Influencer marketing may not be a good fit for your developer-focused startup
It wasn't for Alpha, at least.
I turned down a potential client last week.
This startup - let's call it Alpha - reached out to me over Linkedin and explained that they read my blog post about influencer marketing. They're just looking to launch an influencer program of their own, and wanted to see if I could help.
At first, it seemed right up my alley: They're a developer-focused startup, and I have relevant experience with influencer marketing.
However, after doing some research and talking to them, my excitement slowly faded. While they were very convinced they wanted to do influencer marketing, the more I learned about their business, the more convinced I became that influencer marketing won't work for them.
At the end of the day, I had no choice but to decline the gig. The worst thing you can do is execute a strategy you don't believe will work.
Why Alpha shouldn't do influencer marketing?
Let's look at some recent sponsored videos by developer influencers:
First up, NetworkChuck, one of the biggest developer influencers around. This is a sponsored video for FireCloud, a file sharing tool:
Second, Fireship, another big developer influencer. This is a sponsored video for Codux, a visual web development IDE:
Third, DevOps Toolkit, a developer influencer that specifically targets DevOps working with Kubernetes. This is a sponsored video for Otterize, an access management tool:
The products in the videos have three things in common:
They are useful to a wide range of users: file sharing is useful to almost everyone, visual IDEs are useful to all front-end developers, and access policies are something that every Kubernetes administrator needs to manage.
They all use a bottom-up, product-led growth strategy. They aim to reach end users (rather than decision makers) with the free version of their product, with the hope of selling an enterprise version with advanced features.
The products are cool. Okay, this is not really true for FireCloud (file sharing is not too sexy), but it is true for Codux and Otterize. These products are category creators and offer a completely original way to take on old problems.
In contrast, Alpha is a completely different product:
It is a very specialized solution that was designed to cater to engineering teams who deal with A LOT of data. There are only a handful of those types of engineers, and it is highly unlikely that you will find one on a random YouTube channel.
The company's go-to-market strategy is top-down: There is no free tier, and the entire funnel is oriented towards a meeting with a sales representative.
They are not cool. There are dozens of products that tackle the same basic problem that Alpha solves, and Alpha's differentiation is that it solves it for extreme scale. It is a valuable product, but it is not very exciting.
In this situation, influencer marketing would bring Alpha no value: Such a tactic will generate traffic of engineers who, in 99% of cases, are irrelevant to Alpha at all, since they work with normal amounts of data rather than enormous amounts of data.
In addition, finding a developer influencer willing to make a video about this tool will not be easy. Developer influencers don't like specialized tools you need a salesperson to purchase. They want cool stuff their audiences can use right away (ideally for free).
There's more to community than influencer marketing
Ultimately, I told Alpha no, but I didn't leave them with no options: I told them they're right to leverage community for growth, but they're looking in the wrong place. Instead, I suggested:
Getting their CEO on a podcast.
Co-hosting an online workshop with partners from a well-known company.
Submitting articles to big industry conferences.
After that, they can promote the resulting materials through Linkedin and email marketing. By doing so, they can benefit from the reputation they acquire through community involvement, while also reaching their exact target audience.
Remember, community is more than just influencers. Developers are members of a variety of communities, and developer-focused companies should consider which communities are truly relevant to their products.