Dear Marketers, WE HAVE MORE QUESTIONS!

Summary: In the final episode of ‘Dear Marketers,’ season 1, Host Emily Kramer sits down with all her co-host friends  to discuss additional questions from listeners. Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partner Marketing at Mercury, Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon all weigh on developing positioning for different verticals, getting respect from CEOs, measuring campaigns and more. 

Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. 

Episode 12 is sponsored by Framer and RevenueHero.

About our hostsEmily 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.Devon Watts is a long-time startup marketer currently leading Product and Partner Marketing at Mercury. Previously, she ran marketing for the high-growth fintech Anrok, and spent time building her PMM, content, and brand expertise at companies like Yammer, Asana, and Carta. Devon has led B2B marketing teams with anywhere from 1 to 25+ people, and has experience in PLG and sales-led motions. In addition to marketing, Devon loves her kids, being on/in/near the water, her dog Dolores, and eating cheese.

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 questions from Sinziana Ursu, Anna Furmanov, Julia Wiltshire, Elaine Zelby, Sayed Bin Habib, Lucia Giles, Briana Ottoboni, Allie Beazell, Cori Hamoor, Stuart Bramfeld, and Brandi Eppolito. 

Quotes “A lot of positioning debates that happen are because people don’t understand we’re positioning for the next three to six months or until things change for these audiences. I recommend not only breaking it down by ICP, but even breaking it down like, in 12 months our positioning might be this. Because that solves a lot of problems too.” – Emily Kramer“  I’ve seen a lot of companies basically start a new fiscal year and say, we’re moving up market. Here’s our enterprise segment, it’s this head count, we’re gonna set pipeline of revenue goals that start today. And it’s like, let’s back up 10 steps, because we have zero awareness. It doesn’t just turn on overnight. I think that’s often a mistake I see.” – Jenny Thai

“There are different tiers of campaigns and some are going be bigger than others, but it is important to think about campaigns and understand, are you really running campaigns? How many of them are you running? Because it also serves to give the team focus.…centering the team’s energy around this very clear message or audience or metric you’re trying to move with this campaign, rather than spreading ourselves thin across a bunch of random acts of marketing.” – Devon Watts “The amount of importance on partnerships is not equal and sometimes it’s really unequal, especially when you’re a younger company and you’re relying on larger partners to help you grow… Figure out what is important to them? What is motivating to them? Is it shared revenue goals or is it actually like this individual wants to look good?” – Grace Erickson

Time stamps

[00:00] We’re actually friends

[01:29] Got milk: a toast to the season

[03:13]  What did you most love and least love about doing a podcast?

[06:08]  Innovative B2C marketing

[09:44]  What is a campaign and does it matter?

[17:00] Balancing experimentation with traditional project planning

[26:23]  Why are so many B2B case studies long and boring?

[30:34] Marketing technical products

[36:45] Developing and evolving positioning

[41:06] Indicators you are actually ready to move up market 

[46:14] How much is too much measurement? 

[51:14] How can we gain CEO respect as marketers?[57:17] Best, Marketer

Recommended products & agencies

Typeform: Use code MKT1 toget 20% off their annual growth plan.Framer: Framer will rebuild or migrate your site for free in 3 days. New and existing teams on a Scale Plan are eligible: Submit your brief here.42 Agency: Mention MKT1 to get 10% off a Hubspot Audit or Hubspot Sprint.

Connect with: 

Emily Kramer

Devon Watts

Jenny Thai

Grace Erickson

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