In sales there's a term used, the "economic buyer" aka they who hold the wallet. So for a developer tooling product, the economic buyer is likely a director, CTO or other kind of leader who will make the purchase.

A developer within a company, on the other hand, isn't likely the economic buyer.

When I recommended to bring in JFrog Artifactory to my first company, I evaluated over 5 vendors. After meeting with various sales teams and even having a solution developer sit with us to prototype a product implementation, I finally recommended Artifactory over all the others.

My point is that I didn't write the check, my director did. But I influenced the buying decision because at the end of the day if a product isn't technically feasible, it's a no-go.

So: developers may not be your economic buyers... but they sure are your economic influencers.

That's why marketing to them is just as important (or more) as marketing to economic buyers. Ka-ching.