In today’s digital landscape, coding skills are no longer just for developers. They give a powerful advantage to almost anyone, no matter their role. If you’re leading or developing a digital marketing team, understanding which coding skills will drive the biggest impact is crucial.
The infographic below outlines the coding skills we believe are essential (big check mark) and beneficial (small check mark) for common digital marketing roles. As coding enthusiasts ourselves at Upward Engine, we’re excited to share how these skills can empower your team to reach new heights.
Programming Languages for Digital Marketing: A Quick Guide
For those who aren’t familiar, here’s a brief and simple explanation of these coding languages:
- HTML (“Hypertext Markup Language”): The foundation of every webpage. It tells browsers (like Chrome or Firefox) how to display content.
- CSS (“Cascading Style Sheets”): Works with HTML to add styling and formatting to webpages. It ensures consistent visual styles across multiple pages.
- JavaScript: The most popular programming language on the web due to its versatility. It powers everything from Google Analytics tracking to interactive web apps. Advanced users can even build local or server-side applications using Node.js. TypeScript is an enhanced version of JavaScript gaining traction.
- Python / Julia / R: These versatile languages are frequently used for data analysis, statistics, and automating tasks.
- RegEx (“Regular Expressions”): Used to create “search patterns” (filters) for quickly analyzing large datasets.
- Bash/Shell: These allow interaction with computers and servers via the command line, enabling access to web servers and execution of programs written in various languages.
Coding Skills by Role: Level Up Your Team
Analytics
Why should your analytics team know more than just Google Analytics and Excel? Because things rarely go exactly as planned. Without JavaScript and HTML skills, diagnosing tracking issues (or setting up advanced tracking) becomes difficult. RegEx skills are vital for creating filters that extract meaningful insights from complex data. We believe that using languages like Python, Julia, or R empowers analysts to move beyond basic reporting and perform specialized analyses on massive datasets, potentially even using machine learning to uncover valuable patterns. Combining this with Bash knowledge enables access to server logs and deeper insights.
Advertising
Assuming analytics are handled by a dedicated team member, advertising isn’t typically code-heavy. However, RegEx knowledge is invaluable for building sophisticated filters. If your advertising team creates landing pages, basic HTML and CSS knowledge can be useful when page builders have limitations.
In practice, our team at Upward Engine has leveraged coding skills for tasks like merging large spreadsheets, but these situations don’t occur frequently enough to justify learning a language like Python or JavaScript for the entire advertising team.
SEO
SEO is complex from a technical perspective. HTML is critical for on-page optimization, and CSS now significantly impacts Core Web Vitals. Having at least one programming language – JavaScript, Python, etc. – will greatly enhance your SEO efforts by allowing you to create custom tools on the fly. Python is well-known for its web scraping capabilities, which can be invaluable for SEO. Want to access server logs to see how deeply Google crawls your website? Or schedule recurring custom website scans? Bash/Shell skills are essential.
While basic SEO can be done with just HTML knowledge, dedicated SEO specialists should ideally possess a broader skillset.
Email Marketing
Aesthetics are critical in email marketing. Visually appealing, clear, and concise email templates significantly boost click-through rates, particularly in a mobile-first world. While platforms offer code-free template builders, you’ll eventually encounter limitations that require directly modifying HTML and CSS.
Content Writer
A basic understanding of HTML is beneficial for content writers, especially if they manage content within your CMS (e.g., WordPress). Rich text editors can sometimes introduce formatting glitches. Knowing basic HTML allows writers to resolve these issues and publish on time.
Empowering Your Team with Coding Skills
That’s our perspective on which coding skills are most beneficial for each team member. Of course, every organization is unique. On smaller teams, roles might overlap. On larger teams, you might have a single code-savvy SEO leading a team of specialists.
For learning coding skills, platforms like Data Camp are a great resource. We encourage managers to consider coding skills as a core part of their team’s professional development, empowering them to achieve greater results and drive upward growth. Coding skills are becoming increasingly vital for digital marketing teams to thrive and achieve exceptional results. By understanding the languages and tools that can empower each role, you can unlock your team’s full potential and drive real upward growth. Explore our services at Upward Engine to discover how we can help your team develop the skills they need to succeed.