diff --git a/source/images/blogimages/gitlab-background-team-pics.png b/source/images/blogimages/gitlab-background-team-pics.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..75744bd9790c12430917516de39af28e059010a3 Binary files /dev/null and b/source/images/blogimages/gitlab-background-team-pics.png differ diff --git a/source/images/tweets/gitlab-marketing-strategy.png b/source/images/tweets/gitlab-marketing-strategy.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..ed72855cffdf02181ca378c01af8a76015953794 Binary files /dev/null and b/source/images/tweets/gitlab-marketing-strategy.png differ diff --git a/source/posts/2016-09-23-gitlab-marketing-strategy.html.md b/source/posts/2016-09-23-gitlab-marketing-strategy.html.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..bd979cd776e0a38418b7898e5ecf5569663f9455 --- /dev/null +++ b/source/posts/2016-09-23-gitlab-marketing-strategy.html.md @@ -0,0 +1,141 @@ +--- +title: "GitLab Marketing Strategy" +author: Ashley Smith +author_twitter: ashl3ysm1th +categories: inside GitLab +image_title: '/images/blogimages/gitlab-background-team-pics.png' +twitter_image: '/images/tweets/gitlab-marketing-strategy.png' +description: "How we think about marketing a developer product" +--- + +A common misconception is that developer marketing is showing up at +events and giving out free t-shirts and stickers. While true, +developers are humans and people like free t-shirts, it is not +and cannot be the only method to your developer marketing +strategy, it's a whole lot more. + + + +## Marketing a Developer Product + +**How do we market to developers?** This is a question I've seen asked +multiple times at multiple organizations. Every company that's building +tools for developers has at some point struggled on how to properly +market to their target audience. I've seen it at large organizations, +I've seen it at small organizations, and we've all seen product +messaging that doesn't quite fit what the product actually does. + +Often, +this is due to a disconnect between marketing and engineering/product +and/or the marketing team not understanding **how to message a developer +product**. While people are quick to assume negative intentions of the +marketing team, generally that isn't the case. It comes down to messaging +and communication between marketing and your engineering/product team. +Developers are awesome. Go talk to them. + +## How to Market to Developers + +**Is it hard to market to developers?** No, however, there's a big focus on +truth in marketing, getting a developer help fast when they need it, +developer education, community, and making sure that your marketing +doesn't over-promise what the product is capable of doing. + +The team has to balance how you market a developer product with the +expectations of the developer using that product. For example, most +users of an developer tool will not expect an email from a demand +generation team or BDR team and they certainly will not expect a phone call. + +### Meeting Expectations + +**So what do developers expect?** They will expect education, help getting +started, tutorials, partner integrations that make their lives easier, +and **truth in marketing**. Developers want the truth, they want +proper education, they want integrations that help them, and they want +the marketing team to kind of stay out of the way while quietly +sprinkling helpful information around the areas that they are interested in. + +### Sources of Information + +Some forums that developers use to get information are +[StackOverflow](https://www.stackoverflow.com), +[Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/), +[Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/gitlab/), Twitter, GitLab Documentation, +GitHub, a basic Google search, and all of these channels should be +taken into account when thinking about how to market a developer product. +Where possible, try to offer community support via these forums. Be responsive. + +## Marketing Strategy + +### Event Strategy + +For an event strategy, you need to not only think "how do I bring people +together in a room that are using my product" but also "how do I get +feedback from that room" or "how do I make sure that conversations are +happening between GitLab team members and GitLab community members?". + +Use your event presence to talk to people that love your product. Give +engaging talks and make it easy to give feedback. "How do I make it clear that +feedback is appreciated?". You do that through saying, "Hey, I'd like feedback +on this". Sometimes you don't even have to say it and because the developer +community is such an open and honest one in most cases, feedback is easier +to get. + +Make it easy to provide feedback, make it easy to become part of the +community, make it easy to contribute and people and developers will. +Developer roundtables are awesome. You need a room, some developers using +your product and someone to take notes. + +### Content Strategy + +For a content strategy, much of the same applies. Education, tutorials, +and making it really easy to get started through blog posts, video, +screencasts, office hours, webinars, etc. + +## The Product + +In addition to the above mentioned tactics, good developer marketing +strategy includes a great product. If you have a **great product**, the +job of marketing is much easier. Constant product and feature releases +are one of the best marketing tools. We are lucky that GitLab releases +on the twenty-second of every month and has since 2011. This show of +momentum makes it much easier to market a developer when it's not stagnant. + +In product releases, when your users can see that feedback from the +community is taken seriously and put back into the product, it says +"we take our community seriously". Listen to the feedback, make it +easy to give feedback via issue trackers, [Twitter](https://twitter.com/gitlab), +and/or [Support](/getting-help/) and +if it makes sense for the rest of the community to make a requested +update to the product, do it. + +### Product Launch + +For every new feature or new product, we need to coordinate the entire team +in order to have a successful launch. It's crucial having an efficient +communication between every team involved: developers, product, executives, and marketing. +We use [Conversational Development](/2016/09/13/gitlab-master-plan/#convdev) to achieve +the results we need. Our communication happens mostly within GitLab.com, with issues and +merge requests not only for the product itself, but for posts, webpages, media assets, documentation, +and a lot more. We track the whole process cohesively and consistently across our own platform. + +Recently, we launched the [GitLab Issue Board](/2016/08/22/announcing-the-gitlab-issue-board/), +[Cycle Analytics](/2016/09/21/cycle-analytics-feature-highlight/), and we revealed the +[GitLab Master Plan](/2016/09/13/gitlab-master-plan/). We were thrilled by the involvement +of our community, with tons of tweets, messages, emails, comments on posts, the explosive +chat on YouTube, and the questions and comments posted on +[Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12487112). We raised the roof! All this +success was the result of teamwork and much effort to not only have everything in place, +on time, but also, to make sure the information spread was accurate and available throughout +all the different channels we use to market. + +## Read More + +This content was originally posted on our [Marketing Handbook](/handbook/marketing/). +You can read more about our Marketing Strategy in the following sections: + +- [How we think about marketing an open-source product with a paid version](/handbook/marketing/#how-we-think-about-marketing-an-open-source-product-with-a-paid-version) +- [Top down and bottom up marketing for developer products](/handbook/marketing/#top-down-and-bottom-up-marketing-for-developer-products) + +Our entire [Handbook](/handbook/) is [open source](/2016/07/12/our-handbook-is-open-source-heres-why/), licensed by [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). + +Questions, feedback and suggestions are much appreciated! Leave a comment below or tweet at us [@GitLab](https://twitter.com/gitlab)! 🙌