If you’re still creating marketing campaigns with your sales and marketing teams alone, you’re doing something wrong. Today, it’s crucial to involve developers—both internal and external—in the creation of your campaigns and service development. This article explores why this collaboration is so important and how you can get started.
They’re Your End-Users
Many marketers focus on C-Suite professionals and other key stakeholders at the organizations they’re seeking to work with. In fact, developers are rarely targeted during the campaign cycle. When the end-user is left out of your marketing efforts, you’re at risk of not getting their buy-in after purchase.
This can lead to low client retention and negative reviews as a result of disjointed communication between the decision-maker and the individuals actually using your product.
Expressing interest and taking note of your end-users needs and desires will go a long way. With targeted, emotion-inducing marketing, you’ll be able to gain buy-in from your end-users. Consider how what you’re offering will change their day-to-day life. Will they be more productive? Be able to automate more? Make fewer errors?
It’s important to note that you can’t market to both audiences the same way. Start by creating buyer personas for both your end-users and your decision-makers. Create targeted marketing campaigns that address their benefits and pain points specific to their role.
The compelling points for end-users will likely be more directly related to what you offer, while for decision-makers, you’ll want to discuss the overall business impact, such as increased productivity, revenue, or employee retention.
As stated in Forbes, “Not everyone is like you. Not everyone consumes content like you do or gravitates to the same messages as you.” Take this advice to heart and be sure to be clear and intentional throughout your marketing efforts.
Enable a Flawless User Experience
When your users start trying to using your product and are confused or can’t accomplish what they set out to, you’re creating a negative user experience. No one benefits from people misusing your service, and a miserable first experience can be incredibly challenging to bounce back from. Ensure your on-boarding experience goes fluidly by providing a robust framework for developers.
Don’t stop at on-boarding, though. Provide thorough documentation for all your features and tools, in a manner that works best for your users. This can include on-boarding webinars, video tutorials, and text-based documents.
If your budget allows, consider creating tutorials in a variety of formats for the users to consume (ex: ebooks, easily searchable documents, videos). Additionally, it helps to have a service desk or customer support team at the ready for any users who might still be struggling.
Consider the possibility of hiring or contracting out someone out of your department to create or finalize this component. More often than not, since you and your team will be working so closely with the product, you are susceptible to blind spots due to your familiarity with the product.
Reach Your Users Where They Are
Developers enjoy working through problems but do rely on internet sources when they cannot figure out the problem or need to do so in a time-sensitive manner. Consider what challenges or questions your end-users may have. Create content that answers those questions or helps them overcome their challenges.
These don’t have to be specific to your offering, just specific to your users. In this case, it’s actually better to steer away from directly marketing yourself.
Additionally, having a strong online presence will make a compelling case for developers that don’t yet use your products. They will take note of your visibility and, through consistent engagement, you can stay top of mind for future needs. Take full advantage of various online forums and make your presence known.
Another benefit of engaging with your users on their turf is the new insights you’re able to glean. Use these forums to research common complaints and pain points among similar products/services. Acquainting yourself with these issues will allow you to avoid past mistakes, and, ultimately, have the possibility of converting those users to your service instead.
Consult Your Developers
Shocker: consult your development team before beginning to work on your marketing strategy. It’s a best practice to hold an ideation session to garner their thoughts. While they may not be end-users, they are far closer to the developers that will be using you.
Before concluding your interview, be sure to ask your developers what other questions you should ask other developers. Chances are, they will be aware of several areas that you wouldn’t consider probing about.
Don’t Forget to Follow-Up
After launching your product and marketing campaign, follow up with the developers that have bought and used your service. One-on-one in-person or phone interviews are ideal, but online surveys will suffice. Ask questions to understand why they made the purchase decision, how their experience has been with your organization, and anything else that may help your marketing or overall offering.
Then, apply that feedback. Incorporate learned pain points and benefits into your marketing to make it more compelling. Ask to utilize stand-out client success stories as testimonials and case studies. Take service feedback back to your team. Explore ways to implement and improve, then be sure to close the loop with the initial contact.
Even if you don’t implement their changes, letting them know you communicated their feedback to your team will exemplify that you are thoroughly invested in their overall experience with your product.
In Conclusion
The benefits of involving developers in your next marketing campaign are immense. From improving your offering, your retention, and your marketing, there are tons of insights to glean and apply.
Explore how you can loop a developer in on your next marketing campaign and drive increasing success.
Share in comments how do you build an effective internal process with participation of developers and marketers in your team?
developer team -DepositPhotos
