How to market "boring" products (APIs, DevTools, etc.) I will not promote

We sucked at marketing our product (an API-based infra product aimed at engineers) for a long time. We tried a bunch of stuff we saw work for other companies, but it flopped for us. It wasn't bad execution, it was a bad fit between marketing tactics and our product. I think this is an aspect nobody talks about in startup marketing: How people buy your product. I think there are two main products that get bought (and used) differently: Sexy and boring. \-Sexy products get discovered, not sought out. Customers see them and think, “Wow that’s cool, let’s try it”. \-They’re visual. They're easy to showcase with videos, screenshots or demos. \-Users spend hours in them: Slack, Notion and Figma are examples. \-The ICP is broader and there are many of them (e.g. software engineers). \-Time to value is short: You "get it" quickly. The perfect example is Loom. It made screen recordings so easy that when someone sends you the link and saves you a meeting you're like "I should get that". Boring products (like ours) are the exact opposite: \-They're bought, not discovered. Buyers seek them out when they evaluate vendors for a project. \-They're not visual. You can't make a snazzy demo video of a database, API or other infrastructure. \-Users don’t spend much time in them, even if they do important things in the background. \-The ICP is narrow and there are few of them. \-Time to value is long: Usually depends on implementation in a big project The perfect example is something like AWS. AWS is extremely important to its customers, but most people in the company never log into AWS, and even fewer would know what to do in there. (The word boring isn't meant as a negative thing because the opportunities can be massive. It's more about the attractiveness to the average person). Those two require totally different approaches to marketing. With sexy products, you should be creating demos, viral loops etc. That doesn't work for boring products, which require more documentation and explanation—which people will actually read because boring products are typically ingredients to important projects. You also need to adjust your marketing expectations. A boring product will rarely get a ton of engagement on social media. But for a sexy product, people might not read your blog posts in depth because people "get it" more quickly.