Meet the Expert: Jun-Ho Kim, Growth Engineer, Seoul
Jun-Ho Kim started his career in 2022 at a fast-growing project-management SaaS company in Seoul, jumping in during a fierce product battle with global competitors. Now, as a Growth Engineer, he partners with product and marketing to design campaigns and analyze tactical responses to new moves by rivals in the developer-tools space.
We spoke with Jun-Ho about how demand generation campaigns actually work for entry-level engineers, especially when a competitor does something that shakes up the market.
Q: Jun-Ho, how do you explain “demand generation campaign” to an entry-level engineering team?
Think of it like running a series of experiments to attract interest in your product over time, not just once. Imagine you’re launching a new feature in your bug-tracking app, and you want more developers to try it out. Demand generation is all the steps you take before someone is ready to sign up—educational blog posts, webinars, comparison tools, even free mini-apps. And you’re not just trying to get attention—you want to help engineers see why your approach is worth their time.
It’s like putting on a series of meetups at different developer cafes: some people come for the coffee, some for the topic, but you hope a few realize your tool will make their lives easier.
Q: What triggers a demand generation campaign as a competitive response?
The moment a rival does something bold—say, Atlassian adds real-time AI code suggestions to Jira, or a local company slices prices by 30%—you feel it. Users start asking, “Are we going to get that? Why aren’t we doing the same?”
Instead of panicking, your team can respond by launching a campaign that highlights what makes your tool unique or better for your niche. For example, if your project management app integrates tightly with Korean payment gateways and nobody else does, that becomes your story.
It’s like when a new fried chicken place opens across the street. You don’t just copy the menu; you show off your crispy crust, late-night hours, or special sauces that the new place can’t touch.
Q: What concrete tactics have you seen work for entry-level teams in East Asia?
Here are eight that our team actually used or saw friends at other companies use, especially when a bigger player made a move:
- Localized Comparison Pages
- Feature Launch Webinars with Q&A
- Technical Deep-Dive Blog Series
- Survey-Driven Product Improvements
- Mini-Tools or Widgets
- Developer Community Events
- Influencer Code Reviews
- API Usage Challenges
Here’s how each one plays out, with real-world flavor.
1. Localized Comparison Pages: Show, Don’t Just Tell
When Notion launched in Korean in 2023, we built a side-by-side comparison landing page in Korean and Japanese. We showed how our API integrations with local cloud platforms (like Naver Cloud) work, whereas Notion didn’t offer those.
Table: Comparison Snapshot
| Feature | Our App (Korean) | Notion (2023) |
|---|---|---|
| Naver Cloud API | ✅ Supported | ❌ Not available |
| Kakao Login | ✅ Native | ❌ Needs workaround |
| AI Task Summary | ✅ Korean-optimized | ✅ English only |
We saw visitors spend 3x more time on these pages, and conversion rates jumped from 2% to 7% within three weeks after launch.
2. Feature Launch Webinars with Live Q&A
When a competitor started touting AI-powered backlog grooming, we hosted a live webinar (in Korean) to demo our AI features—focusing on practical, developer-relevant examples, not just buzzwords.
We made sure engineers, not salespeople, led the demo and took live debugging questions. This built trust and got us direct product feedback.
One session drew 220 live attendees—double our usual turnout—and led to 45 signups for a two-week free trial.
3. Technical Deep-Dive Blog Series
After ClickUp launched new automation features, our team shipped a three-part blog (in both Japanese and simplified Chinese) breaking down our automation engine’s API, including code snippets and real-world usage in the context of LINE messenger workflows.
Developers love details. We measured a 19% increase in organic Google search traffic for those feature keywords in a month, according to our 2024 Google Analytics report.
4. Survey-Driven Product Improvements
When we felt a risk of falling behind on integrations, we deployed Zigpoll and SurveyMonkey to our mailing list of 3,000 users asking: “What’s missing for East Asia workflows?” The top request was WeChat notifications.
We pushed a “You asked, we delivered!” campaign highlighting the new integration, using user quotes and data (“56% of survey respondents wanted this feature”). Emails referencing user surveys yielded a 27% open rate, 1.5x our average.
