Comments on: Every Marketer Does Not Need To Be Technical

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:16:50 +0000

Too right. I think you need to be versed in all areas but not necessarily work in them all, unless they are small projects. At least you then know what needs to be done if not completely how.

By: Gent

Gent — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 23:31:21 +0000

I definitely agree with you on this, Bill. But it surely helps if you got some technical skills like graphic design or programming. SEO requires a very creative mind in order to achieve results and every technical skill that you know is just an extra tool to help you along the way.

Being a jack of all trades will definitely help you a lot especially in creating plans and strategies. Also, if you have a team of technical people in your disposition you will know how to talk to them and ask for the right things.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 12:34:02 +0000

Hi Bill, in one of my costumer’s company (Travel agency) I cooperate with Marketing coordinator which is 100% out of tech side of marketing, but she is giving me the orders how I shall do my job (Webdesign and SEO). Anytime I design the solution, she totally change it, then I have to describe the reason of my solution and each case takes weeks more. So I vote and pray, could you learn a bit of technical background before you start making the mess of my life MISS MARKETING COORDINATOR? Thanks for interesting opinion clash.

By: Ellen Contreras

Ellen Contreras — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:21:59 +0000

How do you plan to measure the ROI of your investment? Many marketers use site traffic as their primary metric plus “soft” metrics such as counting fans and followers and positive buzz. But more and more companies are looking for social marketing metrics that pack a better business punch, such as in increase in the number and rate of conversions.

By: Bill Sebald

Bill Sebald — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 01:20:56 +0000

Hi Andrew, if you’re using WordPress (and it looks like you are), I recommend the WP Super Cache plugin. Install that, turn it on, and you’ll be speeding up your page load.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:24:42 +0000

I’m with you on this, Bill. By the way, how do you cache a page on a blog?

By: David Cohen

David Cohen — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:38:27 +0000

Calling Ogilvy a technical marketer, in the context of what the SEOmoz post communicated, doesn’t make any sense to me. Being a brilliant researcher and being the type of marketer Jamie described can’t be correlated in my mind.

Maybe we need to do a better job (me included) adding some definition and context to ‘marketing’ and ‘technical’.

For me, marketing was always about this: getting people’s attention, earning their trust, convincing them to take specific actions, and retaining them as a customer.

There’s nothing ‘technical’ about this. Marketing is a people thing and a communication thing. And of course it’s about meeting business objectives. Ogivly didn’t need to know Python or Illustrator to accomplish this. It didn’t even need to exist for him.

I know there won’t be much consensus on this, especially in the SEO community. But all I know is, when I’m sitting in a meeting with my client who has products that are used by 1 in 3 homes in America, my client doesn’t give a crap if I know how to a cross-domain canonical or code an HTML5 infographic.

They want to know I understand how to solve marketing problems for them, that I understand how to communicate with their broader teams, and that I can execute initiatives with my team back at SEER.

By: Chris le

Chris le — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:40:27 +0000

From a developer’s perspective: You don’t need to be technical to be a marketer. But you’ll waste A LOT LESS time if you pick up some basics.

First, it helps A LOT when someone talks to me at my level. SEO lingo is *NOT* actionable for me. And sending URLs to someone else’s blog post doesn’t help because my entire setup is different. It’s NOT actionable. If you talk to me at my level, give ME /actionable/ recommendations, you’ll get results. FASST. That’s how you win at marketing. Getting results.

Also, you can’t scale what you can’t delegate. I hate the word “scale” but … If you’re delegating work, you have two choices: a human or a machine.

Knowing WHAT to do is baseline. You don’t need technical expertise for that. Getting good at what you do does not require technical expertise. Knowing HOW to delegate the work to a computer just makes you way more efficient than anyone else in the game. Technical expertise is no good to you if you suck at being a marketer.

SOO..

Pick up technical basics so you can be better at your job – communicate with people who need to get your stuff done and delegate work for scale.

By: Michael King

Michael King — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:42:07 +0000

I don’t disagree that SEO is faceted and you can be content strategist and be an SEO. I more meant in the broad sense of being someone who is a comprehensive SEO, you should be technical.

By: Michael King

Michael King — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:41:06 +0000

No. In Ogilvy’s time marketing was just driven by creative. People just threw ideas at the wall and saw what stuck a la Don Draper.

Using Research, testing and attribution were the “technical” things to do that the time. In fact it wasn’t until the late 80′s and early 90′s when actual account planning became the norm.