Full-stack marketing was a term first coined a few years back referring to someone that has a full range of digital marketing skills. Not to be mistaken as a digital marketing specialist who specializes in one specific field like SEO, PPC or marketing automation.

The full-stack marketer fills an all-in-one type of digital customer acquisition role for a small to medium size business (SMB) or startup. They have expertise in a variety of marketing tactics from frontend web development to customer engagement strategies. Wearing multiple hats they are creative-driven,  but also data-influenced and proficient in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), copywriting, paid advertising and many other digital growth tactics.

I recently started using Google Data Studio to create data-driven inbound marketing reports for select partners. It is similar to other reporting tools I have used in the past with a few benefits if you are already using Google products like Analytics, Adwords, & Search Console to analyze data.

A couple of years ago I dreamed of a reporting tool that would let me do what Data-Studio is now letting me do. I was creating reports for partners and started to design HTML reports with any embedded code I could I use to structure data. The data always needed to be manually updated which made the reports lengthy and therefore not cost effective to create. Data Studio now connects a few of the dots so the data is continuously updated. It also lets you choose specific dates or data sets to view. They have come along way yet still have a ways to go.

Marketing is a force of nature, evolving along the same principles as any living species. A good marketer today thinks like a gardener knowing it requires the same discipline to grow a successful marketing campaign as a healthy garden.

The other day when I was out for a run I had one of those déjàvu moments where I felt like I had heard something before, but I was not sure where. I was listening to the Marketing School Podcast with Neil Patel & Eric Slu, on the 4 Fundamental Things You Need to Master in Marketing. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that they were reading a chapter from a horticulture book on how to grow a good vegetable garden.

If you aren’t willing to walk away, you should never start in the first place.

It’s not giving up if you’re moving on, at least that is what I told myself after informing my partner that I would no longer work for the startup we started two years prior. After two years of full time work while juggling a family of five, it was time to move on. It was in the middle of a weekly meeting when I realized that now was as good as time as any.

Setting a date

It’s not like I didn’t set a date, or even go past it a few times; after two years it was beginning to become obvious that we were not going to get outside funding on the current path we were on. Since we really had no funding other than what my partner had put in to establish the business and build a prototype, I knew it was only time before we would shut down or I would need to move on.

BY JOHN RAMPTON IN ENTREPRENEUR.COM

5 Lessons for First-Time Entrepreneurs I Learned the Hard Way

Now that I’m well past my first-time entrepreneur experience, I can reflect on what I learned during that period in my life. In doing so, my tips might be able to help some of you first-time entrepreneurs out there get past barriers a little more quickly, get launched faster, and avoid some pitfalls along the way.

I’ve failed many time. I can remember several times where I didn’t even have enough money in my bank account to pay off the minimum payment on my credit card.

Years later and a healthy bank account later I can share with you a few things I should have known but didn’t. Here are five tips that I wish I knew before I started that would have potentially saved me from failing several times:
1. Ask a lot of questions.

There were many places where I thought I knew what I was doing that would have been better served if I had asked questions instead of assuming. I thought if I asked questions that maybe someone might think I was stupid or might not take me seriously in the business and investment worlds. In actual fact, I should have spoken up and asked more questions because this would have saved me time and money as well as potentially got me funding faster.

Think about growing your business like starting a garden. You want to create an environment for it to thrive. Proper strategy, placement and maintenance are key components that you need to control of if you are going to succeed.

1.) It All Starts With a Good Strategy

A good marketing strategy is your foundation, similar to the soil in your garden. It needs to have a good base first then comes design and other elements required to supply nutrients so that everything can grow. Whether you need a new design or already have something to work with is determined by your companies needs and areas for growth. Without a good foundation, all other inbound marketing or ongoing maintenance will be a waste of time because nothing will be able to grow.