Episodes
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Should my founder be an influencer?
Summary: In this episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer and her friends Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta discuss the intricacies of turning executives into LinkedIn influencers. They delve into the pros and cons, key factors to consider, and practical strategies for achieving a meaningful presence on LinkedIn. The episode features expert insights from Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content, who provides frameworks and tactics for successfully managing executive social media influence.
Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 4 is sponsored by Framer and Tofu.
About our hosts
Emily Kramer is the creator of MKT1 Newsletter, marketing advisor, and 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 55,000 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.
This episode features an expert segment with Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content, who builds online audiences for B2B executives through thought leadership content.
We also hear from Clare McClintock, Biz Ops & Marketing at Metronome, the usage-based billing platform that helps you launch products and iterate pricing faster, who asks us “Should my founder become an influencer?”
Quotes
*”It takes a long time to build on LinkedIn. It’s wildly unpredictable and you're kind of at the whim of others. It's not like paid where you can kind of control what goes out or even like email where you know who's on the list. It's difficult to predict, and you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to crack the code. But at the end of the day, it's time and authenticity that are going to win the day.” - Emily Kramer
*”I think that the [founder’s] actual desire to [build a personal brand] is more important than you might think. Yes, you can have marketing help and you can sort of prod the person and try to tee them up with topics and all of that. But if they are just not that into it, then maybe try to find someone else in the company. It doesn't have to be your CEO or founder doesn't even have to be an exec actually. And maybe what it really should be is the person who knows the most about the topic that you really want to talk about and get eyeballs on. So I do think the want of the person who is going to be the face of this initiative is a pretty important criteria.” - Devon Watts
*”There's two situations here that we're really talking about. We're talking about the situation where founders and executives often ask you to highlight them as a thought leader, but then on the flip side, marketers sometimes want to force their founders and executives to be thought leaders and the forcing doesn't work. And just because your founders asked you if they should do it doesn't work. And so you need to find that happy medium where the founder kind of wants to do it. And you feel like you have the resources and it makes sense.” - Emily Kramer
*”There's like three big criteria that we look at if somebody is going to be set up for success on this motion. One is credibility and experience. And experience as the ICP, I should say, because if you think about when you come across a piece of content on social media, the first thing you think of, whether subliminally or explicitly, is, ‘Why the hell should I listen to this person?’” - Peter Conforti
*”I think it's really helpful to think about your executive as a journalist in their industry. They're kind of like the new version of a trade magazine or publication that’s reporting out on what's going on in your industry. So if they are having interesting backroom conversations that then they can create a piece of content about and share about like, ‘Hey, I'm hearing this thing from other people in the industry. This seems to be a problem that's coming up. Here's how I think we should deal with it,’ that's going to be very interesting. If you can report out, ‘Hey, I talked to a customer last week and they were dealing with this problem and they solved it in this way. And here's the playbook that you can steal to go do it because your ICP audience looks exactly like they do,’ So you want to have somebody who has these access points, cause they're going to have an interesting thing to report on. They're going to be an interesting journalist for your audience.” - Peter Conforti
Time stamps
[00:15] Meet Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta
[00:55] Question from Clare McClintock, Biz Ops & Marketing at Metronome: “Should my founder become an influencer?”
[01:34] Initial Reactions and Hot Takes
[02:38] The Importance of LinkedIn Influencers
[04:00] Challenges and Realities of LinkedIn
[05:36] Frameworks for Evaluating LinkedIn Strategies
[07:40] Metronome's Case Study
[09:28] The Role of Founders in Social Media
[16:15] Evolving Marketing Trends
[21:20] Expert Insights with Peter Conforti, Founder of Good Content
[37:48] Setting Up Executive Marketing Strategies
[39:17] Content Production Tactics
[41:37] Audience Engagement Techniques
[43:45] Debating the Value of Personal Branding
[50:03] Practical Tips for Executing Thought Leadership
[55:30] Game: LinkedIn Influencer Challenge
Recommended products & agencies
Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan
Framer: Use code “MKT1” for 25% off
Tofu: 10% off starter package
Caspian Studios
Connect with:
Emily Kramer
Devon Watts,
Jenny Thai
Peter Conforti
Clare McClintock
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 -
Summary: In episode 3 of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by co-hosts Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon—all three co-hosts worked together twice at Asana and Carta. They discuss the challenges of hiring and organizing marketing teams, how to structure the interview process, and how to set marketing candidates up for success. They also share personal anecdotes and reflections on past hiring mistakes, and emphasize the need to hire for complementary skillset and adaptability over rigid experience requirements. They also go deep into the details of hiring, from interview scorecards, interview assignment best practices, and reference calls, and selling a job offer.
Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 3 is sponsored by Framer and Mutiny.
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.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.
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.
This episode features Branca Ballot, VP Marketing at Glide, a no code software development platform for building custom apps that optimize your business, asking us “How do you hire a great team?”
