The Influence of the Individual on Your Developer Marketing Strategy

Marketing has come a long way since Mad Men. The internet has changed the game for good, and how we communicate has had to change with it. Now, if you want to reach an audience, it's not enough to have a slick marketing campaign—you need to be prepared to put in some time and energy at the level of individuals. 

Forget the days when businesses talked only to other businesses—now what you see is a matrix of interactions between individuals talking directly to each other. This might seem like a small change, but it has huge implications for your developer marketing strategy.

Influential people are often holding more power than influential brands. We see examples of this every day. A good example is Elon Musk. He has over 760 thousand more followers on Twitter than his business does—even though Tesla is a multi-billion dollar corporation and Musk is, well, a person. Hideo Kojima has three million followers on Twitter; his own company, Kojima Productions, which he founded and named after himself, has 438 thousand followers. And these numbers are only getting bigger as time goes on.

What does this mean? In a word: Influence. Not just the influence your brand carries, but the influence that individuals can carry for your brand—and themselves! 

Developer marketers need to consider their developer marketing approach from two levels: bottom-up and top-down. 

Bottom-up means you're targeting individual developers who will be able to use your products and have influence upwards from within their organizations. In 2022, no tech stack buying decision is made in a business today without input from the developer team. Marketing to these developers will impact technology decisions from the bottom up.

Top-down recognizes that your marketing channels extend far beyond just your corporate channels. Developers are no longer only getting information from brand accounts. You don’t need to be an Elon Musk to have influence. There is an opportunity to unify the messaging from mid-level stakeholders with your company. Give them creative resources, give them a platform from which to speak, and the tools to tell a clear and concise message. 

A great example is Sean Lee, former CEO of the Algorand Foundation who worked hard to make sure that his personal content reflected the same vibe and voice of Algorand. This came to life in look, feel, tone, and messaging pillars to create a more unified brand story. 

Developer marketing strategies from the past don't work anymore. The dissemination of information has never been faster, and developers are turning to different channels, and people, to stay on top. In today's world, the most effective marketing strategies are personal and leverage the influence of the individual.

Catchy recognizes five new trends in developer marketing, including the Power of the Individual. Learn about the first trend in our series, the Decentralisation of Developers.