How to Market to Experts

I’m building a business for people who profess to hate me and everything I stand for—expert developers who know more about their work than I ever will.

I’m a content marketer, and like many others in my line of work, I don’t know a line of code. Unfortunately, for much of my audience, content marketers are little more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. I write for expert developers who routinely react to my field’s work with comments like:

• “Anything connected to ads or marketing triggers a visceral response of disgust in me.”
• “There’s no form of marketing I ‘like’ or actively reward, at most there’s marketing I fall for.”
• “Developers are logical and practical thinkers and despise sociopathic behavior. Developers have a very strong resistance to this sort of manipulation.”

This distrust of content marketing has stretched far beyond developers. We live in an era defined by the death of one form of expertise—that of writers and publishers, establishing the norms—and the rise of a new one—that of experts speaking directly to their audiences. This latter category of “intruder” expands beyond the interloping marketer to legacy media—including journalists and writers who aren’t seen as having practical, on-the-ground experience.

To get around this, many writers aim for beginners in their target audience. But content marketing for beginners is rarely worth the effort—especially for businesses pursuing product-led growth, a strategy that requires appealing to practitioner-level experts, such as developers. 

Additionally, broad-appeal beginner content, said Rand Fishkin, co-founder of audience research company Sparktoro, appeals to groups that are “high consumption” but “low amplification.” Higher-level content appeals to smaller groups that consume less content overall but have much more amplification potential. “The amplifiers can usually help you reach the beginners,” said Fishkin. “The beginners usually can’t help you reach the amplifiers.” 

That’s why you should be writing for experts. It’s harder to create content that appeals to them. But when you do, you can leverage their power, reach the beginners, and borrow their credibility along the way. Here’s how to do it.

Embrace and reinforce humility