The 18 Types of Startup Marketers

Take our personality test to find out which type of Startup Marketer best fits your character.

Get detailed results and descriptions of all your individual personality traits at the end.

</p> <section> <h2>The 18 Types of Startup Marketers</h2> <p> </p> <p>by David Berkowitz – Principal, Serial Marketer</p> <p> </p> <p>This personalty test is based on a talk given at Talent Land in Guadalajara Mexico in April 2019. There are lots of generalizations here, as there are in any framework, but they’re all based on real-world examples.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </section> <section> <h2>The Growth Hacker</h2> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Efficiently acquiring customers</li> <li>Data-driven decision-making</li> <li>You love to test & learn</li> <li>You can optimize around practically any metric</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are: </strong></p> <ul> <li>You have blind spots with building brands</li> <li>You are underinvests in less direct paths to shorten sales cycles</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <ul> <li>You need to pair up with a Communicator, Creative, or Strategist to complement your growth hacking skills.</li> </ul> </section> <section> <h3>The Manager</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Management experience</li> <li>You can handle any size team</li> <li>Your focus on the growth trajectory of members of your team</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weakness</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might be a bit of a political maneuverer obsessed with headcount above all else</li> <li>Maybe you are sometimes so focused on meetings with your team that they don’t have time to do their main job</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Focus on evaluating your leadership qualities rather than purely the quantity of your direct reports</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Communicator</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Verbal and written communication eloquence</li> <li>You might share responsibilities with the Evangelist or report into them</li> <li>You can bring ideas to life and make the inexplicable comprehensible</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You can be in a silo if communications is in a separate group from marketing</li> <li>You need to be included in core conversations and decisions, not marginalized</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations</strong></p> <p>You need to be given access to key processes and personnel, and be invite to be part of making decisions</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Evangelist</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You have a strong voice and face for your business</li> <li>You probably have your own audience and your own media channel</li> <li>You can dazzle prospects and the press</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might lack substance if you don’t have internal responsibilities</li> <li>This can prevent you from truly being part of the team</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Find substantive ways to make use of your talents, such as incorporating them as an executive sponsor on key accounts or contributing in other measurable ways</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Creative</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You most likely have impeccable design skills</li> <li>You are brimming with new ideas</li> <li>You are a skilled storyteller</li> <li>You can give life to the most mundane or technical products</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might engage in Potential turf wars if the others in the team want to influence product design</li> <li>you need freedom to operate – and may face challenges in a culture where everything is data-driven</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Establish a clear process with how you fit in with product design. Find a way to broaden your skillset so that your role is not easy to fill via consultants.</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Strategist</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are a master cartographer</li> <li>You provide the insights that lead to the big idea, small idea, and every other idea</li> <li>If you must, you can at times interchange with and usually interact well with the Creative</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Ideas and plans alone don’t grow a business – you need a team that can execute</li> <li>You could clash with the Creative, especially without clear roles and responsibilities</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations:</strong></p> <p>Make sure to execute so that you do not find yourself in the role of being a luxury hire</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Generalist</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You can do a little bit of everything</li> <li>You often surprises the team with how much you’ve experienced and how well you can apply what you’ve learned</li> <li>You often can muster resources to get any job done</li> <li>You are the kindred spirit of the Connector</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You risk being a master of none</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Find out where you truly excel, what you can oversee competently, and what areas are totally new for you.</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Soldier</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are great at following orders</li> <li>You are a strong team player who knows their job and reliably performs it</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>When you need to take ownership, you are usually ill-prepared to do so</li> <li>You are so averse to confrontation that you tend to stick to saying what your superiors want to hear</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Try to learn some leadership skills. Push yourself out of your comfort zone; or at least, find ways to advance internally if you do not want to take on leadership responsibilities</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Connector</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are two degrees away from anyone you need to get in front of – and maybe one degree</li> <li>You are skilled at coming up with great options for anything and anyone you need</li> <li>You can add value when trying to find other key hires</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Just because they can connect you, they still might not get you in front of the right people in the right way to close a deal</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Pair yourself with the right Closer, or at least strong counterparts from the sales team</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Product Marketer</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You can build in feedback loops to keep customers hooked while roping in new customers</li> <li>If the product itself can sustain such loops, you may be the only key marketing hire needed for awhile</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Few products work that well, so product marketers can only work so much magic</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Ensure that you have enough resources to support product growth and get the product into more prospects’ hands</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Ladder Climber</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You know how to rise through the ranks and how to be constantly promoted. You probably came from other teams and took on marketing as well</li> <li>You are adaptable and loyal and come with tremendous institutional knowledge</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might lack training in marketing</li> <li><span style="color: #3c4043;">You know how to prevent the company from seeking the skilled subject matter expert that might compete with you – but which is not in the best interest of the company overall</span></li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Keep on trying to find new oportunties in the company and find the right moment to switch to another role</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Globalist</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Your ads targeting Mauritius will never run in Mauritania</li> <li>You can target any audience anywhere and most likely have years of international experience</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>If you only need to focus on your home market or another key region, your experience will be overkill</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Before you join a new company, make sure they really meet your expectations. Many companies that say they are building global businesses and teams rarely expand very far quickly</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Closer</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You seem to be a salesperson at heart who wound up in marketing</li> <li>You are perfect for when a seller is best to lead marketing</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Sales is not marketing, so there still needs to be a team that can do marketing properly</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>With your skills, you might be the CMO and manage sales and marketing together (just like a chief revenue officer may), you should have marketers that complement your strengths</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Engineer</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You may be as technical as the founder, if not more</li> <li>You can apply methodologies like Agile or Waterfall to the marketing process</li> <li>You are a dream for developers given there’s no language barrier</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might struggle to translate what you’re doing to anyone but the most technical audiences</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>You are best fit to lead a team if external audiences are also developers or otherwise technical; ensure engineers can collaborate well with sales and other groups that don’t have as much technical knowledge</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Spendthrift</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are convinced it takes money to make money, and making money is your endgame</li> <li>You are generous with supporting other teams like Sales and Product</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Protecting the burn rate tends to be an issue</li> <li>You may occasionally pad metrics to ensure spending fits in with target customer acquisition costs (CAC)</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Frugal CEOs and COOs are bound to clash with the Spendthrift; make sure to show results to justify expenditures</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Miser</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You are very protective of the burn rate</li> <li>You won’t blow through even a modest marketing budget</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>More caution comes with less experimentation</li> <li>You might skimp on quality and make your brand look cheap</li> <li>You are reticent to seek necessary additional resources</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Try to think bigger once in a while and act as if money is no object. Regularly check in with other teams like Sales and Product to ensure that you are properly supporting them.</p> </section> <section> <h3>The CEO</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>If you are the CEO of your company you may serve as the default CMO.</li> <li>You know the company better than anyone</li> <li>CEOs like you are inherently talented marketers</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You might not have the time to focus on marketing, even if you have the skills</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations: </strong></p> <p>Know when to let go, let the right hire take over, and then figure out which type of marketer you need</p> </section> <section> <h3>The Unicorn</h3> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your strenghts are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You can do literally everything</li> <li>You are great at direct marketing and brand marketing</li> <li>You are a creative strategist with deep analytics chops</li> <li>You worked in exactly the vertical that is needed at your company</li> <li>Your salary expectation is not even close to what you are truly worth to the company</li> <li>You have exactly the right amount of experience – a lot of what’s relevant, but not too much</li> <li>You are a 10 out of 10 in every single criteria you list</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Your weaknesses are:</strong></p> <ul> <li>You do not actually exist and therefore you are only 1% Unicorn 🙂</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong>Recommendations</strong>:</p> <p>If you are hiring, use this guide as a way to get past your fantasy of this unicorn hire. Consider this your reality check.</p> </section> <section> <h2>Do you like to make and build things, or do you like to make prospects and customers understand the value of what others create?</h2> </section> <section> <h3>What is your motto when it comes to budgets and spending</h3> </section> <section> <h3>Your meetings are:</h3> </section> <section> <h3>Are you all about flawless execution or brilliant strategies?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>When it comes to your skills, which is more accurate:</h3> </section> <section> <h3>What is your ideal team size?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>What social network do you spend most your time on?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>When it comes to analyzing data, you will most likely:</h3> </section> <section> <h3>You are given clear directions but have a different opinion. What do you do?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>What is your favorite way of launching a new product?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>If you where a car, which car would you most likely be?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>Who should design your ads in an ideal world?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>Your conversion rate is nowhere near where it needs to be. What do you do?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>You have a great opportunity to land a huge client. Who do you get to make the pitch?</h3> </section> <section> <h3>Your new startup has just launched. How do you go about building your brand?</h3> </section> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>

The 18 Types of Startup Marketers

Get the Serial Marketer Weekly newsletter