Steal Confluent’s $6.5B+ Technical Content Marketing Playbook 

Marketing to tech professionals is no easy task. 

That’s because they are a savvy audience with deep technical expertise and little time to evaluate many products. So if your product doesn’t have a fast time to value or can’t integrate well with their existing workflows, you risk losing out to your competitors.

That’s why you shouldn’t rely on catchy slogans or flashy ads alone to convert them. 

You need a great product and a solid technical content marketing strategy—in-depth educational resources, social proof, community, and free access to your product—so these professionals can experience your product’s value first-hand before buying. 

Confluent nails this approach excellently. 

The cloud-native data streaming platform helps IT teams self-manage Apache Kafka—a popular open-source platform for processing data streams in real time—at an enterprise scale. 

Since Confluent serves a technical audience, its team used a technical content marketing strategy to build trust and convert 1000 enterprise customers, including big names like Bosch, Citigroup, Expedia, eBay, and Instacart. This also resulted in a $6.5+ billion valuation with $100,000+ in annual recurring revenue (ARR), all in 10 years!

If you serve a technical audience, you will love this case study. And if you don’t, you’ll still learn a thing or more from Confluent’s approach. 

I break down Confluent’s technical marketing strategy—the marketing channels and content formats they used– including best practices you can use to improve yours. 

Let’s jump right in. 

Confluent’s Technical Content Marketing Strategy

First, the basics. 

A technical content marketing strategy is the use of educational resources to position your brand as a trusted source of information and expertise in your industry. 

Technical audiences like developers, engineers, data analysts, and researchers have specialized knowledge and skills. They can immediately tell when a content piece is inaccurate and unhelpful; such content turns them away from your brand and into the hands of competitors who provide helpful content. 

The best way to get on their good side and build a solid relationship with them is to avoid fluffy content. That means using different content formats to show your product’s value—how it works, how to use it, and how it can solve their problem. 

The result? More authority, audience trust, sales, and revenue growth. 

That’s how Confluent built trust and converted big industry names like CapitalOne, Expedia, Michelin, KeyBank, and Intel.

Confluent uses a robust technical content marketing strategy to target decision makers who need to manage and process real-time data streams, often at scale.

These decision makers typically fall under one of these categories: software developers, IT leaders such as CIOs and CTOs, and technical leaders such as chief architects, lead engineers, and data scientists. 

To show these professionals the benefits and use cases for its products, Confluent applies two key strategies:

• Organic search, which drives 50% of its total traffic
• Developer-focused educational content 

Let’s explore each in detail. 

How Organic Search Drives 50% of Confluent’s Total Traffic

Confluent’s top five organic marketing channels are organic search, direct, referrals, search ads, and social. See how they stack up against each other:

Organic search is Confluent’s most effective channel because the company invests heavily in educating its technical audience. 

Providing educational resources is a great way to attract and retain developers. This often includes offering online courses, webinars, or events that teach them new skills or how to use specific product features. 

Confluent uses a combination of three content types to achieve this: 

• Technical beginner guides
• A library of customer success stories
• Industry events and webinars 

Let’s explore each quickly:

1. Beginner technical guides

The Confluent blog drives 4,500 organic sessions every month, and all of its top five pages have one thing in common: they are beginner technical guides. 

Beginner technical guides are a great way to introduce readers to new concepts and technologies. They provide tech professionals who are new to the topic with a comprehensive overview of the key concepts, terminology, and other relevant details. 

For example, this Kafka Connect tutorial blog post is repurposed content that breaks down everything a beginner tech professional would need to know about the topic, including common use cases and how to get started with the platform. 

What I found remarkable about the content is that it doesn’t waste any time dishing out fluff. Instead, it goes straight to the point—sharing the information tech professionals absolutely need to know. 

The Confluent blog also has a strong internal and external linking game. Its team links to relevant content within the website and embeds external content from YouTube as well. This gives the reader more reason to stay longer on the website. 

For instance, the same Kafka Connect blog post has embedded YouTube videos in each section:

Embedding YouTube videos in your blog post is a powerful way to engage your developer audience and help you rank on Google. 

