--- title: "What is developer marketing? | daily.dev Ads glossary" url: https://business.daily.dev/glossary/developer-marketing/ description: "Developer marketing is how companies earn the attention and trust of developers, who decide which tools to use by reading, trying and comparing rather than by taking sales calls. It favours documentation, content, community and honest product claims over interruption." lastUpdated: "2026-10-20" llmsTxt: https://business.daily.dev/llms.txt --- ## What is developer marketing? Developer marketing is how companies earn the attention and trust of developers, who decide which tools to use by reading, trying and comparing rather than by taking sales calls. It favours documentation, content, community and honest product claims over interruption. Developers are a buying audience unlike most. They evaluate a product by installing it, reading its docs and asking peers, and they can usually tell within minutes whether a claim holds. Marketing to them means supplying the material for that evaluation: clear documentation, a working free tier, tutorials that solve a real problem, and a visible team that answers questions. The discipline sits between product, developer relations and growth. Its channels are the places developers already spend time: their feed, newsletters, open-source communities, conferences and Q&A sites. Its measure is adoption, which means sign-ups, active use and the word of mouth that follows, rather than impressions. What separates it from general B2B marketing is the audience's resistance to interruption. 67% of developers run an ad blocker (MarketingTech News, developer ad-blocking survey), and the ones who do not tune out anything that reads like a pitch. The work is to be useful first, in the reader's own context, and to let the product do the convincing. ## Why is marketing to developers different from marketing to anyone else? Developers are the audience that taught the industry to block ads. They decide what to use by installing it, reading the docs and asking peers, and they can tell within minutes whether a claim holds. Anything that reads like a pitch is skipped; anything that reads like a tutorial is read. The numbers are blunt. 67% of developers run an ad blocker (MarketingTech News, developer ad-blocking survey) and 64% of them say it is because ads intrude (business.daily.dev/resources — why developers block most ads). Marketing that interrupts does not reach them; marketing that is useful, in the place they chose to read, does. The other difference is who buys. In most B2B categories the buyer is a manager who evaluates through demos. For developer tools the buyer is the user: a developer adopts, the team follows, and the contract comes last. The person to convince runs the code. ## What are the channels of developer marketing, and which should you start with? - **Documentation and technical content.** The quickstart, the tutorials, the engineering blog. Found through search and recommended by peers; the foundation everything else points to. - **Developer communities and open source.** Being present and useful where developers already talk, and being a good citizen of the projects they rely on. - **Newsletters and feeds developers subscribe to.** Native placements inside the reading developers chose: the one paid channel that reaches them at scale. - **Developer relations.** Advocates, talks, livestreams and community programs that put real engineers in front of other engineers. - **Conferences and events.** Expensive, slow, and still where categories get defined. Start where the product meets the developer: the docs and the quickstart. Then add distribution for what you publish, because a good post on your own blog reaches the people who already follow it. Paid search and social reach developers too, with more waste, because they target titles rather than what people build. ## How do you measure developer marketing? Not by impressions. 35% of "viewable" ads are actually looked at (Lumen / Adelaide attention research), and a developer who did look rarely acts at once. Measure what developers do next, in order: reads and follows, sign-ups, activation (a first working result), weekly use, and the share of new users who arrive through word of mouth. Attribute over weeks, not days. A developer sees a post, reads the docs the following week, and signs up from a search on another device. A [conversion pixel](https://business.daily.dev/pixel.md) with view-through credit and your own user IDs sees that path; a last-click report calls it "direct" and reports the campaign as a failure. The useful comparison across channels is cost per activated developer. A channel with cheap clicks that never activate is the expensive one. ## What does a good developer marketing campaign look like? It says something specific a developer can check. "Postgres branching for every pull request" is a campaign; "the database platform for modern teams" is a logo. It lands on a page that delivers what the card promised, ideally a quickstart or a working example rather than a form. It runs always-on. 95% of B2B buyers are out-of-market right now (LinkedIn B2B Institute / Ehrenberg-Bass, the 95-5 rule); the campaign that reaches a developer today is remembered when the need arrives in six months only if it kept showing up. Presence beats bursts. And it is written by someone who could use the product. Developers can tell when the copy came from marketing and the engineering team never saw it. ## Who should own developer marketing in a company? Usually a developer marketing lead or product marketing manager who sits between product, developer relations and growth, with engineers contributing content and advocates carrying it. The reporting line matters less than the rule that nothing ships to developers without an engineer having read it. Small teams often start with one person who runs the docs, the blog and the paid presence together, which is fine: consistency of voice across those three matters more than headcount. **Common mistakes** - Running display ads to an audience that blocks or ignores them, then concluding developers cannot be reached. - Headlines about transformation instead of what the product does. - Landing a technical reader on a lead form instead of a quickstart. - Judging a four-week campaign by week one, when developers convert in week six. - Letting the copy ship without an engineer reading it. **How developers experience it** - They trust what other developers say and what they can verify themselves. - They evaluate by trying: the quickstart is the sales call. - They remember who was useful before they needed anything. ## On daily.dev daily.dev Ads is the always-on channel for it: your [verified company page](https://business.daily.dev/verified-company/), your posts in the feed developers open to keep up, the newsletter they chose and the daily.dev homepage, targeted by stack, seniority and region and run for you by our team. ## Developer marketing vs B2B marketing | | Developer marketing | B2B marketing | | --- | --- | --- | | **Who decides** | The developer who will use the tool | A budget holder, after a demo | | **How they evaluate** | Install it, read the docs, ask peers | Demos, references, analyst reports | | **What earns trust** | Proof they can check: code, benchmarks, a free tier | Case studies, brand, sales relationship | | **Channels** | Docs, technical content, communities, developer feeds and newsletters | Search, LinkedIn, events, outbound | | **Measured by** | Reads, follows, sign-ups, activation | Leads and pipeline | ## Go deeper - [What is developer marketing? A complete guide](https://business.daily.dev/resources/what-is-developer-marketing-a-complete-guide-for.md) - [Top developer marketing channels, compared](https://business.daily.dev/resources/top-6-developer-marketing-channels-compared.md) - [Developer marketing platforms compared](https://business.daily.dev/resources/developer-marketing-platforms-compared.md) Related terms: [Developer relations](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/developer-relations.md) | [B2D marketing](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/b2d-marketing.md) | [Technical content marketing](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/technical-content-marketing.md) | [Developer audience platform](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/developer-audience-platform.md) ### Frequently asked questions **How is developer marketing different from B2B marketing?** The buyer evaluates the product hands-on, blocks or ignores ads, and trusts peers over vendors. Developer marketing therefore leads with proof a developer can check (docs, code, benchmarks, a free tier) and shows up where developers read, instead of interrupting them where they do not. **Which channels work for developer marketing?** Documentation and technical content, developer communities and open source, newsletters developers subscribe to, native placements inside developer feeds such as daily.dev, and conferences. Paid search and social reach developers too, but with more waste, because the targeting is by title or interest rather than by what they build. **How much should a developer marketing budget be?** Enough to be present every month in the places your developers read, rather than enough for one launch. Always-on presence with modest spend outperforms a single burst, because developers buy when their need arrives, not when your campaign runs. **How do you measure developer marketing?** By what developers do next: reads and follows, sign-ups and activation, repeat usage, and the share of new users who arrive through word of mouth. Impressions and clicks are inputs, not results. **Do developers respond to any ads at all?** They respond to ads that are part of what they are reading, say something specific, and lead to something useful. Native posts in a developer feed and sponsored slots in newsletters they subscribe to are read; banners are not. [All terms](https://business.daily.dev/glossary.md) | [Explore your options](https://business.daily.dev/schedule/?ref=glossary-developer-marketing) | [How pricing works](https://business.daily.dev/pricing.md)