Would you rather be called a generalist or a jack-of-all-trades?
Or would it be preferable to be called a Full-Stack Marketer?
A recent post in Geekwire by Marcelo Calbucci talks about the unique skills of a Full-Stack Marketer for tech start-ups. The head of marketing at Uberflip followed with his perspective on Uberflip’s blog.
I believe that the term Full-Stack Marketer as appealing as it is, falls short in defining the marketer at a tech start-up.
The large tech company needs marketing specialists while small tech requires generalists with expertise in customer acquisition. It’s the size of company that dictates the scope of the marketer. Small companies need a Full-Stack Marketer out of necessity: this executive is the marketing department. Any small firm, at a minimum, requires the breadth of skills of a Full-Stack Marketer.
What defines a start-up, is what defines the marketer.
Consider a marketer who works at a small tech start-up that is family-run and funded. Compare this to a marketer who works at a tech start-up that is venture funded.
The size of company is the same and the roles may be similar, but the pace of business will drive very different marketing behavior.
The tech start-up marketer at the venture funded start-up will share many of the same business ethos as the founder….a marketrepreneur of sorts. This marketer will be tactical on the fly yet strategically-grounded, make decisions with limited information, take risks with limited budgets and resources, measure outcomes, fail fast, take corrective action, and scale marketing successes rapidly.
I like the term velocity to define high performance marketing. Velocity refers to the speed of decision-making but also to the direction taken. This implies that its not just marketing activity that defines success but whether the marketers has charted the appropriate course.
In my mind, a high growth, tech start-up demands marketing velocity: more wins, more faster.