Some developers prefer to learn by seeing and doing rather than just reading. And embedding YouTube videos in your blog post provides them with a visual and interactive learning experience. You also use the videos to walk them through a step-by-step process or to provide an overview of a particular product feature.

Also, embedding YouTube videos in your blog post helps you rank higher on Google. Google prioritizes helpful content, so providing depth that keeps people on your site longer signals to Google that your content is high-quality and engaging. No wonder the Kafka Connect piece dominates the SERPs for the keyword “Kafka Connect.” More than 2000 people search for this term every month, and Confluent drives 2000+ organic sessions for this piece every month. 

Did I also mention that the original course that this blog post was repurposed from drives up to 5,000 monthly organic sessions? 

That’s double the amount of traffic this blog post drives. Talk about the power of content repurposing. Hootsuite saw successes like this too.

2. Customer success stories

Customer success stories are a powerful form of social proof that builds trust and credibility with your audience. 

When your audience sees how your product has helped others achieve their goals, they are more likely to believe that you can help them achieve their own goals as well.

Confluent knows the power of showing real-world examples of how it is used to solve data-streaming-related issues. So it spares no expense with its library of customer success stories:

This can be especially valuable for tech professionals looking for concrete examples of how Confluent can help them.

Customer success stories also give an insight into your product or service’s implementation and adoption process. Sharing details about how customers integrated your product into their existing workflows helps your audience better understand how they can successfully deploy your solution.  

Remember: show, don’t tell.

Confluent’s customer success stories follow a similar structure to Salesforce’s. Take this one about Amway’s success:

This case study contains: 

• A brief description of the challenge Amway faced before using Confluent
• A description of how Confluent helped Amway overcome its challenge.
• Results that demonstrate Confluent’s impact on Amway.
• A customer quote that provides a personal and emotional connection to the story and adds credibility to the results.

Confluent’s customer success stories aren’t as deep or extensive as ShipBob’s or Salesforce’s. For example, ShipBob adopts a data-driven storytelling approach that makes its case more persuasive, credible, and memorable. It includes quantitative and qualitative data and visual aids to show prospects the results that the product or service generated for past or existing users. This is a more useful approach to customer success storytelling than Confluent’s approach. 

To keep this section from running long, I wrote an in-depth piece on the right way to use customer success stories to gain user trust. You should check it out. 

3. Industry events and webinars

Technical audiences love industry events and webinars. 

That’s because it provides opportunities for them to learn about the latest industry trends, tools, and tips. Plus, they can learn from, and connect with, other experts.

Confluent hosts regular webinars and online events covering topics related to event streaming and data integration. These events feature expert speakers and provide attendees with actionable insights and best practices.

These webinars and events offer many benefits for the brand, including:

• More developers become aware of Confluent’s products and community and how they can benefit from these.
• Confluent builds more trust with prospects and strengthens its position as a go-to source for data streaming solutions.
• Confluent builds strong relationships with its audience, industry experts, potential partners, and customers.

How Confluent Sells to Developers

Selling to developers is no easy feat. 

They have hands-on experience using technical tools, so unless you show irrefutable expertise, you risk losing their attention before you even get it. 

Confluent understands this, so instead of trying to sell to developers directly, they use technical education as a channel to pull developers in and earn their trust and money.

Confluent’s offerings are built on open-source technologies, like Apache Kafka, which are popular with developers. 

Developers can leverage Confluent’s products and services to build and deploy real-time streaming applications and integrate them with other data systems. Confluent also provides a range of APIs, SDKs, and developer tools to help developers build applications on top of Kafka. 

Making a product open source is an effective way to attract developers and build a community around it. That’s because it lets developers see how the product works and how they can contribute to its development. This is especially effective when the product is an extension of a massively-popular, ground-breaking technology like Kafka. 

To make the process of attracting and onboarding developers seamless, Confluent has a dedicated developer subdomain that drives 5,000 monthly organic sessions:

The subdomain specifically targets developers who want to work with Kafka and Confluent’s streaming platform, offering them technical resources, such as tutorials, code examples, and API documentation, that detail how to use the platform better.

