Influencer Advisory™For Marketing Leaders at Developer Tools Companies
Turn the Coding Creators Developers Watch Into Sign-Ups and Installs
We find the coding creators developers trust, have them build something with your tool on camera, and track every sign-up back to the creator.
Campaigns for 55+ brands · Willow Voice: 1,000 sign-ups in 14 days
Developers can smell an ad, and they skip it
A coding channel reads a script about your tool, the comments call it out, and nobody signs up. So creators get written off as something developers don’t answer.
Squarespace booked 814 YouTubers a total of 6,322 times, almost 8 times each.
The software brands that win with creators don’t buy one big video. They find the creators who bring sign-ups and keep booking them.
Source: our own data on YouTube sponsorships
Why most developer tools creator programs stall
“The comments called the sponsor read cringe”
Why it happensDevelopers want to see code. A read that sounds like marketing gets skipped and mocked in the comments.
“The views were huge but nobody signed up”
Why it happensThe channel was big with people learning to code. Your buyers already ship code at work.
“The creator clearly never used our tool”
Why it happensThey were handed talking points the day before. Developers can tell in seconds when someone has not built with it.
“We got sign-ups, but nobody made it to a first project”
Why it happensThe video showed the homepage, not the setup. Developers stall when they never see the first few steps.
“One video went up, then nothing”
Why it happensDevelopers try a tool when they hit the problem it solves. One video is gone by the time that happens.
“We can’t tell what each creator brought in”
Why it happensDevelopers sign up days later from docs or search, and nobody tracked where they first saw the tool.
Why we started
We realized this old system was not the way that the most successful companies were doing things. We learned this first hand.
We ran an influencer agency first, then a talent agency. Neither one worked for the brands we served, so we built something new.
First Didn’t work
We were an influencer agency
When we ran as an influencer agency, we would reach out to a thousand creators, hear back from about 50, and end up with three influencers who were actually good.
Then Didn’t work
We were a talent agency
When we ran as a talent agency, we managed our own roster, but every time a client handed us a really niche avatar, we were stuck choosing from the same 50 people.
Now What works
So we built our new method
The foundation of this boils down to building connections at scale with influencers and keeping them, and then scaling them without an operational nightmare.
How we run influencer marketing for developer tools
Three steps, and every one of them ends in a number you can count.
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1
Find the coding creators your users already watch
YouTubers who build on stream, coding podcast hosts and newsletter writers. We pick them by the stack their viewers work in, not how many follow.
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2
Build something with your tool on camera
Each creator uses your tool on a project of their own, from setup to the first thing working, with no script. That is how Willow Voice got 1,000 sign-ups in 14 days.
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3
Track every sign-up, then book the winners again
Every creator gets their own link and sign-up count. The creators who bring developers who stick get booked again, the way Squarespace does.
Examples
One software campaign we ran, and two brands we took apart from our data.
Is this you?
Who it’s not for
Who it’s for
Product
Not a tool developers use
A developer tool, API or platform with a free tier or trial
Size
Under $10M a year
Doing $10M+ a year
Creators
Never sponsored a creator and no plans to
Already sponsor creators, podcasts or newsletters, or ready to
What you count
Views and stars
Sign-ups and active users you can count
If that isn’t you yet and you still like where this is going, message us and we’ll refer you to another agency or tool.
Who we are
We originally started in the media space helping YouTubers improve their content. We know firsthand exactly what it takes to make good content.
YouTubers we helped include Football Fundamental, Ground Glory and Kevin Aquatics, and we helped them implement systems that allow them to earn more.
We started Influencer Advisory around a pretty simple observation that influencer marketing is a fragmented industry.
After being in the influencer agency space, we noticed that it’s fragmented, unreliable and inconsistent, which is why it doesn’t actually become a staple marketing channel for most brands.
That’s what led us down the rabbit hole of looking through 6,200 plus interviews with CMOs, running campaigns for 55 plus brands, and learning what actually works in the influencer space.
Get a free audit of your creator program
See which coding creators your users already watch, and what they would bring in.