What do new marketing managers get wrong? 

Summary: In this episode of ‘Dear Marketers,’ Host Emily Kramer and her friends Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon, dive into what new marketing managers get wrong. Moving beyond the basics  like bad one-on-one formats and messy decks, they dive into the early mistakes that derail leadership credibility. 

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 9 is sponsored by Framer and 42 Agency.

About our hosts

Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, a marketing advisor, and an investor. She previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly. She’s helped hundreds of startups with B2B marketing, has over 50,000 subscribers on Substack, and has reached millions through her content. Kramer’s known for her pragmatic advice, first principles approach to marketing, and her “krameworks.” When not marketing “marketing,” you can find her with her dogs in Oakland, CA or eating ice cream on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.Jenny Thai is a marketing leader with 15 years of content and storytelling experience at high-growth B2B startups. She currently leads content at Vanta where she’s building full-funnel programs to fuel brand and business growth. Before that, Jenny was Director of Communications + Content at Clearbit and Head of Content at Asana where she scaled the content team and function from Series C to post-DPO. When she’s not thinking about doing some content, Jenny enjoys reading books, eating noodles, and playing skee ball. 

Grace Erickson is a true marketing generalist with 10 years of experience in B2B startups, spanning functions like growth, brand, product marketing, and most things in between. She’s currently the VP of Revenue at Cocoon, a Series A employee leave management platform. Prior to Cocoon, Grace led marketing programs at Asana, Carta, and Cleo in various roles, but always with a focus on an integrated customer journey. Besides being a marketing nerd, Grace spends her time coming up with (but not executing) elaborate schemes and browsing Zillow.

We also hear from Mark Huber, VP of Marketing at UserEvidence, who asks, “ What’s the biggest mistake that you see first time marketing leaders make?”

Quotes

* “ Your job as a people lead or manager, no matter how big your team is, is to basically take the chaos that’s happening around you, make sense of it for your team. Then protect your team from that chaos so that they can execute effectively and focus on the impact, versus getting distracted by whatever random shiny object RAM is happening in any given week.” – Jenny Thai

“ My thing that I wish someone had told me before I became a first time manager was how much of your job is shielding. Not lying, but shielding and being a buffer or filter between other people and how that’s hard.” – Emily Kramer“ Teams of any size, in any org structure, need structure to know what to do when. How to prioritize, whose job it is to do what thing, whatever—teams need structure. As a manager, it’s your job to create the right structure for your team. And if your company doesn’t have the right structure for your team, it’s still your job to figure out what the right structure is within whatever’s happening at your company.” – Grace Erickson

Time stamps

[00:00] Meet Grace and Jenny, and how to pronounce “management”

[01:35] Today’s question: What do new marketing managers get wrong?

[02:18] Lightning Round: Management mistakes

[05:47] Summarizing key management mistakes

[07:03] Understanding which projects are high impact

[13:49] The babysitter is dead

[22:54] Delegation challenges 

[31:53] Redefining success in management

[33:46] Tangible tips for effective delegation

[38:52] Proactive performance management

[49:27] The role of internal marketing

[55:09] Best, Marketer Game

Recommended products & agencies

Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan

Framer: Apply to their startup program to get their $900 launch plan for free for a year at framer.com/startups or use code MKT1 for 25% off a yearly site plan

42 Agency:  Mention MKT1 to get 10% off a consulting package

Caspian Studios

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer

Jenny Thai

Grace Erickson

Subscribe to MKT1 Newsletter for a companion newsletter for each episode.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newsletter.mkt1.co/subscribe