Our State of Developer Marketing 2023/24 Report offers a bird’s eye view of the landscape, including where developer marketers are spending their budgets (and how big those budgets are in the first place).
Download your free copy of the report for a deep dive into the industry, from the marketing resources used by developer marketing pros around the world to common developer pain points and community insights.
Annual developer marketing budget
While it’s possible for a company to achieve its goals while working with small budgets, it’s fair to say that investing in developer marketing strategies and tactics can greatly enhance the chances of success.
Last year, we asked developer marketers how much their org spends annually on developer marketing and found the majority (26.7%) invests anywhere between $101,000 and $250,000, which is a considerable amount.
The next highest range was $0 – $10,000 at 20%, and $10,000 – $25,000 at 13.3% (both more modest amounts).
We posed the same question in 2023/24. The results? Only 16% of participants saying their budget spans $101,000 and $250,000. The highest ranges are $26,000 – $50,000 at 24% and $51,000 – $100,000 also at 24%.
No one had a budget of over $1 million, whereas in 2022, 10% of developer marketers reported this huge budget.
Where are budgets being spent?
Now that we’ve seen the average developer marketing budget, we followed that up with where teams are actually spending that budget.
In 2022, the top activities where marketing budgets were being spent were paid advertising (56.7%), events (43.3%), customer research (27.4%), and hiring and recruitment (26%).
It’s interesting to see that, in 2023/24, things are a little different. Events (60%) are now at the top of activities, followed by paid advertising (52%), blogging (32%), and software (36%).
There doesn’t appear to be much focus on customer research (16%) and competitor research (4%), which could be due to the fact that 52% of our respondents hail from product-first orgs.
‘Other’ accounted for 12% of responses, and included activities like onboarding new community members, agencies, and technical content.
Digital marketing success
We also asked our respondents to choose the three digital marketing channels they have the most success with in the past twelve months, and content marketing (76%), email marketing (36%), and video (36%) came out in the lead.
In 2022, the three channels picked were content marketing (56.6%), SEO (50%), and paid advertising (30%), so only content marketing remained at the top.
‘Other’ (8%) included Slack.
Which software and tools are most popular?
Equally, we wanted to know which tools developer marketers used in their company. In 2022, the winners were analytics tools (76.8%), followed by CRM systems (56.5%), online advertising tools (47.2%), and SEO tools (46%).
This year, the top tools were also analytics (64%), followed by content creation tools (60%), customer relationship management tools (60%), and social media tools (52%), which were different from last year.
‘Other’ (8%) included community management tools.
When asked which three tools developer marketers couldn’t live without, we found a great variety of software and platforms. These include:
Download your FREE copy of the report for more insights like these!
