Many marketers deed limits not due to the fact that they deficiency ideas, but due to the fact that they can’t execute oregon scale them.

Not everyone has the luxury of developers, designers, oregon analysts who tin assistance crook large ideas into reality. Even if you do, you inactive request to vie for clip and assistance with the remainder of your organisation.

But times person changed. AI tools similar ChatGPT marque method learning radically much accessible. It’s present imaginable to go “technical” adjacent if you’re a humble writer, societal media marketer, oregon marque strategist—because we each person entree to a patient, susceptible method tutor successful the signifier of a ample connection model.

I’m a lifelong marketer and non-technical person. I ever wanted to larn however to code, but ne'er knew wherever to start. I bounced disconnected fractional a twelve coding courses, until I realised that ChatGPT is the cleanable teacher and troubleshooter. Now I tin telephone APIs, constitute elemental scripts, and automate parts of my workflow:

If I tin bash it, you can too.

Ever wished you could propulsion unrecorded information from tools similar Ahrefs, societal platforms, oregon interior merchandise analytics—without waiting connected engineers?

The answer: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are tools that fto antithetic bundle speech to each other. They unlock entree to information that tin velocity up competitory research, automation, and adjacent gathering customized dashboards.

I utilized ChatGPT to larn however to usage the Ahrefs API to fetch my top-performing content, way SERP volatility, and show backlinks automatically. We interruption down however it works successful our Ahrefs API guide.

Use the API fastener successful Ahrefs to get a consciousness for however API requests are structured. If you person entree to the Ahrefs API, you tin read our documentation and adjacent marque free signifier requests.

How to get started:

• Learn the basics of HTTP requests, authentication (like API keys), and effect parsing (usually JSON). Try Mozilla’s API guide, Postman Learning Center, or RapidAPI’s beginner tutorials.
• Try your archetypal unrecorded petition using Postman to deed a elemental endpoint, similar fetching upwind oregon headlines. For other practice, effort calling a nationalist endpoint similar the News API to fetch the latest articles connected immoderate keyword—useful for contented ideation oregon monitoring manufacture trends.
• Use ChatGPT to constitute a Python publication utilizing requests, explicate each line, and grip API authentication. Paste successful API docs—it tin assistance construe them into moving code.

What if you didn’t person to hold for an expert to propulsion your numbers? That’s the powerfulness of SQL—a cosmopolitan connection for asking questions about data.

I usage ChatGPT to assistance constitute SQL queries that pulled blog station impressions, clicks, and mean presumption from Google Search Console—broken down by URL and date. Then I utilized those insights to prioritize which articles to update and re-promote.

(This works large alongside a full contented audit process.)

One of galore SQL queries I usage arsenic portion of my blog reporting process. This illustration selects URLs from our planetary blogs (/es/ is Spain, and so on).

How to get started:

• Focus connected learning SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, JOIN, and CASE statements. For an fantabulous beginner-friendly walkthrough, effort Mode’s SQL tutorials oregon LearnSQL.com’s SQL Basics Track.
• Use escaped tools similar Mode, DB Fiddle, oregon BigQuery sandbox to constitute and trial your queries.
• Paste your array schema (column names and types from your spreadsheet) into ChatGPT and picture what you privation to measure—it volition constitute and explicate the full query.

Sick of repetitive tasks clogging up your day? Learn however to automate your astir mundane, repetitive tasks, and you tin escaped up your clip for much breathtaking things.

Automation platforms similar Zapier and Make fto you physique “if-this-then-that” logic crossed each your selling tools—without touching code. It’s technically “no-code,” but don’t beryllium fooled—it inactive teaches you however to deliberation similar a programmer: mounting conditions, chaining steps, handling exceptions, and reasoning done logic flows.

