- In this video, we're gonna ask some major experts what
their opinion is on how to become a more technical marketer.
All and more coming up, right after this.
(energetic music)
Hi there, and welcome to another video of
MeasureSchool.com where we teach you
the data-driven way of digital marketing.
My name is Julian and on this channel,
we do marketing tech reviews, tutorials,
and the occasional interview, just like this one.
So if you haven't yet, consider subscribing.
Now recently, we went to London to attend
MeasureCamp, my favorite analytics conference really,
and we also took our video gear with us
so we would be able to do some interviews for you guys
in the breaks between the talks.
So this time we asked, where should a marketer
start out if he wants to become a more technical marketer
and here's what they said.
- In a way, you don't need to become too technical,
I don't think, there's all different ranges
for different people but to become a good analyst,
you have to understand where the data comes from,
how it's built and how it's been produced by the tools.
So definitely understanding the rule to that,
how it's sort of set up and how it's transmitted
to Google servers and what could we do with it then.
If you understand the raw data, how it's built,
the numbers you're then looking at, make so much more sense.
Otherwise, you'll make mistakes
just through a lack of knowledge.
- Well, most recently, I was very lucky cause
I started working much closer with my agency's developers
so I saw, I was working directly with one of
our developers when he was integrating
a enhanced Ecommerce style data layer
and we were working with like, when was the data layer
updated, when there was a certain Ajax request
on the pages and stuff like that
and that really, cause enhanced Ecommerce, especially,
is quite complex to get your head around anyway,
but working in that fashion with a developer
and watching them write the PHP which built the data layer
and pushed the variables into the data layer
that was on the front end of the site
was really eye opening and that was a really good experience
and I know not a lot of other analysts
are that lucky to work that closely with developers.
- Well familiarity with Excel is always
gonna be a core skill but increasingly,
Google Sheets is an excellent place to go.
Particularly now that you've got Data Studio
so, you know, Data Studio will allow you to visualize
anything in Google Sheets and it's a beautiful sort of,
dashboard creations so I'd say that's the way
it's really going from the reporting side of things.
You know, get going with Data Studio,
learn how to use Google Sheets
like you learn how to use Excel
and those will be really good starting points.
So you need to kinda be thinking about
getting stuff out of Google Analytics
and not just relying on the standard reports
that are contained within, to get your own sort of
customized views on what's happening with your websites.
- I think, you know, a big key these days is tag management.
So take our fundamentals course for DTM.
But also, the way that I learned and became more technical,
was really just reading a lot of blogs
and understanding what other people are doing out there.
People are doing some really cool things.
Simo, in particular, I read his blog often.
It's a great place for tips.
- I think, It's kind of like with the technical stuff,
it's more, this is not a great thing to say but
it's a bit of a case of, fail fast, as in ...
You wanna .... in some ways, the more mistakes you make,
the more you'll learn from those mistakes.
So, like, when I was first starting out,
I made loads of mistakes which is not great,
but it does mean you're not going to make them again.
And you definitely remember if you've made the mistake.
And it's, thankfully now, I know pretty much
all the mistakes that you can make
so it's like, phewf, I'm normally pretty careful.
The tools I mentioned for automating also reduced
the number of mistakes and improved data quality
so there's a bunch of Chrome plugins which help
with technical stuff, Google Tag Assistant,
Data Slayer and the Preview Window.
- Learning programming just the web tech stack
is important in html-5 CSS Java script.
Those three tools, learning the basic terminology,
learning the basics of those three tools,
it will get you far in analytics, in digital marketing
as well and then again, you're back to the place
where you have to figure out what kind of an analyst
you are, what kind of a marketer you are.
For example, if you're into SEO, you might want to start
learning about how the web server works,
so you understand re-directs, you understand, you know,
you understand how pre-rendering works and stuff like this.
If you're into analytics, you wanna know how
the document object model works, how the web browser
renders a page and all this kind of stuff.
So, getting down and dirty with the tech stuff
is what you, what I would recommend people to pick up.
- So, there's a lot of people at the moment
who get very excited about learning Python
and scripting languages, I think it's great
but that's not the starting point.
I think, for most of us, the environment we work in
is the web so start with learning web technologies.
Learn JavaScript, learn jQuery, learn CSS,
learn html, learn to set up a server.
Understand the mechanics of how the internet works
and then go away and do clever stuff
with machine learning and systems
but understand the mechanical side first.
- So there you have it, this is how you can
become a more technical marketer.
Now leave a comment below if you have any more tips
on how you started out in technical marketing
and to become a more technical marketer
and what helped you out the most,
I would be really interested in it.
And if you want to become a more technical marketer,
then check out our new project: TechMarketer.io
where we have built a few resources around
how to be more technical in the field of Digital Marketing.
Now, my name is Julian and I'll see you next week.