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?
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). At 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 teh 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.
Why Nostalgia Marketing Works (Taylor's Version)
How Taylor Swift uses the power of nostalgia, memory, and emotion in her marketing strategy for her re-recorded albums
Very few artists record hit albums. Even fewer record the same hit album twice.
As a deeply devoted Taylor Swift fan, it was never questioned that I would dive right into Taylor’s re-records of her albums. Like millions of my Swiftie brethren, I will always support Taylor and her ownership of her music.
But in her re-releases, Taylor is not just marketing her albums; she’s also marketing nostalgia. She’s capitalizing on whatever each of us was feeling in 2012 when RED was first released — throwing us right back to the exact memories and emotions we felt when we heard RED for the very first time. It should be no surprise that Taylor Swift, Marketing Queen, is using nostalgia as a proven marketing strategy for her re-releases, as well as her upcoming Eras tour.
What is nostalgia marketing and why it works
Nostalgia Marketing is “the strategy of tapping into positive, familiar concepts from previous decades to build trust for new ideas and reinvigorate modern campaigns.” Nostalgia marketing is all about playing on the emotion of fond memories to build a positive association. So even if you’re faced with a new product or service, the connective tissue to a pleasing memory makes this new product or service positive by association.
Nostalgia is often associated with childhood or adolescent memories since for many, childhood was filled with days of no stress, playfulness, and pure joy. Nostalgia marketing tends to use universally recognized fads, trends, or icons to tap into the collective positive emotion of an entire generation. For example, I used to watch hours of classic cartoons growing up. So when this 1999 MasterCard commercial aired, even though I had no idea (at the time) what MasterCard was, I immediately had a positive association with the brand (and remember this ad as a favorite over 20 years later)
Is RED (Taylor’s Version) a work of marketing nostalgia?
The release of RED (Taylor’s Version) may not necessarily by definition be considered Nostalgia Marketing. Why? Because Taylor isn’t using a different trend, brand, or fad to make a positive association with herself. Instead, she’s using her younger self, and the emotions Swifties had when they first heard and fell in love with RED in 2012, as the positive association with a not-quite-new-but-definitely-improved product released in 2021.
Regardless, Taylor knows the power of music to bring up memories, and the power of nostalgia to sell records. She shared, “I think one of the nostalgic things about this for fans is going back in your life for where you were when that album came out…I’m just feeling lots of nostalgic feelings but all the memories I’m feeling are with the fans over the years in concert. It’s really a celebration of that bond that we have.”
When RED (Taylor’s Version) was released 11 years after the original, fans across social media reported being pulled right back into the emotional state they found themselves in back in 2012. Married women locked themselves in their rooms crying over ex-boyfriends of years past as they listened to All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) (Don’t even get me started on All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)!) 32-year-olds are rocking out to 22 (Taylor’s Version) as if they just bought a round of double vodka sodas at a karaoke bar (I say this without any personal experience of doing this at 22…)
The role music plays in tapping into emotional nostalgia
Is this powerful emotional response happening because of fans’ love of Taylor? Sure. But more likely, fans are pulled right back to where they were years ago because of music’s ability to trigger emotions.
Music is known to elicit powerful emotional responses, potentially even the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Music also creates its own “musical memory” that helps create deeper connections and associations, according to the late Oliver Sachs. “Music can provoke general recollections, for example, the feeling of what it was like to be a child…And some songs will prompt nostalgia over more specific scenarios,” according to a 2018 VICE article on the science behind music’s nostalgic power. Combining the power of Taylor Swift, with the emotional memory of music, is a one-two punch that’s bound to leave any Swiftie like a crumped-up piece of paper lying here.
When it comes to music and nostalgia marketing, newer brands looking to build awareness or reach new customers can overcome being the new kid on the block by using music familiar to their target audience. The sonic equivalent of comfort food, a nostalgic song can create positive, soothing associations with an otherwise unfamiliar brand. It’s one reason new artists often sample older, popular tracks on new music — bridging the gap between the familiar and unfamiliar “can propel mediocre tracks to the top of the charts.”
With the imminent release of Taylor’s next re-recorded album (at least according to die-hard swifties who have carefully decided the Easter eggs in Taylor’s videos), and with her Eras Tour kicking off in March, we can expect to see Taylor Swift continuing to capitalize on the marketing power of memory and nostalgia. It’s a savvy business move on Taylor’s part, necessitated by the unfortunate sale (and resale) of her masters. But it may also prove to be a roadmap for other artists looking to reignite their fanbases, or brands interested in reintroducing themselves to old fans.
With the resurgence of 90’s fashion and trends, you could imagine 90’s favorite fashion brands like Mudd Jeans and Steve Madden partnering with 90’s musicians like Christina Aguilera or Smashmouth (do they still exist?) to reconnect with their audiences and reignite their brands. Although, I really hope no one brings low-rise jeans and 3-inch flatforms back…I’ll stick to hoping the old Taylor can rise from the dead and come to the phone when she re-releases Reputation (Taylor’s Version).