Here’s a ace elemental Zap that syncs changes successful our maestro contented spreadsheet with spreadsheets for each of our planetary blogs—in this case, notifying the Japanese selling squad that caller articles are acceptable for localization:

I’ve utilized Zapier for a 100 antithetic things: managing interaction signifier submissions, triaging leads, triggering editorial workflows for content, syncing information betwixt antithetic spreadsheets, creating notifications successful Slack, you name it.

How to get started:

• Start with Zapier’s template library oregon Make’s ocular script builder.
• Build a elemental multi-step automation that uses filters, conditions, and formatting. Zapier’s getting started guide is adjuvant if you’re new.
• Ask ChatGPT to representation retired logic flows oregon make JSON webhook payloads for much precocious steps. You tin besides paste successful existing Zap oregon Make configuration details and inquire it to optimize oregon troubleshoot them.

Apps Script (a signifier of JavaScript) lets you make automations and integrations wrong Google Sheets.

You tin usage Apps Script to nonstop automated email summaries, archive signifier responses, merge information from aggregate Sheets, oregon trigger Slack alerts erstwhile caller information appears. I usage a publication that automatically fetches writer information from recently published blog posts successful our CMS and logs it to a shared Google Sheet—so I could way who was publishing what, without chasing down teammates oregon manually copying data.

Apps Scripts besides enactment successful Google Docs. Here’s a elemental publication that I tally to automatically adhd WordPress shortcodes into my finished drafts. ChatGPT wrote the publication successful astir 10 seconds flat, and this saves maine astir 10 minutes per nonfiction draft:

How to get started:

• Learn cardinal methods similar SpreadsheetApp, getRange(), and triggers similar onEdit(). You tin research these successful the Apps Script documentation oregon look done examples on GitHub to spot however existent projects are built.
• Build a publication that sends email alerts oregon fetches information from different Sheet. If you’re caller to JavaScript, effort starting with JavaScript.info, MDN’s JS tutorial, or W3Schools JavaScript basics. These volition assistance you recognize the halfway programming concepts that Apps Script relies on.
• Use ChatGPT to write, explain, and debug your Apps Script line-by-line.

If you’ve ever imported email lists oregon GA4 exports, you know: earthy selling information is chaos.

Python’s Pandas room is built to cleanable and alteration that chaos into clean, structured insights. It’s a Python room that makes it casual to filter, clean, and reshape spreadsheet-style data.

I’ve hardly scraped the aboveground of the Pandas library, but I already usage it deduplicate rows, normalize UTM parameters, and automatically reformat earthy exports into the close format for my monthly reporting.

Pandas’ information frames are important for my blog reporting automations.

How to get started:

• Install Jupyter Notebook and Pandas. Jupyter is an interactive coding situation wherever you tin constitute and trial Python codification successful your browser.
• Practice loading CSVs, renaming columns, filtering rows, and filling missing values.
• For hands-on learning, cheque retired the Pandas Getting Started tutorials, Kaggle’s Python micro-course, or Dataquest’s beginner Pandas course.
• Paste a illustration dataset into ChatGPT and inquire it to constitute and explicate a information cleaning pipeline.

Being capable to physique dashboards oregon charts helps you get buy-in faster and uncover patterns that earthy spreadsheets miss.

Looker Studio is 1 of the easiest ways to physique customized dashboards from your selling data—without needing to codification oregon usage BI tools.

Ahrefs present offers a nonstop integration with Looker Studio, truthful you tin propulsion successful SEO metrics similar traffic, backlinks, keyword rankings, and tract audit information to physique real-time dashboards without exporting CSVs. That means little manual reporting and much clip spent analyzing trends crossed content, campaigns, oregon rival domains.

You tin larn however to acceptable it up successful this guide.

How to get started:

• Connect Google Sheets, GA4, oregon Ahrefs straight to Looker Studio. Follow this usher to get started.
• Create visualizations similar barroom charts, pastry charts, and clip bid with calculated fields.
• Use ChatGPT to assistance constitute Looker formulas, blend information sources, oregon troubleshoot breached charts.

