How would you recommend scaling a product marketing strategy for a series A start up? What would you prioritize after positioning/messaging and product market fit have been determined?

For series A or any early-stage start-up, I'd hyper-focus on really nailing product market fit (PMF) through deep engagement with customers who are actively using your products as part of their everyday workflow. In my experience, early stage start-ups have some early tech, a handful of early adopter customers (make sure you freshen up on Crossing the Chasm to not fall into early adopter traps) and a bunch of hypothesis that need proving (see the pitch deck for the A round). The first PMM at the company should work hand-in-hand with sales and product to obsessively, objectively validate what's real, what's defensible and what's repeatable. Don't take sales or product's word for it, see it in action for yourself. And don't go in with a bias to confirm internal hypotheses - assume the team is (at least partially) wrong, because statistically you are. And that's ok - keep working with customers until you see real patterns in what customers do post-sales with your product and what leads to renewals and expansion. Then write it down to see if you can to web copy or a pitch deck that can replicate the "so what" for a specific persona trying for a specific use case. Think one foot in front of the other rather than scaling out early signals - chances are you'll hit roadblocks that will force you to trace your steps back to a new set of customers using your product that'll require you to rework your web copy and pitch deck. PMMs at later-stage start-ups or enterprises need to focus on scaling out and simplifying a complex mix of products, audiences and use cases. If you're a (or the) PMM at an early stage start-up your job is much more hands-on and hand-crafted.

Great question. In the early days, focus is key, so be wary of taking on too much in PMM. With that said, here's how to think about scaling.

Nail the Basics

Set the Foundation:

First and foremost, you want to ensure your team is united around a compelling strategic narrative, brand messaging, and core brand pillars. It's crucial to validate your product market fit, as many companies are still in the discovery phase at this stage. Aligning on  product messaging, product pillars, differentiators, and value propositions is critical.

Evangelize Your Core Message:

Once you've built your foundation, you’ll want to evangelize your message through core content like your sales deck, one-pagers, and your website. Enabling your organization on this content is critical. 

Next, it’s important to bring your message to life through customer proof points. Case studies, quotes, ROI metrics, and more are critical to buildling trust with your audience. In the early days, this can be tough to gather, but the ROI on these efforts is way greater than any internal content you create. In the past, we’ve formed tiger teams whose sole focus is to go out and get early customers and partners who will sing our praises. Get creative with how you incent them! 

Show Them You Know Them. Then Give Them a Framework!

Everyone loves a good framework! Start by showing your audience you know them. Develop a deep understanding for their status quo. Understand their tools, their workflows, their goals, their challenges. From here, provide a framework for how they can go from point A to point B. 

Assets like customer maturity models, operating frameworks, or decision frameworks are great ways to help your customers before they ever purchase your product. Be sure to embed your product capabilities into this framework to show them how you can help them advance faster.

Scale Up

Inspect the Data, Validate Your Hypotheses

Once you’ve nailed the basics, it’s time to scale. PMM teams typically scale their strategies in a few ways: 

• Double down on core messaging and positioning

• Persona marketing

• Industry or vertical marketing

• Solution marketing

Pursuing any of these strategies is quite labor intensive, so you want to make sure you take time to process the data. Look at customer data in your CRM, look at product usage data, talk to leadership, product, and sales, look at competitors and market trends. The goal here is to identify what’s working today and match that with where you think your business is going. It’s really easy for PMM to scale in a silo and miss the mark. 

Once you’ve aligned on one of the above strategies, start with a small bill of materials (e.g., datasheet, webinar, blog, sales enablement) and see whether it resonates. If it does, double down! If it doesn’t try a different tact. 

More often than not, at Series A, your best bet is focusing on your Core Message. Wait until Series B (or beyond) to test more segmented strategies. 

One More Thing

You should start to layer in things like competitive intel, win/loss analyses, analyst briefings (if applicable), and in-app messaging along the way. If you’re a team of one, start with the most impactful activity. Again, focus is key and be mindful not to bite off more than you can chew!