Case Study

Deutsche Telekom

When Deutsche Telekom needed a full go-to-market strategy for a new API developer portal, they turned to Catchy.

When the competition is intense, your developer experience needs to stand out.

When Deutsche Telekom (DT) needed a full go-to-market strategy for a new API developer portal, they turned to Catchy. Their product team had built an exciting suite of APIs and developer tools, but the telecom giant was struggling to bring developers into the ecosystem. Catchy conducted extensive research, then used the data to inform and build a developer program and go-to-market strategy.

Meet the Client

DT is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe. Their tech incubator, hubraum, aims to bring early stage startups and leading European telecommunications companies together to facilitate innovation in 5G, AI, and IoT technology.

Our Approach

DT, via hubraum, planned to launch a developer portal consisting of a suite of APIs and developer tools. Catchy helped them devise a go-to-market strategy, including messaging and positioning based on primary research, so they could better reach developers.

After auditing the existing Deutsche Telekom global developer marketing plans and assessing their effectiveness, Catchy guided the client through an extensive consulting exercise consisting of primary audience research, portal UX/UI workshops, developer marketing strategy and go-to-market planning to help bring the developer experience to life across multiple channels.

The project also included:

A 300-person global developer research study to understand what developers need from a developer portal
A 25-person UI/UX workshop to gauge how developers interact with DT’s portal and what changes would make it the developer portal of choice
A competitor analysis to see what the leading players in the field do differently

The Deliverables

After 5 weeks of in-depth research and analysis, we developed a deep understanding of the priorities of DT’s developer audience and the challenges facing the organization by emerging powers such as Twilio and AWS. From there, Catchy devised a multi-year, multi-stage workstream to grow the DT developer ecosystem.

The Catchy team mapped out a Go-to-Market strategy with an end-to-end customer journey for each audience segmentation, and proposed the key channels to invest and goals to reach. Catchy also created communication guidelines and a full set of starting kits to guide the communication strategy implementation.

Our final deliverables included:

A tone of voice guide to ensure appropriate and consistency in communication throughout the developer portal, social channels, and external publications
A holistic visual design approach, together with a suite of design assets to effectively communicate with the target audiences through different channels
A UX and information architecture design, copywriting for all API developer portal pages, including API use cases, and getting started guides
An audit of all technical documentation and supporting best practice resources
A marketing roadmap, content calendar, a 12-month recommendation for event sponsorships and speakers, and recommended routes into community activation

With the Go-To-Market Plan and ready-to-use execution start kits, DT clearly understood their audience's needs and motivations and had a clear plan to build their ecosystem and compete with rival brands.

Looking to launch a new developer program or improve your developer experience, but you aren’t sure where to start? Catchy is ready when you are to help you define a comprehensive go-to-market strategy.