+1,413%organic traffic growth
DBB Software
Built the marketing function from zero — website, SEO, paid, AI search — from 166 to 2,513 monthly clicks and 3 enterprise deals won.
- 28 SQLs from zero
- 3 deals won
Service · Demand Generation for DevOps Companies
Demand generation for DevOps companies that need engineers to trust you before they ever run a container, not another gated whitepaper they'll never download.
In DevOps, demand isn't created by a webinar blasted at a cold list — it's created when a credible engineer or founder earns trust with practitioners who adopt bottom-up, while the platform leader and CFO who actually sign learn your name before the incident, cloud-bill shock or re-platform that starts a buying cycle. We build the engineer-led content, LinkedIn, technical talks, podcasts and newsletter systems that do exactly that — measured in CRM-tracked pipeline, not GitHub stars and trial signups that never monetize.
- B2B tech companies worked with
- 60+
- Years marketing to technical & executive buyers
- 9+
- CRM-tracked marketing-led revenue
- $30M+
- AI Search recommendation success rate
- 80%
- A demand-generation strategy mapped to your two buyers — the practitioner who adopts and the platform leader or CFO who pays — and to the trigger events that start a DevOps cycle: incidents, cloud-cost reviews, re-platforms, scaling pain, a new VP of Engineering.
- Engineer- and founder-led LinkedIn: a defensible technical POV and weekly cadence ghost-drafted in your founder's real voice (refined with them, never invented for them), plus an engagement plan that earns reach in other engineers' threads.
- Deep technical content engineers respect: runnable teardowns, architecture and self-hosting write-ups, honest 'X vs Y' comparisons, and operational posts on MTTR, pipeline minutes, toil and cloud-spend — precise enough to survive a principal engineer reading it.
- Conference, meetup and DevRel-style talk strategy: topics, abstracts, and distribution that turns one talk into weeks of clips, posts and newsletter material.
- Executive-facing webinars and live technical sessions framed in total cost of ownership, consolidation, risk and headcount saved — with follow-up that becomes tracked pipeline.
- Podcast strategy: launching your own engineering-credible show, or placing your founder as a guest on the podcasts your buyers already listen to.
- An engineering newsletter your market wants to open — owned audience insulated from algorithm changes, segmented so sales knows which accounts are warming up.
- A repurposing system so one expert input — a talk, teardown or podcast — fuels LinkedIn, the newsletter and short video for weeks.
- CRM and analytics that tie content and event engagement to accounts, opportunities and closed revenue, keep free adoption separate from commercial pipeline, and feed a monthly read of what to double down on.
How the system works
How the DevOps demand-generation system works
Diagnose the market
We map your ICP and full buying committee — the engineer who adopts, the champion who advocates, the platform leader and CFO who sign — the trigger events that start a cycle, and where your buyers spend attention. Then we decide whether your real constraint is awareness, technical credibility, or a leaking paid funnel.
Compare against known B2B tech patterns
We hold your situation against the demand systems we've run across 60+ B2B tech companies, including DevOps and developer-tools work. Open-core tool with a strong engineering voice is one playbook; a platform or SRE consultancy selling to heads of platform is another. This skips the expensive guesswork.
Choose the right growth path
We commit to the two or three channels that fit your buyer, your founder's bandwidth and your motion — engineer-led LinkedIn, technical talks, a podcast, a newsletter, executive webinars — and deliberately leave the rest out. A focused system that compounds beats a thin presence across six platforms.
Build the service system
We stand up the production engine: technical narrative and POV, content calendar, ghost-drafting in your founder's voice, talk and podcast operations, the newsletter, the repurposing pipeline, and CRM instrumentation that separates community adoption from commercial pipeline — a machine that runs weekly without depending on an engineer finding three free hours.
Optimize against CRM + sales feedback
Every month we read engagement against the CRM and what discovery calls surface, then tune: which narratives to lean into, which formats convert to conversations, which topics pre-handle the objections that stall DevOps deals in procurement. It's a compounding system, not a campaign.
The XQL difference
Why XQL runs DevOps demand generation differently
- 01
Market memory
Across 60+ B2B tech companies and 9+ years marketing to technical and executive buyers, we already know DevOps has its own physics — the person who adopts and the person who pays are rarely the same, and the audience trusts code over copy. We know which engineer-led narratives a principal engineer reposts versus which read as marketing, which talk topics fill a meetup, and which open-core stories move a CFO. Your founder's first ninety days start from that pattern library, not from scratch.
