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Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)11 September 2022

How to build a powerful marketing machine

6Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Leadership4 steps

Areas of Responsibility (AORs) for Cross-Functional Ownership

Publish a beyond-titles list of who's the DRI for what, so product and marketing always know who to go to.

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Marketing4 steps

Fuel and Engine Model of Marketing

Reduce all of marketing to two questions: do you lack valuable things to say, or a way to distribute them?

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Marketing4 steps

Impact Goals Over Activity Goals

Judge a marketing team by big bets and full-funnel conversion, not by how many blog posts they shipped.

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Marketing5 steps

Pi-Shaped Marketer Hiring

Your first marketer needs two deep spikes plus strategy skills — not one spike, and not a generalist smear.

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Entrepreneurship4 steps

Product-Market Yourself as a Functional Angel Investor

Package your functional expertise into one clear, repeatable value-add so founders pull you into deals.

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Marketing5 steps

The GACCS Marketing Brief

A five-part brief — Goals, Audience, Creative, Channels, Stakeholders — to align before you make anything big.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster12:30

Content Isn't Just Blog Posts

Emily pushes back on the narrow view that marketing content means blog posts. Content is copy, videos, webinar recordings, and positioning — and interactive resources tend to outperform prose. Tools, templates, and calculators are content that adds real value.

  • Most people wrongly equate content with blog posts
  • Content also includes web copy, templates, video recordings, webinars, and podcasts
  • Tools, resources, templates and calculators tend to perform better than blog posts
  • Positioning and messaging are a form of fuel that content expresses

“content should be tools resources templates like calculators those kinds of things do better”

Emily Kramer · 12:30
#content#marketing#positioning
Myth Buster25:30

Don't Make a Big-Company Senior Your First Marketer

A common failure Emily sees: founders (often on a VC referral) hire a super-senior marketer from Google, Salesforce, or another public company as their first marketing hire. It's the wrong profile — those people have only marketed products everyone already knows, so they don't understand how to build a marketing foundation from scratch. Marketing a known brand is a fundamentally different motion than building one up.

  • First-marketer hires from big public companies frequently fail
  • VCs often refer 'someone great from Google' who is wrong for an early-stage role
  • Big-company marketers haven't built positioning, audience research, or channels from scratch
  • Marketing a known brand is a very different motion than building one up

“you don't want to go out and hire someone super senior who's like only worked in a public company like that's the wrong person”

Emily Kramer · 25:30

“they're like oh they only worked in salesforce i'm like well yeah why is that not a good fit”

Emily Kramer · 26:00
#hiring#startups#marketing#first-hire

Hot Take· 4

Hot Take08:00

Hire for Business-Model Fit, Not Industry Experience

Founders obsess over hiring a marketer who has sold to their exact industry or audience, but Emily argues business-model experience matters far more. Whether you're top-down enterprise sales or bottom-up product-led growth dictates the entire set of marketing activities. Great marketers pick up a new audience and product quickly, and fresh eyes can even help.

  • Insisting on industry/audience experience needlessly narrows your candidate pool
  • Business model (top-down sales vs bottom-up PLG) dictates the marketing activities far more than industry
  • Great marketers learn a new audience and product fast; you already have in-house audience experts
  • A fresh set of eyes on the audience is sometimes an advantage

“great marketers learn the audience and learn the product quickly and sometimes that fresh set of eyes is helpful”

Emily Kramer · 08:00
#hiring#marketing#business-model#startups
Hot Take37:00

"Product-Led Growth" Is a Misnomer

Emily's contrarian take: PLG really means 'not as much sales,' which means product plus marketing. People rename marketing anything they can to avoid calling it marketing. Counterintuitively, a PLG company should have a bigger marketing team early on, because marketing owns the one-to-many communication that sales would otherwise handle.

  • PLG really means less sales — i.e. product plus marketing
  • People rename marketing to avoid calling it marketing
  • PLG companies should have a bigger, not smaller, marketing team early on
  • Marketing owns one-to-many communication; product uses the product itself as a channel

“i think the product led growth is a misnomer i think people do anything they can possibly do not call marketing marketing”

Emily Kramer · 37:00
#plg#marketing#hot-take#go-to-market
Hot Take49:00

Flattery vs Strategy: The Marketing Busy-Work Trap

Riffing on a talk title from her friend Jenny (ex-Asana head of content), Emily calls out how much of marketing is 'flattery, not strategy' — throwing a lot of stuff out there, doing busy work, and looking busy without being impact-focused. The best teams can tell you exactly which few things drive their growth and what their big bets are.

