Marketing analytics is a fast-growing and lucrative field that combines data, technology, and creativity to optimize marketing strategies and outcomes. If you want to break into this exciting career, you need to take the first step: assess your current skills and identify your learning goals.
Before you dive into the vast and diverse world of marketing analytics, you need to have a clear understanding of your own skills and abilities. What are you good at, and what do you need to improve? What are your interests and passions, and how do they align with the different domains of marketing analytics? You can use online tools like self-assessments, quizzes, or surveys to help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in areas such as data analysis, statistics, programming, visualization, communication, and business acumen.
First Steps to Break into Marketing Analytics: 1. Educational Foundation 2. Technical Skills 3. Build a Portfolio 4. Networking 5. Internships or Entry-level Roles 6. Continuous Learning 7. Online Presence 8. Soft Skills Development 9. Industry Research
Before diving into marketing analytics, understand your skills, interests, and alignment with different domains. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses in areas like data analysis, statistics, programming, visualization, communication, and business acumen. Use online tools like self-assessments to help. This self-awareness will guide your learning and career path in marketing analytics.
Once you have a realistic picture of your current skill level, you need to learn the foundational concepts and techniques of marketing analytics. You don't have to master everything at once, but you should have a solid grasp of the core principles and methods that underpin marketing analytics. You can start by learning the basics of marketing analytics, such as how to define marketing objectives, how to measure and track marketing performance, how to use data to generate insights and recommendations, and how to communicate and present your findings effectively.
Take stock the different domains, whether it be paid marketing, SEO, or email. Understand how they can each be individually successful, but more importantly how each tactic interacts and contributes to a larger marketing strategy.
To start your career in marketing analytics, learn foundational concepts and techniques. Focus on core principles like defining marketing objectives, measuring performance, using data for insights, and effective communication. Mastering these basics will provide a solid foundation for more advanced topics.
One of the best ways to start your marketing analytics learning journey is to understand the media types, what they do, and how they are measured. You can begin by understanding what Call to Action or response each media type is likely to drive and how that media type is calculated. A perfect foundational way to learn is to start with campaign execution, build programming and targeted workflows, and measure campaigns. Natural learning from setting up campaigns also includes setting up the measurement of those campaigns: KPIS, Measurements, control cells, and more. I recommend understanding the channels, programming the associate campaigns, and setting up the measures and KPIs. This would be a good learning journey for the basics.
Marketing analytics involves using various tools and platforms to collect, process, analyze, and visualize data. Depending on your goals and preferences, you may want to focus on learning specific tools and platforms that suit your needs and interests. For example, you may want to learn how to use Google Analytics to measure web traffic and conversions, or how to use Tableau to create interactive dashboards and reports. You can also explore other tools and platforms that are relevant to marketing analytics, such as Excel, SQL, Python, R, Power BI, or Adobe Analytics.
Focus on learning specific tools and platforms that suit your needs and interests in marketing analytics. Consider Google Analytics for web traffic and conversions, Tableau for interactive dashboards, and Excel, SQL, Python, R, Power BI, or Adobe Analytics for other analytics needs.
These are all great comments by the other experts. I would also recommend learning the various analytics methods that help you generate insights in your chosen toolset. For example, categorize the different types of analytics, such as conjoint modeling, segmentation, moving, or weighted averages for forecasting, and see if you can perform these tasks using the related tools. This way, you learn about the marketing problem, the analytics problem set, the method, and the feature functionality of the tools.
One of the best ways to showcase your skills and demonstrate your value as a marketing analyst is to build your portfolio and network. You can create your own projects or join online challenges or competitions that allow you to apply your skills and knowledge to real-world marketing problems. You can also share your work on platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, or Github, and get feedback from peers and experts. Additionally, you can network with other marketing analysts and professionals, and learn from their experiences and insights. You can join online communities, forums, or groups, or attend events, webinars, or workshops related to marketing analytics.
To showcase your skills as a marketing analyst, build a portfolio with real-world projects and join online challenges. Share your work on platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, or Github for feedback. Network with other analysts and professionals to learn and grow. Join online communities, forums, or groups, and attend events, webinars, or workshops in marketing analytics.
The field of marketing analytics is constantly evolving and changing, so you need to keep learning and improving your skills and knowledge. You can follow the latest trends and developments in marketing analytics, and stay updated on the best practices and standards. You can also take online courses, certifications, or degrees that can help you advance your career and expand your opportunities. You can also seek mentorship or guidance from experienced marketing analysts who can help you grow and succeed.
Very often, an excellent way to break into marketing analytics is to work in the campaign management or digital conversation functions that program the campaigns and journey on behalf of marketing. While this is more of a data operations role(campaign analyst role), this helps you learn the data, how marketers think about testing, and how they measure their campaigns. With this knowledge, you will be invaluable to the marketing analytics team in the future.
Take time to understand the fundamentals of marketing and why a campaign was created and how to measure success. Evaluate campaigns you see in the marketplace and ask yourself how would you analyze this website, commercial or digital ad. Then share this thinking in an interview to show the company your critical thinking skills, which most likely will open the door for you to work in the space and get hands on experience analyzing marketing campaigns. Also don't forget that marketing is a segmented space where you can focus on niche types of marketing (website, social, search to name a few) so take some time to think about what type of marketing you want to analyze can help narrow the focus of your job search.
Develop the uncanny ability to predict the future, it`s your ticket to foreseeing trends, anticipating marketing moves, and generally being a statistical soothsayer.