--- name: kramer-mkt1-field-guide description: "Apply Emily Kramer's public MKT1 frameworks to B2B startup marketing strategy, prioritization, campaign briefs, content plans, and team design. Use when connecting audience research and company advantages to revenue growth and execution." --- # MKT1 Field Guide for B2B Startup Marketing Based on Emily Kramer's public method. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Emily Kramer. ## When to use Use for a B2B startup's annual or quarterly marketing plan, campaign, content roadmap, channel mix, or marketing team assessment. The method connects company-specific strategy to planning, execution, and team capabilities rather than treating each as an independent exercise. [S1] This is an operational synthesis of public frameworks, not a reproduction of paid templates or an official MKT1 implementation. The sequence and deliverable packaging below adapt those frameworks for agent work. [S1] ## Operational procedure ### 1. Establish the three strategy drivers Collect the company's audience and market research, business model and go-to-market motion, and marketing advantages. Record product maturity, contract value, buying process, current performance, resources, and the planning horizon. A self-serve product and an enterprise sales motion require different distribution, staffing, and economics. Where evidence is missing, identify the research needed and label provisional assumptions before recommending tactics. [S3] Evaluate requested work against these inputs. A competitor's successful tactic or a founder's exciting channel idea is not enough justification. Trace the proposal to a company-specific audience, advantage, and goal; otherwise flag it as a potential Random Act of Marketing and defer it until there is a strategic reason to proceed. [S6] ### 2. Prioritize audiences and map the ecosystem Define the TAM as the universe of plausible customers, then specify ICPs at both company and person levels. Include company characteristics plus buyer roles, workflows, problems, information sources, and buying behavior. Separate core, scaling, testing, and currently deprioritized ICPs. Use these priorities in briefs and roadmaps; a catchy persona name is insufficient audience analysis. [S3] Map competitors, complementary products, communities, influencers, service providers, and players who may be both partners and threats. Identify audience overlap and possible partnership value. A competitor-only map misses how buyers discover information, evaluate alternatives, and decide whom to trust. [S3] ### 3. Identify advantages worth accelerating List evidenced dynamics that could make this company's marketing unusually effective. Candidates include unmet demand for education or community, authentic founder credibility, network effects, ecosystem opportunities, and market or regulatory tailwinds. For each, explain how it can drive growth and what investment would activate it. Distinguish an existing advantage from one that must be built. [S4] Reject strengths competitors exploit identically. Do not manufacture a founder narrative or propose category creation merely because it sounds ambitious. Category creation is most defensible when the product introduces a genuinely new approach, rather than simply improving an existing product. Prefer natural advantages over costly attempts to force one. [S4] ### 4. Rank revenue levers before selecting work Rank four possibilities for the current quarter: acquire more customers within existing ICPs, acquire customers in new ICPs, increase customer value, and improve efficiency. Explain the order and proposed effort allocation. Treat the ranking as a shared strategic decision, not a permanent company characteristic. [S6] Check whether the proposed campaign portfolio follows that ranking. If efficiency is the priority but nearly every project buys more traffic, revise the portfolio. If the existing market is becoming saturated, avoid automatically solving the problem with another volume target. [S6] ### 5. Define positioning and desired perceptions Choose the core ICP and the alternative buyers compare the product against. Express positioning in plain language: who it serves, what it is, and its strongest differentiator relative to that alternative. Compare candidate alternatives if several are plausible. Check that the homepage hero communicates all three elements; an elaborate positioning document that cannot do this has not finished the job. [S3] Write three to five Perceptions as beliefs the audience should repeat about the company. Gather inputs across founders, marketing, product, sales, and customer success, then synthesize them rather than endlessly wordsmithing together. Cover both the company story and product story. Distinguish content pillars, which organize topics, from Perceptions, which define the narratives running through those topics. [S3] Check whether competitors could credibly use the same Perceptions. Refine vague claims and reconsider major content that reinforces none of them. Avoid a feature-only story; the product should occupy part of the narrative alongside customer problems, market insight, and the company's vision. Kramer's product-content proportion is illustrative, not a universal quota. [S3] ### 6. Create the decision dashboard and KPO goals Compile one Marketing Decision Dashboard containing prioritized ICPs, advantages, Perceptions, ranked revenue levers, and team goals. Reference its fields in roadmaps and project briefs so annual strategy remains usable during everyday prioritization. [S6] Set three kinds of goals: KPI outcomes, big-bet Project milestones, and Ops work such as hiring, research, tooling, and measurement. Make each measurable and time-bound. Explain why it matters and how the strategy supports it. Include non-goals, dependencies, and risks so commitments reflect actual capacity. A lead target alone is not a marketing plan. [S5] ### 7. Prioritize the work portfolio Inventory existing initiatives and classify them as stop, maintain, or scale before adding new ones. Organize proposed work into big bets, core work, operations and foundation, and not now. Keep useful deferred ideas with a reason so stakeholders can see that they were considered. [S6] Attach strategic metadata before estimating effort: ICP, Perception, revenue lever, advantage, distribution engine, and relevant goal. Remove misaligned ideas first. Then compare effort, cost, maturity, and potential impact within appropriate categories rather than scoring unrelated work as if it were interchangeable. [S6] Balance proven and experimental work, short-term needs and long-term bets, and coverage and depth. Reserve meaningful capacity to deepen the strongest priorities while retaining discovery work. Do not distribute equal effort across every audience, channel, or story, and do not endlessly repair weak initiatives while neglecting proven winners. [S6] ### 8. Design fuel and engine together For each selected initiative, specify fuel, meaning the message