Can a Creator Fund Supercharge your DevRel Content Strategy?
One of the most common requests we receive from clients of The Dev Rel Collective is how to increase awareness of a product or feature with Developers. Especially with early-stage companies, it is not always realistic to hire more advocates, or even create more tutorials and content. You need to find ways to get the developers already in your community, or influencers in a space you are trying to grow awareness, to write content for you. Easier said than done though, right?
Developers today are busier than ever. Asking them to do more is a tall order. The trick is to find something they love to do and reward it. Many of us at The Dev Rel Collective are gamers. We spend our evenings glued to our TVs playing the latest shooter or driving simulator. And, when we are not playing games, we are often watching YouTube videos and live streams of our favorite creators as they play games. It got us thinking, why are gamers creating all of this content that provides amazing awareness for the game studios? If you boil it down to the basics: they are doing something they love (playing games), and getting rewarded for it (ad revenue).
As it so happens, a recent client in the gaming space needed to increase awareness and amp up content creation. They didn’t want to hire more marketers or advocates as they needed to be careful of burn rates and headcount caps. I proposed establishing a creator fund as a way to supercharge their activities. I pitched the idea to Lester Chen over at a16z to start a creator fund, similar to what gaming studios do for their players. If anyone knows how to do it, Lester sure does. We hashed over a few details, but the model was pretty clear and described below.
One word of caution though. Creator funds are not for everyone. We can help you determine the right strategy for your business, but as you read the approach below, you need to understand that there is significant management overhead to keep track of verifying creator claims, paying out creators, and more. You also should commit at least 6 months, and ideally longer, to running the fund. These activities take time to gain momentum and should be aligned with major product releases or marketing events to ensure that impact is maximized.
With the disclaimer out of the way, let’s jump into the steps required to establish a creator fund at your company.
Steps to establish a creator fund
1. Establish a quarterly fund and payout criteria
Allocate a quarterly amount of money that you will pay creators. This might be pretty small to start with, say $20,000 from the marketing budget, and grow over time as you see success. You will use this money to pay out to creators based on some sort of performance goal. Lester suggested staying away from something like YouTube video views as it can be easy to artificially inflate numbers. It’s much better to tie it to something you can directly measure, like signups.
2. Define tiers and set goals
Now that you know how much budget you have to work with, you need to define a series of payout tiers. We’ve had success with a mixed tier approach which pays out across different criteria. Lower tiers, which can be achieved more easily, act as motivators. Developers get a taste of success and want to spend more time to achieve more. Let’s take the ultimate goal of signups/conversions and YouTube videos for example. Not everyone who watches your video will decide to sign up. And, we know paying out just for views is not necessarily the right strategy either. This is where the mixed-tier approach works well. Establish a lower tier that pays for views and gets developers motivated, and mix it with a higher tier that pays for conversions, and where the real money is
Here is an example:
Tier 1: $100 for greater than 1,000 views
Tier 2: $500 for greater than 10,000 views
Tier 3: $1000 for greater than 20 sign-ups.
Tier 4: $2000 for greater than 50 sign-ups
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You will notice in the example above that tiers overlap. A developer may get 1000 views and drive signups. This is fantastic. Reward them handsomely and keep going!! You will also notice that at $2000 for 50 signups, CPA, not including other payouts is at $40. This aligns pretty closely with what you would typically expect for a developer-focused campaign. As you scale, this number should decrease, especially if you use multiple channels such as blogs, videos, referrals etc. It will never be as low as self-service signups. The goal of a creator fund is to grow those organic signups over time through broad awareness.
3. Offer content creation coaching
A common situation we have seen repeatedly is that developers start creating content, but the quality is not great. Blogs and articles may be poorly structured, or videos may not be polished or succinct. The result is low view counts. Don’t let this be the reason you cancel your creator fund before you see success. Remember, for many developers, this may be the first time they are creating content like this. Be a partner with them. Offer to review and copy edit articles, and perhaps offer monthly video creation webinars, or even access to a learning platform like Udemy that has dozens of videos about how to create great YouTube content. Go the extra mile, and treat the creators like an extension of your Developer Relations team. It will only benefit you in the future.
4. Amplify content
At this stage, you should be seeing some healthy content coming from the community. It’s now marketing’s job to start amplifying this content. Share it on social media, repost it on LinkedIn, add it to your YouTube channel and monthly newsletters, nurture emails, and maybe even put some retargeting money behind it. The more you help your creators increase their reach, the better it is for you. Another great strategy is to invite some of these creators to a webinar that your marketing team hosts. The golden rule is to reuse the content across as many channels as you can.
5. Reward creators
A large part of the success of a creator fund strategy is to help grow a vibrant community. To do this you want to reward creators with more than just financial incentives. Developers love schwag and recognition: give creators who reach a particular milestone an exclusive t-shirt, or plaque. Give them stickers, promote them to MVP, offer time from the company’s executive time to meet 1:1, and get early access to product features. Make them feel a part of the company. This is your opportunity to give back and say thanks for going the extra mile. Don’t skimp on it.
6. Measure & adjust
On a quarterly basis, take stock of the program. Did it achieve your metrics goals? What did it break down to in terms of cost-per-acquisition? Does it make sense to continue it, or spend the money somewhere else with a lower CPA? Metrics are your friend here. Analyze them and adjust, but be careful not to give up too early. These sorts of programs can take time to grow. It is much better to adjust the payout criteria and goals to align with your needs than wholeheartedly give up on the program. This sends the wrong message to developers and to your community. If possible, commit to a year of the creator fund. The dividends will come, but the right mix may need some tweaking along the way.
Summary
A creator fund strategy is a very powerful way to engage and energize your developer community to create and share content on your behalf. There is overhead in doing so, and you need to be committed for at least six months, ideally longer. When done right, however, creator funds can go a long way in making a small startup or Dev Rel team seem much bigger and more impactful. Just think how many small indie games were picked up by streamers and rocketed the game to success. Treat your creators like extended members of your team and reward them with more than just financial incentives. Reward them with your time and recognition, and great things will happen.