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MKT1 Newsletter

5 resources from MKT1 Newsletter we point people to, and the questions each answers.

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Why we picked it The six evaluation dimensions and the too many firsts rule, which turns a vague hiring instinct into something you can actually score a candidate against.

How to hire your first marketer

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer and Kathleen Estreich About 15 min read

  • The main hiring mistake is too many firsts: a candidate should be new to at most one or two areas, not all of them.
  • Hire a pi-shaped marketer, deep in one function and proficient in a second, usually product marketing plus growth.
  • Dedicated marketing leadership can usually wait until Series B or roughly 10 million dollars in revenue.
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Answers What does Emily Kramer say your first marketing hire must already be able to do?
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Why we picked it A one page brief covering goals, audience, creative angle and channels, written before anything longer than a tweet. It is the cheapest thing a new marketer can adopt on day one.

The GACC Marketing Brief: The best framework we've created

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer About 10 min read

  • GACC is goals, audience, creative or unique take, and channels or distribution, written before you create anything.
  • Use it for anything longer than a tweet: a campaign, a blog post, an event focus.
  • Everything you make must ladder up to a perception or a goal, otherwise deprioritize it.
  • Order of operations: OKRs and roadmap first, then a GACC per piece, then create, then distribute.
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Answers What does Emily Kramer say your first marketing hire must already be able to do?
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Why we picked it Kramer's four product types (vertical solution, new way, 10x better, buy versus build) tell you what you are positioning against before you write a word. She is also blunt that most positioning docs are research with no answer at the end.

The MKT1 Guide to Positioning

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer 20 min read

  • Most teams overdo the research and never produce the actual answer, the positioning statement itself.
  • Positioning fills three blanks: who is it for, what is it, why is it better.
  • Nearly every B2B product fits one of four positioning types: 10x better, new way, vertical solution, or buy vs build.
  • If you are selling a new way, early competitors usually help you grow the category rather than steal from you.
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Answers How do I write the one line that says what category we are in? How do I test whether a category name lands before we commit the whole website to it? Our competitor's category is bigger and better funded. How do I carve out a segment we can actually win? What do I actually change when we reposition? Website, deck, pricing, all of it?
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Why we picked it Three real startup homepages taken apart, showing the whole chain from positioning statement to messaging to the actual sentence on the page. Seeing the translation fail in someone else's copy is the fastest way to spot it in yours.

Positioning & messaging teardown, with Anthony Pierri

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer and Anthony Pierri 20 min read

  • Even startups that write a perfect positioning statement lose it by the time it reaches the site.
  • Point the homepage hero at your primary audience and route other ICPs to audience-specific pages.
  • The fastest way for a sales-tech company to sound like everyone else is to lead with increasing revenue.
  • New way positioning is the hardest of the four product types, because you have to build problem, solution and product awareness at once.
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Answers What is the actual difference between positioning, messaging and copy? I keep being asked for all three and they feel like the same job. Everyone has an opinion on our new messaging and nobody can settle the argument. How do I test it instead?
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Why we picked it The diagnostic that stops you misreading a growth problem: decide whether you are short on fuel or short on engine before you hire or spend anything.

Building an efficient marketing machine: the fuel & the engine

From MKT1 Newsletter by Emily Kramer About 12 min read

  • The split: fuel is the content and ideas, the engine is the distribution machinery, and startups over-index on one.
  • Slow growth is often not a fuel problem but the lack of an engine to distribute the fuel you already have.
  • Hire back and forth: one fuel person, one engine person, then a combo person.
  • Product marketers make good first hires because they naturally combine the fuel and the engine.
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Answers What does Emily Kramer say your first marketing hire must already be able to do?
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