What’s the Difference Between Product Marketing at a Start-up vs. a Large Enterprise?
The start-up vs large enterprise conversation is a common one. But what does it look like to be a product marketer at a growing start-up vs an enterprise business? Especially now with many large technology companies laying off talent while start-ups are hiring, it’s a great time to evaluate the differences.
(Note: This is based on my own personal experience, all thoughts and opinions are my own!)
Generalist vs Specialist Product Marketer
I joined a Series B start-up as the second product marketer, at a company of ~90 people and a marketing team of about 9. Small but not tiny. While I wasn’t originating the PMM function entirely, it was still pretty new to the organization, and only once there were two of us were we really able to define the scope of the role.
The scope? I described my job as 50% product-focused and 50% sales-focused.
Product-focused: Working with the Product Management and UX teams to understand and launch new products.
- Understanding the product roadmap
- Identifying launch and release features and prioritization
- Creating a launch plan
- Developing launch collateral
- Creating messaging and positioning for new features and products
- Attending customer feedback sessions
- Conducting customer research
Sales focused: Partnering with the Sales and Marketing teams to promote and sell said products.
- Creating and leading sales enablement
- Building first call decks, data sheets, webpages, webinars, e-mails, and content
- Attending industry events and customer meetings
- Writing customer stories
- Conducting competitive intelligence
- Partner with demand generation on lead-gen campaigns
Jodi…that sounds like you did everything there is to do within Product Marketing?
Exactly! At a start-up, you’re a PMM generalist. With fewer PMMs, comes more responsibility. If you’re new to Product Marketing and want to understand what the PMM role is like, start-ups are a fabulous place to learn. And if you’re a seasoned PMM, start-ups are a great place to make sure you’re doing a little bit of everything across the full spectrum of the PMM role.
In contrast, when I joined a 20K+ enterprise SaaS organization, I joined as a content PMM on one of about a dozen products in the portfolio. My whole job was to create top and middle-of-the-funnel content for a specific part of the product portfolio. E-books, analyst reports, interactive websites, webinars, as well as email and demand generation campaigns were my whole job.
At a larger company, PMM roles are more specialized. Depending upon the size of the team and the organization, you could have one person doing each of the following roles:
- Enablement
- Sales go-to-market
- Messaging and Positioning
- Events
- Content
- Technical product marketing
- Release marketing
This means you become a true subject matter expert on one portion of the PMM role. This is a fabulous way to develop expertise and build a brand for yourself as a go-to person in your specialty. If you want to avoid being a “jack of all trades, master of none,” then a PMM role at a large enterprise may be for you.
Learning by Googling vs. Learning from Peers
Fewer people and fewer years of experience at a start-up mean you’re often the first person doing something for the first time. And if you are new to PMM, that means you’re spending a lot of time Googling “What is a first call deck” or “messaging and positioning template.” At least, that was my experience!
I didn’t know how to craft a positioning statement, or how to structure a first call deck. I had no idea what a competitive battle card looked like or how to write an e-book. Yes, I had other marketing colleagues to learn from, and I could dive into a network of people outside my company to learn. But largely I was on my own trying to figure out what my options were and how to get something done.
By contrast, at a large, established organization, there’s a good chance someone has already tried to solve the problem you’re working on. There are templates for first-call decks, whitepapers, and datasheets. There are even copywriters who will actually write e-mail copy or an e-book based on your guidance— copywriting might not even be part of the PMM role!
And, there are tons and tons of people to learn from. The best part of a large organization, in my opinion, is the relationships you build with others across the organization. There’s always someone to learn from, someone to connect you to the right person or resource to help you get your job done. And often, you’re learning from people who have been around the company for a long time and know how to be successful within that particular organization, saving you a lot of time and headaches.
If you’re an established PMM, moving to a start-up means you likely have enough experience under your belt to not have the exact same experience I had. But a newer, smaller company may mean you’re trying something for the first time, so there’s less of a precedent as to “what works here.”
“Young, Scrappy, and Hungry” vs. “We’re in the Money”
Ah, budgets (and a musical theater reference, you’re welcome). During my time at start-ups, the assumption was you would do things without outside resources and without an additional budget. That meant doing your own video editing and copywriting, for example, even if you have no editing or copywriting experience. Most graphic design and creative work were done in-house. Maybe we spent some money on an inexpensive agency to create templates so we could build our own datasheets, but marketing budgets were largely reserved for events, campaigns, and customer swag.
Contrast that with a large enterprise, where we used agencies for everything. Demo videos, whitepapers, datasheets, website design — you name it, we could outsource it. Was it necessary? Sometimes. Was it efficient? Sometimes. Was it a good use of money? Sometimes. But having budgets for outside contractors and agencies meant I didn’t have to know video editing or graphic design. I could outsource that work to experts, and I could focus my time on what I was good at.
Building vs. Following Processes
Smaller, newer companies mean you’re creating the templates, guidelines, and processes for your organization to follow. There’s often no structure in place and very few existing answers. In fact, you may be the first person to start a product marketing function, which means you have to educate product managers, engineers, sales teams, and more about what a product marketer does, how to work with PMM, and why the role matters. This can be a huge learning curve for everyone involved, as it requires carving out new swimlanes and shifting responsibilities across teams and functions.
In addition to providing education around the role of product marketing, you’ll also create the structure for the function. This may include developing a launch plan, creating a tiering system for launches, creating a messaging hierarchy, and building out a content calendar — all for the first time in a company’s tenure. If you’re new to Product Marketing this can be…very hard to do. Trust me — that was my experience.
At large organizations, most processes and guidelines are already in place. You will hardly be the first, second, or even 10th product marketer on the team — most everyone will know the value PMM brings to the table, and where the swimlanes are. There’s a voice and tone guide, there have been product and feature launches before, and there’s a set of expectations around what it means to do sales kickoff, sales enablement, or a product launch. Sure, these processes might need to be updated or templatized, but you’re not starting from scratch — you’re adapting what’s already been done to meet your needs.
When I moved from a start-up to a large company, I was awestruck by the structure and resources that were suddenly available to me. Sure, over time I saw there were still plenty of areas where there wasn’t a process in place or where launch templates, for example, needed to be updated. But more often than not, having an established way of getting things done was incredibly helpful!
If you’re making the reverse move from a large company to a start-up, I recommend seeing what templates, processes, and resources you can adapt to hit the ground running quickly at your new organization. Not everything will be a perfect fit for a much different company, but it’s helpful to have a starting point — and it’s a quick win to bring this structure to your new organization.
The choice between a start-up or a large enterprise is like comparing apples and oranges. And, there’s more to evaluate in the selection than just the differences in the product marketing role. The benefits, pay, flexibility, and influence may vary wildly. Ultimately, understanding how your role may differ between these two experiences will help you evaluate what the right choice is for you at this point in your career. And the right choice for you may change at different points in your career journey.
I didn’t make a conscious choice to start my career in start-ups — it was what was available to me at the time. When I started my post-college, 9–5 career (after my 5–9 career in film production) I applied to over 40 jobs, and the first offer I got was for an HR internship at a start-up. It ended up being a great place to grow quickly, learn from smart, talented people, and get to know every corner and crevice of a business.
After getting my MBA, I wanted a PMM role at a large, established company — but the competition was fierce, and I wasn’t what they wanted to take a chance on. But with past experience at a growth-stage start-up and experience within the industry, I was an attractive candidate for a growing start-up to take a risk on. It was only after I had some product marketing experience under my belt that I jumped into a larger organization. While I’m glad I had start-up experience first, I think I would have been better at my job at a start-up with some more established experience under my belt.
