By Caroline Forsey

“An obsession with quality” is what I wish 12-year-old me had… but alas, I ended up with boatloads of Forever 21 T-shirts.

As it turns out, quality really does matter. Our master today — Emily Kramer, a marketer, investor, and advisor for B2B growth-stage startups (and MKT1 newsletter creator) — told me her “obsession with quality” is the reason she’s been so successful in the newsletter space. (With 48k subscribers and growing.)

Want to learn more? Keep reading to learn how the MKT1 newsletter creator “never misses”, and her advice for any marketers who are the “first-ish” marketing leaders at their companies.

Why the creator of the MKT1 newsletter “never misses”.

1. Be ready to tell leaders what you’ll stop, start, and continue.

Kramer has been the “first-ish” marketer four times at companies ranging from 10 to 300 employees, so my first question was an easy one: If you’re the first marketer at a company, where the heck should you start?

Kramer told me whether you’re a team of one or leading a 200-person marketing department, the answer is the same: Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

“First, you need to figure out where you can win. Where can you stand out? Where do you have the biggest advantage over competitors? What channels make the most sense for your business?”

This translates to: Stop doomscrolling through TikTok for “inspiration” or convincing yourself a snazzy newsletter giveaway will save the day. Start with what matters most.

“You’ve got to have a framework for how you’re prioritizing — you have to put a stake in the ground about what you think is important, and why. If you don’t, you’ll just get barraged with requests.”

One of Kramer’s go-to moves when joining a new company is to create a “start, stop, continue” plan. That way, execs can quickly see, “Oh, we already tried that,” or “We’re stopping this, and here’s why.”

Otherwise, your founder might just get a little too obsessed with the idea of you publishing ebooks on Amazon as the “next best marketing move.”

(Not speaking from experience or anything.)

2. To sell marketing to execs, compare it to the product team.

“The biggest challenge in my career has been selling marketing. Early in my career, I didn’t understand the delta between what I understood about marketing, and what founders or other teams knew about marketing,” Kramer says.

I feel her: As someone who comes from a family of salespeople, I spend most of my Thanksgiving dinners trying to explain that brand awareness is still a valuable outcome.

Luckily, Kramer’s landed on a metaphor that seems to work: She likes to tell founders and execs that marketing teams are like product teams… Not sales.

A few key similarities: Both product and marketing are multidisciplinary; both have a portfolio of ideas and a roadmap of the big things they plan to do; and both require a balance of …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron