In this article, I’m excited to dive into the key lessons I’ve learned about bridging the gap between product marketing and developer relations. I’ll cover everything from optimizing developer experiences, launching successful go-to-market strategies, and creating high-quality, impactful marketing materials.
Whether you’re just starting your career in tech or looking to scale your team’s efforts, these insights will help you strengthen collaboration between DevRel and product marketing, driving both adoption and business results.
Let’s explore how to get it done!
Optimizing the developer experience at MuleSoft
Being a developer marketer is super fun because you can have a huge impact on your organization through the work that you initiate.
When I joined MuleSoft as a Developer Advocate, I was tasked with optimizing the developer experience. At the time, the only way that developers could interface and learn about MuleSoft was by reading documentation or taking a formal training class.
Teresa Garanhel
When I tried to onboard myself with the AnyPoint Platform product, I quickly realized that there were huge gaps in the developer experience, and getting started with MuleSoft was really difficult.
Io, I proposed a one-to-two-year plan to optimize the onboarding experience for developers. I got it approved, and I got to work on spinning up a landing page and started building out all these ‘getting started’ tutorials.
Once I fully executed my tutorial proposal, it resulted in this tutorials page being the number one way that developers interface and onboard onto the MuleSoft platform. It led to higher adoption rates and millions of dollars in attributed pipeline which we were able to measure through sign-ups.
That's why I love this work. It's super exciting because when you have an idea and you're willing to get creative in the dev marketing space, you can deliver huge results and have a huge impact on the business as well.
Teresa Garanhel
Integrating DevRel into your go-to-market activities
When it comes to being a product marketer, you really want to focus on go-to-market activities that’ll drive an impact in your organization. And you want people to recognize your work and the materials you create to have a wide reach across your company and also externally.
In order to create these materials for your new product launch, you're going to have to work cross-functionally with product, DevRel, digital marketing, brand, and sales to lead the successful launch.
I'm going to briefly cover some of these launch activities and where DevRel can fit into each of them.
The first one that I want to cover is a product brief. This is used by sales teams to understand how a new product works at a high level. These product briefs will often get handed over to customers.
When you work at a company like Twilio, you have over 60 different products, and that's a lot for a salesperson to remember. And that's why I think it's important that you create robust product briefs that are understandable by either a non-technical or technical audience.
I'll always consult with DevRel and the product teams to identify what the most popular developer use cases are, and I make sure to highlight them in this product brief.
For example, with one product brief, I highlighted all of the most popular destinations with segment that I was able to identify with both DevRel and product’s help.
Teresa Garanhel
I’d also say that creating product pages is one of the most essential things that you can do when you're launching a new product as a PMM.
Product pages should tell a story graphically. And, as a PMM, you're going to be the one in charge of creating that artistic vision. Yes, you're going to lead that design narrative, but you should also be focused on the messaging as well. Have clear language that describes the product well.
You should also lean on DevRel to support you on all of the developer tools that are listed on the page, and also the quick start guides. You should make it as easy as possible for developers to sign up for the product and try it out on this product page experience.
It's important to note a few things about these pages; developer relations create all of the documentation links and all the one-click deployment assets on all of them. As a PMM, that made my life a lot easier because I just went to DevRel and said, “I need these resources. Where do I find them?” And then they provided all that to me.
A good developer marketer will also understand that developers love seeing how the product works visually. For example, Stripe's documentation is a clear winner because you can see the code working on the right-hand side as you're actually trying to consume the documentation.
I tried to create a similar experience on the MuleSoft platform when I worked there. I worked with the brand team to develop these product gifs that were actually implemented on the product pages, and they showed exactly how the product worked.
Mariya Delano
When we implemented this on the website, we saw much higher adoption rates because it wasn't just text describing how the product worked, it actually showcased the product in action and how easy it was to drag and drop connectors to create integrations.
Another huge pipeline driver for Twilio that I've seen be hugely successful for developers is release webinars. We produce these webinars each quarter, and we highlight all of the new product releases that are coming out this quarter.
We interview people like product managers, PMMs, developer advocates, and the engineers who are responsible for these exciting new releases. And we actually kept upping the budget each quarter because we've gotten so much positive feedback from audience members on how much they enjoy the content.
We also highlight customer stories, we show off use cases, we give an overview of the new product, and then we have an in-depth technical demo that shows how the product actually works.
For each webinar, we have hundreds of people that tune in on Zoom, and then we post the video to YouTube fully edited, and that gets thousands of views. And we're able to attribute pipeline to each webinar we produce based on who RSVPs on the sign-up form.
So, this webinar program that I spearheaded is really a key component of our go-to-market strategy for bringing any new product to market, whether it's a developer product, a large launch, or XL launch.
We always like to feature those things in this developer webinar so that people can learn from the people that actually created the product themselves. And we're talking millions of dollars in pipeline generated for each of these webinars. It's a really big value add for the company.
