Ep09 - Marketing Planning & Forecasting with Emily Kramer - Part 1
Episode Description
In this episode of The Revenue Stream, I had the chance to sit with Emily Kramer, co-founder of MKT1 and a seasoned marketing leader, and dive into the essentials of planning and forecasting.
Emily spoke at length about planning and forecasting in UserEvidence's podcast with Mark Huber, Adam Goyette, and Jeff Ignacio over here. And we thought this needed a longer and a more detailed breakdown of how to do planning and forecasting. That's why, we're launching this in two parts.
In today's episode, Emily shared the importance of setting KPI, project, and ops goals (KPO), how to navigate the complex relationship between planning and forecasting, how to think about long-term strategic bets, and teams you need to involve in your planning process. Join us for a deep dive into how businesses can set themselves up for both short-term and long-term success.
I had so much fun chatting with Emily in this episode and I hope you enjoy listening to it just as much.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where Emily helps me improve my forecast live on the podcast.
Show Notes
Follow Emily Kramer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilykramer/
Learn more about MKT1: https://mkt1.co/
Follow Vikash Koushik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikashkoushik/
Learn more about RevenueHero: https://www.revenuehero.io/
Emily's newsletter on Annual Marketing Planning: https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/annual-marketing-planning
Episode Transcription
Vikash: Welcome to another episode of the Revenue Stream, a podcast by RevenueHero. I'm your host, Vikash Koushik, and today I have with me Emily Kramer. I'd be surprised if anyone tuning in isn't aware of Emily Kramer. In the rare case that you aren't, Emily is the co founder of MKT1. She's also the author of a well known marketing newsletter that she puts out at MKT1.
I highly recommend checking out her newsletter because every time I read it, I learn something new and they're super actionable. Even for a topic that's extremely strategic. So I recently pinged Emily and, I told her that, Hey, I'm doing planning and forecasting for the first time. Can you help me improve it?
And she was like, yes, let's do it. So in today's episode, Emily and I will be talking about all the things you should and shouldn't be doing when it comes to planning and forecasting. If you hear us talking about a spreadsheet, stay tuned for part two, where Emily will open up a model I created and walk me through how I can actually improve it.
I know this is going to be a masterclass in planning and forecasting, and I'm super pumped about it. Emily, welcome to the show. I hope I didn't butcher your introduction.
Emily Kramer: No, you did great. I would say it's a model. Like a model is a spreadsheet, right? You're selling yourself short on what you've built, which anytime you can change a couple inputs in one or two cells in a spreadsheet and it changes the rest of the spreadsheet, to me, that's a model.
So you have a forecasting model. If. So you're there, right? There's always room to make it better. And I think the thing about forecasting is that it can be really scary, especially if you're not a spreadsheet and math person, but once you have it, it can be such a great tool to help you prioritize and look at the impact of any marketing activity you're planning to do.
And so I think that. It's worth doing for tons of reasons, and I think anyone can do it just with some basic reading and watching of different things. So hopefully this becomes one of those things that's useful, and the intro was great. Just a little bit more about me. I led marketing at a number of companies, a number of startups before starting MKT1, sometimes called MarketOne, sometimes called MKT1, terrible name.
Long story someday, maybe it'll get changed. I don't care how you say it is the point. I'll probably call it both in this podcast. But anyway, prior to that, I led marketing at a bunch of startups. Always joining as the first or second marketer and then having the opportunity to scale those teams as the head of marketing.
So I was at a company called Ticketfly early on. That's now part of Eventbrite. And then I was at Asana as the first marketer, when it was around 35 people built that team up over four years leading it. So early days building that out was a really amazing experience in growing my own marketing skills and leadership skills, and still a lot of things we did there shape the team.
My newsletter and things I talk about today. and then I went to a small company called Astro leading marketing and support. as the first business hire, they got acquired by Slack before their series B. and then I was at Carta where I joined when they had no marketing team and they had a large sales team and built up marketing from scratch, but at a later stage company, they were serious, seriously.
When I joined. So through those experience, I've seen sales led models, PLG models, early stage, late stage, the whole nine. And so I've used that to write a newsletter, advise and invest, which is what I do today.
Vikash: Emily, I think a fun fact, I don't know if, if you're aware of this, I think back when you were at Asana or probably just when you had left, I think you did an AMA and that was like my go to resource.
I was working at a small company that was also in the project management space, but going after developers very specifically. So that was like, wow, this was a wealth of knowledge for me.
Emily Kramer: Do you remember where I did the AMA or like, what was it about Asana or was it about like marketing in general?
Vikash: It was about your time at Asana and how you approach marketing at Asana.
I think it was at growthhackers.com.
Emily Kramer: Oh yeah, I remember doing that. At that time I hadn't done as many AMAs or, I mean, podcasts weren't as big of a thing, but I hadn't done as many of those types of interviews. So they stand out. Now, no offense to people who have had me on their podcast. I appreciate it.
I'd be like, which one was that? But your career grows over time, but yes, I remember that vividly and answering a lot of those questions and growth hackers was an amazing resource then general with a lot of those types of things. So that is a fun fact and a throwback for me. I hadn't thought about that in a while, but I'm glad you read it.
