As a marketer in any field, it’s imperative to stay on top of technological advances and maintain a flexible skill set that can adapt to an evolving digital world. In an industry where being data driven and able to translate your ideas into action tends to drive the most success, adding coding to your stack is a great technical skill to compete in the job market and open up new career opportunities. And along the way, it would probably be nice to make a little more money, right? Good news; there’s an increasing number of businesses relying on marketers with coding skills, and IT marketing recruitment is on the rise. As a marketer with coding knowledge, you’ll dramatically grow your career opportunities attract the attention of more digital marketing recruiters.
Coding can be extremely useful for any marketer to remain a valuable asset to your organization. What if you could build a customized mobile app for your brand from scratch? Or make minor tweaks to a landing page without relying on your development team? Or build HTML email templates without hiring someone else to get the job done? You’ll be able to cut costs and improve all-around effectiveness by learning and understanding some level of coding knowledge. And if you’re an employee of an organization, coding skills can support your case when asking for a raise or promotion.
Two Marketers at Synecore Explain Why They Value Coding as Their “Second Language”
Benefits of Coding to Marketers
Not every marketer needs to be a coding master. Acquiring even a basic programming knowledge is imperative for what we do and challenges ahead of us as marketers. Basic levels of HTML, CSS, and maybe even JavaScript or Python can vastly reinforce a resume for someone and impress a digital marketing recruiter. Even understanding the fundamentals will give you a grasp of the capabilities and limitations of the marketing tools you rely on every day.
Coding isn’t the easiest skill to learn, but that’s a part of what makes it so invaluable to a professional. Even if you have no plans of becoming a master coder, try it out for a few weeks or a month and see how all your capabilities are heightened.
Consider just a few the impactful benefits of learning basic coding skills and language:
- Career expansion
- Well-rounded computer science understanding
- Increased salary potential
- Ability to resolve tech related issues quickly on your own
- Capability of building small website projects without delay from your developer
- Comfort reading/analyzing big data to understand user experience or results metrics
- Ability to more creatively communicate and collaborate with developers
Building your stack with coding proves to an IT marketing recruitment firm that you possess an iterative approach to solving problems and testing new ideas. Stand apart from competition with an invaluable skill in high demand.
How to Add Coding to Your Stack
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Do I have to go back to school to learn coding”? and “How much is this going to cost?”
The good news is you don’t have to sit in a classroom, at least not to get a strong grasp of the fundamentals. There’s a wide range of well-regarded coding education resources online making it accessible to you from anywhere for a reasonable price (often free).
1. Codecademy
Codecademy offers interactive courses which make learning to code and design websites fun and easy. You can choose to learn languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or dive right into building a website using real-world examples like Airbnb and Flipboard as a guide. Perfect for beginners, Codecademy offers free classes available to anyone.
2. Lynda
Rated as one of the best sources for online learning, Lynda offers informative and simple video based training. The tutorials allow you to work at your pace. Additional resources are included such as worksheets and templates to test your new found skill. Lynda starts at $19.99 for a basic plan and $29.99 for a premium plan. Both plans include unlimited learning from all courses, accessibility from any internet enabled device, project files and code practice, quizzes and offline viewing.
3. Free Code Camp
As the name implies, it’s a free coding education software which allows you test your new found skill in the real world. In addition to hundreds of hours of coding lessons, Free Code Camp directly connects you to nonprofit organizations where you can put your skills to work!
Even more options are just a quick Google Search away. After utilizing one of the many coding education resources and putting your new knowledge to work, you can finally add coding to your stack–and resume. Burning Glass researchers, a job market analytics website, found that jobs that require coding skills pay up to $22,000 more per year, on average. Also, they reported 49% of all jobs that pay more than $58,000 require some coding skills, according to their analysis. Another valuable insight from Burning Glass and Oracle; roughly half of the jobs in the top income quartile — defined as those paying $57,000 or more per year — are in occupations that commonly require applicants to have at least some coding knowledge. It’s safe to say that if you’re a new graduate or veteran it’s top priority to build your stack with coding to compete in the rigorous job market.
A Stepping Stone to the Future for IT Marketing Recruitment
From market research, SEO, social media marketing, digital marketing and content marketing, marketers will constantly have to deal with programming languages. From something as simple as changing font on web pages to designing cutting-edge chat bots. Coding is all around us no matter what field you occupy; every business today has web pages or uses data analytics to complete day to day operations. Take your career to the next level with basic knowledge of coding. Attract digital marketing recruiters and land the jobs you want. The benefits as a marketer with coding skills are unlimited and prove to have increasing effects on pay. Code literacy is now a fundamental requirement for participation in the digital world.
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