DevRel vs. Developer Marketing: Key Strategies Compared

DevRel and Developer Marketing, a Short History

"DevRel" is often used interchangeably with "developer marketing." In many companies, they can be difficult to distinguish. This is even more so when a single person or small team is responsible for everything without clear (enough) roles and definitions in place.

It probably doesn't help that there is no consensus on the definition of DevRel, even within the DevRel community. As the authors of a recent book on the subject write in their introduction, this is still "a question of fierce debate." In another example, at the start of this video, Tadas Petra's informal poll shows that there is plenty of confusion about what DevRel is outside the community.

One reason there is disagreement and confusion about DevRel could be its recent origin and rapid growth. "DevRel" was coined by the Apple Macintosh marketing team in the early 1990s, bringing with it a number of other now-common terms like technology "evangelist" and "spreading the tech gospel."

At OSP (following our PAX editing code guideline), we prefer to avoid both the sublime of religious terminology and the violence of war words. But, as another critic of the "Evangelist" term has said, the ship has sailed on this one.

Only in the mid-2010s did DevRel become prominent as a distinct and essential function within tech companies. Without standardization, education, or clear guidelines, the evolving nature of DevRel roles often overlaps with developer marketing, contributing to ongoing confusion and debate. As DevRel becomes more established, the industry is gaining a clearer understanding of its unique value and distinct roles. 

With all that said, the marketing component is just one piece of the larger DevRel puzzle. Here's another pair of working definitions:

• DevRel is the ongoing strategic activities by which organizations build and maintain mutually beneficial, long-lasting relationships with developers, developer influencers, and developer communities. It focuses on relationship-building and support. Below, we discuss the multiple "pillars" that make up DevRel.
• Developer marketing is one of those DevRel pillars. This particular marketing approach targets awareness and adoption, focusing on developers as decision-makers and influencers. Fulfilling their need for helpful information while respecting their mindset can help increase product awareness, adoption, and advocacy. Developer marketing is synonymous with B2D (Business-to-Developer) marketing.

The Essence of Developer Relations

Authenticity is key to DevRel, where the point is to create and nurture relationships between a company and its developer community. Developer evangelists must support developers, advocate for their needs, and ensure they succeed with the company's products or services.

DevRel representatives, aka developer advocates or evangelists, are almost all developers themselves. They can sling and demo code and jump into a contribution sprint. Most are also great on stage and happy to talk with crowds.

First and foremost, genuine engagement is made possible through empathy: first-hand knowledge of the joys and challenges developers face. This empathy helps design resources that offer real value and create open lines of communication from the developer audience back to the company's product and marketing teams. 

You can find developer advocates making connections by participating in or sponsoring developer forums, hosting meetups, and contributing to open source projects.

The Pillars of Developer Relations

Several online resources discuss the “four pillars” of developer relations. No two articles name the same four pillars exactly, but some common themes allow us to bring these ideas together as a DevRel consensus of sorts.

Caroline Lewko and James Parton give a fantastic overview and framework for understanding DevRel in their book, Developer Relations: How to Build and Grow a Successful Developer Program. They compellingly break down the essential elements of DevRel into five parts: Developer Experience, Marketing, Education, and Success, all built on the solid core of developer communities.

Exploring Developer Marketing

OSP understands that developers are a vital voice in technology selection, either discovering new tech they want to try or doing due technical diligence on something being considered by management, budget holders, or other departments. Connecting the technical and business "sides of the house" with content and strategy is a critical part of our mission at OSP. We speak geek and biz :-)

Generally, we can distill developer marketing into two main approaches:

• Developer-first, aka B2D companies: Organizations that make products for developers, for example, platforms, IDEs, APIs, or tools. Twilio is perhaps the most notable example of a developer-first company, being the first to prove that B2D could work at a time when investors were still skeptical.
• Developer-plus companies are primarily B2B or B2C companies that sell to developers as a secondary or tertiary market group. Their products or services cater to developers but aren't their main focus or revenue source. There are vastly more developer-plus companies than developer-first companies. Examples include tech giants like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Google. There are also companies not traditionally thought of as part of the internet and web economy that offer products or services to developers, like Ford, Capital One, and AT&T. 

Lewko and Parton estimate that about two-thirds of DevRel professionals work in Developer-plus companies, with the other third working in Developer-first or B2D firms.

Educational v Promotional Developer Marketing

In DevRel, there is often an inherent tension between developers' general tendency towards sharing knowledge and their companies' need to make sales. Providing enough free educational content to establish and build trust is indubitably a good idea. Maintaining active campaigns and incentives to convert users into paying customers when the time is right — without upsetting the developer audience at the same time — is an unavoidable part of staying in business.

