To pick up some marketing ideas that will start moving the needle on your startup, read a small book. You'd probably already know enough to start iterating on 3 or more techniques.

To get a marketer to pick up the most basic coding skills, start with flow control and variables. It could be a month before you're useful, in one language only. Then understand HTML, SQL, the server-side language, maybe jQuery, plus maybe security so you don't start adding lots of useful but dangerous code. Understand performance, so you don't kill the server with a loop in customer-facing code. Not just be able to click a "add new test" button, but integrate ABingo without hassling the rest of the team (if that's the best tool for the job). The point is: whatever it takes. You need to know enough technical concepts to be fast and loose with whatever will move the needle best. You're making few marketing decisions, but many technical ones.

So: fully agreed with your other comment. Marketers will be well-served by getting into some of the code, because it'll enable them greatly. But if I were hiring a marketer->coder, I'd be a lot more wary.

Up until today, I've disliked the growth hacker "thing". But these posts have clarified it for me. I'm generally irritated at the non-bschool vibe around here, but on this issue I'll lean heavily on the coder side.