Working on product marketing for JetBrains software products for 2 years, I would like to share some insight of positioning products for non-usual target audience (such as software developers in our case), which obviously brings a variety of changes to standard marketing, product management and sales processes. On real-life cases I will be talking about the way agile organisations has to align usual business processes to changing environment on the example of the IT industry (though I believe many approaches can be used in other industries as well). I'll be focusing on product marketing mostly, and surely will cover some issues of developer-oriented culture and developer-oriented product building and marketing activities.

1. DEVELOPER MARKETING
Mikhail Vink
Product Marketing Manager
JetBrains
Mikhail.Vink@jetbrains.com
mikhail_vink
or communicating to sceptical audience

2. SO, WHAT'S JETBRAINS BUSINESS?

3. MORE THAN 1,000,000 DEVELOPERS

4. WHY DEVELOPERS ARE DIFFERENT?
https://flic.kr/p/TaVYS (c) Amit Gupta

5. NO BS POLICY
https://flic.kr/p/nQzqqi (c) Obert Madondo
“standard” marketing messaging is harmful

6. ANOTHER WAY OF THINKING
https://flic.kr/p/xMdLW (c) Duncan Hull

7. HIGH ENTRY LEVEL
TO THE PROFESSION

8. THE NEW KINGMAKERS
Stephen O’Grady

9. EVERY DEVELOPER “KNOWS”
MARKETING BETTER THAN YOU
so they would be resistant to your message

10. SO WE’LL HAVE TO PROVE
OUR STANDPOINT

11. SALES PROCESS REVISED
• Word of mouth
• From developer to manager
• And no “classic” salespeople

12. NO OUTBOUND SALES
https://flic.kr/p/gK7GrV (c) Matthias Ripp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbehkUN4eCU From 0 - 100 Million with No Salespeople Takes Awesome Collaboration Tools - Atlassian Summit 2012

13. MARKETING APPROACH
https://flic.kr/p/9iJNNN (c) DW 2002

14. RESPECT

15. Show me attitude
Get my attention
Prove me

16. BE CLOSE TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
= BE DEVELOPER (IN OUR CASE)

17. SUPPORT IS THE BEST MARKETING
• You talk to developers!
• Open Issue Tracker
• Email Support / ZenDesk
• Forums (Community Support)
• Social Media
(c) JetBrains
Feedback on forums by George Cook
I was just reporting a bug for 2.1, and in the bug
tracker noticed that there was the option for version
2.1.1. I diligently downloaded it and lo-and-behold the
bug was fixed before I even reported it!!

18. MAKE TRANSPARENT
FEEDBACK CHANNELS

19. COMMUNICATIONS
• Blog posts
• Tutorials
• Documentation
• Screencasts
• Webinars
• E-mail marketing

20. DELIVER ONLY DRY CONTENT

21. DON’T BE ANNOYING

22. DON’T BE ANNOYING
• Max 2 social media messages per day
• Max 1 blog post per day
• Max 1 email per week
• … and keep your remarking on the leash!
(c) JetBrains

23. EMAIL MARKETING CASE
• Open Rate - 2 times more than industry average
• CTR - 4 times more than industry average
Internal research of JetBrains
https://flic.kr/p/7WMu58 image (c) Rupert Ganzer

24. DEVELOPERS CONSUME ALL
KINDS OF MATERIALS

25. CONTENT MATTERS MORE
THAN DESIGN

26. WHO SHOULD DO DEVELOPER
MARKETING?

27. TEAMS
Management Team
Product Team
Team Lead / Project Manager
Product Marketing Manager
Developers
Quality Assurance
Support
Administration (IT, HR, etc)
Sales
Marketing
Developer Advocates
Marketing Research
Web Team, Design
... and more
PPPrPrororododduduucucctct tT Te Teeaeaamammm PPrroodduucctt T Teeaamm
(c) JetBrains

28. WHO SHOULD DO DEVELOPER
MARKETING
• Product Marketing Manager
(c) JetBrains

29. WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT PMMS?
• Technical people
• Work close with development team
• “Hub” to other teams
• Release management
• Business goals in mind
• Be with community -
understand product and market
(c) JetBrains

30. COMMUNITY - WORD OF MOUTH
• User Groups
• Classroom
• Open Source
• Conferences and Events
• Team of Developer Advocates
(c) JetBrains

31. GIVE BACK AND GIVE AWAY

32. COMMUNITIES ISSUES
• Language/technology specifics
• Many autonomous entities
• They can hate each other
• … and you are not a part of community

33. SOCIAL NETWORKS
https://flic.kr/p/d9K1Bc (c) Chris Potter

34. WHO TO FOCUS AT?
• Community leaders
• Trend setters
• News makers

35. A FEW WORDS ON CONFERENCES
• Tech people should staff the booth
• Be extra-careful
• “Leads” term is not for all developers
(c) JetBrains

36. WHO SHOULD DO DEVELOPER
MARKETING
• Product Marketing Manager
• Developer Advocates
(c) JetBrains

37. DEVELOPER ADVOCATES
Russia UK Spain Sweden Belgium USA Brazil
(c) JetBrains

38. WHO SHOULD DO DEVELOPER
MARKETING
• Product Marketing Manager
• Developer Advocates
• Your Customers
(c) JetBrains

39. CREATE COMMUNITY
turn your customers into advocates

40. WORKING IN DEVELOPER’S WORLD
FOR NON-DEVELOPERS

41. EVERY DEVELOPER “KNOWS”
MARKETING BETTER THAN YOU
so they would be resistant to your message

42. SO WE’LL HAVE TO PROVE
OUR STANDPOINT

43. HOW TO ROCK DEVELOPER MARKET?
• Be respectful
• Speak the same language
• Keep your content dry
• Remember about word of mouth
• Create community around the product

44. GOOD READ
• Developer Evangelism, Chris Heilmann
http://developer-evangelism.com/
• The New Kingmakers, Stephen O’Grady
http://www.amazon.de/New-Kingmakers-Stephen-OGrady-ebook/dp/B0097E4MEU/
• Developer Marketing: Do’s and Dont’s, Michael Coté
http://www.slideshare.net/cote/developer-marketing-dos-and-donts

45. DEVELOPER MARKETING
Mikhail Vink
Product Marketing Manager
JetBrains
Mikhail.Vink@jetbrains.com
mikhail_vink
or communicating to sceptical audience