The Developer Marketing Flywheel is a guide to what needs to get done, when to do it, and how to measure the results. It’s a roadmap for developer marketing practitioners on how to build successful programs.
Discovery is the starting point for this roadmap, where you’ll build your strategy by figuring out the core principles of product-market fit. This is ultimately what gets the entire flywheel in motion!
In this post, we’ll explore the third phase of Discovery: Primary Research.
After conducting stakeholder interviews and secondary research, you may still have a few unanswered questions about your product, including:
Primary research can help fill in these gaps and set you up for success when you go to market. Not all primary research methods are the same, so we recommend figuring out which of the following three (or which combination) is suitable for you.
| Category | Method | Goal |
| Qualitative |
Observation Interviews Focus groups |
Understand mindset, needs, and pain points |
Qualitative research is great for learning about developers' attitudes toward your brand or product. Through interviews, you may discover that developers love your product’s features. Or, through focus groups, you might find that they think it’s difficult to install and use. Other observational methods, like watching them work through a “hello world,” might show that your documentation is slowing them down.
| Category | Method | Goal |
| Descriptive |
Sample survey Panel survey |
Describe, explain, and validate research findings |
Descriptive research will allow you to collect quantitative data from developers to learn more about who they are, how they work, and what they need to be successful. You can get this data from sample and panel surveys and use it to present objective information about your audience. You’ll find this especially useful for aligning multiple decision makers with conflicting views about how to approach developers.
| Category | Method | Goal |
| Scientific |
Controlled experiment Field experiment |
Isolating if X causes Y |
Scientific research will allow you to test specific situations (aka hypotheses) and give you the last bits of data you need before going to market. Use experiments to isolate these situations and better understand the issues and areas for improvement. For example, you could time developers to see how long it takes them to get up to speed with your product using updated documentation.
For example, here’s a look at a company based outside the US that wanted to launch its platform in the US. Internal stakeholders assumed the brand was globally recognizable and that awareness of their platform would be high. To test this hypothesis, Catchy surveyed US-based developers on this topic.
Key findings from the survey included low awareness and familiarity and low usage and interest. The corresponding data showed internal stakeholders that there was an awareness gap to overcome and allowed them to realign their developer marketing strategy to address this.
To conclude, primary research will provide the data and insights to answer your final questions before going to market. Together with stakeholder interviews and secondary research, it’ll give you all the information you need to get your program off the ground. Next in our Developer Marketing Flywheel series, we’ll explore how you can accomplish your first strategic goal: Increase Awareness.
Read our entire Developer Marketing Flywheel series:
