On almost every digital marketing team, there’s that one person who actually knows how to code, much to the envy of the rest of the team. Whenever there’s an email template gone awry, or a landing page that needs to be made by EOD and the tech team are too busy to help…the coding marketer swoops in to save the day.
In this day and age, every digital marketer should learn at least the basics of code. Before, coding skills would help digital marketers to stand apart from the crowd when job hunting. But in 2022, they should be a basic requirement for the job.
Why? Let’s get into it…
Benefits of Coding for Digital Marketers
While learning to code is nowhere near as difficult as most non-tech professionals think, it does take time, effort, commitment, and motivation. So it’s important to understand your why for learning code before you start that coding bootcamp. While everyone will have their own reasons, generally speaking coding can:
Unleash your creativity: Imagine what you can achieve when you learn the skills needed to build things for yourself.
Get the most out of your data: Go beyond the more basic dashboards and find new insights.
Create automations: Automate basic tasks and free up your time for work that really matters.
Destroy bottlenecks: Instead of waiting for your product team/data scientist to help you out, coding can help you to do things for yourself on your own time.
Facilitate better collaboration: Make it easier to work with your tech teams by learning how to speak their language, and super-charge your collaboration.
Basic Coding Skills for Digital Marketers
Once you’ve understood the benefits of coding for digital marketers, the next step is to decide which aspect of coding will be the most helpful to you.
1. Scripting
Scripting consists of three categories: Perl, Python, or even Bash. Python is dynamic, Bash acts as a command-line interpreter, and Pearl works for general purposes. These are examples of scripts – complex programs created to help automate tasks plus enhance efficiency.
There are multiple activities you can achieve with scripting know-how. For starters, you can easily automate common jobs that IFTT or Zapier can’t execute. Plus, you can create prototypes of valuable internal tools and evaluate them for efficiency before you outsource to a developer. Additionally, you can clean data quickly to foster data visualization. Python is an extensive coding tool that’s more refined than the standard Excel search.
2. HTML
HTML instructs the browser on how to define and illustrate the content. So, experts in content marketing should learn how to use meta descriptions, keywords, and title tags. If the program you utilize to upload information lacks a WYSIWYG or Markdown interface for decent formatting, you should find a solution to build spacing, hyperlinks, paragraphs, headings, lists, and images.
3. Data Visualization
With data visualizations, information is illustrated in a vivid, graphical form, like a chart or a pictorial slideshow. They allow marketing professionals to see their analytics visually and make conclusions instantly. More importantly, they convey more information in just a fraction of screen time.
Suppose you want to learn how to build data visualizations. This move allows you to easily convey your ideas to the stakeholders without losing any important information in translation. Plus, data visualization comes in handy for content marketers when you want to create graphic portraits to explain your arguments.
4. Data Analysis
Do you want to pursue a career in Excel and SQL? A common coding language, SQL, can help programmers to manage data held in a database system. They allow data definition and manipulation, as well as control languages. For those in a career in marketing, you can use the querying or manipulation language. On the other hand, Excel is a spreadsheet program that allows seamless data manipulation.
Using Excel and SQL requires you to understand how Python or VBA operate macros – specific rules that indicate how the input sequence is mapped on the output replacement sequence. If you are learning coding and HTML, you should learn how to perform data manipulation using SQL or Excel.
First, understand how SQL works. Next, if you want to code-heavy text, macros are right for you. After you understand how data analysis works, you’ll look at the data collection process keenly, and thereby seek to develop skills needed to become an expert in coding.
That means when you hire developers to perform data analysis, you can ask meaningful questions about the entire process and save on time and money you could have spent cleaning data. Moreover, these basic skills allow easy report writing. Besides that, you’ll not need a professional developer to answer questions on your behalf. You can analyze raw data directly from the sales records using analysis and marketing automation.
How Coding Skills All Work Together
It is possible to use SQL coding to make interesting findings or write a script geared toward transforming the SQL to data visualization. After that, use the data visualization as a way of showcasing your findings. Thereafter, persuade your software development team to do a test to check if the data is accurate. For example, most people prefer using OAuth instead of authorization systems. Overall, use HTML coding to create blog posts to highlight the results.
As you can see, one coding skill is a great asset to any digital marketing career. But a full-stack knowledge of web development is even better! A part-time Web Development bootcamp fits into your life without disrupting your day job, and teaches you skills that you can apply to your work immediately.
Ready to supercharge your digital marketing career with web development? Check out Ironhack’s remote, hybrid, or campus bootcamps, and see what your future holds.
