This article is the first in a series on building an effective developer advocacy strategy.
As a developer advocate, you’ll quickly discover that there’s no shortage of things you could do.
You could overhaul your documentation, write blog posts, speak at conferences, host webinars, build sample applications, run office hours, launch an ambassador program, engage online communities, organize meetups, collect product feedback, build AI agents, create MCP servers, and more. All of these are legitimate developer advocacy initiatives and, in the right context, any one of them could create tremendous value.
The problem is that you have limited people, limited budget, and limited time to prove the value developer advocacy contributes to the business. You can’t do everything.
Every quarter, every year, you have to get really clear on what deserves your attention.
What deserves your attention are the initiatives that help move developers through the stage of the AAARRRP framework your company or product needs to focus on.
Your thinking needs to shift from “What can I do as a developer advocate?” (P.S. There’s a lot you can do.) to “Given my company’s current reality, what activities or initiatives are most likely to create meaningful business value?”
And how do you uncover that answer? Through strategic analysis.
Before you decide what to build, write, or launch, you first need to gain a comprehensive understanding of the business you’re trying to help. And to gain a comprehensive understanding of the business, you need to look at it from three areas of analysis.
- The company
- The team
- The product and its users
Each area progressively narrows the range of initiatives worth considering until you’re left with a much smaller set of strategically viable options.
Area of Analysis 1: Understand the Company
The first step is understanding the company itself.
Ask questions such as:
- Where does the company sit in the market? (Market Position)
- What growth stage is it in? (Growth Stage)
- How does it make money? (Monetization Strategy)
Getting the answers to these questions tells you what the business is trying to accomplish and, therefore, what developer advocacy is expected to contribute. More importantly, it helps you identify which stage of the AAARRRP framework deserves the most attention given your company’s current reality.
Once you’ve identified that stage (or stages), you can focus on the developer advocacy initiatives that support it and temporarily eliminate initiatives that primarily support other stages of the AAARRRP framework.
Market Position
Market Position refers to a company’s or product’s standing relative to others in its market. Usually, companies or products are in one of four market positions: Market Leader, Challenger, Niche Player, or Shooting Star. Their specific position determines how they compete, the strategic priorities they focus on, and the business challenges they need to overcome.
For example, a challenger entering a crowded market is solving a very different business problem from a market leader defending its position. The challenger, who is a new entrant, is likely more concerned with building awareness, differentiating itself from competitors, earning developer trust, and convincing customers to switch. The market leader, on the other hand, is likely more concerned with defending its market position, deepening product adoption, retaining customers, and maintaining its competitive advantage.
Understanding your company’s market position helps developer advocacy figure out how to contribute to those priorities.
Growth Stage
Growth Stage refers to where a company is in its business journey. Companies are typically in one of three stages: Early Stage, Growth Stage, or Mature Stage. Their growth stage determines what the business is focused on achieving at that point in time.
For example, an early-stage company is likely more concerned with creating awareness, acquiring its first users, and finding product-market fit. A growth-stage company is likely more concerned with improving activation, increasing adoption, and retaining users. A mature company is likely more concerned with customer expansion, loyalty, and gathering product feedback to strengthen existing relationships.
Understanding your company’s growth stage helps developer advocacy understand which part of the developer journey deserves the most attention right now.
Monetization Strategy
A company’s Monetization Strategy describes how it captures value from the products or services it offers. In this series, we’ll look at four common monetization strategies: Revenue Upfront, Delayed Revenue, Market Enhancement, and Ecosystem Play. Each strategy influences what the business ultimately considers valuable.
For example, a company with a revenue upfront strategy is likely more focused on helping prospective customers recognize value before they make a purchasing decision. A company with a delayed revenue strategy, on the other hand, is likely more focused on driving product adoption and long-term engagement because value is captured after customers begin using the product. Likewise, companies pursuing a market enhancement strategy or an ecosystem play are likely to measure success differently because they create value in different ways.