- 02
Faster diagnosis
Before we publish anything, we diagnose whether you actually have a demand problem. In DevOps the bottleneck is often not awareness — you may have plenty of practitioner adoption and a paid funnel that leaks because the free-vs-paid boundary is fuzzy and the economic buyer was never spoken to. We pressure-test that in weeks, so you don't pour content into an audience you already have while the real gap is monetizing it.
- 03
Smarter channel selection
Founder-led LinkedIn, deep technical writing, conference and meetup talks, a DevRel-style podcast, an engineering newsletter and executive webinars all create DevOps demand — but not in the same mix for every motion. An open-core tool with a magnetic principal engineer leads with engineer-led content and runnable posts; a platform consultancy selling to heads of platform may get further with executive webinars and a podcast. We pick the two or three that fit your buyer and your founder's appetite, and ignore the rest.
- 04
Sales feedback loop
Demand gen that never talks to sales becomes a content hobby. We mine discovery calls and lost-deal notes for the exact operational language buyers use — the MTTR target they're chasing, the cloud bill that triggered the search, the integration gap that disqualified a competitor — and turn it into the next month's posts, talks and newsletter editions, so content pre-handles the objections a champion hits defending you to a skeptical platform lead.
- 05
CRM attribution
We instrument demand against your CRM, not a wall of stars and signups, and separate community adoption from commercial pipeline so an anonymous container pull is never mistaken for revenue. We track which accounts engaged with your founder's content or attended a talk before they raised a hand, and compare demand-touched deals to cold ones. That discipline is how our book has tracked $30M+ in CRM-tracked marketing-led revenue.
Why XQL vs alternatives
Why XQL vs the alternatives
DimensionTypical approachThe XQL way
Generalist marketing agencyRuns the same content calendar for a dev tool and a dental SaaS, and publishes generic 'thought leadership' that engineers and SREs see through in one line.9+ years and 60+ B2B tech companies of pattern memory, with technical content credible enough to survive a principal engineer reading it.
Personal-branding freelancerOptimizes for impressions and viral posts, and counts GitHub stars and trial signups as 'demand' — vanity metrics that rarely reach the commercial funnel.Instruments every channel against your CRM and separates free adoption from demand-touched, tracked pipeline.
In-house DevRel or marketerTalented but solo, with no pattern library across companies and no time to run engineer-led content, talks, a podcast and a newsletter at once.A senior system and production engine that has already built this across dozens of B2B tech companies, plugged in without a long ramp.
Traditional SEO agencyOnly captures the engineers already searching, and ignores the practitioners and executives who aren't in-market until a trigger event fires.Creates demand across the whole market so buyers arrive pre-sold, and pairs it with high-intent search capture when that's the right second channel.
Advisory-only consultantHands you a strategy deck and a content calendar, then leaves you to produce, distribute and measure all of it.Owns the build and the weekly execution — drafting, talk and podcast ops, distribution and CRM measurement — not just the advice.
Commercial outcomes
Proof from the same playbook.
Strategy first, channels second, sales feedback always. We measure by the qualified demand and revenue we can trace back inside the CRM.
Selected results
Senior operators on every account. Never a junior pod.
Client signal
What B2B tech founders and CEOs say
Thanks to XQL Group's efforts, we've seen a 207% increase in web traffic and an improvement in domain rating from 12 to 45. The team has successfully optimized our SEO strategy and gained around 160 backlinks. Overall, they're responsive and thorough in their project management.
Since working with XQL Group, our domain rating has improved from 27 to 44. In addition, we've seen a 15% increase in monthly traffic within nine months. The team completes work on time and within the agreed budget. Moreover, their subject matter expertise is highly impressive.
XQL Group's efforts have resulted in 44 leads from paid campaigns and improved web traffic from Germany by 5x. The team is responsive, quickly surfaces issues, and communicates regularly through chats and virtual meetings. Their expertise and proactiveness have impressed our team.
Organic traffic has increased by 10–15% each month, and we have started receiving our first inbound requests. XQL Group's optimization tips have also helped improve keyword rankings, and internal stakeholders are impressed with the team's collaborative approach.
