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Why should my CMO love APIs?

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Kristopher Kleva edited this page Aug 16, 2013 · 31 revisions

Convener

Kristopher Kleva (@klevland)

Attendees

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Notes

I recently asked the API-Craft community this question about why a Chief Marketing Officer would find API development, management and monetization important. This session was conducted as a face-to-face mind mapping exercise used to arrange some keywords and concepts that demonstrate the value of your API program.

Original Question:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/api-craft/69KH9z5VZDw

Why should my CMO love APIs? API Value Mind Map

Apis provide value. The following mind map was a fun exercise to help describe the value of your API program to Marketing executives. The keyword in the map is value. The group immediately came to consensus here that value was the most important thing to the CMO.

"CMOs are in the business of highlighting value like that!"

Branching from Value we arranged the following nodes in our map. These phrases represent keywords used when illustrating the value of APIs from a Marketing perspective. As Convener, I've attempted to make sure to understand which node each attendees perspective fell under. If I any mistakes or clarifications should be made please contact the Convener @klevland.

APIs provide value because:

Developers provide value because they are the core propulsion of your business. Developers make the customer experience come to life on any device, anywhere, and at any time using a massive collection of languages, tools, design patterns to do so. Developers come from all walks of life, speak different languages and have received various levels of education. Developers provide value to the CMO because they provide the human resources to construct marketing requirements into working software. Developers add value and your CMO loves them.

Sam Ramji once mentioned in a talk, "Why do you care about developers? Because they’re your new channel and they’re core propulsion", correlating developers to sled dogs used for the core propulsion of Roald Amundsen to the south pole 100 years ago.

Hackathons The group thought a great ways to pamper the developers into pushing their business forward was through Hackathons. A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.

Hackathons resources to share with your CMO

"Connect with a talented Team and explore the possibilities for cash, prizes and notoriety. Use Hackathon.io to scout talent and assemble a crew of super-skilled coders and designers." - Hackathon.IO - Organize & Discover Hackathons

"Hackathons are a big tradition at Facebook. They serve as the foundation for some great (and not so great) ideas. It gives our employees the opportunity to try out new ideas and collaborate with other people in a fun environment." - Facebook Hackathon

"AT&T Mobile App Hackathons are competitive events, produced by the AT&T Developer Program, and designed for attendees (technical & non-technical) to build mobile apps, get some great food, and compete for awesome prizes across different categories. Most importantly, our hackathons give you the opportunity to meet new people and scout for teammates to work on new or current projects." - [AT&T Mobile App Hackathon] (https://developer.att.com)

"AngelHack organizes insanely large hackathons, where developers learn new tools, meet new friends, and showcase their skills to the community. To date, we’ve organized almost 100 hackathons in 35 cities globally. Our flagship event is the AngelHack Global Hackathon competition, which happens twice a year (Spring and Fall), bringing together 10,000+ developers each time." - [AngelHack Hackathon & Accelerator | http://angelhack.com/‎]

Development Labs Software Development labs have historically made some big impacts to digital natives and immigrants alike. The natives include Adobe, Google, Apple, Apache, Oracle, LinkedIn to name a few; and their registration databases, forums, knowledge bases and code repositories are crammed with developers. APIs provide Value because they are the transactional juice which powers the Developers Labs. Developers visit these labs, read API documentation and write apps to interact with our APIs in order to propel the business forward.

Awesome Development Labs to share with your CMO that developers love!

[Adobe Labs | http://labs.adobe.com/‎] Gain early access to developing Adobe technologies including preview and beta software, pre-release plug-ins, related samples, documentation, tutorial and more.

[Apple Developer Labs - WWDC | https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/labs/‎] WWDC offers hands-on labs where developers can get help on fundamentals, advanced techniques, UI design, app submission issues, and more.

[Apache Labs | http://labs.apache.org/‎] Apache Labs is a place for innovation where committers of the foundation can ... Labs provides a place for the Apache committer community to collaborate.

[Oracle Labs | http://labs.oracle.com/‎] The Mission of Oracle Labs is straightforward: Identify, explore, and transfer new technologies that have the potential to substantially improve Oracle's business.

