What Marketing Can Teach Devs About API Strategy

For August, I'm doing something different. In this edition of Net API Notes, I'm turning the editorial responsibilities over to specially selected guest authors, the first of whom is Emma Kriskinans.

Emma Kriskinans is Tyk's VP of Global Marketing, helping scale the company from seventeen employees to over one hundred fifty. Emma's strategic API experience is vast, as she leads marketing for a company that was listed as a 2023 Gartner Leader in API Management.

Writing has been a lifelong passion for Kriskinans. In addition to authoring the API Product Management newsletter, she also writes for fun on everything from creativity to culture on her Scrambled Eggs Substack.

In September, I'll be back on my high horse. But for now, I want to express my deepest thanks to Emma for continuing to expand my understanding of how broad and encompassing the world of APIs can be. Onto the piece!

What marketing can teach developers about API strategy

Tech teams may hesitate to take cues from marketing, but don’t be too quick to scoff: the API community can learn valuable lessons from the marketer’s journey, including our mistakes. 

The last twenty years has forced marketing to evolve from being seen as merely a creative or promotional function to a critical driver of business growth, measured by clear, revenue-based outcomes. The same evolution is needed for teams building API strategies, and if you’re not intentional about how you market your API strategies - internally and externally - you run the risk of being misunderstood or undervalued. 

Whilst I’ve written before about how API strategy has a marketing problem, it only recently dawned on me just how literally API strategy has marketing’s problem: how to successfully and consistently demonstrate the value of our work to the rest of the business. 

I’ve been a marketer for over fifteen years, in large corporates as well as scale-ups like Tyk, and in every business - no matter the size, I’ve had to get the business bought-in and the Board, well - on board, if I’ve wanted to make any sizeable impact to the bottom line. 

It’s not always been easy. I’ve felt the temperature of the room change as I outline all the ways I need help from the rest of the org. I, too, have watched eyes glaze over as I unthinkingly mention yet another acronym. But I’m here to let you know I made it out the other side, and I’m here to share the lessons learnt from my mistakes, so you can apply them to your own marketing problem and save your API development teams years of frustration. Let’s dive into them.

1. Get the business to care

Marketers found out long ago that if money talks, that means ‘revenue’ is the lingua franca you must learn to get buy-in for your ideas. API strategies are no different: for them to gain strategic attention they deserve, teams must clearly articulate how their efforts impact the bottom line.  

The easiest way to do this is by aligning your API initiatives with the company's OKRs (objectives and key results). Lots of developer teams do this in theory, but they don’t make the link explicit in practice. And that means you’re not making it easy for your CEO to track the connection between your project and the numbers which keep them up at night.

If you have an external-facing, productised API and can show a monetary impact in revenue every time your API is called… well, definitely start there. But even if your API isn’t directly revenue-generating, how does it help your P&L sheet indirectly? Improved API documentation might not mean immediate dollar signs, but if it leads to 20% increased adoption of your API, then there’s your revenue impact. On the internal side, perhaps you’ve seen that a better API experience reduces hours in time to market for your dev teams. How much do those hours add up to? Report that back. 

The good news is our industry is already moving in the right direction. Trends like platform engineering, developer velocity, and GitOps all emphasise making software development more efficient and effective. Businesses like MongoDB have gone further and established dedicated API Experience teams to champion the voice of the API user, whether internal or external, measured against business KPIs*. 

And through my work on the API Product Management newsletter I’ve seen the huge value this role brings to development teams by bridging the gap between an organisation’s commercial vision and the technical implementation. Our hopes for the API product manager are almost as high as the demand for them** - but we shouldn’t use it as an excuse to shirk our own individual responsibility, and power. We each have the ability to translate the impact of our work to the business, and it starts by speaking in dollar signs.

* Bianca Lisle of the MongoDB API Experience team was generous enough to spend some time back in April this year explaining to me how their APIX team functions. It got me really excited about the potential of these teams to bridge the gap I’m talking about in this piece.