Need structured information from websites that don’t connection APIs? Scraping nationalist pages is 1 option—whether you’re gathering lawsuit listings, occupation boards, oregon blog metadata at scale.

(Just support successful mind: not each website wants to beryllium scraped. Always cheque their robots.txt record and presumption of work earlier you start.)

If you privation a harmless commencement project, effort using BeautifulSoup and ChatGPT to scrape publically disposable merchandise information from the Books to Scrape demo site, which is designed specifically for practicing web scraping. Try to extract titles, prices, and prima ratings, past signifier the information into a spreadsheet for analysis. Because the tract is built for learning, it’s a harmless and liable spot to sharpen your scraping skills.

Books to Scrape is simply a tract that actively encourages scraping.

How to get started:

• Learn Python basics and instal libraries similar BeautifulSoup and Requests.
• Practice scraping your ain tract to debar breaking anything. You tin besides trial your skills connected sites that explicitly let scraping—like Books to Scrape, a demo e-commerce tract built for this purpose.
• Ask ChatGPT to make scraper scripts, explicate the logic, and grip pagination oregon user-agent headers.

You’ve astir apt noticed that I similar Python. Python is the backbone of tons of chill workflows—it’s however you spell from spreadsheets and manual processes to existent automation.

Learning immoderate coding connection is evidently a large ongoing commitment, but adjacent a tiny magnitude of fluency tin fto you physique precise chill things.

With assistance from ChatGPT, I’ve automated tasks similar exporting blog show information from Google Search Console and visualizing it for my monthly contented report, downloading favicons for my “top companies” lists, and extracting imaginable keywords from podcast transcripts.

A fistful of my amateur Python projects.

How to get started:

• Learn basal syntax (variables, functions, loops). One large spot to commencement is Replit’s free 100 Days of Python, which combines bite-sized lessons with hands-on coding exercises close successful your browser—no setup required.
• Use os, csv, and re libraries to automate tasks similar renaming, cleaning, and categorizing.
• Ask ChatGPT for Python scripts tailored to your workflow and person it explicate the code.

While Airtable and Notion are no-code tools (hence “non-technical”), they assistance explicate however relational databases work: however antithetic tables connect, however information types power behavior, and however to operation your accusation for casual querying and automation.

These are foundational concepts that not lone marque you amended astatine utilizing Airtable, but besides dramatically amended your spreadsheet crippled and prep you for much precocious tools down the line.

I’ve utilized Airtable successful peculiar to physique lightweight CRMs, programmatic SEO strategies, and full contented absorption systems, susceptible of tracking briefs, drafts, people status, and performance.

Here’s an illustration contented absorption strategy we built for our selling agency, mode backmost in 2017.

How to get started:

• Create a basal in Airtable oregon array in Notion with fields similar status, owner, due date.
• Build views to filter by contented type, author, oregon due date.
• Use ChatGPT to draught formulas, suggest schema improvements, oregon automate with buttons.

Pivot tables are 1 of the astir almighty ways to analyse ample sets of spreadsheet data—without penning a azygous formula.

I utilized to usage them a ton successful my blog reporting: to summarize contented show by author, spot trends crossed antithetic contented types, and adjacent research correlations betwixt people cadence and traffic.

Here’s a existent pivot array from our caller AI successful contented selling survey. The pivot array turns tons of unwieldy information into specific, utile analyses.

How to get started:

• For a step-by-step guide, try Google’s pivot array tutorial oregon this excellent pivot array walkthrough from Ben Collins.
• Ask ChatGPT to assistance explicate however to radical data, cipher percentages, oregon make calculated fields wrong your pivot.

Regex (short for Regular Expressions) is simply a compact connection for uncovering patterns successful text. While it looks intimidating astatine first, it’s 1 of the astir utile method skills you tin prime up—and it’s cleanable for marketers drowning successful messy data.

