As a PMM charged with balancing both self-serve and enterprise customers of the same product, what are the nuances between the two?

I know this situation well; it's the same here at Klaviyo!  First, you need to understand the composition of both audiences. Are the self-serve customers smaller businesses that don't need to talk to sales to feel comfortable using the product? Are at least some of them actually enterprise customers poking around in the product before they talk to sales? Is this a product-led company that makes it easy for end users at enterprise companies to self-serve? Maybe a combination of the above?  With t ...Read More

You have a very tall order ahead of you! These two motions aren't nuanced differences -- they are completely different playbooks. Most of my AMA questions are about comparing the two, so I'll summarize the key differences here: The buyer Often a self-serve buyer is a team lead/director level or an end-user, looking to try out the product to see if it could work for themselves or their team. They are rarely thinking about their entire company's needs. These buyers want to validate the product fas ...Read More

Great question—thanks for asking! One thing to get out of the way first: Most products will have both users and buyers and those users and buyers can live across self-serve and enterprise. Users: Individuals that get value from your product (either actively or passively) but don’t have the power or need to purchase. Buyers: Get value from your product and also have the power to purchase–buyers can exist both in self-serve and enterprise plans. Now to get into the nuances… Customers, no matter wh ...Read More

In general, the answer would largely depend if the enterprise customers and self-serve customers are in the same journey. As in, if the self-serve customers are eventually graduating into a subscription model. But, if you were to look at the nuances between the two sets of customers, I would start by asking the following questions:1/ How are these two customer segments different? How are their motivations different?- Self-service customers crave control and the ability to solve problems independ ...Read More

These two audiences are VERY different. And it's important to be clear on the difference between audiences and channels. Enterprise merchants often move through a sales led funnel. SMB's in many cases are the ones going through a self-serve funnel. A few nuances for each: Self Serve Users going through a self-serve experience are more likely to be looking for an "off the shelf" version of the product that can more easily be sold and explained without human assistance Sales Led Users going throug ...Read More

In a lot of cases, they’re the same customer, they just want to buy differently. For example, an individual user who may end up being your internal champion wants to try the product for a personal use case. Great, go and self serve, get familiar with us! Our touch in that use case is much lighter, no overt sales touch, mostly just ensuring that there are no roadblocks to product adoption. However, if that were to come in as strictly an enterprise deal, the user probably doesn’t have the ability ...Read More

Here are several nuances (generalizations, not hard truths) to consider between self-serve and enterprise customers from a product marketing standpoint: Who they are: Self-serve: end-users, individuals or small teams, individual contributors to lower-level management Enterprise: could be users or buyers, larger teams or departments or even entire companies, director level+, you may also find that regulated industries like government or financial services can only buy through Enterprise sales Wha ...Read More

Great question - this is very common in today's PMM landscape. There are 3 main product marketing differences: Target audience Messaging  Value prop For self-serve products, the target is usually focused on the individual user. Therefore, the messaging and value prop is focused on simplicity and solving their immediate problem, which in return helps them do their job better or faster.  However, when selling to enterprises, the target audience is usually the buyer. Keep in mind - the buyer often ...Read More