Introduction 

It happened again.

You’ve gotten yourself through another complex technical marketing project, for now, but you can’t help but acknowledge the sinking feeling that you can only “wing it” for so long.

It’s no secret that marketers need to become increasingly technical. With each passing day it seems as if technology is getting more and more beyond our abilities, and the digital superstars appear further beyond reach than ever before. For those who didn’t grow up as digital natives, this can be incredibly overwhelming.

This overwhelmed feeling can be inspired by a number of reasons:

• A new web project never gets off the ground
• A relationship with a software developer goes sour; or
• A potentially lucrative digital opportunity never gets realized.

Marketers in this situation regularly conclude that there are only two solutions out of this problem; the most common of which is the most dangerous – to avoid becoming technical altogether. The alternative is to become a developer themselves.

The second option, whilst undoubtedly a much better idea than the first, takes some serious immersion and potentially years to actualise.

Realistically, a transition into a more technical role doesn’t need to be that drastic. The most adaptable marketers are discovering there is a comfortable middle ground for those who are diligent enough to learn.

You can still be a marketer at heart and manage the complex technical environment all the while securing your job and earning the respect from your more technical colleagues.

It’s simple: learn the basics of programming.

You don’t have to become a developer or programmer to appreciate the concepts it can teach. Learning to program equips you with critical skills that can be transferred to all other aspects of your marketing activities.

Fixing a broken process, learning about dependencies, conditionals and controls, how to think in a systematic way and how to structure strategies with adaptability and scalability in mind.

These are just some examples of concepts that can be learned even without writing a single line of code.

In essence, learning to program teaches you how to translate abstract ideas into concrete processes.

So where do you start? We’ve put together three key ideas that every marketer, including you, needs to know to better work with and communicate with your technical team: