--- title: "Developer marketing resources worth reading" description: "The developer marketing and DevRel reading I'd hand anyone starting out: basics, case studies, docs worth copying, newsletters and people to follow." source: https://savepad.app/blog/developer-marketing-resources --- [Blog](https://savepad.app/blog) · 17 April 2024 # Developer marketing resources, from someone who's been doing it a while The developer marketing and DevRel reading I'd hand anyone starting out: basics, case studies, docs worth copying, newsletters and people to follow. *A Savepad search across developer marketing resources, matching a PDF, a docs page and a saved post* **TLDR** - Marketing to developers is its own thing. The usual playbook (gated ebooks, “book a demo”, LinkedIn ads with stock photos) mostly makes them close the tab. - I keep a list called [awesome-developer-marketing](https://github.com/ronakganatra/awesome-developer-marketing) on GitHub. This is the starred-by-me version. - Read the basics, then the case studies, then go and look at great docs, because in dev tools the docs are marketing. - Everything here is also in my public Savepad, in folders that match the README. ## Why a separate list I’ve spent most of my career marketing things developers use (headless CMSs, mostly, at Hygraph and DatoCMS). If you come from “regular” B2B marketing, the first month is mostly unlearning. Developers don’t want to be nurtured. They want to try the thing, read the docs, and be left alone until they have a question. Most marketing resources don’t cover that. These do. ## The basics - [WTF is B2D?](https://snipcart.com/blog/b2d-marketing-selling-to-developers) from Snipcart. Selling to developers, explained plainly. - [Is Developer Relations Developer Marketing?](https://aspleenic.medium.com/developer-relations-and-developer-marketing-they-arent-the-same-thing-35b896159825) They aren’t the same thing, and this is the clearest explanation of why. - [The importance of using experts in developer marketing](https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/29/draft-dev-ceo-karl-hughes-on-the-importance-of-using-experts-in-developer-marketing/), Karl Hughes of Draft.dev in TechCrunch. Why your content needs to be written by people who’ve actually used the stack. - [Why is marketing to developers different?](https://developerrelations.com/what-is-b2d-or-developer-marketing) from developerrelations.com. - [A Primer on Developer Marketing](https://tomwentworth.com/2016/10/13/a-primer-on-developer-marketing-47d792d67586/) by Tom Wentworth. From 2016 and still right. ## The ones that argue with you - [Marketing doesn’t work on developers](http://tapes.scalevp.com/marketing-doesnt-work-developers/) from Scale Venture Partners. The title is the thesis. - [Developers hate marketing](https://cloud.google.com/files/apigee/apigee-developers-hate-marketing-ebook.pdf), an Apigee ebook, hosted by Google. Yes, an ebook about how developers hate ebooks. - [50 Lessons in Developer Marketing](https://twitter.com/nickwritesit/status/1402318187299934212), a thread on X. Fast, opinionated, bookmark it. ## Case studies - [Stripe’s model of product-led, developer-centric growth](https://lethain.com/stripe-product-led-developer-centric-growth/) by Will Larson. - [How Vercel built a product-led motion on top of Next.js](https://www.decibel.vc/content/from-open-source-to-enterprise-how-vercel-built-a-product-led-motion), from Decibel. - [How we launch at Supabase](https://supabase.com/blog/supabase-how-we-launch). Launch weeks, from the source. - [How Novu grew to 20k GitHub stars](https://www.crowd.dev/post/how-to-grow-a-github-project-to-20k-stars-with-nevo-david-novu). - [How Lago got its first 1,000 GitHub stars](https://github.com/getlago/lago/wiki/The-777%E2%80%90point-Hacker-News-hit-that-got-us-000-star), a 777-point Hacker News post, written up in their wiki. ## Docs worth stealing from In dev tools, docs aren’t just a requirement. They’re basically a feature. Great docs make marketing so much easier, and most devs will read your docs before they read your homepage. *A docs quickstart page with a sidebar and a code sample* 0883 · docs · #getting-started *An API reference code sample* 0980 · docs · #api-reference *A concepts page in product docs* 0177 · docs · #structure Docs pages saved as pages, so the layout, the sidebar and the code samples are all there when you go back to them. The ones I keep going back to: [Stripe](https://docs.stripe.com/), [Tailwind](https://tailwindcss.com/docs), [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/docs), [Prisma](https://www.prisma.io/docs/), [Shopify](https://shopify.dev/docs) and [GitHub](https://docs.github.com/en). Look at how they split getting started from reference, and how fast you get from the first page to working code. ## Community - [The Orbit Model](https://github.com/orbit-love/orbit-model). A framework for thinking about community as gravity instead of a funnel. - [Community-Market Fit](https://www.commsor.com/post/what-is-community-market-fit) from Commsor. - [Community-Led Growth: the PLG expansion pack](https://corinneriley.medium.com/community-led-growth-the-product-led-growth-expansion-pack-b474ab9a7940) by Corinne Riley. ## Newsletters and people Newsletters: [DevTools Brew](https://morganperry.substack.com/), [DevFirst](https://devfirst.substack.com/), [DevRel Weekly](https://devrelweekly.com/) and [Newslepear](https://newslepear.beehiiv.com/). More in [the newsletters post](https://savepad.app/blog/marketing-newsletters). Blogs: [Developer Markepear](https://www.developermarkepear.com), [Mary Thengvall](https://www.marythengvall.com/), [swyx](https://www.swyx.io/) and the [Developer Marketing Examples on mktto.dev](https://mktto.dev/examples), which is a swipe file in its own right. (Flo Merian and I run mktto.dev together, so take that one with a pinch of salt.) And if you want to see what I think about emailing developers, I wrote [a whole thing](https://ronakganatra.com/posts/email-marketing-to-developers) on that. ## Where it lives now The list on GitHub is the backup. The live version is my public Savepad at [my.savepad.app/@gunnyganatra](https://my.savepad.app/@gunnyganatra), where every page has a snapshot (some of the 2021 links are already dead) and search reads the whole thing. If you’re a dev marketer too, there’s a page on [how Savepad works for developers](https://savepad.app/for/developers), and the general [marketing resources](https://savepad.app/blog/marketing-resources) post is the other half of this one. [Join the waitlist](https://savepad.app/#waitlist) ## Read these next - [The marketing resources I actually go back to: Blogs, books, newsletters, podcasts and case studies from my own swipe file, the ones I starred after years of saving everything.](https://savepad.app/blog/marketing-resources) - [Marketing newsletters worth your inbox: The marketing newsletters I actually read, for growth, SEO, B2B and developer marketing, and how to keep them from drowning your inbox.](https://savepad.app/blog/marketing-newsletters) - [Design inspiration websites worth bookmarking: The design inspiration sites worth keeping open: landing pages, app screens, type and the weird stuff, what each is good for, and what to do with what you find.](https://savepad.app/blog/design-inspiration-websites)