Open source projects and communities are an exception here. Since the product (open source code) is free to use, providing technical documentation, how-tos, and valuable knowledge for free is excellent passive content that can do marketing for you.

However, as soon as you need to attach a business to your open source code — in the form of a technical agency or product — you will also need business-focused marketing and (coming full circle) campaigns and incentives to convert users into paying customers.

• Educational initiatives such as webinars, tutorials, and blog posts demonstrate expertise and build trust.
• Product promotion efforts, by comparison, focus on making conversions and increasing product usage through targeted campaigns and incentives.

The Intersection of DevRel and Developer Marketing

DevRel and developer marketing are complementary. You'll want to find the right mix of activities for you when figuring out how to best promote your offering. Create and maintain a solid DevRel strategy and a holistic, collaborative approach* to engaging developers by combining developer marketing with education, support, and community engagement. 

* A collaborative approach, in this case, means putting DevRel and marketing in the same reporting structure with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. If you separate them across departments, you'll lose the magic and potential of the disciplines working in harmony to multiply each other.

Technical Content Creation: The OSP Approach

We craft educational and promotional content for our clients' developer audiences. Our rigorous writing and editing processes combine technical accuracy with narrative and storytelling. We align business goals, deploying our Value Map, Authentic Communication principles, and extensive experience to create impactful developer-centric content.

Here's how we do it … 

NB: We also create content for business and less technical decision-maker audiences. Developer-centric content generally starts with technical details, while budget-holder content starts with the business value the product delivers. Both sides need technical accuracy, a link to value, and good storytelling.

Ahem. Back to our story. Here's how we do it

Authentic Communication

OSP's ethical pillars — empathy, clarity, and trust — ground and guide us. We call our resulting content creation model Authentic Communication.

Empathy involves understanding developers' needs, challenges, and mindsets, making content relevant and resonant with their experiences.

• Operational Empathy (putting empathy into practice) includes choosing terminology appropriate for our audiences, choosing language that connects (not divides), and interviewing and quoting subject-matter-experts to understand and explain their areas of expertise to other non-experts.

Clarity focuses on

• Delivering information straightforwardly, explaining acronyms, avoiding jargon, and not playing buzzword bingo.
• Formatting content for scan-ability, breaking up walls of text with bulleted lists, using headers that help tell your story.

Trust is built through technical accuracy and honesty. All claims should be substantiated and legible to experts and non-experts alike.

• Furthermore, being clear about what your offering can't do helps set expectations with readers and prospects.
• We recommend content that highlights the strengths of your offering and doesn't put down your competition. We don't produce so-called “FUD,” content designed to provoke fear, uncertainty, and doubt about others.

These principles guide OSP in crafting content that not only informs, but also engages and builds a loyal developer audience.

Writing and Editing Codes

At OSP, we have developed a set of writing and editing codes that help us ensure that all of the content we produce effectively fulfills its purpose of communicating with technical or business audiences. This approach means that every level of writing, from word choice and punctuation to sentences, paragraphs, and claims, contributes to making compelling content. The editing process involves checks for technical accuracy, coherence, and alignment with business goals in coordination with our strategic teams. Using our codes to help us be consistent, the resulting product communications are accurate, informative, polished, and compelling in addressing developer audiences. 

Our Content Creation Expertise

We have extensive experience producing a wide range of technical content, from website copy and blogs to product data sheets, podcasts, and RFP responses. Our work is informed by collective decades of experience with technical products, software, and open source communities. This diverse expertise allows OSP to tailor a range of content to various formats and platforms. By combining written and multimedia content, we can engage developers through multiple channels while ensuring that messaging remains consistent and impactful across all types of content, emphasizing your overall communication strategy.

Connect with Developers

By understanding and effectively implementing complimentary DevRel and developer marketing programs, your company can better create authentic relationships, provide valuable support, and foster product adoption within developer communities.

• DevRel focuses on building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with developers through support, advocacy, and engagement.
• Developer marketing targets developers as key stakeholders, influencers, and decision-makers, promoting awareness and adoption.

Using both approaches hand-in-hand can help you meet the needs of your technical and developer audiences. Having this key constituency on your side will help you achieve your broader business objectives.

Our advice? Harness the power of developer relations and marketing to create a solid foundation for your growth and innovation. 

If you'd like to talk about DevRel and developer marketing for your organization, we'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch 

Image credits

devrelbook.com, Open Strategy Partners, and our friendly robot overlords

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