What exactly is a full-stack marketer? The people on your digital marketing team As you build out your digital marketing team, there are three key roles you should focus on. Acquisition Monetization Content There’s no rule about the number of people you need for your team, so build out your marketing team based on your business needs and the strategy you’ve developed. Hire great marketers who specialize in things like analytics, blog content, video marketing, email marketing, etc. If you’re looking for candidates with a special skill set, then find those specific candidates based on their skills. A good candidate can grow with you and become an all-star on your digital marketing team. The best talent out there, meaning the kind of people you really want to hire, aren’t actively looking for a job. No matter what kind of results they get, you want people who will fit in well with your company culture. Those are the people you want on your team. With the right cultural fit and a strong onboarding program, you can build that all-star marketing team that will hold their ground and grow with your business.
The concept is simple enough.
If you want to build an all-star digital marketing team, then you search out the most talented individuals, convince them that you’re exactly where they should be, and bring them on board.
After that, it’s just a matter of keeping them happy.
Right?
If it were that simple, every startup would be flourishing with a dream team powering their marketing efforts.
Not that long ago, a single person or two could handle the bulk of the marketing efforts.
All that is changing.
No matter how skilled an individual is, they don’t have enough arms – or hours in the day – to get everything done.
Why a jack-of-all-trades won’t always cut it
Early on in the startup phase, you can probably get by for a brief period with one person wearing multiple hats.
Sometimes that’s you, but more than likely a full-stack marketer has been brought on to handle all the marketing magic.
What exactly is a full-stack marketer?
Regardless of the organization, they work in virtually every area of marketing.
They focus on the customer and outcome rather than specializing in a single domain.
They have a wide skill set, making them highly versatile.
The full-stack marketer is a jack-of-all-trades, and often includes key skills such as:
- Marketing planning
- Media buying
- Social media management
- Email marketing
- PPC
- Conversion optimization
- Storytelling
These skills and much more are what many consider to be the core of what makes the perfect digital marketer.
It may be tempting to try to search for a couple of full-stack marketers that can handle everything.
But keep in mind that while these individuals may have a wide skill set, they aren’t always the ideal solution for a few reasons.
Let’s consider these reasons.
1. Personal Limitations
An individual can only be so productive on any given day.
It doesn’t matter how skilled they are, they only have two hands and only so much focus.
Plus, multitasking is bad.
We’re not wired for trying to tackle more than one project at a time, no matter how much a person touts that they can take on the world.
2. Unequal Skill Sets
A full-stack marketer might be able to function in a variety of areas, but that doesn’t mean they carry equal skills in every area. Take this research from Smart Insights:
This image shows the top 20 digital marketing skills and how marketers rated their proficiency in various areas.
Their research reveals just how much of a challenge it is for someone to develop their skills equally across such a wide range of specializations.
Not to say that a full-stack marketer isn’t a smart investment.
The full-stack marketer fits best with smaller companies and startups. In that environment, they can use their entrepreneurial spirit and skill set to drive growth.
As companies grow, it’s best for this kind of individual to move into a leadership position where they can develop your all-star team to include specialists with targeted skill sets.
The people on your digital marketing team
As you build out your digital marketing team, there are three key roles you should focus on.
- Acquisition
- Monetization
- Content
There’s no rule about the number of people you need for your team, so build out your marketing team based on your business needs and the strategy you’ve developed.
If you have no marketing team, your first goal should be to hire at least one person for each of the above areas. This gives you someone accountable for each of the core responsibilities.
1. The Content Team – This is the individual or team responsible for creating, sourcing, and managing all of your content.
Your content team will handle blogs, podcasts, videos, infographics, social content, content curation, white papers, etc.
This includes content that is both customer-facing and internal (such as content created to support your sales team) and at all levels of the sales funnel.
HubSpot provides a good example of how content changes based on the sales cycle or stage of the buyer’s journey.
Your content team will use research to determine the best strategy for developing content including:
- The type of content to develop
- The most appropriate topics
- At what stage to present that content
- The best marketing channels to promote that content
2. The Acquisition Team
This team is directly responsible for the initial acquisition of customers including the lead generation strategy and acquisition strategy.
Aside from overseeing the organic and paid traffic campaigns, these are your go-to people for monitoring analytics and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs).
Analytics need their own focus.
Why?
Because, for your marketing strategies to be effective, your teams need to know which channels work and which channels are junk as quickly as possible.
Paying attention to metrics and your KPIs will keep you from wasting a ton of money.
Lead generation is also critical. While your teams should work on building relationships with existing customers, you still have to create a constant flow of new ones.
That’s where your acquisition team steps up to the plate.
According to a 2012 State of Digital Marketing report, lead generation is the top priority for B2B marketing teams.
This remains unchanged based on data gathered by Content Marketing Institute, which reports that 85% of B2B marketers put lead generation as their top priority.
Your acquisition team should also have a primary handle on graphic design for ads, paid and organic campaigns, and any original images used in your content marketing.
3. The Monetization Team
The purpose of everything you do is to make money, so having someone devoted to this ensures that everything you’re doing moves you toward that goal.
This team doesn’t just focus on generating money. Their goal is to maximize the revenue your teams and assets are generating.
This is where your team comes together to optimize conversions through split testing, improving email marketing strategies for better open and click through rates, etc.
Your monetization team will develop the plan to help you measure success over time.
Early on, you’re likely to have just one person in charge of each of these areas. As your business grows, the goal is to pad out each of these teams, so the work becomes more granular.
Hire great marketers who specialize in things like analytics, blog content, video marketing, email marketing, etc.
Where to find your digital marketing dream team
Business would be so much simpler if you could hire a marketing A-Team at one fell swoop.
If only.
You’ll have to piece your team together, and it won’t happen overnight.
But knowing how to find and attract talent can simplify the process.
1. Attract the talent you want.
Hunting for candidates is a start, but you should also focus on improving your culture and creating a better workplace to attract talent.
According to McKinsey, we could add $2.7 trillion in global GDP by better matching people and jobs.
That starts with a shift in perspective.
Instead of trying to take candidates from application to hiring in a simple linear approach, treat it like you treat your customer journey.
Notice how the above candidate journey shared by Monster and Fortune shows a cycle similar to that of a customer?
Grow relationships with employees the same way you cultivate customer relationships. This leads to loud and proud brand ambassadors.
It doesn’t matter how many recruiters you’ve got. They can’t hold a candle to the power of your employees boasting and operating as a true extension of your company.
A study from Edelman even…
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