Let’s Get Coding: Why Today’s Marketers Should Learn to Code
If you have been keeping up to date with the marketing tactics and concepts I have been posting about over the last month, you should know that the world of marketing today involves many digital aspects in comparison to years ago. So, why haven’t we been talking more about the backbone to pretty much all of the marketing strategies we use: our website? Anyone can have a basic website easily designed for them and nowadays, you can even design your own website online on a website building platform such as Wix; however, when it comes to creating a good website, you need to have someone who is advanced in HTML, CSS, and Javascript to make the website look good and work well (throwing it back to my blog about UI and UX, right there). You may be thinking “but that job is for a computer science graduate...” and “we already have a person that does this at my company.” Well, it is becoming more important now than ever for marketers to learn how to code and throughout this blog, I’ll explain how you should be expanding your knowledge of marketing information to encompass all types of marketing tactics, why you should learn to code, and even give you some tips and tricks that you can use to start learning how to code.
Importance of Being a “Full-Stack” or “T-Shaped” Marketer
Before I even talk about coding specifically, I want to mention how important it is to be as expansive in your marketing education as possible. This may not seem as important for people in larger companies who are hired specifically for their marketing specialty; however, I believe it is important that every market strives to be as comprehensive in their knowledge of marketing tactics regardless of the type of company they are in. In the last twenty-five years, we have seen a huge shift towards digital marketing due to the rise of the internet and rapidly advancing technology. Because of these changes, it is extremely important that marketers are staying ahead of the game and doing their best to be as knowledgeable about many different marketing concepts and the platforms in which they can be most effective in increasing in engagement and conversions. This concept is called being a “t-shaped” or “full-stack marketer” and gosh, it is way more important now that marketers are like this than ever.
By definition, in reference to this article by Eric Siu of Single Grain, an internet marketing consultation agency, says that t-shaped marketers, also known as full-stack or growth hackers, understand the different disciplines of marketing but specialize in one major marketing concept. For example, a t-shaped marketer would be almost an expert in SEO but would also understand all the workings of SEM, A/B testing, Inbound Marketing, and so on. This is because your marketing works across channels (i.e. your paid ads on social media affect your landing pages and your email marketing affects your website conversions). If you do not understand how other marketing concepts work together to affect your overall marketing efforts, you may be at a disadvantage from other companies who have found tactics and strategies that work across channels to increase their conversions.
In more depth, Wade Foster, Zapier Co-founder, did a great job of creating a list of pretty much everything you need to know in order to be a “full stack marketer.” The list includes knowing SEO, copy writing, PPC, email marketing, social media, positioning, in-product marketing, public relations, content marketing, blogging, storytelling, life cycle marketing, app store marketing, analytics, A/B testing, landing page optimization, HTML/CSS/Javascript, customer service, pitching, distribution, and business development. Yes, that is a lot of things to know and luckily, he has compiled links for you to be able to go into depth on each of those subjects if you are unfamiliar or are wanting to learn more about how those concepts are changing and growing; however, I wanted to note that he does mention that a full stack marketer should know HTML, CSS and Javascript (here’s where we talk about coding)!
An Unforseen Duo: Marketing and Coding
Most businesses use websites and understand that their website can ultimately lead to consumers moving up the hierarchy of effects from awareness of the brand or product to purchasing the product overall. When looking at marketers, specifically while looking at marketing educations in college, a knowledge of coding is still not seen as a skill that is important to marketers, even more specifically, digital marketers. Even huge marketing platforms and practices such as Google Analytics and A/B testing often require some knowledge of coding. So, marketers should learn to code. It is as simple as that. Though, in higher education, we still aren’t seeing as much of a push towards marketers learning coding skills.
Though I can most definitely attest to this as my digital marketing class is the first marketing class in my four years at WWU that actually discusses coding, let’s look at an outside perspective. According to this article by John Lauerman of Bloomberg, there is definitely a lack of coding education in higher education. Coding crash courses are becoming more popular outside of higher education because students are realizing that their colleges are preparing them for things that employers were hiring for fifteen years ago (I can attest to this as I have taken three different marketing classes on the basics of marketing when I could have been taking coding classes) and are turning to outside of college programs to get a better education for job-hunting. Four years ago, these crash courses became so popular that companies that offered those coding programs made a combined revenue of $59 million and students are definitely seeing the benefit with 59% of crash course students reporting a salary increase after graduating from the program. Even though these programs do not come with a fancy certificate or a degree, students leave the program with projects that they can show to future employers and that, in and of itself, has proven to be greatly affective in helping students obtain entry-level tech jobs.
Looking at the big picture and based of the information presented above, hopefully, you are starting to feel like it is becoming more and more important for marketers, especially digital marketers, to learn coding; however, to maybe entice you a bit more to seek an education in coding, it has been found that jobs are becoming more interdisciplinary in the digital sphere with over a quarter million jobs advertised seeking hybrid talent as of last year (especially for digital marketers who understand and can effectively code). More jobs means more opportunities for increased salaries, am I right?
Codecademy: A Place to Start
If three-month crash courses in HTML, CSS and Javascript do not sound like your cup of tea, you’re in luck because there are plenty of online sites available to teach you how to code. One for which was recommended by my digital marketing teacher is called Codecademy. They have courses in HTML, CSS, Sass, how to make a website, how to deploy a website, and how to create responsive design. The best thing about this platform is that most lessons are interactive which means that you read text about a certain type of coding rule or technique, then you practice it, and see how it looks on a fake webpage.
I spent about two hours on the platform and in that time period, I learned the basics of HTML (and built a weirdly awesome fake-website about brown bears) and then, began learning about CSS. To be honest, I got lost in the platform. It was very cool and the interactive lessons kept me engaged and wanting to learn more. Because HTML is the foundation behind all web pages, it felt awesome to see how the basics of a website work from the structure of a page to the way images are placed on the page as well. Codecademy does work a freemium-based model meaning that a few introductory courses are free in learning HTML and CSS; however, to go beyond those means you must pay for it. However, if I am being honest, it was such an easy way to learn that I feel like I may pay for the additional courses after I graduate college just to get a leg up from my competitors.
Below are images of two different screenshots of the Codecademy courses I took in HTML and CSS (and unfortunately, my laptop broke during this time period so I different screen shots than the original ones). Overall, I learned that it is very important for digital marketers to learn how to code and even so, it is even more important to gain knowledge in many marketing concepts because marketing is constantly evolving and in order to stay competitive, you have to keep learning.
