In the early morning of May 3, 2023, I saw a controversial tweet claiming "DevRel is marketing in disguise".
Honestly, it is hard to reasonably debunk this claim. But it must be debunked to help business people not to make horrible choices.
Looking at the claim again, it has the potential to make business people assume they can treat DevRel and Marketing the same way.
No. That would be a terrible mistake for one major reason: Marketing is a profession of those who can talk while DevRel is a profession of those who can bring the talk to reality or do both.
This is what I mean:
It is one thing to promise your audience they will get all their desires plus extra but it is another thing to fulfil the promise.
Marketers have no strong reasons or incentives to care about whatever happens to the users they bring, they only need to bring users. So they always resort to promising "The Heaven and The Earth" just to meet a target.
And there is nothing wrong with that because it is the purpose of their job. In short, the mindset of a marketer is to bring in users by all means possible.
But no, DevRel people can't do the same because their job is more practical than emotional. You can't promise computers to bring solutions into existence.
It has to be practically done, bit by bit, with blood and sweat but never with just promises.
DevRel people and developers generally always face the consequences of any promises they make. They have to work hard to create docs, abstractions, presentations and many others just to fulfil the promises.
Treating DevRel people like marketers tends to prevent them from doing their job of finding and implementing ways to improve user experience to drive adoption and revenue. Turning them to marketers may look good if you focus on vanity metrics instead of what moves your business forward in the end.
Obviously, DevRel has a lot to do with marketing and selling but they have to be addressed differently because of the practicality of software and software development. Marketers win when they bring in users and so they have an incentive to over-promise. Yes, it is totally different for DevRel people.
After bringing users, they still have to be part of the process to deliver on their promises. If they fail to deliver on their promises, users will have terrible experiences, product adoption will tank and revenue will plummet, leading to the failure of such a company.
So, it is reasonable for any business that deals with developers to make sure their DevRel team focuses on making the developer experience better than anyone else can deliver in their industries. The best way to do so; is not to treat DevRel people as marketers.
Now, in summary, the major difference between marketing and DevRel is:
Marketers are fond of sweetening product promises because they don't face the consequences of their actions as they don't build the product which may lead to terrible user or developer experience and revenue. DevRel teams work hard to fulfill the promises made by marketers and business executives.
Marketers tend to protect the image of their companies by spreading good news while DevRel tends to protect the image of their companies by trying to improve user experience and satisfaction.
Marketing focuses on getting acquiring users without necessarily caring about users' experience while DevRel focuses on relationships and other activities that improve users' experience.
Marketers don't have to care about the feedback from their users because it has nothing to do with their job but any DevRel team needs to care about it because it will help to improve users' experience and satisfaction.
Marketing and DevRel are different in purpose and operation, though they have some intersections in approach. So, treating DevRel teams and operations like marketing is not a good thing for a business that focuses on developers.
Okay, wait! If marketing is different from Developer Relations, then what is the job of DevRel people?
They educate stakeholders and create documentation, abstractions, applications and content that make the magic in their products felt so that you won’t need to trick people to buy your products.
Is DevRel marketing in disguise? What do you think?
This write-up originally appeared in:
DevRel: How to sell to developers
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