Corporate VS. Startup Marketing

Kriti Vichare
Kriti is a marketer, entrepreneur and cartoonist. She is the illustrator and co-founder of EntrepreneurFail, a comic about the ironies of starting a company. She is also the founder of IdeaKube, a company that facilitates brainstorming and networking through ‘ideation parties.’ Kriti was a former marketer at PepsiCo and Kraft Foods, holds an MBA from NYU Stern, and a BS and MS from Carnegie Mellon University.

“With no marketing budget I resorted to techniques I would have never considered – cold calling, cold emailing, cold presentations, and crashing networking events, amongst others.” 

To spread the word to customers in a big company, the marketing department gets the big bucks to make sure the sales team is out there busting down doors to grow the business. And since chances are the brand or product already has recognition, the marketing helps reiterate and boost the brand in the market. The huge marketing budget pales in comparison to the return on the investment.

In a startup on the other hand, every employee – from founder to developer to gopher needs to be a marketer and a salesperson. The thick skin each employee will develop after hearing constant rejections will only make the value proposition stronger.

This article by Anita Newton goes deeper into the comparison! It’s a good read especially if you are making the transition from big company to small, or vice versa.

Key Startup Lesson: Use inexpensive methods of marketing and PR that all team members can use help grow the business.

Tell us about your experiences marketing in your startup in the comments below. 

This comic and post is from the book: Cheating on Your Corporate Job: A Comic Look at the Startup Dream. Read the review on Forbes.com. You can get the book on Amazon Kindle or PDF. Use the code “fifty” to get a 50% discount on the PDF.