Lessons everywhere: MongoDB marketing and you
In 2012, MongoDB was the database of choice. Developing in MongoDB was a fast track to peak employability. What did the marketing team at MongoDB do to achieve that success?
They focused on creating enthusiastic developer evangelists who essentially worked exposure and job training. It worked great, but bit them hard when MongoDB installations become messy problems for businesses.
MongoDB evangelists took on every database problem they could find. The outcome sometimes got a little messy.
We believe that they should have run a more blended strategy from the start.
Content to create developer advocates
MongoDB created developer advocates and supported them with technical content on the hows and whys of using MongoDB. It is really great content, built for a discerning audience. It provides them useful material to take action. It was not a cheap strategy. Creating hands-on content is a deep effort. Creating content that is consistently posted to HackerNews is like batting .400 for an entire season in the MLB, but MongoDB did it.
Technical Content has Impact
This next paragraph requires a little self promotion (sorry developers, it is marketing!); Lion’s Way believes in making this deep technical content, even though it is hard. The technical decision makers need implementation guides, use cases, tutorials, Jupyter notebooks, Git repos. When we get a new technology client, we read their docs to see how well developed they are. If they are in good shape, we love to mine them for content sources (Lions call it “fodder”). When thinking about all the purchase decision makers, proofs that involve hands on understanding of the product is gold.
…So Does Business Content
However, the MongoDB marketing was singularly focused on these technical decision makers, and I believe it hurt them in the long run. The enthusiasm of their evangelists was overheated, leading to the use of MongoDB in stacks that were ill-suited. It was poorly secured, resulting in a massive ransomware spree. The result was distrust and loss of brand value.
A technical person would point out that this is not MongoDB’s fault. Individual developers made bad decisions. MongoDB continues to be a fantastic platform with a lot of uses. However, the business of MongoDB continues to go through some tough stock tumbles. In essence, by overselling to unsuitable applications, MongoDB suffered. They sold mittens as socks.
We certainly do not want to take away from the success of MongoDB, but my lesson from the story is that the entire purchasing committee deserves the same respect as the developer, and that your marketing should reflect that. MongoDB used fantastic tools to market to developers who brought the technology into organizations. But other decision makers such as product and business need a respectful understanding of the product that speaks to their needs.
Further Reading
If you like the flow and growth of tech as much as I do, I highly recommend this entire series On MongoDB. I enjoy it even though it is written from the developer anti-marketing point of view. I am used to taking those lumps! In fact, I really appreciate hearing the unvarnished perspective.