How to build a powerful marketing machine | Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)

Emily Kramer led and built the marketing teams at Asana, Carta, Ticketfly, and Astro (acquired by Slack). These days, she’s the co-founder of MKT1, where she helps founders and marketers build and scale their marketing functions. Emily is also a well-respected angel investor and writes my favorite marketing newsletter (MKT1). In today’s episode, she shares her insights on when to hire marketers, how to determine which type of marketing hire is best for your team, how to best work with marketing, and what red flags to look for. Emily shares actionable templates and some incredible frameworks that are sure to expand your marketing knowledge.

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Where to find Emily Kramer:

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Where to find Lenny:

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

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Referenced:

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Emily’s background
(06:08) Hiring a marketing team
(11:26) Examples of fuel and engine in marketing
(16:00) What is a product marketer?
(18:20) Why you should start with a marketing generalist
(20:30) The difference between a growth person and a product person
(23:57) What to look for in a product marketer
(26:58) When to hire a marketing person
(30:45) The role of a brand marketer
(33:24) Marketing for PLG startups
(36:22) What is product-led growth?
(39:23) How to get product and marketing to collaborate
(43:38) What is the GACC framework?
(47:58 ) How to know if your marketing team is effective
(54:33) Why founders need angel investors with functional expertise
(1:00:23) Lightning round

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[denispinsky]

Emily's quick witted sarcastic sense of humor is pure joy ♥️♥️♥️ don't cry Lenny ;)

[Jalfred]

Emily is DEF the marketing SME 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼. Nice job!

[harambeboy]

Keep making these, they are SO amazing for understanding each angle of a tech co, where I’m personally normally only seeing the product side.

[janedeuber]

Incredibly helpful! Lenny… You’re such a great interviewer and Emily… I love your brain! Thanks so much for sharing your brilliance.❤

[StartupMonkey]

Great discussion on the various flavors and stages of marketing. Identifying the right first hire is real challenge for early-stage founders.

The VC-inspired hiring recommendations was spot on.

[homepieinc]

Tremendous value in this interview. thank you.

[LanceWillett]

Great episode, useful and engaging. Emily's not kidding about marketing jargon, though. Needed a glossary for terms like FDO. (Is that “funnel data optimization, ” maybe?)

[daggerthree]

"Just hire the senior guy from Google" for an early stage company is disastrous for both parties.