You may be thinking that this already seems like a lot of work. There's a lot of different things going on, and these are just a few of the activities that you're going to be doing as a product marketer.
But when you work as a product marketer, sometimes you're going to be working on 5-10 different work streams at the same time. Everyone's going to expect you to be the product expert because you're working with all of the product managers on a daily basis.
And this is why sometimes you just have to say, “No, but.”
You won't have the bandwidth to support certain activities. I have this happen all the time. But instead of only saying no, I always try to figure out whose job it really should be to complete a task. There's going to be many instances where it's product's job to handle a launch activity, or it might be DevRel's job to fix some outdated documentation.
Teresa Garanhel
As a product marketer, you really have to learn how to delegate work and identify who’s best suited to tackle a task or project.
Sales enablement is another huge component of being a great product marketer. Learning how customers are using your products and then understanding how sales is selling those products is really key to being a successful PMM.
One thing I can recommend both PMM and DevRel do is join sales calls. What I learned from my sales calls is that there are sometimes huge gaps in the developer experience, and you'll hear from customers what problems they're going to be facing with the product.
At Twilio, I created a presentation that I presented to sales, which was all about how to get in by asking your developer. We basically covered all of the common pitfalls that customers run into when using our SMS products.
Something very common is that people use our SMS products and they don't sign up for A2P 10DLC. And then their messages start getting blocked or they send an email and then it starts getting sent to spam folders. It's because these customers and developers didn't sign up and get set up with Twilio the proper way.
And in those initial conversations, sales should have enabled them properly to be successful in the product, because otherwise they'll leave Twilio and go to a company like Vonage or RingCentral.
What we want to do is try to make sure that they have a successful experience right out of the gate. And this is just one way to do that, by enabling sales to educate them on a technical level.
As a PMM, writing blog posts has also been essential in my work when I'm bringing a new product to market. It not only helps with SEO, but I'll get DevRel involved to actually create a technical demo or example around the blog post, which helps bring it home that much better.
Teresa Garanhel
Product videos is another great way that you can collaborate with DevRel. These videos can be implemented directly in the product experience, and you can work directly with the product managers on this initiative.
If you can somehow find budget as a PMM to allocate $3,000-$5000 to have a video professionally edited, you can then put that video up on your YouTube channel and then say to the PMs, “Hey, when we have a new developer that onboards onto the product experience, can we show them this video on the home page of the product experience?”
And what you can do is create that relationship between DevRel and PMMs where you work in symbiosis because with product marketing, you can focus on the messaging component, and then DevRel can focus on the technical content component.
I know it's a lot, but one thing that I can promise you is that focusing on high quality marketing assets is going to get you noticed in your organization. And the more you can support your launch partners, the more they're going to want to work with you.
Since your launch went smoothly, there's going to be a ton of resources out there for your developers, and everyone at the company is going to be happy with what you created.
Teresa GaranhelFacilitating effective collaboration between DevRel and Product Marketing Managers
Now, I want to talk a little bit about DevRel and PMMs, give a high-level overview of each org, and provide some suggestions on the ways that they can work together.
As a PMM, you need to do a few key things. Great PMMs are storytellers. They understand the power of a great narrative, and they dedicate hours to developing a memorable and inspiring product story.
And, if you understand the technical side of the product, this can enable you to get extremely creative with demos, go-to-market materials, and messaging.
Great PMMs will launch a product, but then will continue after the fact to tie the product into future launches, even when the launch date has passed.
One way I do this in my job is that, when we're launching a new product, let's say on the release webinar, I'll call out the past launches I've done in previous quarters, give a link, and make sure to call them out explicitly so that people know those products are available.
When it comes to working in DevRel, I’d say that great DevRel understands where in the documentation developers are running into roadblocks, and where exactly we could insert a new piece of content that could explain some common developer pitfalls.
Teresa Garanhel
Some things that good DevRel leaders ask is, “Where can we improve the technical documentation? Where do we need new tutorials? Where are the customer developers running into challenges? Could we create new tutorials to hand off to sales teams that could help customers?”
So, when it comes to both PMMs and DevRel, you both need to be product experts. I’d say that both people should be technical. You should understand how the product works at a deep level, and you also need to be able to measure success.
Great PMMs and DevRel are going to be focused on 3-5 measurement metrics, and you're going to work with your key stakeholders to validate them because your work directly impacts business results. Try to identify those 3-5 important metrics for your organization and line of business.
Stacey Kruczek
When you're working at a large organization like Twilio, you're going to need to find a way to align those goals of both DevRel and PMM.
DevRel wants support from PMMs to build those partnerships between product and DevRel.
When PMMs are launching a new product, they're going to need your help to create that partnership between product. I've seen it a lot as a developer advocate myself. I always had a challenging time building those relationships with PMs.
And, in some organizations, it's not very supportive to work very closely with your PMs. So, I think PMMs can help be that bridge to bring those two orgs together.
