How to attract developers to your website with an IT events calendar

How to advertise in an environment that doesn't welcome advertising.

Hi, this is the PVS-Studio team. We've been developing the code analyzer for C++, C#, and Java for 15 years, and now we have decided to launch an event calendar for IT professionals.

Context

Before we begin, a bit of context: our company sells the static code analyzer. This is a complex specific product that developers use to automatically search for errors and potential vulnerabilities. Business saves money because it is several times cheaper to fix an error at the stage of writing code than at the code testing stage (and even more so after the release).

PVS-Studio is used not only by thoroughbred IT companies: any company where one of the departments writes code subscribe to the license gamedev, medical institutions, financial corporations.
One of our eternal goals is to increase the number of programmers who visit our website and know the usefulness of the analyzer.

Idea

Looking for new points of growth, we thought about how to attract more potential customers to the site, build up communication channels and distribute more product trials. A solution came from a problem that we ourselves encountered: among the bunch of websites, it is difficult to find a conference you want to speak at.

There is no common website: you search for C++ events in one place, and for Java in another. We had to keep a list of sources that need to be checked regularly, otherwise we risked not being able to apply for a major conference. And if you're just a participant, you can miss the ticket discounts end up in a situation where tickets are sold out.

We are sure that other developers face similar problems that's why we have launched a common event calendar for developers. For users, this saves time and solves an urgent problem, for us it is an opportunity to highlight our main product.

Service

The first version of the service was released in March 2023. The website now has about four hundred conferences. You can filter conferences by country, subject, and format of the event. For example, the calendar can show which C++ conferences will be held in Germany this year in a couple of clicks.

Besides conferences for programmers, we add events to the website for IT managers, security specialists, game industry employees, and workers from other related fields. This is how we reach those who are not directly involved in coding, but may decide to buy PVS-Studio.

In addition, we try to cover small meetups: we believe that small communities are no less important than large international conferences.

Team

The main performer in the service is the event marketer. He spreads the news about the calendar on thematic sites, writes promo texts (like this one), orders advertising and arranges for advertising integrations. The web department draws unicorns and makes sure that nothing breaks on the website. One of the founders of the company follows the processes and vision.

The team that works on the calendar is united by one idea: to attract programmers to the website with the help of marketing, and then retain them through the benefits the service creates.

Promotion

It is easier and cheaper to advertise an aggregator than code analysis software. But the audience for these two products is very close.

The promotion of the service is in its early stages. In addition to this text, we will post articles on thematic websites for developers, make text posts in social media, buy advertising in telegram channels and search engines. We also actively communicate with IT chat members they are eager to use interesting innovations. But you have to be careful in these conversations: it's easy to get banned.

We don't yet know how the programming community will welcome the service. Experienced developers often react extremely negatively to any advertising, so we will try to do delicate marketing. We hope that a free product with more or less understandable benefits will not be pelted with tomatoes.

Monetization

The service does not sell ads. We do not receive money for the publication of conferences. We add to the general list only those events that we consider important. As mentioned above, the purpose of the calendar is to put our brand in the infofield, not to make money from contextual advertising.

PVS-Studio has a B2B product and a fairly long sales cycle several months. Therefore, here we primarily focus on the benefits that our calendar will bring to the user. Maybe one day this user will want to buy our analyzer, ask for a trial or tell their colleague about the program, the one who just codes in C++.

We will see which part of the users who use the calendar will try out our code analyzer.

Welcome: event calendar for developers.