Should Marketers learn how to code?

Marketing has one of the broadest job descriptions on the planet. From brand management to strategy to product development to copy writing to communications to advertising and promotion. Add to this list customer experience, user design, content marketing, blogging, social media curation, email marketing and you will find a list that is ever growing.

So do we now need to add coding to that list?

It’s fair to say that in the last 20 years I have seen it all as a marketer. The advent of the internet during the 90s to the rise of social media in the noughty’s (00's) and the ushering in of digital across all mediums in the millennial teens. All of the events have meant that us marketers have had to learn a new way of doing and speaking, and learn it fast.

That in a nutshell is one of the key traits of being a marketer. The ability to learn quickly. Oh, did I mention creativity? We also have to be creative. And curious. Curiosity is what drives the world around. And marketers need it in spades because if your customers are interested in something, then we need to be also. But it goes beyond bright shiny things because pretty quickly your customers will lose interest if it’s just a gimmick.

Marketers are multi-lingual

I’ve always said that marketers are the interpreters in businesses and organisations. We translate complex and/or technical speak into a consumer friendly language that is free of jargon and ridiculously long words. We grasp what the tech guys are saying and turn that into a 30 sec bite of air, sound or vision and hope to hell that someone likes it and buys it.

We have to be across every touch point to ensure the message is clear. Can you imagine what the IKEA instructions would look like if they had been left to the tech guys to write them? Not only would we have spare parts left over, we’d all still be at step one!

<h1> Should Marketers learn how to code? </h1>

Code is a language

So, we come to that question. Should Marketers learn to code?

Given the scope of everything else a Marketer has to learn, then the simple answer would be yes. The same argument though could be had about being creative. Do marketers need to understand design? Again, yes is the answer. And with that, suddenly I hear a million voices all screaming out at once! That’s the graphic designer collective around the world screaming, nooooo, at me as I write. (Please excuse the poor Star Wars reference)

When I say design I don’t mean marketers need to actually learn how to design. Instead, it comes back to an interpretation thing again. One of the best compliments I ever had came from a designer who said that, ‘I had a designers eye’. Naturally I was chuffed. I not a designer but I love design and seeing the creative process come to life. From a thought to a brief on paper to a fully realised visualisation, shape or form is one of the most exciting experiences one can go through.

Marketers need to be able to visualise (another trait on the list) and see things before they happen. It’s a skill and it’s a powerful one because it can be very costly if they can’t. Designers have this ability. The difference is, they know how to bring that vision to life. Marketers can tell you what they want and have some inkling of what it will look like but that’s as far as we can go (usually).

I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator not because I wanted to be a designer necessarily but because I thought it would help if I knew how the programs worked. It also comes back to being curious. I like to learn new things. Especially things that challenge me. Turns out knowing Photoshop and Illustrator has bailed me and many clients out numerous of times. (namely money, it has saved them having to spend money on a proper designer :) I didn’t need to resign anything but I could fix typos and delete contentious sentences. All without ruining the final artwork.

Enough but not too much

So, have I successfully avoided answering the question about marketers having to learn how to code? No? Damn.

My belief is this, marketers should learn how to code. However, we should know just enough to understand how to trouble shoot i.e. fix a small line break glitch, but not enough that we become the experts. Namely because we have too much on our plates already but also because like the fact we aren’t designers, we aren’t programmers or web developers either.

In school I learnt how to code in MS-DOS but couldn’t tell you a single command line. Whereas I’m convinced that my 3 year old will be learning how to code in HTML (add number here) by the time she gets to primary school. And thus it will be a whole different world by the time she is making career choices.

And yes, marketers should learn how to code. But not too much. We should know how to fix the old line break or make something bold or underlined, even change a heading colour. But we shouldn’t ever try to become the expert.