There are a couple of impressive features of the Confluent Developer subdomain, but the most important is its architecture—the way its pages are organized, linked together, and presented to users. 

The Confluent Developer’s site architecture is impressive because of its clear navigation and consistent design across all pages. 

A well-designed site architecture helps both searchers and search engines. 

Visitors find it easier to find the information they need to self-educate and make decisions. Search engines, on the other hand, value websites that provide a good user experience and have a clear structure. Pages on these sites often rank higher in SERPs.

The site’s menu, for example, is easy to understand and always present on every page:

This menu provides quick access to different sections of the site, including developer-specific tutorials, API docs, and community resources. Organizing the subdomain’s content using a floating menu makes it easy for developers to find the information they need without scrolling through pages. 

Apart from easy navigation and consistent design, here are three other ways Confluent makes its developer platform valuable to users and search engines:

Confluent Developer Learn Platform

A learning platform is a valuable resource if you serve a technical audience. 

These technical resources teach prospects and users how to make the most of your product or service and position your brand as an authority in the industry. 

Confluent’s learning platform attracts 2000 people every month. 

It has online courses, tutorials, videos, and certification exams for developers and data professionals who want to learn Apache Kafka basics, advanced concepts, setup, and different use cases. 

These free courses have practical exercises and projects that let developers experience the product’s benefits first-hand and see how it works in real scenarios. 

Teaching your audience how to use your product for free establishes your authority and increases customer trust and loyalty. As users become more knowledgeable and skilled at using your product to solve problems, they are more likely to keep using it. 

For developers who need to learn how to use a specific feature or perform a specific task, Confluent tutorials come to the rescue:

These tutorials provide quick wins for users looking to gain specific expertise, so they don’t have to go through a full course. Developers can choose one that matches their skill level. They are also shorter and require less time commitment than a course. More than 200 people visit this page every month. 

Confluent also offers an industry-recognized certification:

Certifications are a big thing in every industry. They show professional credibility and technical proficiency and offer tons of career opportunities. 

A Confluent certification shows potential employers, clients, or colleagues that a developer understands Confluent’s technologies and how to use them effectively. This boosts their professional credibility and positions them better. The certifications are also recognized within the Confluent community, which can help developers build their network and connect with other professionals in the field.

So, what’s in it for Confluent?

As users complete and share their certification online with their network, others see why they should take the certification course. It’s like a badge of honor:

Overall, Confluent goes all in, offering developers a way to self-educate, use its platform better, and gain industry recognition. Users can get certified, take free courses to get accredited, and utilize tutorials to gain specific skills fast. 

Confluent Community

Developers are big on community. That’s because communities give them a chance to:

• Feel a sense of belonging and get real support.
• Network and connect with other professionals in the field.
• Gain new insights and improve their skills while collaborating on projects.
• Share knowledge—ask questions, share their experiences, and learn from others.

The Confluent’s developer community is a great example of an engaged and supportive technical community, just like Salesforce. 

Beyond offering access to valuable content such as tutorials, documentation, and videos, the Confluent developer community offers support to members experiencing challenges or seeking advice via its online forums. 

What’s great about the community is that anyone just joining can search all existing, previously answered questions and conversations before asking new questions. 

Confluent also has a Slack channel of 40,000+ members where developers and tech professionals can chat with colleagues and Kafka experts in real time. 

Another interesting strategy Confluent uses to foster a sense of community is to reward active, super-helpful members through the Confluent Community Catalyst program. 

Recognizing and rewarding members motivates them to keep contributing to the community. It shows that Confluent values user contributions and is invested in their success, which results in a stronger connection between the member and Confluent.

On the other hand, members will be excited to share the news with others on social media or in their professional networks, such as this post:

Some people who fall into Confluent’s target audience category can see this update and be inspired to join the community. 

Overall, Confluent’s developer community is open and inclusive and encourages participation from all members. 