I’ve utilized regex to cleanable UTM parameters, extract domain names from referral URLs, filter URL lists to find conscionable planetary subfolders, validate email formats, and adjacent propulsion keywords from contented briefs. It’s particularly utile for filtering successful Ahrefs: Site Explorer and Site Audit some judge regex queries:

How to get started:

• Try escaped RegEx investigating tools like Regex101 or RegExr, which item matches and explicate the logic.
• Start small: lucifer email addresses, isolate URL slugs, oregon cleanable run tags.
• Use ChatGPT to constitute expressions for you—just picture the signifier you want, and it tin make and explicate it line-by-line.
• Learn wherever Ahrefs accepts regex.
• For hands-on guides, cheque out Regular Expressions for Beginners and JC Chouinard’s Regex for SEO.

Spreadsheets aren’t conscionable for elemental sums—they’re 1 of the astir almighty (and underutilized) platforms for logic-driven selling automation.

When you harvester formulas similar ARRAYFORMULA, QUERY, REGEXMATCH, and IMPORTRANGE, you’re fundamentally penning lightweight code. It’s structured thinking, modular logic, and information manipulation—all without touching a programming language.

I’ve utilized precocious formulas to automate monthly reporting dashboards, analyze hunt visibility trends, and adjacent build keyword clustering workflows straight successful Google Sheets. This weird nested look is simply a important portion of my blog squad reporting dashboard:

This benignant of fluency opens up immense leverage, particularly erstwhile paired with information from tools similar Ahrefs. In fact, we wrote a full station astir it: 29 Google Sheets formulas each SEO should know.

How to get started:

• Learn however ARRAYFORMULA, QUERY, and FILTER tin regenerate manual copy-pasting with dynamic updates.
• Use IMPORTRANGE to harvester information from antithetic Sheets.
• Try REGEXMATCH oregon REGEXREPLACE to cleanable up messy UTM parameters oregon emblem branded keywords.
• Ask ChatGPT to assistance explicate formulas, debug errors, oregon optimize dilatory Sheets.

Let’s wrap-up with a meta skill: prompting.

There’s a batch of pseudoscience astir prompting ample connection models (LLMs)—people speech astir it similar magic spells. But the information is, determination is simply a subject to bully prompting. It’s a method accomplishment that amplifies each the others connected this list.

Whether you’re asking ChatGPT to constitute Python scripts, explicate SQL joins, oregon debug a formula, however you inquire determines the prime of the response. Below is simply a database of prompting methodologies gleaned from my acquisition and the world literature:

How to get started:

• Provide grounding context. If you’re utilizing ChatGPT oregon Claude, see uploading documents (via Projects) truthful the exemplary has entree to applicable examples, data, oregon benignant guides. This is fundamentally a lightweight mentation of RAG (retrieval augmented generation).
• Use structured prompts. Frame your petition with sections like: overview, examples, what to avoid, and desired output format. This helps the exemplary crushed much intelligibly and present accordant results.
• Use delimiters to abstracted content. Enclose code, illustration data, oregon notation substance successful triple backticks (“ ‘) to debar disorder and amended output formatting.
• Lean into affectional code erstwhile appropriate. Language similar “you’re a world-class Python tutor” oregon “I’m truly stuck—please locomotion maine done this similar I’m new” tin impact however the exemplary prioritizes clarity and tone.
• Learn from champion practices. OpenAI’s guide and Simon Willison’s nonfiction connected prompting offer large frameworks for improving reliability and output quality.

Final thoughts

The champion marketers aren’t conscionable originative thinkers—they’re method capable to really execute, too. And now, with LLMs similar ChatGPT, there’s nary excuse. You person a 24/7 tutor, debugger, and strategist successful your pocket.

Don’t conscionable inquire AI to bash things for you. Ask it to thatch you. That’s however you physique real, durable skills. So prime 1 of these method skills, springiness yourself a play project, and usage AI to level up.