Emily Kramer: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I recently did a talk with my friend Jenny, who was the head of content at Asana and now is the head of content in Palms at Clear Lake. And she was sort of joking. We were coming up for the name of the talk and she was like, "I want to call it content splatergy versus content strategy." And I was like, "We'll work that in, but maybe that won't be the title, splatergy is really weird word." But it's true. But I think it's funny because a lot of what marketing is that splatergy not strategy, meaning it's just like you just throw a bunch of stuff out there. And if you're doing a bunch of work and it's like a lot of busy work and you want to look busy, but it's not impact focus. The best marketing teams are impact focus. They can tell you of all the things they're doing, what are the core things that are of driving that linear growth or just keeping the lights on. They can tell you what their big bets are. What are the things that we are doing right now that we believe can cause step change, top of the funnel growth? Or step change growth on signups or whatever it might be? What are those things? What are the big bets that you're taking? And then what are the foundational pieces of marketing that aren't done yet that might be taking up time? We would love to be able to move faster here, but we're like, we don't have a good lead scoring system or we're working on this. We need to redo our website and here's why we need to get it into Webflow and then we'll be able to move faster. So they should be able to break down. Here are the core things we have to do. We're measuring that the core work is working by these TBIs and it's sort of a full funnel view. And we are working on these big bets and here's the foundational things that are broken. So if you ask a marketing lead and you're like, What are their big bets? And they're like, I don't know. You can't grow at the rate of venture back startups, you grow by just continuing to do incremental things. That's the same as product I would imagine as well. So they need to have this sort of framework going on. And the other thing that I think is a sign that you're not being impact focused or you're not being effective as a marketing team is this is my favorite thing to pick on And I see it all the time. And I understand why it happens, but don't do it. If our goal is to write 10 blog posts this month. And I'm like, no, that's not a goal, that's maybe a tactic. But the goal should be traffic and the conversion rate from that traffic or the signups that come from that. So you shouldn't have activity goals, you should have impact goals. And so the best marketing teams are focused on these funnel metrics. They're not just focused on a certain number signups or qualified leads. They're focused on that number plus maintaining or improving the conversion rate that comes after it. So they're focused on signups with a conversion rate to activated user of the same or better than it is now. cused on that number plus maintaining or improving the conversion rate that comes after it. So they're focused on signups with a conversion rate to activated user of the same or better than it is now. Because I can get a lot more people to sign up for a product, but they might be really shitty quality. So you need to have sort of that other threshold. So these are some of the things that I look at to say, is marketing team impact focused? And when I talk to companies or work with marketers and look at what are they doing and what are their projects, these are the things I usually point out. You need to be more impact focused and here's what you need to do. So that's the big thing that's like are they doing a bunch of busy work or are they doing a bunch of things that can actually lead to tangible growth and what metrics are they using to track that? The other thing is if they're not tracking to my point about not just looking at the raw numbers at each stage of the funnel, but looking at the conversion rates. If they're not looking at conversion anywhere at all, there's a huge problem. Because again, I can throw a bunch of people into a funnel stage but they don't convert to the next one, it might not be helping anything. So their focus on conversion not just at the stage of the funnel that they own, but throughout the entire funnel, I think also is a good indicator on if they're being successful as marketers or not. Yeah, these are great. I feel like everything you're saying is music to every PM's ears. That great marketing people should be impact focused, have clear goals in KPIs. You also talked about how it's important to DRIs, like who is responsible for what, being really clear about that, communicating really clearly and often. And then there's this piece about just setting the foundations, like a strong foundation that helps make all these other things successful. This is great. I imagine every PM would be like, This is exactly what I want from my marketing team. And your point here is, if your marketing team and lead is not doing these things well, maybe there's an issue and maybe it's not the right marketing person.…

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