Full Stack Marketing

Perpetual Learning

Over the past couple of years, I've done growth-related work for two startups - GrowthGenius and Knowledgehook. I don't consider myself to be an expert. However, I have paid attention to what kind of tactics work and what doesn't.

Today, we have a number of channels available to us including email, LinkedIn, calling, direct mail, podcasts, video series, blogs, newsletters, and partnerships.

This creates an infinite range of possibilities to attract new customers or engaging existing users.

The best campaigns always come down to the amount of 'free value' that you provide your user. The more 'free value' you provide, the more likely you're able to build trust with your prospect/user. The more competitive your space is, the more free value you'll need to provide.

Free value isn't always $$$ related. It can come in the form of content that provides unique insights, tools that make the life of your prospect easier, access to experts in your prospect's field, or even recognition among their peer group.

The mechanism that allows you to provide free value to your prospects and users can vary quite significantly. I've seen people run free breakfasts (pre-COVID-19), offer consultation sessions, or even create whitepapers to legitimize the work being done by the prospect.

At the surface, it's quite easy to rush and learn the next 'new tactic' whether that's creating a podcast (gaining a lot of popularity now) or running a massive conference (a tactic that was used by many tech companies the past couple of years).

I'd rather go a layer deeper and understand the skills that allow you to find the next best tactic vs. being copying the current trend.

Being User Focused

It always starts with the end-user/customer. If you don't understand your user, you won't be able to generate free value for them. A lot of people make the mistake of creating free value as an extension of their product regardless of whether it's actually useful for the end-user. In that scenario, you're really just optimizing for your own convenience.

The key to being a great UX expert often lies in asking the right questions, using data where possible but more importantly having an independent view on what the future (in this case, a campaign) should look like.

Creating Content

Being able to create digital content across various channels (newsletter, blog, podcast, video, and social media) is critical. Those of us who invested in learning how to create digital content are seeing the payoff today, where people pretty much only consume content online.

Using Automation

The goal isn't necessarily to become a developer but rather to be coding-literate. You should be able to work with different tools, understand how applications work, and apply them in a way that allows you to scale your campaign. The key is to start with an extremely manual process and then use tools to improve and scale your workflow.

The three skills above are what form the full-stack marketer. When you apply these three skills to the goal of creating free value for the user, you'll almost certainly be able to create a tactic that generates disproportionate returns.

While I did say that you're better off trying to find the next best tactic, there is such a thing as marketing arbitrage. You can steal tactics from highly competitive industries (e.g. B2B sales technology) and apply it to less competitive industries (e.g. education) and generate more results.

To further illustrate my point on the full-stack marketer, I did a podcast with a former colleague of mine, David Hurley. He has an incredible blend of marketing, coding and sales - which has allowed him to execute some interesting campaigns. He's currently building Conversify and has worked at #paid, Planswell, and GrowthGenius.

Here are some questions that we explore during the podcast.

1. How has your stack of marketing skills changed over time?
2. It's one thing to be a true developer. It's another thing to be literate on code and know-how to build prototypes. How did you go about learning how to code?
3. What are some of the 3-5 quick hacks that saved you a bunch of time?
4. Tell me about the power of Facebook advertising. What makes it so special? Walk me through the steps of how you would set up an experiment on Facebook.
5. How do you test messaging? What can we learn from it?