What do you do if you need to collaborate with data analysts as a product marketer?

Former Head of Data here. Data analysts and non-data colleagues work best together when the PMM brings a hypothesis to the table and the analyst has room to explore that hypothesis. Allowing them to dig into the concept and prove, disprove or identify new avenues that might not have been considered. It's even more effective if you have a less-granular metric that you want to dissect. For example, you start with an activation problem for your free trial users and you ask the analyst to explore this issue and see if they can find trends, behaviours or metrics between different groups. In this scenario, you can bring customer insight (what those groups look like, anecdotal info to test) to the table and give them a direction to follow.

When collaborating with data analysts as a product marketer, ensure clear communication of marketing objectives, provide access to relevant data and metrics, seek their expertise in data interpretation and analysis, align on KPIs and performance metrics, collaborate on data-driven insights for targeting, segmentation, and campaign optimization, and regularly review and iterate based on data-driven feedback to enhance marketing strategies and achieve business goals effectively.

1. Define Goals: Clearly outline your marketing goals and what data insights you need from the analysts. 2. Speak the Same Language: Gain a basic understanding of data analysis terms to facilitate communication. 3. Ask the Right Questions: Prepare specific questions for the analysts to ensure they deliver the most relevant data. 4. Share Your Expertise: Explain your marketing initiatives and target audience to help analysts tailor their insights. 5. Regular Communication: Schedule regular meetings to discuss findings, address roadblocks, and iterate on strategies. 6. Visualize the Data: Collaborate on transforming data into clear and actionable visuals for presentations or reports.

The first step of any successful working relationship is establishing trust. Being transparent and open about goals, knowledge strengths and possible gap, best ways to communicate helps to build that trust. Second step is understanding importance of roles. Data is extremely important for decision making, and that can impact business growth, retention, lifetime value, new territories' strategy and pretty much any strategic decision in the business. Great PMMs understand the business, market, stakeholders and customers quite well, since the role is highly cross-functional. Third step: agree on a timeline, deliverables, track progress on a joint tool/spreadsheet and communicate regularly. Adapt, compromise and change as needed.

This is an extremely important step: what does success looks like. If you have a shared excel or powerpoint, write that on top of the file or a slide you open frequently. Whenever you feel the project is digressing too far from the original goals and objectives, you can stop and reevaluate if the scope needs to change or redirect efforts in the desired direction.

Consider the specific metrics you want to improve. Whether it's customer acquisition, conversion rates, or ROI, providing this clarity helps data analysts focus on the most relevant data sources and analysis techniques. Ensure that your objectives are realistic and achievable within the scope of available data and resources. This will enable that the collaboration remains productive and actionable.

This collaboration should be a win-win-win situation for marketers, analysts, and the organization. Let's see how: Work together to create unique storytelling that integrates data insights into your marketing narratives. This shared language helps in crafting stories that are grounded in data-driven realities. Collaborate with data analysts to explore consumer psychology analytics, going beyond basic demographic and behavioral data. Analyze sentiment, linguistic patterns, and psychographic data to understand the deeper motivations and emotional triggers of your target audience, enabling more impactful marketing messages.

Learning from colleagues with different skill sets is one of the best actions a Product Marketing professional can make to become a better professional. More specifically, learning from Data Analysts can be eye-opening in the sense of validating things like messaging, buyer journey and more. For a Data Analyst, understanding more about the business, the industry or the audience from the PMM lenses can help improve the way they share information back to the business, track other key metrics and become laser-focused on PMM's priorities.

Collaborating with data analysts is my favorite part of the job. It's always insightful and fun, allowing me to learn in the field continuously. Leveraging each other's strengths is key. By sharing ideas and insights, our collaboration becomes incredibly productive, blending analytical depth with the product marketing strategy for impactful results.

Regularly conduct cross-functional meetings that include data analysts, product managers, customer service representatives, and other stakeholders to review data insights from all angles. This holistic approach ensures that strategies are informed by a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey and product lifecycle.

I try to understand the tools and techniques used by our data analysts, enabling me to ask the right questions and interpret insights in the context of our marketing objectives. Maintaining open communication is key, with regular check-ins to discuss progress, share insights, and align on the next steps.

Turning insights into action is key! We kicked off 'Insight Ideathons,' where teams brainstorm creative marketing leaps drawn from the latest data. It's like a hackathon, but for market strategies - supercharging innovation and team spirit. ???? And 'Data Dives,' our monthly deep-dive sessions, became legendary. We don't just skim the surface; we explore the ocean of data with our analysts as guides, using tools like Google Analytics and Tableau. These dives uncover hidden treasures in data seas, directly steering our marketing ship! ????