  • Much of marketing is flattery (busy work to look busy), not strategy
  • Impact-focused teams know which core activities actually drive growth
  • Great teams can name their big bets — the moves that could cause step-change growth
  • They also name the broken foundational pieces (e.g. lead scoring, website) holding them back

“a lot of what marketing is that flatter g and not strategy”

Emily Kramer · 49:00

“it's like a lot of busy work and you want to look busy but it's not impact focus”

Emily Kramer · 49:00
#marketing#strategy#impact#hot-take
Hot Take56:30

Product-Market Yourself to Win Deals

On becoming a sought-after angel investor, Emily says functional expertise is in short supply and founders increasingly lean on angels instead of hiring for a function early. Her edge is a crisply articulated, specific value-add — 'I'll help you build your marketing function and hire' — which makes it easy for others to bring her into deals. In effect, you have to product-market yourself.

  • There's a shortage of investors and advisors with deep functional expertise
  • Founders lean on angels for functional help instead of hiring early
  • A specific, well-articulated value-add makes it easy to get pulled into deals
  • You have to 'product-market yourself' — be clear about the product you're offering
  • You also have to actually deliver, since that's what generates more deal flow

“it's almost like you gotta like product market yourself like what's the product that you're offering”

Emily Kramer · 56:30
#angel-investing#positioning#career#personal-brand

Explainer· 1

Explainer35:00

The Marketing-to-Product Handoff in PLG

Everyone talks about the marketing-to-sales handoff, but Emily argues PLG has an equally important marketing-to-product handoff. The stretch from filling out a website form to getting into the product spans two teams, and if it feels disjointed — or a user gets a jumble of marketing drips and product transactional emails — they'll notice. She doesn't care how you structure it; the experience just needs to feel consistent with heavy collaboration across the two skill sets.

  • PLG has a marketing-to-product handoff analogous to the marketing-to-sales handoff
  • The signup flow from website form to in-product needs to feel consistent
  • Disjointed handoffs (mismatched drip and transactional emails) are noticeable to users
  • Structure is flexible — an onboarding owner, a hybrid role, or a committee with one DRI all work
  • The key is collaboration and a clear process across marketing and product skill sets

“we talk about like the marketing to sales handoff all the time on the go to market side but there's a marketing to product handoff…”

Emily Kramer · 35:00
#plg#onboarding#collaboration#product

Story· 1

Story16:30

The Scariest Question to Ask a Product Marketer

At Asana, CEO Dustin's go-to interview question for product marketers was simply: what is product marketing? Emily says it's the most terrifying question you can ask them because nobody has a clean answer. Her working definition: someone who understands the product, the audience, and the market, and can figure out how to communicate the right things at the right time.

  • Asana's CEO always asked candidates 'what's product marketing?'
  • It's a feared question because product marketers struggle to define their own role
  • A product marketer understands the product, the audience, and the market
  • From that understanding they figure out how to communicate to the audience at the right time

“it's like no scarier question for a product marketer then hey what's a product marketer”

Emily Kramer · 16:30
#product-marketing#hiring#asana#interviewing

Q&A· 2

Q&A27:00

When to Hire Your First Marketer

Lenny asks when it's best to make the first marketing hire. Emily's rule of thumb: usually around Series A (or a junior person at seed), and only once you have some semblance of product-market fit. If you're still doing bespoke founder-led sales and modifying the product per customer, you don't need a marketer yet — marketing accelerates growth and does things that scale one-to-many. Product-led models need marketers earlier since there's no sales team.

  • Typical timing is Series A, or a junior hire at seed heading into the A
  • Wait until you have some semblance of product-market fit and some successful customers
  • If still doing bespoke, founder-led sales, founders and contractors can cover it
  • PLG models need marketers earlier because they won't be hiring salespeople
  • Test: if you hired a marketer, what would they do — and can your product handle the growth?