[Linkedin Labs | http://www.linkedinlabs.com/‎] LinkedIn Labs hosts a small set of projects and experimental features built by the employees of LinkedIn. We share them here as demonstrations and to solicit feedback.

  • Vendor Requirement - Vendors can more easily integrate to meet business service level and data requirements. Service levels can measures the performance of a system by defining goals and the percentage to which those goals should be achieved.

  • Brand - Extend your Brand by enforcing design and/or integration guidelines reducing risks incurred by unsanctioned scraping.

  • Innovation - APIs can foster innovation by supporting business incubation programs. These programs are designed to cultivate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business and technology resources and services. All APIs and services are developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts. Innovation may position you as a thought leader recognizing you as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded.

  • Distribution Channels - APIs can create new distribution channels. Allowing the Brand or Enterprise to become "Programmable" expanding the reach of your product and/or services.

  • Time to Market - Get out into the market faster creating a competitive advantage by developing an attribute or combination of attributes that allows you outperform competitors.

  • Risk Management - Without an API, people will find unofficial points of integration that you have no control over, e.g. screen scraping. Better to have people "inside the tent"

  • Discovery - Once you offer an API you create the opportunity for 3rd parties to creatively bring value in unexpected ways.

  • Revenue -

  • Cost Avoidance -

  • Key Performance Indicators -

Key Points

  1. They are the business of highlighting value. Apis provide value.

  2. Because there is nothing worse than missing out out on a trend.

  3. APIs (in some form or another) have historically enabled multiple distribution channels.

  4. Providing APIs can transition a traditional web site into a platform.

  5. They are in the business attracting new customers or leads.

  6. To bind or lock-in existing customers better providing service integration they are less likely to switch.

  7. API consumers are likely different than the rest of your customer base, but have a powerful multiplying effect.

  8. Because you don't want to get your lunch eaten by a competitor who did a fantastic job of reaching out to this segment and engaging them as customers.

  9. Because the value of your product and/or service increases with the number of tools people can use with it.

  10. The API is a means of building long-term customer relationships.

  11. Puts you on the radar of technical people by sponsoring hackathons, writing technical papers, producing technical content.

  12. Customers who integrated our APIs have stayed customers for longer on average and compared to non-integration customers.

  13. Building a community of developers around our API will function as a sales multiplier in our market.

  14. Creates a software halo around our core system that complements the out-of-the-box functionality.

  15. Enables collaboration with integration partners (who rely on our API) in niche markets that we would not address by ourselves cost/benefit-wise

  16. Provides marketing with a new target audience - the integration developer to market the product and/or service and the complementing API.

  17. Conveys a message to end customers that you are committed to meet their specific needs and are satisfied with a leading system and a smart integration

The impetus for creating APIs for an existing product can be entirely of a marketing nature (sometimes championed by engineering, but always from a marketing-as-perceived-by-engineering slant):

  • This would be useful?
  • People would use it and be happier?
  • People will pay for this, or buy our core product in greater numbers?

Do's and Don'ts when pitching APIs:

  1. Never tell anyone "they don't get it"… because they may understand the concepts using different nomenclature. Providing APIs are sometimes represented as "Turning your site into a Platform".

  2. Don't debate the value or impact to the Brand with marketing. They are the SME in this area.

  3. Don't overdose on the technical terminology.

  4. Replace the API acronym with what it enables.

  5. API must not be solely the domain of the developer evangelist, CMO needs to be in on this, but your dev evangelist / API support team should be their shepherd

  6. Be aware of the customer segment actually consuming your APIs. But don't over do it

  7. Be aware of the customer segment actually building (or just using) the applications on top of or integrating with your API.

  8. Ideal use case is to provide a comprehensive product and/or service including an API, not just a pure API.

Use cases

  • Dropbox and Twitter (before it changed tactics) grew because of third-party integrations
  • Nike created Nike+ to prevent user for scraping content
  • IBM Rational Software creates API into products to extend functionality

Links

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon

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