If you’re a marketer, it’s very likely that you create Digital Marketing strategies to engage with audiences. As digital marketing becomes more prominent, the skillset for marketers keeps getting broader to include (at least) basic to medium understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, and SQL. Do not panic, depending on the marketing role or tactic it’s actually necessary to know more about one or the other.  The truth is that you cannot manage what you don’t understand. 

On the other hand, if you’re a developer, we are sure that you are dealing a lot with marketers. Either you work with them, for them, belong to them or you are part of a team of marketers. Even if you do not realize that, it’s true. 😌

Coding Makes you a More Valuable Marketer

Understanding what developers and fellow digital marketers want/need saves time and money and makes the execution a bit smoother.  Coding does not necessarily replace staff in social media, lead acquisition, content development, but Knowing code will surely guarantee better communication between teams and better execution of a marketing campaign.  

Coding languages used in digital marketing

Even though most of our graduates at 4Geeks Academy become full-time software developers,  some of our students are graphic designers and marketers looking to become the best career-wise. This quick guide includes the most practical programming languages not only for programmers but also for marketers that want to be more accomplished in their area.   

  1. HTML + CSS for data and info visualization

**HTML and CSS make up for the **basic -very basic- front end development skills. HTML is the code that is used to structure and display a webpage along with its contents. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, works with HTML to add styles to web pages. 

HTML tells browsers how to define and display content. It is a MUST for content marketing and SEO because it is the language interpreted by internet browsers to make a difference in search engine positioning. HTML is necessary to find and edit meta descriptions, title tags, and keywords that are part of on-site optimization.

Along with  HTML, CSS allows you to structure and style emails, create and tweak landing pages, customize forms and give format to information in any website. 

Knowing both languages can make marketers much more effective in a digital marketing job, especially when working in a small team. Other than SEO, knowing a bit of both means no more waiting for a developer to have time to add a confirmation button to your email template.

  1. JavaScript for web development and tracking

JavaScript is everywhere.  It’s the most frequently used programming language in web development. It powers many parts of the web ecosystem and is the language that allows animation and interactivity on a web interface. 

If you are a marketer and work with Google tracking codes, such as in implementing cross-domain tracking, then you have interacted with JavaScript. When setting up a website’s tracking code, Google instructs you to add a code snippet right after the tag on each of your website’s pages.

JavaScript is the best programming language to use when implementing tracking codes such as Hotjar, Facebook, Reddit, Google Ads, etc. To set up advanced tracking knowing some JavaScript ensures proper implementation. 

Also, with more advanced JavaScript, you can automate repetitive tasks in Google Ads, configure UTM parameters for different websites, connect a company’s inventory with ad campaigns, power better Ads’ A/B testings and more!

  1. Python for Data Analysis

Python is similar to JavaScript in several aspects. Python is versatile and approachable, and for marketers, it’s useful because it’s the go-to language for data analysis. 

A marketer has to juggle data either generated by customer's usage of a product, or service, or from marketing tactics such as paid search, social media, search engine optimization, etc. Python allows a level of automation to juggle vast amounts of data so you can get  deeper insights for better marketing strategies:

  • predicting whether a subscriber could leave an app or subscription

  • **estimating ** the expected increase in customer service requests

  • processing automatically a lot of text of social media mentions

  1. Structured Query Language (SQL) for Data Processing

Structured Query Language (SQL) is designed for managing data that is held in a relational database management system. SQL is like Excel on  a higher level of data processing. 

Remember, digital marketing thrives on data, large chunks of it. SQL excels at performing quick and simple data queries or analyses on as large as multi-million-line datasets. It does not collapse such as Excel does with just a few hundred thousand data rows. SQL doesn’t have such a great user-friendly interface; in order to access data and make elaborate queries, you will need to write code-based instructions.

**SQL and having the business knowledge allows marketers to create accurate and more detailed reports, also it will come in handy to create specific segments with Google Analytics data. **BigQuery, a Google product, lets you use this language to manage Google Analytics data that is impossible to handle in the Google Analytics point-and-click interface such as adding advanced filters and running more complex calculations.

Start Learning Today

Dear marketers, learning technical digital marketing skills can absolutely help you to stand out on the job market, get better results and be more effective on a job. If you are thinking of learning to code, leave all fears aside to have unique programming experience! And if you are not thinking about it, please start doing so!

Developers: Do not stop learning. Get to know new languages and their implications for marketing, after all, what do you develop amazing web apps for? A marketer should not necessarily look to become on-par with a software developer, but there is no reason why anyone shouldn’t learn programming. If you are looking for more robust education in any of these languages, or better, if you want to learn a bit about all of them, a coding Bootcamp is a great way to revise your skillset and improve your odds to land a new job or to get a new client!