“i think it's helpful to have some sort of semblance of product market fit”

Emily Kramer · 27:00
#hiring#startups#product-market-fit#timing
Q&A1:05:00

Her Favorite Interview Question

Emily's favorite interview question (which she didn't invent): describe something complicated that you know well but others don't — and describe it as simply as you can. It reveals how someone communicates, and she'll sometimes ask them to make it even simpler on the spot, especially for writing roles. Amusingly, most people pick something related to cooking.

  • Ask candidates to describe something complicated they know well, as simply as possible
  • It reveals communication skill, not just knowledge
  • For writing roles, she asks them to make the explanation simpler, repeatedly
  • It's a softer framing than 'teach me something I don't know,' which can feel pretentious
  • Most people surprisingly pick a cooking-related topic

“describe something complicated that you knew you know well that others don't and describe it as simply as you can”

Emily Kramer · 1:05:00
#interviewing#hiring#communication

Tool· 1

Tool1:00:30

Emily Kramer's Marketing Book Picks

In the lightning round, Emily favors classic marketing books that have stood the test of time over recency-based ones, since marketing changes so fast. Her picks: The Tipping Point, Crossing the Chasm, and Seth Godin's Purple Cow. She adds April Dunford's Obviously Awesome as becoming a must-read on positioning even for non-product-marketers.

  • Prefers classic marketing books because marketing changes too fast for recency-based ones
  • The Tipping Point, Crossing the Chasm, and Seth Godin's Purple Cow
  • April Dunford's Obviously Awesome — a must-read on positioning
  • Obviously Awesome is helpful even if you're not a product marketer

“i think april dunford's obviously awesome is sort of becoming one of those books that every marketer should have read on positioning”

Emily Kramer · 1:01:00
#books#recommendations#positioning#marketing

Takeaway· 3

Takeaway38:30

Your Website Must Be Editable by Marketing

Emily warns that the website will need updating thousands of times, so it belongs on an easy-to-edit CMS like Webflow — not buried in the codebase. If the site is built into the code, on a headless CMS, or otherwise untouchable by marketing, that's a huge problem. Early on product sometimes owns the site because marketing isn't there yet, but that should change fast.

  • The website needs constant updates and should live on an easy-to-edit CMS like Webflow
  • A site built into the codebase and not touchable by marketing is a huge problem
  • Product owning the whole website and top-of-funnel messaging is a poor use of time
  • Where forms are built (site vs product) drives who needs to own them

“the website is something that's going to need to be updated like five thousand times and it needs to be on like web slow preferably…”

Emily Kramer · 38:30

“if it's like built into the code base that's like or it's on a headless cms or it's not touchable by marketing that's a huge…”

Emily Kramer · 38:30
#website#cms#webflow#marketing-ops
Takeaway50:30

"Write 10 Blog Posts" Is Not a Goal

Emily's favorite thing to pick on: marketing teams that set activity goals like 'write 10 blog posts this month.' That's a tactic, not a goal. The real goal should be the impact — traffic, conversion rate, and the signups that result. Set impact goals, not activity goals.

  • 'Write 10 blog posts this month' is a tactic, not a goal
  • Real goals are impact metrics: traffic, conversion rate, resulting signups
  • Set impact goals, not activity goals
  • It's an extremely common mistake even though it's understandable why it happens

“our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month and i'm like no that's that's not a goal like that's maybe a tactic but…”

Emily Kramer · 50:30

“you shouldn't have activity goals you should have impact goals”

Emily Kramer · 51:00
#goals#marketing#metrics#kpis
Takeaway52:00

Measure Conversion Across the Whole Funnel

A sign of a weak marketing team, per Emily, is chasing raw counts at each funnel stage without watching conversion rates. You can flood the top of the funnel with signups, but if they're low quality and don't convert to activated users, it helps nothing. Good marketers track conversion throughout the entire funnel, not just the stage they own.

  • Focus on funnel conversion rates, not just raw numbers like signups or leads
  • Target signups plus a maintained-or-better conversion rate to activated users
  • More signups of poor quality can be worthless if they don't convert onward
  • Good marketers watch conversion across the whole funnel, not just their stage

“i can throw a bunch of people into a funnel stage if they don't convert to the next one it might not be helping anything”

Emily Kramer · 52:00
#conversion#funnel#metrics#marketing