And you know, here we are years later. Doing it live. All right, let's get into it. This is all very top of mind. One, because when we're recording this, I had just sent out a newsletter this week, I'm planning to forecasting newsletter last year, sending out another newsletter on planning next week. And it's fall, which, you know, in the business world is annual planning season.
And so I am primed and ready. Cause this is what I've been thinking about. More than I'd like to admit over the past few weeks as I've been writing these newsletters. Yeah, perfect timing top of mind So let's let's dive in and do this
Vikash: Amazing Emily and I think before we get into the speed spreadsheets and things like that I think one thing that that has always sort of like Sort of like bothered me or I couldn't wrap my head around is like, Hey, if I have a plan, I tweak something over here and I put it on the forecast.
It doesn't make sense over there. And then I have to come back over here. Like, it feels like planning and forecasting go hand in hand. And it feels like a chicken and egg problem, right? Like, which comes first? Like, which do you do first? What is more important and that sort of stuff, right?
Emily Kramer: It's interesting.
I don't see it as a chicken and an egg problem at all. So to me, you have historical data. Hopefully if you're an early, very early stage startup and you don't have historical data, it's very hard to do bottom up forecasting, which we're talking about, which I'll come back to. In a second, but you have that, and maybe you have a shell of your model, or you built a model last year.
So you have that, but like, push that aside because model is somewhat useless. If you want to, if you want to parallel path it and have someone putting in the historicals and using that to build a model fine, but before you can go in and. Manipulate the model or add assumptions, which is really what makes the model a model is that you take all these assumptions, like, we're going to launch this huge campaign in June that goes in the model, or we are going to do a lot of work to improve conversion rates.
That's an assumption that goes into the model. We're going to run a event or a user conference or some such thing in September in the model. So. To me, not chicken and egg, because you've got to figure out what those big projects are, and those big changes are before you go play with the model. So if you want to have a shell of it built first, but before you can go in and move around these levers in the forecast, or these inputs, you need to make a plan.
And a lot of times, people mistake that, so I get why you might think it's chicken and egg, as I said. But they mistake, Oh, I'm really just trying to go in and like get a target. But how can you get a target if you don't know the big things that you're going to do? So to me, planning is not just doing a forecast or coming up with a target pipeline goal or MQL goal, or even revenue goal.
It's actually going, and this is what I just wrote about. It's actually going and saying, what is our vision and our marketing strategy for this year? Like, what's the plan? And in my newsletter, which I'm sure you'll link to in some capacity in this, I talk a lot about that. What are our goals for the year?
Not, you're like, how can you set goals for the year? If you haven't done the forecast? Well, your goals shouldn't just be numbers, KPI goals. You can put placeholders for, we're going to be tracking again, conversion from this stage of the funnel to this stage of the funnel this year and leave a placeholder, but your goals should also include the big projects you're hoping to accomplish those things.
I just mentioned that conference, that huge product launch, you know, that positioning redo that affects everything on our website, that huge campaign, whatever you should have goals, big projects. Because they won't necessarily, the results won't necessarily show up in your KPIs in the immediate. So those projects are setting you up more for long term success.
And then you should also have some goals for the big foundational work that needs to happen to enable you to hit these goals. Because if you don't plan for those, You're going to run out of time to hit your other goals because that foundational work, the new tools, the product marketing research, the audience research, name, any other foundational thing, making this forecast that takes time.
So you've got to block off times for that. And the best way to do that is. So I recommend, this is fun to say, I recommend setting KPO goals, not just KPI goals. KPO goals are KPI goals, project goals, and Ops goals. It just worked out that way, that it was KPO and KPI. I was like, this is so convenient. I have a phrase now.
Yeah. So you want to be setting those goals and to get to those goals. You need to figure out what those big initiatives are and the big things that you're going to do. And that list is probably going to be longer than your goal. It's just, what are the big things, timeline them out for the year, the big things you're doing.
And then you can go in and put these in your plug these into your model and get the exact numbers to put into those goals. So that's my like, overall speech on planning. The one thing I should have set up front, but I didn't is what's the goal of planning, which is very meta because you're setting goals during planning, but what's the purpose of planning.
The purpose of planning, let's see, I'm not reading this off a page. Let's see if I can get it, get it right. The purpose of planning is to figure out how you're going to win in the short term and hit the short term goals that are needed to hit the sales quota. To figure out how you can continue to succeed in the longterm and set yourself up for success in the longterm beyond this quarter, this is where marketing becomes not really like sales as much and more like product or the big bets, things you're doing to set you up for in the future.
And then figuring out how you can do all that efficiently, and that comes into how much am I going to spend? And what are the conversion rates I can get? And how can I approve those? So what can we do plant the point of planning? What can we do to hit the short term revenue goals? What can we do to set ourselves up to hit long term revenue goals?
And how can we do that efficiently? That is the point. And the secret to doing that is to figure out what are your strengths as a company? What are your advantages and how can I accelerate those advantages through these big projects and changes? And so that's what planning is. And I should have started there and I didn't.
And so apologies, I talked in the wrong order. You could do some fancy editing or you can just leave this in here as like, you know. Sometimes I too don't list the goal and purpose first of what we're talking about and you should know.
Vikash: I like Christopher Nolan movies and it goes in like different time sequences.
So I think I loved it.