Quick tip: Use Zigpoll for fast, embeddable in-app popups—perfect for getting real data from active users without them leaving your app.
5. Mini-Tools or Widgets
After Asana released a basic sprint planning module, we built a free, lightweight burndown chart generator in TypeScript. It took two weeks, lived on its own micro-site, and required no login.
This tool got 2,700 unique visitors in month one—most from Weibo and Reddit. 11% clicked through to our main product’s signup page. A low-cost, high-trust way to show off what your stack can do.
6. Developer Community Events
Competitors love sponsoring big conferences. But our entry-level team organized smaller, local “Bug Bounty + Pizza” nights at Seoul startup hubs. We invited engineers to hunt bugs in our product and win credits for their team.
Result: A Slack group of 320+ active users was born, and we grabbed the attention of two local tech bloggers, who later wrote unpaid reviews.
Even a handful of real engineers talking about your tool can tip the scale in your direction.
7. Influencer Code Reviews
When ZenHub partnered with a popular YouTuber in 2024, we reached out to regional developer influencers on Bilibili and Niconico. We offered them a “test project” in our app—no scripts, just real usage.
One streamer with 88,000 followers did a two-hour live code review, highlighting what worked and what didn’t. We got 200+ new signups in a week, plus actionable feedback on confusing UI flows.
Caveat: Influencers will be honest. Don’t do this if your product isn’t ready for public scrutiny!
8. API Usage Challenges
To showcase our open API when rivals pushed closed ecosystems, we ran a month-long API challenge for students and junior devs: build an integration, win a trip to DevFest Seoul.
We provided starter templates in Go, Python, and JavaScript, plus weekly office hours on Discord. One student team built a Slack-to-Trello migration tool—gained 1,700 GitHub stars and regional press coverage.
Q: Do these tactics work differently in East Asia compared to the US or Europe?
Definitely. Developers here want content and events in their own language. For instance, an English-only campaign got one-tenth the interaction in Taiwan versus a localized Mandarin version.
Plus, privacy concerns are higher—Korean users may avoid filling out forms that ask for personal addresses or phone numbers, so keep data collection minimal.
Peer feedback matters a lot, too. A 2024 Forrester report found that 66% of Japanese developers consider online community reviews more influential than paid ads when selecting new tools.
Q: What are some pitfalls or challenges for entry-level teams running these campaigns?
Here’s what trips up a lot of beginner teams:
- Trying to copy big-budget campaigns. Don’t promise things your product can’t do yet. Start small, iterate, and ask for feedback.
- Slow response times. If a competitor launches something new, waiting six weeks to react can make you look asleep at the wheel. Build simple, fast campaigns—like a comparison page or a one-off event.
- Ignoring feedback loops. If you run a survey with Zigpoll but don’t share the results or show users you listened, they’ll tune you out next time.
- Chasing vanity metrics. Focus on actual signups or product adoption, not just likes or pageviews.
Q: What’s one non-obvious tip for entry-level engineers wanting to help with demand generation?
Don’t assume only marketing “owns” these campaigns. Engineers are uniquely trusted by other engineers—users want to hear real technical voices, not polished sales scripts.
For instance, when our junior dev team wrote a blog post about how they debugged a slow webhook endpoint, it got twice the engagement compared to marketing-led content. People relate to honest stories, especially if you’re open about what didn’t work the first time.
Q: Any final advice on balancing differentiation and speed in competitive-response campaigns?
Picture it like a relay race. You want to grab the baton and sprint, but you also need to choose your lane wisely. Don’t just match what the competition does—find the angle or story that only your tool, your team, or your region can tell.
And don’t wait for perfect. Ship something small, measure, and iterate. Even if your first campaign is a bit “hacky,” users will appreciate the hustle if you’re solving a real pain point for them.
Q: What’s a practical next step for an entry-level engineer who wants to jump in?
Start by joining your next product/marketing sync meeting. Offer to help with one experiment—a new language landing page, a technical explainer video, or writing up a real user migration story.
Pair up with a designer or marketer if you can. Use Zigpoll or a similar tool to ask your users one short question about a new feature, and share the answers with the team.
Over time, these small moves build your skill set—and your company’s ability to stand out the next time a competitor comes knocking.