QUOTES
*"Before you do the interviewing, before you do the hiring, I think a big part of [hiring a great team] is scoping the role. And then I think there's also just the interviewing itself. I think it's also important to note that great hiring doesn't stop when you make an offer and it gets accepted. Onboarding and supporting your team throughout is really important." - Emily Kramer
*"If you are the greatest marketer in the world, and you have five of you, you're going to have a pretty bad team. Because they're not going to complement each other.. A great team is great because of how they complement each other and work together, not because they're all individually great." - Grace Erickson
*"There's so many specializations within the broad category of marketing that doesn't exist in the same way on say a sales team or a customer success team." - Grace Erickson
*"Making hiring plans is kind of a fool's errand because you have this list of people that you need, but then you might hire someone that has a different shape." - Emily Kramer
*"Someone can be perfect on paper but not the right person for the role." - Grace Erickson
*"Having clarity upfront about the skills, attributes, and qualities you're looking for helps with consistency when comparing candidates. If you have a few finalists, it helps you hone in on what you really need and who's spiking in those areas. It also reduces bias as a guideline for interviewers. With marketing roles, cross-functional interviewers—someone from product, sales, rev ops, etc.—are often on the panel. You want them to have guidelines and parameters for what they're assessing. Big fan of scorecards." - Devon Watts
*"Resumes are overrated. I think what you really want to get at is, do they have experience managing ambiguous projects and influencing others to get stuff done? I've been at tech companies of varying sizes, and that is a consistent thing, is that folks need to be able to manage ambiguous problems, ambiguous projects, and bring clarity, and drive progress and outcomes." - Devon Watts
*“As the marketing leader your team and the excellence of your team ultimately is what reflects on you. So if you want to look really good, hire the absolute, absolute, absolute best people, especially if they're better than you. Because at the end of the day, they're just gonna make you look that much more amazing at your job.” - Grace Erikson
*"The best people want to work on great teams that make a big impact. And a great way to show that your team is strong and makes a big impact is to be organized and have clear goals and prioritize well. So I think all of the organization stuff and the OKRs and the AORs, they're not just acronyms, right? They're ways to actually build a high performing team and then that helps you hire because you can point to all of the ways in which your team is killing it and they want to be on a team that's killing it." - Devon Watts
Time stamps
[00:14] Meet Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon
[01:04] Question from Branca Ballot, VP of Marketing at Glide: How do I hire a great team?
[01:39] Initial Reactions to Hiring Challenges
[03:11] Defining a Great Team
[08:30] Frameworks for Building Teams
[14:01] Organizing Product Marketing Teams
[24:14] Interview Processes and Best Practices
[32:37] Assignment Reviews and Interview Questions
[33:03] Testing Skill Sets and Practical Tips
[36:12] Favorite Interview Questions
[48:25] The Importance of Reference Calls
[50:40] Selling the Candidate and Mutual Fit
[56:05] Common Hiring Mistakes
PARTNERS:
Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan
Framer: Use code “MKT1” for 25% off
Mutiny: Mutinyhq.com/report
Caspian Studios
CONNECT WITH:
Emily Kramer
Devon Watts,
Grace Erickson
Branca Ballot
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 -
Episodes manquant?
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Summary: In episode 2 of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing and Partnerships at Mercury, and Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta. Together they discuss the essentials of maintaining a consistent brand story across channels. The conversation touches on the importance of defining the perceptions or storylines you want to drive in the market, how to drive perceptions through content and campaigns, and examples of perceptions.
Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform. Episode 2 is sponsored by Closing Media & Naro.
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.
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.
This episode features Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit, providers of beautiful, affordable, always on-brand tracking, asking us “How do you tell a consistent story?”
Quotes
” I think of content overall or your story and brand as another product your company's creating for the same audience. So it's a product. It should be thought of as a product, managed like a product. You need to think about why you're telling your story, what's unique about your story, how your story is differentiated from competitors’ stories. Much like you would think about how your product is going to be differentiated.” - Emily Kramer
“To me, a story is everything you say about your business. And that includes the stuff you say about your company mission, vision, your founding story. It includes the stuff you say about your products. It includes the things you say related to thought leadership. It includes the things you say in ad copy and all of that. Like all of that together is your story. So maybe the story is the through line across all of your marketing fuel.” - Emily Kramer
“My hot take response is what not to do, which is don't just start cranking out content and creative, and marketing assets if you haven't aligned on what your big picture themes are. Because I think that's a very easy way to just get into doing random acts of marketing that aren't cohesive or consistent.” - Jenny Thai
” You have your customers, probably the most important audience and the one we think about most as marketers. But your recruiting team has an audience of candidates, prospective employees, and you have investors. You have these other audiences that you might want to tell slightly different stories to, but still have a consistent through line and still be telling the market at large a unified story.” - Devon Watts
” Start with what you want people to hear. And one exercise for this is ‘what would you want people to repeat back to you about your company?’” - Devon Watts
” Write the headline we would want to see. If we got our dream PR placement or whatever, how would they realistically put it? Not just what's going to be our blog post headline or our landing page headline, because that is not necessarily how the market will perceive or talk about you.” - Devon Watts
” Write perceptions from the perspective of the customer that you're trying to reach. Because then it helps you think about where they actually are right now. Like, do they even think about you? If not, then like, you actually have to create some awareness. Or if there is an existing perception about you, then what do you need to do to shift it to the new perception?” - Jenny Thai
”The combination of your perceptions should be unique to your company. No other company should be able to claim that combination. One individual perception could potentially be used by many other companies, but the combination should feel like uniquely your company or else your story is not going to seem unique.” - Emily Kramer
” Think about perception as a product you're selling or something you're launching. What's the plan? The campaign plan, the launch plan, the plan to launch this perception into the world? What are the campaigns? What are all the things that you're doing? And I find that some of the best marketing ideas come from this.’” - Emily Kramer
”If you don't know your story, you probably won't be telling a good one. So know your story, spend time to actually define what you're trying to say. Zoom a level out…your work is going to be so much better if you take a couple of steps backwards in order to go much faster, with a much more clear sense of direction.” - Emily Kramer
Time stamps
[00:00] Meet Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Devon Watts, Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Mercury
[01:49] Question from Mikayla Hopkins, Head of Marketing at Tracksuit: How do I tell a consistent story?
[2:11] Initial Reactions to the Question
[5:41] Defining Story in Marketing
[7:56] Story vs. Brand
[10:49] Positioning and Story Consistency
[13:28] Crafting Perceptions and Storylines
[22:15] Examples of Effective Perceptions
[27:11] Crafting Unique Company Perceptions
[28:06] Understanding Perceptions Through Famous Slogans
[28:50] Analyzing Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign
[30:51] Decoding Twilio's 'Ask Your Developer' Slogan
[32:43] The 'Got Milk?' Campaign and Market Context
[34:57] Evaluating Effective Perceptions
[37:24] Implementing Perceptions in Content Strategy
[41:14] Final Thoughts on Telling a Clear and Consistent Story
[44:13] "Best, Marketer" Game: Driving Perceptions
Recommended products & agencies
Typeform: Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan
Closing Media: Mention MKT1 for $5,000 free ad spend
Naro: Get first month free
Caspian Studios
Connect with:
Emily Kramer, Devon Watts, Jenny Thai, Mikayla HopkinsSubscribe 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 -
In this debut episode of 'Dear Marketers,' Host Emily Kramer is joined by Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Grace Erickson, VP of Revenue at Cocoon. Together they answer the question: "How do I handle marketing requests?"They share strategies for prioritizing these requests, underscoring the significance of setting clear goals, aligning with other teams, and understanding the motivations behind each request. Additionally, the episode provides insights on managing request processes, with tips on internal marketing and communication. Wrapping up with entertaining anecdotes of outrageous past requests, the hosts offer both practical advice and humor to guide marketers through similar challenges.
Dear Marketers is produced by MKT1 & Caspian Studios in partnership with Typeform.
About our co-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.
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.This episode also features Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at Pocus, the AI prospecting platform for building high-quality pipeline, asking us “How do you handle marketing requests?”
Quotes
” When you are getting lots of random requests, ask why. Try to get to the request behind the request to figure out what exactly people are trying to solve. That usually leads you down a line of questioning that gets you to the actual problem that needs to be solved. And then maybe you already have a solution. You don't actually have to do the request.” - Jenny Thai
” A request coming from your CEO is always going to be treated differently than a request coming from an SDR. And that's just how the world works, and to pretend it doesn't work that way is setting everyone up for failure. And so the sooner you can figure out what the rules are for different people, the sooner you can actually move forward.” - Grace Erickson
” I think sometimes founder requests also come in the form of like, ‘Let's run X company's playbook. It worked for them. So why aren't we doing it?’ So a lot of it is internal education too. So first understand what your founder thinks marketing is, but then part of your job is to explain that there're other ways to approach this problem. And it's not just running whatever startup's playbook worked for them.” - Jenny Thai
” I think the best defense against requests is setting goals. You definitely need shared goals and it's the only way you can actually make the right decisions and actually have the why that's so important to give to people.” - Emily Kramer
Time stamps
[00:00] Meet Jenny Thai, Head of Content at Vanta, and Grace Erickson, VP of Marketing & Partnerships at Cocoon
[00:58] Question from Sandy Mangat, Head of Marketing at POCUS: How do I handle marketing requests?
[02:00] Initial Reactions to the Question and Advice
[04:40] Importance of Setting Goals
[07:08] Building Internal Relationships
[12:57] Understanding Team Motivations
[16:59] Sharing and Aligning Goals
[31:21] Handling Absurd Requests
[33:25] Legal Involvement
[34:13] Brand Campaign Challenges
[35:02] Managing Request Processes
[38:15] Balancing Feedback
[43:56] Internal Marketing and Communication
[51:32] Lessons Learned
Recommended products & agencies in this episode
Typeform - Use code “MKT1” for 20% off the Growth Plan
Attio - Get 15% off your first year at attio.com/mkt1
Ahrefs
Caspian Studios
Connect with:
Emily KramerGrace EricksonJenny ThaiSandy Mangat
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
