A start-up company with a limited budget relies on a full stack marketer to be the conductor and play all the instruments in their digital marketing orchestra. Find the right full stack marketing talent for your business and keep your digital brand in tune at the right price.
Marketing roles are changing quickly as the industry incorporates new digital tools and evolves to improve campaign success at every stage of the marketing funnel. For startups and smaller companies, budgets often only allow for a single person to juggle multiple digital strategies aimed to increase new business leads and conversions. That’s where the full stack marketer comes into play.
What is a full stack marketer?
“Full stack” is a term borrowed from the programmer and developer world, referring to a maestro who is fluent in multiple coding languages. Similarly, a full stack marketer manages every level of a marketing campaign from brand strategy and creative design to nut-and-bolts technical implementation and analytics.
Unlike traditional marketers, full-stack marketers are multi-skilled with a working knowledge of all of the modern marketing tactics and vision to orchestrate projects. Here is a list of the top skills your startup’s full stack marketer should incorporate for a customized digital marketing strategy:
Brand Strategy – A full stack marketer develops a long-term plan for successful brand growth that achieves your company goals and maintains consistency through the entire consumer experience in a competitive environment.
Competitive Research and Analysis – Even a niche product or service has direct and indirect competition that may offer similar solutions and appeal to the same target market as your company. An effective full stack marketer knows your competitors well and adjusts your strategy with them in mind.
Marketing Funnel – Analyze the stages of a buyer’s experience through lead generation, cultivation, and retention. Know what attracts them to become a customer, where you may be losing them, how to get them back, and how to keep them.
User Experience Design – Reach beyond basic website design by monitoring user experience (UX) and enhancing usability, accessibility, and satisfaction when users interact with your product, service, or company.
Website Development – From the front to the back end of a website, a full stack marketer is usually familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as well as one or more back end languages like PHP, Ruby, and Python. An experienced developer can also choose the best CMS (content management system) to match the size, complexity, and custom features required to fulfill your website’s visitor experience.
Website Analytics – Know how to set up appropriate website analytics and regularly monitor that data to save your company thousands on dead-end campaigns. Google Analytics is the top SEO tool used by marketers. It tracks your website traffic and conversions to determine what content and campaigns are working, and what’s not.
Split Testing – According to HubSpot, only 17 percent of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates. A/B split testing is essential to optimizing your landing pages, homepages, and blog posts by comparing traffic with varying headlines, calls to action, and images.
Search Engine Optimization – Nearly 64 percent of marketers actively invest time in search engine optimization. SEO is the biggest channel for driving traffic to your website, but it often takes a lot of time and effort. We recommend using Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin that helps you write better content and optimize your website.
Writing / Storytelling – According to a recent survey, most marketers reported that the company where they worked had a small marketing team of between one and three people. Due to lack of resources, 40 percent of teams have to outsource content creation as needs for content marketing continue growing. Among the other most common responses, many stated that they have only one marketing specialist doing everything. Successful content marketing often requires a very wide skill set, covering anything from storytelling to analytics.
Content marketing is not only an effective way to deliver your key messages to your target audience but it is also plays a key role in your SEO. A full stack marketer should be able to develop a keyword strategy and incorporate keywords seamlessly into content that captivates the interest of your audience and converts them to new customers.
Tip: Try Moz Pro’s Keyword Explorer, a keyword research tool with over 500 million traffic-driving keywords. Simply enter a URL or keyword to identify the best keywords your site could rank for and find high-impact solutions with comprehensive SERP analysis.
Inbound Marketing – This strategy focuses on attracting customers and prospects to your company website or product by delivering relevant content where and when they need it most. Full stack marketers incorporate content marketing (video, email, blogs), social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), live events, webinars, and more to achieve this goal.
Public Relations – A full stack marketer can turn your product distinctions into buzzworthy coverage to maximize your digital marketing ROI with conventional media, bloggers, and other online outlets followed by your industry peers and potential consumers.
Tip: You can even sign up as an information source on HARO (Help a Reporter Out), a free service to help journalists seeking resources for their upcoming stories. If you provide relevant information, they will often include backlinks to your site, which positively contribute to your SEO.
Mobile Marketing – Mobile is taking over consumer brand engagement. While mobile conversion rates slightly trail desktop, 54.8 percent of all web traffic is generated through smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Mobile marketing includes SMS promotions, push notifications on apps and games, mobile-friendly websites and email formats, QR codes, location-based targeting, and more.
Marketing Automation – About 68 percent of businesses currently use automation in some way. Mastering tools like Pardot, Hubspot, Marketo and SharpSpring enable a full stack marketer to keep your business running on all cylinders, driving high quality leads through targeted content, scheduling multiple social media posts, tracking campaign performance, and helping your company better understand your audience.
Predictive Analytics – A full stack marketer can use data, machine learning, and AI algorithms to pinpoint the likelihood of future consumer outcomes based on historical data.
Paid Online Marketing – Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the most common form of paid online marketing where companies pay results-driven fees each time ads are clicked, generating traffic to their websites. PPC includes display ads, search engine advertising with Google Ads, social media campaigns, and retargeting ads to follow up with potential buyers and offer purchase incentives after they visit your site.
Who needs a full stack marketer and why?
Due to marketing budget limitations, startups and small- to mid-sized companies rely on one or two staff members to complete the full stack marketing portfolio. On the other hand, large companies hire a generalist in a marketing director position who knows enough to hire and manage a staff of core marketing specialists and often contract out the rest.
The reality of a full stack marketer’s skill levels and productivity.
One potential pitfall to hiring a full stack marketer internally is the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none syndrome. A full stack marketer is rarely skilled enough to effectively carry out every element of a full stack marketing strategy to its completion. Companies that rely on a single person to do it all, risk details being missed and high burn out. Instead, prioritize your full stack marketing plan with a few successful marketing tactics to get the ball rolling. Then, add elements to your stack as revenues and resources allow.
Consider the option of hiring a digital marketing agency to help fill the gaps or take on the complete role of your full stack marketer. A digital marketing agency retainer can be as cost effective as hiring a one- or two-person team with the added benefit of multiple specialists contributing to and tracking your full stack marketing portfolio.
Parallel Interactive adapts to meet your full stack marketing needs.
Parallel Interactive develops a custom, plug-in strategy to fit clients’ full stack marketing needs, large or small. With larger clients, Parallel provides digital marketing specialists to supplement the company’s core capabilities. Startups and small- to mid-sized companies often require a full stack marketing team, custom built to match your industry expertise and specific marketing goals.
