Marketing for developers: where to start

For many developers, “marketing” feels like a separate world. In practice, for an indie, marketing is getting the right people to discover that your product exists and to trust you.

Content that works for devs

• Tutorials and how-tos: “How I did X with Y” attracts people with the same problem. Use your blog, Dev.to or Medium.
• Open source and examples: a GitHub repo with an example of using your tool or your stack drives organic traffic and shows what you can do.
• Short videos: recording the screen showing the product or a technical flow works well on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube; many people prefer to see the tool in action.

Where to be present

• Where your audience is: Reddit (subreddits for your niche), Discord, Telegram groups. Participate before just posting links.
• Twitter / X and LinkedIn: regular posts about what you’re building, technical decisions and results (even small ones) build recognition.
• Newsletter: subscribers have already shown interest; use it for launches, updates and exclusive content.

Mindset

You don’t need to be an “influencer”. Being useful and consistent already sets you apart: explain real problems, share what you’ve learned and answer questions. Marketing for devs usually works better when it’s genuine and technical than when it’s just “buy my product”.

Start with one channel and one type of content (e.g. one blog post per week or one thread per week on Twitter) and adjust based on feedback.