Developers Hate Marketing: Launching and marketing your API »

Once you build your API, will developers come?

We've picked up some good stuff from our customers on this topic, many of which we've posted as developer adoption best practices on this blog.

So today we've rolled these in a new whitepaper with our friends at Evolved Media  - Developers Hate Marketing:  Attracting Developers to your API.  

Topics include some thoughts on:

• what do developers expect?
• do's and don'ts in launching your API
• patterns in successful developer programs

You can find it here, we'd love to hear what you think.

Don’t try to market to developers.  Instead, solve their problems. »

Not long ago you could count the number of 'developer marketing' programs on one hand.  Now there are hundreds of programs as Web companies and enterprises open APIs.   These companies know that developer adoption will make their API strategy succeed or fail.

But Developer Marketing is an oxymoron.  Developers hate marketing.   

You cannot drive adoption by 'marketing to developers.'  Sure, you can send offers to your developers but your mileage may vary.

A better formula - understand what's important to developers and give them what they need to reach these goals. Developers want to:

•  build new skills that lead to the best projects and jobs.  This is why new or proprietary tools and programming models are tough to get off the ground - it's a small market of new projects for the developer.
•  increase their productivity.  With good tools and by connecting developers with decent resources and each other for help.  This is why sites like StackOverflow take off. 
•  be recognized for good work and see their products used.  Focus on showcasing their work, not your product.  It's not about you.
•  get paid.  Think App Store model, or affilate marketing networks.

Talk to the folks that made the big developer networks sucessful and you'll hear these points over and over. Some others:

• Developers are not buyers, but are very strong influencers.  There are superstars in the developer world - make them fans and that is the best marketing you'll ever get.
• You can't 'own' or 'use' developers because they have an account on your service.  Developers have lots of options and switching costs might be low from your API.
• Act on their feedback.  Developers are smart and listening and acting on their complaints and ideas is critical to your credibility.
• Developer communities are fragmented.  For example, there is no such thing as an "API developer', but instead there are Twitter or Facebook or Salesforce developers.

Once you have attracted a developer to use your service - they are like gold.   So treat them with respect - don't try to 'use' developers or you might lose them!

API Business Models and Monetization »

Even with the success of APIs like Twitter, Amazon and Facebook, it can still be a struggle to articulate the value of opening an API to execs and other business folks whose support is needed. (Maybe this is why so many APIs are launched as skunkworks projects.) But we can start by identifying the business model.  Common ones with open APIs are:
 
APIs as a marketing channel

Kipp Bodnar argues than any CMO should consider an API to extend brand awareness and consumers’ perception by letting developers write applications to distribute your content. And this might be at a fraction of your online marketing budget. To measure ROI, you could start by looking at the number of interactions you are getting through APIs or by tracking the traffic boost to your website.  
 
APIs as distribution channel for your content

If your company has some valuable content or data, APIs are a natural way to increase syndication. Indeed data accessible through APIs is easy to retrieve and can be embedded in other websites and applications. Many consumer web products, such as Google's many search API products, use this effectively to distribute content all over the web, which in turn drives their main advertising business model.
 
APIs are the cheapest and fastest way to build applications

You would love to build applications on all the different platforms your customers use - iPhone, Blackberry, Pre, Facebook, MySpace..the list goes on.  While it may never be possible to cover every platform, with an open API developers can help you create applications much faster than your team might.  For example, Twitter has no shortage of apps for every platform. 
 
APIs to distribute services

SaaS companies often use an API to distribute additional services. Your API could be either free because it's part of their existing subscription (a great way to differentiate service from competitors) or as an 'add-on' service for incremental revenue. SpinVox Announced last week 600 Registrations for SpinVox API which converts voice to text. They charge 35c for a 30 second message. Apparently their pricing did not discourage developers.
 
APIs to let third-parties extend your product

The same way than you would not be able to build all type of clients for different platforms, you might not be able to build specialized solutions for each market segment and vertical. By opening APIs you might create an ecosystem of partners and developers that augment your core offering with specialized solutions and innovative ideas. This makes your offering much stronger for your customers. Saleforce does this well - Force.com and the App Exchange cover a rich spectrum of specialized solutions they might not be able to provide otherwise.
 
APIs make your business more sticky

There is no secret than in the enterprise industry software integration projects are expensive and once in place, integration code rarely changes. SaaS vendors and services providers that managed to get deeply integrated in their customers IT stack tend to stick. 
 
So, what is your API business model?

Up next:  Roadmap and technical considerations for API monetization.