or asset, and engine, meaning distribution, processes, tools, and measurement. Confirm that the audience wants this fuel and can encounter it through the proposed engine. When results disappoint, check distribution before concluding that more or different content is required. [S8] Compare six engine families: inbound, outbound, product virality, events, ecosystem, and lifecycle. Select a focused, reinforcing combination based on the strategy drivers. Test before scaling; reassess periodically and consider cross-channel effects before shutting one down. Neither copying fashionable channels nor depending indefinitely on a single channel is a sound selection method. [S3] For account-driven execution, tier accounts by fit, value, and intent, with higher-touch plays for higher-priority accounts. Map both company and contact lifecycle stages, qualification triggers, handoffs, and next actions. Use customer-oriented stages rather than territorial marketing-versus-sales labels, and measure stage volume, conversion, and time. [S3] ### 9. Brief, produce, and build mileage Before production, write a GACCS brief containing Goals, Audience, Channels, Creative, and Stakeholders. Specify the objective, priority ICP, distribution and follow-up, differentiated idea and Perception, and the responsible people and reviewers. Start short to establish alignment, then expand into the execution plan; use the brief as the review rubric. [S2] Treat content as a product that solves an audience problem. Prefer differentiated anchor assets, recurring series, useful templates, or tools over a quota of generic posts. Plan a bespoke discovery-to-next-action journey for major assets, including appropriate nurture, sales, or onboarding follow-up. [S7] [S8] Build Mileage into the plan before creating the anchor asset. Separate repurposing, which creates related formats, from distribution, which gets each format consumed. Give each derivative its own distribution plan and a useful next step. Maintain planned work for revisiting proven assets, rather than continually creating new material and forgetting the old. [S3] ### 10. Match execution to capacity and learn Assign each campaign one directly responsible individual coordinating fuel and engine across functions. Use the same campaign discipline for events, launches, and demand programs. Review quarterly campaign priorities monthly and replace lower-priority work when a stronger opportunity appears. Scale successful campaigns instead of assuming every quarter needs a completely new concept. [S9] Assess coverage across product marketing as the research foundation, content and brand as fuel, and growth marketing as engine. For early teams, favor marketers with depth in two functions and working breadth across the third. Where coordination is the bottleneck, consider a marketing producer working across functions and reporting to the marketing leader. Choose hiring against the actual gap. [S2] Construct a bottom-up forecast from reachable accounts or traffic, historical conversion, deal value, timing, and planned improvements. Compare it with top-down revenue expectations, then revise activities and budget where they disagree. Expose unsupported assumptions; do not invent conversion improvements merely to make a target reconcile. Tie budget decisions to acquisition efficiency rather than an arbitrary spending percentage. [S3] ## Finished output and review Deliver a decision-ready package scaled to the requested task. Include the strategy drivers and evidence gaps, decision dashboard, ranked work with deferral reasons, KPO goals, selected fuel-engine combinations, GACCS briefs for committed campaigns, ownership and dependencies, and forecast assumptions when revenue or budget is in scope. For a single campaign, summarize existing strategic inputs rather than manufacturing an unnecessary annual plan. [S5] [S6] Before returning it, verify that each committed item has an audience, strategic rationale, useful creative contribution, distribution path, and outcome. Flag mismatched fuel and engine, unsupported advantages, content without a next step, unbudgeted operations, and disconnected metrics. Explain which proven work will deepen and which experiments will inform the next prioritization cycle. [S4] [S6] [S8] [S9] ## Worked example, invented illustration LedgerNest sells close-management software to finance teams at growing SaaS companies. Its strongest evidence is existing customers' demand for practical close templates and two accounting partners willing to distribute them. The illustration applies the frameworks, not a real company assessment. [S3] [S4] The agent ranks efficiency first, then additional customers in the core ICP. It proposes a close-readiness diagnostic paired with partner workshops and lifecycle follow-up, deferring an unrelated podcast. A proposed Perception is that LedgerNest helps lean finance teams identify close bottlenecks before adding headcount. The campaign brief identifies controllers as the audience, diagnostic completion as an initial signal, and qualified-account progression as the outcome. [S3] [S6] [S8] Its KPO plan separates account conversion from the workshop launch milestone and the routing setup needed before launch. One campaign owner coordinates the diagnostic, partner distribution, and follow-up. The agent labels conversion assumptions pending a pilot and plans reusable workshop clips, each with its own distribution and next action. [S3] [S5] [S9] ## Sources Only publicly accessible material fetched with curl was used. For archived essays with subscription gates, only the visible public portions informed this synthesis. [S1] Emily Kramer, MKT1 Newsletter introduction to the Field Guide. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emilykramer_i-started-mkt1-newsletter-as-an-ad-hoc-way-activity-7356712307499880451-eQdJ [S2] The MKT1 Field Guide to B2B startup marketing, Part 1. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/mkt1-field-guide-to-b2b-startup-marketing-part-1 [S3] The MKT1 Field Guide to B2B startup marketing, Part 2. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/mkt1-field-guide-to-b2b-startup-marketing-part-2 [S4] Find & accelerate your marketing advantages to grow much faster. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/find-and-accelerate-your-marketing [S5] MKT1 Guide to Annual Marketing Planning. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/annual-marketing-planning [S6] How to prioritize marketing activities & avoid random acts of marketing. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/marketing-prioritization [S7] The GACC Marketing Brief, The best framework we've created. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/the-gacc-marketing-brief-the-best [S8] Building an efficient marketing machine, the fuel & the engine. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/fuel-engine [S9] How to run effective campaigns. https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/how-to-run-effective-campaigns