Alex Kracov is the CEO and Co-Founder at Dock, and the former VP of Marketing at Lattice. Alex joined Lattice as the first marketer and third employee, and he helped to grow the business from seed to 1850+ customers. Prior to Lattice, Alex was a consultant at Blue State Digital — the team that elected President Obama and orchestrated projects at Google. Since leaving Lattice in 2021, Alex co-founded Dock, a B2B platform that has streamlined the customer buying experience for clients like Loom, Origin, and Instabug.
In today's episode, we discuss:
- The 2023 SaaS marketing playbook
- How to start your early-stage B2B marketing
- How to prioritize resources across multiple marketing bets
- How to think about attribution
- Lattice’s unorthodox million-dollar marketing campaign
- How to hire for early marketing roles
- What makes a standout marketer
- Advice for building your first website
Referenced:
Where to find Alex Kracov:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kracov/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkracov
Website: https://www.kracov.co/
Where to find Brett Berson:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brettberson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Intro
[00:02:45] The challenges and opportunities in early-stage B2B marketing
[00:05:13] How to think about short-term versus long-term marketing goals
[00:07:31] Allocating resources across marketing bets
[00:09:13] Signs your marketing is working
[00:11:20] The most underutilized marketing strategy
[00:13:03] Creating your company’s first website
[00:14:22] How Lattice formed its brand messaging and positioning
[00:18:22] Dock’s innovative approach to marketing software
[00:20:14] The first thing people should see on your website
[00:23:10] Lattice’s most successful early-stage marketing tactics
[00:28:05] Determining which marketing strategies are still relevant
[00:30:25] Lattice’s unorthodox million-dollar marketing campaign
[00:33:26] Why Alex had an outsized impact at Lattice
[00:37:05] Lessons from his first marketing hires
[00:39:41] When to scale your marketing team
[00:40:55] Building an effective early-stage marketing team
[00:42:30] A tough conversation with the CEO & Co-founder of Lattice
[00:44:46] Achieving early-stage marketing alignment
[00:46:20] Transitioning from employee to entrepreneur
[00:49:19] Getting the most out of conferences
[00:50:47] Selecting marketing channels in the early stages
[00:52:44] Hiring marketers for experience versus potential
[00:56:34] The 2023 SaaS marketing stack
[00:58:19] Advice for Zero to One marketing
[00:60:46] What successful B2B marketing looks like