If you serve a technical audience, learn from Confluent’s developer community. Encourage participation, provide valuable content, offer support and guidance, foster a sense of community, and recognize and reward members. 

That’s how you build an engaged and supportive niche community that promotes your brand and drives conversions.

API Documentation

Great API documentation is an underrated technical content marketing strategy. 

Many marketers see it as a purely technical task, and there’s some truth here. 

API documentation is highly technical in nature and hard to write. Some brands don’t have the expertise and resources to create high-quality documentation that meets the needs of tech professionals. Some see it as a technical resource rather than a marketing tool. So they ignore investing in API docs completely. 

Here’s the catch:

API documentation can be a powerful marketing tool when done well, and its benefits are numerous: 

• Better user experience
• More organic traffic
• Increased adoption and usage
• Higher domain authority and quality backlinks
• Established customer trust 
• Higher retention

Confluent’s API documentation exemplifies these benefits. The page drives 17,800+ monthly sessions, with backlinks from high-authority websites such as Stack Overflow, Github, Salesforce, Cisco, and Coinbase. Here’s what its search scorecard looks like:

Confluent’s API documentation is well organized, easy to navigate, and provides clear instructions for developers. For example, this “How to Use Kafka Connect,” article breaks down tips for using it effectively. 

The page is also easy to navigate, with static side menus on both sides of the page and a hyperlinked table of contents.

Confluent makes search easy by incorporating a search button feature. Each menu on both sides lets you easily access different parts of the article or chapters of the guide. That’s a solid interlinking game. 

Its main landing page is also easy to navigate:

People know where to go next when they land on the page. 

If you’re looking to create a documentation section for your website, treat its homepage like a landing page. The documentation homepage should guide visitors toward the most important information and give them a clear idea of what they will find in your documentation.

Think about it. When someone visits your site’s documentation section, what questions are they likely to have? Will they be looking for quickstart guides or definitions? Do they need help with something specific that requires 1-1 support? Your homepage should answer all of these questions in a simple, easy-to-follow way.

Ultimately, your goal is to create an intuitive experience that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they need. So, take the time to design your documentation homepage with these in mind. Trust me, your visitors will thank you for it. 

The documentation also includes sample code and sample requests and responses, making it easy for developers to understand how to use the API.

If you’re creating documentation for your product, avoid marketing to customers. 

API docs are meant to educate customers on how to use your product better, so you should cut the fluff and avoid trying to sell your product or features. Instead, stick to what people actually want: clear code and instructions.

For example, developers are frustrated when they encounter an error and can’t tell why it happened. You should ensure your documentation clearly explains why certain errors occur and provides clear instructions on how to prevent or solve them.

Confluent’s documentation includes a section on identifying and troubleshooting common issues developers encounter when using the API.

Finally, always remember to write for humans first and bots second. 

Sure, you need to make it SEO-friendly, but that shouldn’t be your primary focus. Use clear and concise language so your documentation is easy for people to understand. That’s how you create helpful API docs people actually want to read. 

Use Technical Content Marketing If You Target Developers and Data Leaders

Confluent’s success came from understanding who its audience is and implementing a strategy that appeals to its target audience. 

Developers and data leaders have unique needs that require specialized expertise. Technical content marketing lets you provide them with the information they need to solve these challenges, which builds trust and credibility with your audience.

Technical content marketing establishes your brand as a thought leader in the industry, increasing your credibility and influence and attracting more high-quality leads.

To make the most of your marketing efforts:

• Create beginner technical guides that break down key concepts and benefits of your product so that new customers can gain value from the get-go. 
• Use a data-driven storytelling approach to make customer success stories more persuasive, credible, and memorable.
• Use industry events and webinars to create awareness, establish authority, and build stronger relationships with your audience, industry experts, potential partners, and customers.
• Create resources your audience will find valuable, such as API docs, online courses, tutorials, certifications, and a thriving community.

Done well, these will set you apart from the crowd and ensure you reap massive ROI over time. After all, that’s how Confluent hit its $6.5B valuation in nine years.