** The rise of the API product manager role has been noted by others in our space. Two recent articles which document this trend are ‘API Program and Governance Trends 2024’ by James Higginbotham and ‘Is API Product Management a Role or a Person?’ from this newsletter’s own Matthew Reinbold.

2. Find your fans

To get buy-in for your strategy, first you learn the language. Then you get out there and speak it amongst those who could, should, or would have a stake in your plan, otherwise known as internal marketing. 

As a team with ‘marketing’ in our name, we should have had this one down pat. In reality, I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve seen marketing campaigns launched without realising that the most important people to tell are your colleagues. Not only are they dealing with customers every day, doing work which could be improved by your latest tactic, they could become your biggest advocates. 

It’s a good idea to start by identifying key players who can influence the success of your API strategy, and don’t assume they all sit on the ‘technical’ side of the fence: some of your biggest sponsors are probably sat in Sales, Customer Support, Product Management or Marketing. 

Engage these key stakeholders earlier than you think you should, and talk to them often. Collaborate with them in the planning process using the common language of those company OKRs and revenue metrics we just talked about, and be open to new ideas or constructive feedback. This approach not only helps refine your strategy but also builds a coalition of support necessary for successful onward implementation.

Remember too that stakeholder management doesn’t have to mean endless 1:1 meetings. Use a variety of communication channels to get teams onboard: I find group workshops work particularly well at getting important feedback whilst reiterating the ‘why’ of your programme. 

We’ve all seen those leaders who have been promoted into a more senior role and expect their new title means instantly doors open and heads start nodding. It’s not enough. Teams across the org also have to understand what API strategy means - and does, for them. 

3: Explore marketing strategies beyond DX

Often, I see most API marketing strategies begin and end at creating a fantastic Developer Experience (i.e. documentation and developer portals), and then relying on the developer community (internal or external to your org) to promote your API for you. And yes, this should be the bread and butter of your API marketing activity: after all, developers are likely the number one user of your APIs. 

But it’s a common misconception that marketing starts and ends at Promotion. Successful marketing strategies encompass all of what we call the marketing mix, which covers four Ps: Product, Pricing, and Place as well as the aforementioned Promotion.

For the Product aspect, look at the wealth of material on APIs-as-a-product thinking (and the different definitions - and arguments for each - within). Use the Jobs-to-be-Done framework to outline the requirements for your API in line with your Ideal Customer Profile. Use analytics to understand how the API is being used and where there may be opportunities for improvement based on usage stats. 

In terms of Pricing, set a structure that reflects the value provided by the API, possibly exploring models like tiered pricing or subscription-based access. Place, or distribution, is another critical consideration. This involves making your API easy to find and access. Ensure that it’s well-documented, easy to use, and available through platforms where your target users are most likely to be. This might include developer portals, marketplaces, or integration platforms.

Marketing within the organisation matters for demonstrating how your API strategy will deliver value and for identifying the advocates who’ll help you make an impact. Marketing APIs and API products outwards into the world is the key to delivering on that promise. 

What would a marketer do? 

Marketing and API development teams have more in common than we both may initially think. Asking ‘what would a marketer do?’ can help remind you of this as you navigate buy-in for your next big API idea. 

Venture out of the technical team when it comes to marketing the value of APIs within the business, and think beyond developer experience when it comes to communicating that value externally. Most importantly, learn to speak the language of the Board: just as marketing teams learned to link their efforts to tangible revenue growth, your plan for API excellence must do the same. 

And if you’re still not sure, take this as your sign to go ask a real-life marketer for their feedback and ideas on your plans. By collaborating and learning from each other's experiences, we can amplify our impact on the bottom line, together.

Thanks again, Emma! If you'd like to read more of Emma's writing on APIs, technology, and life, check out her API Product Management newsletter and Scrambled Eggs Substack. ~ Matthew

Milestones

August is always relatively slow, with few news announcements. Given that, here's a funny comic by Forrest Brazeal:

Wrapping Up

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That's all for now. Till next time,

Matthew [@matthew (Fediverse), matthewreinbold.com (Website)]