Marketing for Developers 2026

Justin does a live teardown of the landing page for There There, a new AI-powered help desk from Spatie in Belgium. Practical takeaways for launching a product in the AI age.

00:00 Intro and first look at There There's landing page
00:52 Headline and design — clean, modern, tight
01:11 Show the humans behind the product (team avatars, hover states)
01:24 Why human faces matter in the age of AI vs. autonomous companies like Polsia
02:37 Make your product screenshots interactive with hoverable feature highlights
03:17 Structured text content on your page feeds LLMs and AI search
03:41 Real testimonials with photos build trust (Lars Lofgren conversation callback)
04:28 Get reviews on Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, Product Hunt, and Reddit
04:59 Team photo and "a real person replies" footer
05:52 Pre-launch waiting lists are the most potent marketing moment
06:22 The About page — professional team photos signal trustworthiness
07:17 Publish your docs early to seed search engines and LLMs
08:14 Live test: Googling "what is There There app?" and "is it trustworthy?"
09:42 Trust and reputation matter more than ever with so many spammy AI sites
10:08 Wrap-up — two thumbs up, just fix a few typos

Links

• There There — AI-powered helpdesk by Spatie
• Spatie — Belgian dev agency / open source creators
• Polsia — Autonomous AI company platform
• Freek Van der Herten
• Flare, Mailcoach, Ray — Other Spatie products
• Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, Product Hunt

Justin sits down with Daniel Coulbourne and John Drexler (the founders of Thunk agency) to workshop the launch of their first SaaS product, Tidy. Built from years of running their own agency, Tidy consolidates time tracking, invoicing, scheduling, and client agreements into one opinionated tool built specifically for hourly-billing agencies. This episode is a live marketing strategy session: positioning, messaging, content, LLM discoverability, influencer partnerships, launch tactics, and landing page feedback.

Key Takeaways

• Sell the philosophy, not just the software. Tidy's real product is an opinionated system for running an agency; the software is how you implement it. Lead with conviction. They should own the term "Build a Zero-Risk Agency."
• LLM discoverability is the new SEO. Building a wide, authentic web footprint across Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, review sites, and the founder's personal accounts is the strategy for a new product launch.
• The anticipation phase is your most powerful marketing window. Don't wait until launch day to tell people what you're building. A waiting list and a drip of updates are worth more than the launch itself.
• Human faces convert. Nothing Justin has tested beats having real people (founders, team members, customers) visible on your homepage.
• Feature copy should come from lived experience. Rewrite every feature description as a story about a problem you've actually faced. "We built this because we got burned" is more persuasive than "track your hours."

Links

• Thunk
• Tidy
• Transistor.fm
• Basecamp homepage
• SparkToro (referenced for "zero click marketing" concept)

Justin Jackson and Lars Lofgren dive deep into how AI and LLMs are fundamentally changing marketing, SEO, and content strategy. They discuss why founder-led marketing has shifted from being a "cheat code" to a requirement, the death of traditional attribution, and practical strategies for succeeding in this new landscape.

Lars Lofgren has worked with Automattic, Dropbox, Crazy Egg, and Kissmetrics. Previously built a $7M annual revenue affiliate business.

Justin Jackson is the co-founder of Transistor.fm, and the creator of Marketing for Developers

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction - Background on Lars's career and expertise in marketing and SEO
0:50 - Why founder-led marketing is essential in this new era
6:22 - What's a big ranking factor for LLMs and Google these days?
8:05 - Lars's approach to LinkedIn: deeply personal, vulnerable, and real storytelling
11:16 - The old SEO playbook doesn't work anymore
14:54 - What matters now? Building presence across the entire web (Reddit, reviews, social)
19:09 - People are still looking for the same thing: "What's the best product for me?"
20:53 - Founder-led marketing is what wins
25:34 - Become the influencer or pay influencers
26:30 - The state of paid advertising
38:21 - [ Become a member at https://marketingfordevelopers.com to hear the rest of the episode ]
39:18 - When everyone can build software... distribution becomes even harder
41:17 - Maybe in the future, there will be no websites? Just API endpoints for LLMs to hit?
42:09 - Right now, people want to connect with humans; they want to connect emotionally

Key Takeaways:

1. Founder-led marketing is now mandatory
Building a personal brand and audience is no longer optional for B2B success

2. Entity footprints matter more than content quality
Presence across Reddit, reviews, social platforms, and other sites matters more than having the best blog content

3. Attribution is dead
Embrace faith-based marketing and focus on genuine engagement over trackable metrics

4. LLMs favor established categories
Position yourself in segments that LLMs already understand, not creative new categories

5. Turn your marketing team into influencers
Have employees build personal brands on their own accounts, not just company channels

The arbitrage opportunity
Marketers willing to invest without perfect ROI tracking will have a massive advantage

Connect with Lars

• LinkedIn
• Newsletter

The goal of the show is to publish interviews with builders and marketers navigating the challenges of marketing software and digital products in the AI age.

Artificial intelligence and LLMs have changed the game. For one, many more people will be building apps and products because it's much more accessible with tools like Claude Code. And that just means more competition and makes it harder to stand out.

Additionally, AI has changed how people choose the products they buy. We need a new approach. The old marketing handbook no longer works.

In 2026, I'm rewriting the Marketing for Developers book for the AI era.

In the meantime, you can read the original book published in 2015 on marketingfordevelopers.com for free.

Thanks for adding this to your podcast player. You will be notified when I publish the first episode.

Links

• Read the original Marketing for Developers book (2015)
• Join the list for early access to new book chapters
• Transistor.fm - podcast hosting: https://transistor.fm