- Comprehensive docs
- Working code examples
- Transparent pricing
- Self-service signup
- Active community support
The engineer who bounced? He's now a paying customer and recommended us to his team.
He didn't convert because of marketing. He converted because we got out of his way and let him evaluate the product on his terms.
That's developer marketing:
- Docs before marketing copy
- Code before claims
- Transparency before polish
- Community before campaigns
- Developer experience before sales process
Developers are the harshest critics and the best advocates. Give them the tools to evaluate independently. Accept their criticism. Ship fixes fast. Build in public.
They'll reward you with word-of-mouth you can't buy with marketing spend.
That's how you win with developers.