I’d also say that DevRel is always going to be looking for some sort of strategic direction. What activities are top-align focused from PMM leaders and sales leaders, and how can you help bridge that gap? That way, DevRel understands what sort of content they should be creating, and what's going to help top of the funnel adoption of the product.
When it comes to events, how can PMMs get involved to create the talk track and messaging for DevRel? And then DevRel can come in and do the actual technical piece of the presentation.
From the PMM side of things, I’d say that product marketers want DevRel’s help on things like demo support, suggesting live demos, and fun ways to showcase the products that we're launching.
We also really love high-quality produced and edited tutorials regarding product walkthroughs. I think it's very easy for a DevRel person to say, “OK, we're just going to create this really quickly in a couple of days.”
But, when a good DevRel spends a lot of time on the demo and that quality shows, PMMs love that because it helps sell the product that much better, and then sales can use that as enablement material to help sell the product.
We’d also love DevRel to help us bring exposure to new product launches. DevRel is usually in charge of all of the developer social accounts, so if there's ways that they can leverage those social accounts to talk about the new releases and highlight the new developer offerings that we're coming out with, that's where PMM really needs a lot of help.
How PMM and DevRel can work together to create successful meetups and events
The last thing that I'm going to talk about is meetups and events. I've worked a lot with DevRel on various meetups and events. I've also worked with them a lot to identify user conferences to target.
Karen White
Since I grew up going to meetups all the time, I really love hosting developer events myself. So, I try to find really good conferences. Or when the GDC is in town, how can we get some of those developers to come and learn about Twilio and have that aha moment?
What you can do is work with both PMMs and DevRel cost centers. You guys both have shared initiatives, you both want more brand awareness, and you want to raise adoption of new products.
So, why not take some budget from PMMs and some budget from DevRel and then create an awesome event together?
That's what I do a lot at Twilio, and that's why I'm able to throw these really awesome developer parties.
Also, when it comes to strategic messaging, how can we talk about the customer or the Twilio customer engagement platform? And how can DevRel create a really fun demo that engages with developers? Then, we'll bring that energy together and create an awesome event.
I just want to highlight a couple of events that I've done. For the Game Developers Conference (GDC), I rented out the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, which is a nightclub. I hired these really cool DJs that do synthwave music, we posted the event on meetup.com, and it was the number one attended event all of GDC week.
We had around 3,000 RSVPs for it, and we had 950-960 people actually show up at the door. This event cost around $15,000. We bought food and drinks for people. It was a pretty low cost brand awareness event, and we talked about TwilioQuest.
The reason why this event was so successful was not only did DevRel and PMM both help with the budget, but I also had someone from DevRel come and speak on stage about TwilioQuest.
I also built partnerships with Sledgehammer Games who created the Call of Duty franchise, and also with Microsoft to have someone come in and talk about AR and VR.
So, it wasn't just about Twilio. I was bringing in a bunch of different companies to talk about different things, and those partnerships are really what drew such a large crowd in to this event and why it was so successful.
Another one I did that was pretty successful was our Unity and Twilio collaboration, where I worked on a presentation around how to go to market quickly using building blocks.
I talked a lot about how you can deploy your game quicker with APIs, and then my co-worker Sam came in. He worked on the DevRel team, and he actually showed a demo of how to implement Twilio into Unity.
That experience was really great because then developers got that messaging from the PMM side of, “Why should I build an SMS solution myself? Why can't I just use these APIs?”
And then my co-worker came in and showed that it's just literally one line of code and you can get SMS working in your Twilio app and Twilio SendGrid. Then Unity came and did a whole talk on Unity Gaming Services.
So, this event was really successful. We had around 300 RSVPs and about 80 people showed up at the door at the Microsoft reactor.
Teresa Garanhel
3 key ways to become an expert developer marketer
The first one is that becoming a technical expert for your products is really important.
Work with your product managers, work with DevRel, and work with sales to really understand how customers are using the products, what pitfalls they're running into, and how you can address these challenges through the marketing material that you create.
The second one is to get developer relations involved in all of your launch activities. Find ways that DevRel tutorial content can be integrated directly in the product experience.
Then, give DevRel that strategic direction that they crave on what products they should be focusing on and what's going to make an impact to the top of the funnel adoption for Twilio.
The third and last main takeaway I'd like to leave you with is to create beautiful experiences and tell great stories.
If there’s a way for you to push the envelope in your own job, whether it's hosting a really engaging in-person event, filming a webinar, or creating a YouTube video, I’d always encourage everyone in the audience to make sure that whatever you're releasing is the highest quality content that you can possibly produce, and what's feasible within your budget.
Quality matters. Developers notice the effort that you put into your work, and I’d always say you should try to raise the bar. And if you do all those things, you're going to become an expert developer marketer in no time.
This article is based on Jordan Schuetz's talk at the Developer Marketing Summit in San Francisco in 2022. You can enjoy the complete presentation – and hundreds of others – with Developer Marketing On Demand.
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