How to Boost Your Marketing Analytics Skills
Subscribe.
These two curated newsletters gather up a slew of great articles and resources about applied analytics, especially applied marketing analytics.
The Full Monty: This is a curated newsletter and/or a podcast. There are plenty of analytics-related articles mentioned here and a ton of other stuff of interest to marketers.
Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View: This Sunday newsletter leans heavy on AI and machine learning, but has irresistible, useful reading for marketers and SAAS people.
Follow experts on Twitter.
Need to get your analytics insights but the spoonful ― or maybe by the tweet? No problem. Follow anyone mentioned in this article, plus at least these three accounts (listed in no particular order):
Jeffalytics@jeffalytics: Conducting experiments in digital marketing and analytics.
Avinash Kaushik@avinash: Author, “Web Analytics 2.0 & Web Analytics: An Hour A Day”
Feras Alhlou @ferasa: Co-author of “Google Analytics Breakthrough: From Zero to Business Impact.”
Join marketing analytics groups on LinkedIn.
Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Marketing and Retail (63,580 members). How they describe their group: “This group provides a platform for experts to discuss analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) as relevant to marketing, media, and retail.”
Better Marketing with Analytics (15,104 members). “Our mission is to provide a place for people who want to learn about and use analytics for marketing. Meet other marketing people involved with analytics to have discussions and make connections. Whether you are someone who wants to use Analytics to improve your marketing efforts or someone who is already an expert of how to create and use it, this is the place for you.”
Big Data, Analytics, Business Intelligence & Visualization Experts Community (210,797 members). “A premier community for both existing expert professionals and companies researching the convergence of big data analytics and discovery, Hadoop, data warehousing, cloud, unified data architectures, digital marketing, visualization, and business intelligence.”
Web Analytics Professionals (21,607 members). “Biggest analytics group in LinkedIn. Designed for analytics professionals. Lots of jobs, insights, benchmarks, industry leaders, tool providers, and many other user types. Your way to get in to the analytics industry.”
Get certified.
Google Analytics Qualification (for individuals). To become Google Analytics Qualified, you’ll have to pass the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) exam. To get access to the IQ Test, you’ll need to register with Google Partners. Joining Partners is free, and once you’re registered you’ll have access to a library of resources, including the Google Analytics for Beginners and Advanced Google Analytics tracks. Finish those training programs, take the 90-minute exam, get at least 80% on it, and you’re in!
The Direct Marketing Association’s marketing analytics certificate. One of my old NYU Master’s Degree Professors, the super smart Perry Drake, teaches this DMA course. The class is just 8-9 hours long. Costs $ 479 for DMA members and $ 799 for non-members.
General Assembly’s Data Analysis online courses. I came within an eyelash of taking this course a few years ago. It’s still on my wish list. 11-week course. $ 1,250.
University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education’s Certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics. 8 month curriculum; $ 3,297.
PennState’s Graduate Certificate in Marketing Analytics. This is a hefty program, with hefty requirements (4 full courses) and a hefty price tag ($ 11,160). But you can spread the coursework out, and if you really want to master data like a pro, seriously consider this program.
Listen.
Our own Nathan Isaacs has two recent podcasts about marketing analytics:
Kaushik’s site also has a page of the podcasts/webinars he’s appeared on recently. And don’t forget Audible for all the analytics books you don’t have time to read.
Watch.
TED Talks are a fantastic resource. And while the number of TED Talks expressly about marketing analytics is pretty small, there are a slew of talks about data.
Here are just a few of my favorites:
TED Talks are crazy good at one particular thing: Getting you to think about how analytics can be applied. This will add depth to your understanding of the more mundane parts of marketing analytics. It also helps you see your analytics work with fresh eyes.
Visualize.
How you present your data is almost as important as what you learn from it. Witness how hours of work can fall flat if you show a C-level executive a complex data visualization that doesn’t make sense to them. You standing there saying “but this, but that” won’t help if they don’t understand the chart you showed them.
So get smart. Clean up your charts by knowing how to present data in more elegant ways. Make your reports actionable and shareable.