Most marketing teams pretend they’re doing the 70-20-10 thing. Very few can tell you which activity sits in which bucket. If you're serious about reaching developers—where attention is scarce and cynicism is high—it's worth getting honest about your allocation. Where are you compounding? Where are you expanding? And what’s your 10% Hail Mary? If you don’t have one, you’re probably overdue.
Sergey Brin’s 70-20-10 framework was never meant for marketers—but we’ve stolen it anyway. It’s simple:
- 70% of your resources go to what’s proven to work
- 20% to expanding what’s working
- 10% to high-risk, high-reward bets
Sounds clean on paper. Messy in practice. Especially when you’re marketing to developers.
So here’s the question: in your own team, do you actually know what lives in each bucket? Most people don’t. They either run everything like it’s a 70% safe bet, or worse, burn half the budget on “bold experiments” that are really just creative briefs with no measurement attached.
Let’s fix that.
70%: Optimize What Works
This is your baseline—performance ads that deliver, SEO that compounds, nurture sequences that don’t suck. The conferences which you know will bring in valuable leads. The key here isn’t "set and forget." It’s micro-optimizations, creative testing, offer iterations. It’s boring—but it’s what pays for the 10%.
20%: Expand What Works
Here’s where you get to stretch your muscles. You take the content partnership that worked and ask, “What happens if we localize it?” You take your top-performing campaign and try a new channel or format. Or you find out that devs on your platform love posts about AI infra—and build a whole editorial spin-off.
This bucket is where developer marketers either get lazy or get leverage. It’s the place to pour fuel, not glitter.
10%: Go Weird
Now the fun part. This is your license to get weird, but not dumb.
These are long shots, things that you don't have any data to believe will work, or have even failed in the past. It applies not just on a budget or activity level, but on a personal one. What's a habit or practice you usually do? When will you break it?
If it fails, great. Now we know.
If it works, it graduates to 20%.
That’s the deal.
