You don't know what 'good marketing' looks like for your company
Scale beyond word-of-mouth
Stop guessing, build predictable systems
Turn your early traction into a system. Get your dev-tool in front of the right engineers.
"Our most expensive mistakes have been in the direction of we didn't really figure out marketing for a really long time." - Avery Pennarun, Co-founder & CEO - Tailscale
Building a company that serves developers is hard... but, you don't have to figure out the marketing yourself
A while ago you've realized you cannot build an actual business on just word-of-mouth or the unrepeatable growth spikes. You cannot rely on luck.
You built something developers want to use. That part worked.
The problem is, the right developers don't realize you solve their problem the way they want it solved. So you're invisible to them. And the developers who do find you aren't the ones who matter for your company.
This is a marketing strategy problem. (and no, I'm not here to throw strategy and sit on the sidelines. But more on that later...)
This is not a "we need more leads" problem. Not a tactical one.
Here's what this looks like in practice: You get signups. Some are great. Some are pulling the wrong use case. Some are pulling competitors' customers. You never quite figured out the pattern of which is which.
So you keep shipping more features hoping one sticks, or you run campaigns that get noise, not signal.
And you can't explain to investors or your board exactly why some of your early growth worked and whether you can do it again. That's the blind spot.
It's not that you're bad at marketing. It's that so far you've hired marketing experts but not someone who can lead and show you how your entire company's marketing has to work.
You could spend months (or even a couple of years) optimizing the wrong things. Like others have. Or you could figure out what's actually off right now.
Book a 15-min no-cost clarity all on my calendar below and we’ll discuss where you are and what your next step needs to be to grow predictably. No fluff, no sales pressure. Just clarity.
Are you at a stage where the following statements resonate?
Read the statements below
You've trouble judging (and therefore hiring) marketing talent.
You need someone who has actual engineering experience and NOT from traditional marketing background
Your competitors are figuring out scalable marketing while you're still relying on word-of-mouth & lucky spikes
You can't afford another 6-12 months on a marketing hire that doesn't work out
Your board/investors are asking why growth is slowing — and you don't have a clear answer
Your board needs to see results soon — and you lack confidence in your ability to deliver them
How do you fix these?
It’s not more campaigns.
It’s not hiring
another marketing expert.
It’s someone embedded with your
team who can see the patterns you’re missing, help you make the right
strategic bets, and actually lead the work while you focus on what you do
best.
Marketing Strategy & Leadership for Dev-Tools With A Fractional Engagement
I Build & Lead Data-Driven Developer-Marketing Departments (+ DevRel Teams) for Developer-Tool Companies to Multiply Their Revenue.
I don’t sit on the sidelines. I work inside your company, embedded with your team. That means I’m holding standups with our team. I’m working directly with our team on the campaigns that matter. I’m helping you make the strategic calls in real-time, not reviewing decisions after they’re made. You get a fractional leader who thinks about your long-term marketing strategy while actually leading the execution. The strategy and the leadership come together.
What that looks like:
- Quarterly strategy sessions and reviews where we look at what’s moving the needle (and what isn’t)
- I hire and build the team for our company.
- Weekly / Fortnightly check-ins with the rest of the leadership team to report progress
- I’m holding standups with our team, understanding what’s happening frequently
- I’m inside the Slack channels embedded with our team participating in conversations as needed
- When a campaign needs to pivot mid-quarter, we adjust together
- Your team knows what the strategy is because I’m explaining it while we’re building it, not after
This is different from hiring a consultant who audits your work. Different from hiring a full-time marketing leader. It’s fractional leadership. Strategic direction and leading execution, at a cadence that the team needs.
“I had a lot of issues handling the operations and marketing side of my business. There was nobody to lead marketing activities, we didn’t have a marketing strategy in place. I had to do everything from product to platform to marketing by myself. And I couldn’t focus on any of these fully. I needed someone to take over the website and marketing side of things and lead it, build marketing strategy, run campaigns and monitor results
…
Our work together helped me focus on our courses which is an important aspect of our platform, as well as growing our team. Raj is a smart and talented marketer with good leadership skills, knowledge of modern technology and tools, and great communication skills. His ability to research and identify the right solutions, setup automation and lead a team of developers helped us build a new learning platform from scratch and provide our users with a better experience..”
Mumshad Mannambeth
Founder & CEO at KodeKloud
How does this work?
Three simple steps.
Chat
Schedule a 15-minute call to evaluate good fit for your organization’s needs.
Strategy
Then we’ll get on a longer call to deep dive into your needs. Then I’ll share the steps I recommend with a proposal
Marketing Transformation
In the first 30 days, you’ll have a comprehensive marketing plan and the leadership to execute it over the next quarter
Have questions? These are frequently asked.
About fractional
Hearing it for the first time?
Is this for you?
To help you figure out
What Is A Fractional Marketing Strategist + Leader?
A Fractional Marketing Leader is a marketing executive serving businesses by leading marketing strategy, sales development, growth opportunities, and heading the marketing department.
Businesses use fractional C-level services because they do not need a full-time C-level executive but still require expert strategy and leadership. Businesses enjoy the flexibility that a fractional executive provides.
Often, it makes sense to bring in a fractional chief marketing officer as opposed to full-time. This can be for financial reasons, as a typical full-time CMO salary can cost more than $200,000 per year. It could also be because the work needed to be done by the CMO does not require a full-time position.
What Are Their Responsibilities?
- Developing the marketing strategy for both the short-term and long-term.
- Deciding and committing to which marketing strategies are best for your business, such as SEO, content marketing, paid advertising, or events/conferences, etc.
- Solving marketing problems that will arise and need to be resolved quickly.
- Leading the marketing department and inspiring team members.
- Hiring new employees and building out your team for success.
- Working with outsourced agencies leaning on their experience.
Your Fractional CMO should have a wealth of marketing and managerial experience. Therefore, the Fractional CMO should be the natural leader of the marketing team.
In addition to leadership qualities, the Fractional CMO is to be seen as the c-suite level marketing strategist who helps organizations achieve their marketing goals. Your Fractional CMO will work closely with both your organization’s leadership team and the marketing talent executing the marketing tactics on a day-to-day basis.
What Do They Do?
Here are a few sample activities
- Create your marketing strategy
- Map out your customer journey
- Correct your messaging and positioning
- Hire marketing employees and consultants to execute
- Create systems for your team to follow
- Manage KPIs so your marketing makes you money
How to Know if You Need My Services?
- You are running your marketing team instead of being the CEO
- You’re struggling with judging marketing hires/talent (esp. compared to engineering or other teams)
- You’re not sure what campaigns to have your marketing team try next
- You don’t have your developer journey mapped out, or clear KPI’s for your campaigns
- You’re relying on luck for your growth
- You’re attracting the wrong developers / development teams
- You know if developers tried your product, they love it, but you have trouble getting them to sign up + implement at least the ‘hello world’ equivalent.