XQL Group has successfully defined a clear marketing strategy and established our company's unique value proposition. The team has also helped hire critical specialists for our marketing team. They are communicative and organized, and their expertise in the tech industry is impressive.
Thanks to XQL Group's efforts, we have defined our marketing strategy and hired key developers for our website. The team has launched retargeting campaigns on LinkedIn and developed a strong content marketing strategy. XQL Group's marketing expertise is a hallmark of the engagement.
They were not just talking about AI search in theory; they knew how to approach it practically.
What impressed us most was their deep specialization in working with software development companies.
They've brought structure, strong execution, and constant initiative to improve outcomes.
They operated with the discipline and initiative of an internal senior marketer.
Their ability to combine strategic vision with hands-on execution was particularly valuable.
Their focus on results and true interest in making things work set them apart.
XQL Group's project management was exemplary.
The quality of their work is consistently high.
FAQ
Questions about this service.
The buyer physics are different, so the playbook is. DevOps tools and services are adopted bottom-up by engineers who form opinions hands-on long before procurement is involved, then bought top-down by a platform leader or CFO who never read your blog. Generic demand gen aims one message at a single 'decision-maker' and counts impressions; DevOps demand gen earns trust with the practitioner in code-credible content and talks while seeding the economic buyer's awareness in business terms — and keeps free adoption separate from commercial pipeline so you don't mistake stars for demand. We build for both ends of that deal at once.
It backfires when it's done the way generalist agencies do it — gated whitepapers, 'revolutionary platform' language, ghost-written platitudes — and that's exactly why most DevOps content fails. We don't manufacture a persona. We extract the real technical opinions, ops war stories and hard-won lessons your founder or principal engineer already holds and turn them into runnable teardowns, honest comparisons and talks in their actual voice — drafted by us, refined with them. The bar is simple: an SRE in your audience should read it and think 'this person has actually run this in production,' not 'this is a vendor.'
Often yes, and it's the most common DevOps failure mode — but the fix isn't more top-of-funnel noise. Stars, downloads and free signups report beautifully and aren't revenue, and an open-core funnel leaks exactly where the paid tier (SSO, RBAC, audit logs, self-hosting, support SLAs) has to justify a budget line to someone who never touched the tool. We sharpen the free-vs-paid narrative so the commercial tier's value is legible to the buyer who controls spend, aim engineer-led content and executive webinars at the teams most likely to need it, and re-instrument signup-to-usage-to-closed-won in your CRM — monetizing adoption you already have without alienating the community driving it.
We instrument the whole path and refuse to let free adoption masquerade as pipeline. A DevOps deal can begin with an anonymous container pull months before a contract, touch a champion, a platform lead, security and finance, and stall in procurement. We track which accounts engaged with your content or attended a talk before they raised a hand, use self-reported 'how did you hear about us' as a deliberate signal, watch branded-search and direct lift, and compare demand-touched deals to cold ones — with community adoption and commercial pipeline on separate lines. We won't claim a like caused a deal, but across our book this discipline is how we've tracked $30M+ in CRM-tracked marketing-led revenue.
It's a compounding system, not a campaign, so be honest about the horizon. You'll typically see leading indicators — engagement from target engineering accounts, inbound replies, talk and newsletter traction — within the first one to two months. Tracked, demand-touched pipeline usually becomes visible in the CRM around months three to six, as trust banks and trigger events like incidents, cloud-cost reviews and re-platforms fire. The companies that win treat it as always-on; the ones that quit at month two usually needed it most.
Yes. For DBB Software we built a growth engine from a standing start and took marketing from zero to 28 SQLs and 3 closed deals in a single year — exactly the motion of creating demand for a technical-services buyer where none existed, then wiring it to closed-won in the CRM. More broadly, our portfolio spans 60+ B2B tech companies, $30M+ in CRM-tracked marketing-led revenue, and 133% SQL growth per quarter, built for the technical and executive buyers who evaluate DevOps companies.
Ready when you are
Let's talk.
Bring your offer, channels, and revenue goals. We'll show you where the biggest growth constraint is and what to build next.
Danylo FedirkoFounder
For B2B tech companies selling complex expertise to serious buyers.
- B2B tech clients
- 60+
- Revenue generated
- $30M+
