How to grow adoption of new features with Developers
We are currently working with a client who recently released a set of features targeted towards a different type of developer. This requirement, growing adoption of new features and/or attracting developers with different programming languages, skills, or methodologies is a very typical scenario we see as a company continues to grow and wants to attract a broader set of developers. The strategy to be successful is always the same:
Exceed your existing developer's expectations
It might sound silly, but before looking to attract new/different developers, make sure you do an amazing job with your core developer audience. Don’t just settle for single-digit growth numbers or even really high percentages, rather focus on exception NPS scores and developer feedback. Make your product something developers can’t live without. And make sure they tell everyone about it. Then, you be confident that you know what developers need and can look to grow your addressable market.
Target existing new tech users
Let’s say your new feature targets Rust developers, which is a new developer audience for you. Start by making sure these developers know you have a new offering for them. Seek out key partners that already have a presence in the space and offer to collaborate on content that they can post to their sites. These organizations already have the audience, you want to tap into that.
In conjunction with publishing content on partner sites, start doing the rounds of relevant conferences. This is where you can lean into your developer advocacy team and have them hit the road. It’s not uncommon to look to sponsor events to increase brand awareness. Generally, sponsorships are a good strategy, but start small; sponsor food and drink at meetups, etc until you get good developer feedback on your offering. Once you are confident that your product exceeds this new developer's feedback (see item #1), then sponsor bigger events.
Build relationships with influencers in that community. Ask/pay them to review and blog/vlog about your offering. Do it authentically. If they give poor feedback, immediately connect them with your product teams and see how you can improve the experience.
Depending on the bandwidth of your team, establishing a creator fund can be an excellent way to really supercharge organic content creation. Each quarter, allocate $x that you pay to anyone who creates content that reaches a certain threshold: views, conversions, etc.
Target new or existing users
Perhaps new existing users of your product can take advantage of the new feature you are offering. The goal here is to make them aware of the feature and see the value in it. Very often this may take the form of updating nurture emails or webinars. These are effective point-in-time solutions, but too often organizations fail to create a single source of information for their users. Spend time taking inventory of existing blog posts, learning material, and content around the new feature and combine them into a single page for developers, eg: www.mycompany.com/newfeature, and put demand generation and SEM effort behind this one resource, rather than spreading promotion activity across multiple disparate pages.
Look at bigger trends and how your new feature helps align with that trend and make developers’ lives easier. Spend time creating thought leadership content around this trend and weave your feature into the narrative. This will help you draft organic search traffic around trends.
Most importantly, share developer success stories where your community has used the new feature. Developers love to hear from other developers. And why not take it on the road with local user group events in key cities or important customers to help drive adoption. Always remember, that the best developer is an existing developer.
Partner with Product
Great developer relations teams should often act as outbound PMs for product management. They hear the good, the bad, and the ugly directly from developers. Use this input to continuously improve the product experience and exceed developer expectations.
Ensure you track product usage analytics on new features, and regularly review things like HotJar recordings with product to identify points of friction. Then partner with the product team to fix issues in the product and create content around best practices.
Form a developer council made up of existing community members, key developers at customers, and new developers. Listen to their feedback, act upon it, and turn these people into your strongest advocates.
Take all of the learnings back, and create quickstarts and how-to guides and invest in the next set of features to continuously optimize the developer experience