Understanding your company’s monetization strategy helps developer advocacy understand the outcomes the business ultimately wants to drive.
After analyzing your company’s market position, growth stage, and monetization strategy, you should have a much clearer understanding of what business problem deserves the most attention and, therefore, which stage of the AAARRRP framework you should focus on.
For example, you might conclude:
“Given our company’s current reality, we should probably be looking at initiatives that support Awareness and Acquisition because those stages are likely to create the most business value right now.”
At this point, you still haven’t decided exactly what you’re going to do.
You’ve simply narrowed your focus from every possible developer advocacy initiative in Figure 1 to the subset of initiatives that support Awareness and Acquisition.
Area of Analysis 2: Understand the Team
Once you’ve identified the business problem, the next step is understanding what the rest of the organization is already working towards.
Ask questions such as:
- What is Product focused on?
- What is Marketing focused on?
- What is Sales focused on?
- What is Customer Success focused on?
- What initiatives are already underway?
- Where can developer advocacy best contribute?
Understanding the team further narrows your options by showing you where the rest of the organization is already investing its efforts. It helps ensure developer advocacy complements those initiatives instead of operating in isolation.
For example, imagine that at another company, you discover that:
- Product is rebuilding onboarding.
- Marketing is driving traffic.
- Customer Success is improving onboarding.
That tells you that improving onboarding is likely one of the company’s biggest priorities, and it’s also where the rest of the organization is already investing its efforts.
Now your options narrow even further.
Rather than considering every initiative you’ve shortlisted, you can prioritize the ones that reinforce the work Product, Marketing, and Customer Success are already doing.
Area of Analysis 3: Understand the Product and Its Customers
Only after you’ve narrowed the business problem and aligned with the rest of the organization do you ask:
“What’s the best way to execute the initiatives I’ve narrowed down?”
Ask questions such as:
- What kind of product is this?
- How do developers discover, evaluate, and adopt it?
- Who buys the product?
- Who uses the product?
- What motivates each of them?
- Where do they experience friction throughout their journey?
While analyzing the company tells you what business problem deserves the most attention, and analyzing the team tells you where developer advocacy should focus alongside the rest of the organization, analyzing the product and its customers tells you how developer advocacy should go about contributing.
For example, imagine two companies that have reached exactly the same conclusion.
Both are challengers, in the growth stage. Both have identified Activation and Retention as the stages that are likely to create the most business value, and both have Product and Marketing teams focused on improving onboarding.
From the first two areas of analysis, both companies have narrowed their focus to initiatives that support Activation and Retention.
However, one company sells an open-source CLI that developers can install and start using in minutes. The other sells an enterprise identity platform that requires procurement, security reviews, and implementation across multiple teams.
Although both companies have narrowed their focus to the same priorities, the way developer advocacy contributes will be completely different.
The open-source CLI might benefit from quick-start guides, tutorials, sample applications, AI agents, and community support that help developers experience value as quickly as possible.
The enterprise identity platform might benefit from architecture guides, implementation workshops, security documentation, and reference architectures that support a much longer evaluation and implementation journey.
The business problem hasn’t changed. The initiatives haven’t changed. Only the execution has.
Bringing Everything Together
By the time you’ve analyzed the company, the team, and the product and its customers, you’ve transformed an overwhelming list of possible developer advocacy initiatives into a much smaller set of strategically viable options.
The company tells you what business problem deserves the most attention and, therefore, which developer advocacy initiatives are most likely to create meaningful business value.
The team tells you where developer advocacy should focus alongside the rest of the organization.
The product and its customers tell you how to execute the initiatives you’ve narrowed down.
Only then are you ready to decide what to prioritize for the quarter or year, how you’ll measure success, and how developer advocacy will contribute meaningful business value.
In the rest of this series, we’ll dive deeper into each area of analysis, starting with understanding your company’s market position, growth stage, and monetization strategy, and how each one influences the developer advocacy initiatives you should prioritize.