How to Become a Better Marketing Technologist

Earlier this month, I wrote a column for MarketingLand called “5 Ways to Embrace Your Inner Marketing Technologist,” in which I explored some different ways that marketers could improve their technical chops to maximize their use of technology. I queried several digital experts on the topic, including Jay Baer, Scott Brinker, and Rand Schulman. I just got a reply from Joe Lucas, Director of Demand Generation & Marketing Ops for InsideView, a leading marketing intelligence platform and one of Tealium’s customers. Joe is one of the smartest and most technical digital marketers I know. Here’s what he had to say about becoming a better technologist:

Joe Lucas, Director of Demand Gen & Marketing Ops for InsideView

Hey Erik,

Experience with analytics and statistics is crucial because you need to be able to drive to decisions based on data. Most of the demands of a modern marketer should take a data-driven approach (from a top of funnel campaign, all the way down to nurture programs). 

Other skills that are particularly helpful are:

• HTML/CSS – The need to tweak and, in some cases, implement landing pages and other digital assets. This touches email marketing, landing pages and overall digital design.
• JavaScript – Some working knowledge of JS is also helpful (yes, even with marketing technologies like Tealium). The ability to understand and implement things like custom variables, tracking bugs, and being able to diagnose problems and understand the most common web frameworks require a basic understanding of JS.
• Excel / SQL – The ability to extract a bunch of data and then operate and understand it is key.  Understanding basic data relationships helps with creating custom reports and allows a marketer to have a deeper understanding of prospects and the programs that drive them.

Those are the big ones. 

Thanks Joe!