Developer Marketing (B2D): What It Is & How to Get It Right

Most companies marketing to developers make the same mistake: they take whatever's working for their B2B audience and aim it at engineers.

Same blog posts. Same gated PDFs. Same schedule a demo CTAs plastered everywhere.

Developers clock this immediately. And they leave.

I've spent the last decade writing content for developer-tools companies: 

• Twilio
• DigitalOcean
• LaunchDarkly
• Matillion
• AssemblyAI

among others…What I've learned is that developer marketing isn't a harder version of B2B marketing. It's a fundamentally different discipline with different rules, different channels, and a very different definition of what content means.

Here's what developer marketing is, why most companies get it wrong, and what to do instead.

What Developer Marketing Is

Developer marketing (B2D) is the practice of building awareness, trust, and adoption for a product among software developers and technical practitioners. It uses channels, formats, and messaging that respect how developers evaluate tools.

Because developers don't buy software the way a procurement team does. They try it, break it, read the docs, ask colleagues, check GitHub, look for a tutorial, and make up their minds before they talk to a salesperson. 

Your marketing exists to show up usefully during that process. No, it’s not to intercept them with ads or push them toward a demo they didn't ask for.

If your marketing isn't built around that reality, it's not developer marketing. It's regular marketing aimed at people who've learned to ignore it.

What Developer Marketing Isn't

Three things that get confused with developer marketing constantly:

1. It isn't DevRel. Developer relations is a function: community building, conference talks, open source contributions, developer advocacy. It overlaps with developer marketing, but they're not the same job. DevRel builds relationships. Developer marketing builds awareness and pipeline. Both matter. They need different people.
2. It isn't technical documentation. Docs are a product function. Their job is to help existing users succeed. Great docs are a competitive advantage, and they absolutely support marketing, but writing docs is a different skill from writing content that attracts developers who've never heard of your product.
3. It isn't consumer marketing with the word "developer" swapped in. This one causes the most damage. The intercept-ad playbook, the urgency-driven copy, the gated content behind a form — yeah, none of that works on an audience that's trained to close tabs the moment something feels like it's selling to them.

Why Most Companies Get Developer Marketing Wrong

After years of writing in this space, I've watched the same failure patterns happen again and again:

Writing for the buyer instead of the user 

At a lot of B2B companies, the buyer is a VP of Engineering or a CTO. The user is a backend developer or a platform engineer. These are not the same person, and they don't respond to the same content. 

Content that convinces a VP ("reduces operational overhead," "enterprise-grade security") bounces off the developer evaluating your API on a Friday afternoon. They want to know if the thing works, how fast they can get it working, and whether the docs are any good.

Treating the blog like a press release repository 

"We're excited to announce." "In today's rapidly evolving landscape." "[Product] is proud to partner with [other company]." 

Woof.

This kind of content is written for the company and not the reader. Developers are allergic to it.

Underestimating how fast trust evaporates

Developers talk to each other. A lot. 

If your product has a known bug you haven't acknowledged, your marketing is fighting that reputation every time someone Googles your name. If your docs are bad, no amount of SEO content fixes it. 

Developer marketing only works when the product and the marketing are aligned on honesty.

What Good Developer Marketing Looks Like

Here are three companies I've written for directly, and the one specific thing each one does well.

• Twilio earns developer trust through tutorials that work. These aren’t marketing-flavored tutorials with screenshots of a polished UI. It’s actual working code with real output. The implicit message is: "We respect your time enough to show you exactly how this works." That's developer marketing done right.
• DigitalOcean built an empire on the premise that technical content should be genuinely useful. Their tutorial library is ungated, comprehensive, and written for practitioners. They get links, traffic, and signups from content that doesn't ask for anything upfront. Most companies look at that model and flinch at the ungated part, but DigitalOcean has been winning with it for a decade.
• LaunchDarkly writes for the job-to-be-done. Instead of "here's how our feature flags work," it's "here's how you run a safe production deployment." Of course, the product is in there, but the reader gets value whether they use LaunchDarkly or not. That's what makes them come back (and eventually sign up).

Ultimately, all three treat the reader like a smart person who can smell a pitch from a mile away.

The Developer Funnel Is Different

Standard B2B marketing maps neatly to awareness, consideration, and decision. Developer marketing maps to a fundamentally different set of stages, with different content types at each one.

Really, developers resist the hand-off to sales. If your product requires a sales conversation before someone can try it, you've already lost a massive chunk of the developer audience. The content strategy needs to account for this — more self-serve enablement, less request a demo.

How to Build a Developer Marketing Strategy That Works

You don't need a 40-page strategy document. You need answers to five questions:

1. Who, exactly, is your developer audience? Backend engineers are different from DevOps engineers are different from security practitioners. The more specific you get, the more useful your content becomes."Developers is not a target audience.
2. What does their evaluation process actually look like? Map out how a developer at your ideal company would go from never hearing about you to building something. What do they search? What do they read? Where do they ask questions? Your content strategy should show up at every step of that path.
3. What can you offer that's genuinely useful without asking for anything? A free tier. A public tutorial library. An honest comparison page. An open-source tool. Something that demonstrates value before the relationship starts.
4. What does your competition's content look like, and where is it weak? If everyone in your category is producing surface-level explainers, you win by going deeper. If everyone's doing long-form guides, you win by being more specific. Find the gap.
5. Who's writing it? This is the one most companies underestimate. Developer content written by someone who doesn't understand the technical context reads like developer content written by someone who doesn't understand the technical context. Your audience will know within two paragraphs.

Who Should Hire a Developer Marketing Writer (and Who Probably Shouldn't)

Hiring a developer marketing writer makes sense if:

• You're selling developer tools, APIs, infrastructure software, or anything where the primary user is an engineer
• Your product has a technical evaluation process — someone is going to read your docs, run a POC, or test your API before anyone signs a contract
• You need content that can pass a credibility check with a senior engineer

It probably doesn't make sense if:

• You're selling to developers as a secondary or tertiary audience (they're not the ones buying)
• Your product is sales-led enterprise with a procurement process — the marketing that moves those deals is different
• You need someone to write about developer topics generically without any real product angle

Developer marketing is a niche within a niche. The writers who do it well have usually spent time working in or adjacent to technical products. Ask for proof of that before you hire.

Want Someone Who's Done This Before?

I'm Jesse Sumrak. I've spent the last decade writing developer marketing content for Twilio, DigitalOcean, LaunchDarkly, Valimail, Matillion, AssemblyAI, and others. I know the difference between content that gets passed around in a Slack channel of engineers and content that gets closed immediately.

If you're at a devtools company trying to figure out who can write content that resonates with your audience, that's my lane. Holler at me, and we'll figure out if it's a fit.

FAQs

What is developer marketing?

Developer marketing is the practice of building awareness, trust, and product adoption among software developers using channels, formats, and messaging tailored to how developers evaluate and adopt tools.

How is developer marketing different from DevRel?

Developer relations (DevRel) focuses on community building, developer advocacy, and relationship management. Developer marketing focuses on driving awareness and pipeline through content, SEO, and targeted messaging. They overlap and complement each other, but they're different functions with different goals.

What content types work best for developer marketing?

Technical tutorials with working code, honest product comparisons, quickstart guides, implementation walkthroughs, case studies written for practitioners (not executives), and changelog content that demonstrates shipping velocity.

Does developer marketing work for B2D (business-to-developer) companies specifically?

Yes — B2D is arguably where developer marketing is most critical. When the developer is both the user and the primary decision-maker, your marketing has to earn their trust before it earns their business. The self-serve model most B2D companies rely on only works if the content and product experience are strong enough to convert without a sales conversation.

How do I know if I need a developer marketing writer vs. a general B2B writer?

If your content needs to pass a credibility check with a senior engineer, you need a developer marketing writer. If your audience is primarily business buyers who happen to be buying developer tools, a strong B2B writer can often do the job.