What Skills Should Marketing Analysts Have?
Marketing Analysts should have a strong foundation in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, social media marketing (SMM), pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and other digital marketing skills. They should also understand industry lingo and paid search campaigns like Google Ads. Marketing Analysts will spend a considerable amount of time researching and optimizing campaigns, and they may be required to use tools like Moz or Ahrefs depending on their employer. A Marketing Analyst must also have a basic understanding of data analysis and using Google Analytics.
Marketing Analysts must be able to think critically, solve complex problems in data and in marketing, and understand how a specific industry functions and changes over time. They need to know how to model and understand their audience, analyze customer behaviors, and perform competitor analysis. They must be able to translate all of their information from research, analysis, and problem-solving exercises into quantifiable and understandable results. They’ll need to effectively communicate those concepts with their team and their clients. Marketing Analysts might also lead focus groups, depending on their employer, and will need to be able to clearly and effectively communicate in those scenarios as well. A Marketing Analyst is most successful when they can think empathetically and build strong relationships with consumers, fellow researchers, clients, and management.
Tableau and Excel are the most common tools used for analysis in the marketing industry, and any Marketing Analyst should be proficient in each. As they move up the ranks, they might find that learning the basics of R or Python will help them perform their analysis more efficiently and open up access to other tools such as Jupyter Notebook or RStudio. Some Marketing Analyst positions will require basic programming skills and data mining using SQL, R, SAS, or Python.
Learn the Skills You Need to Become a Marketing Analyst
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Digital Marketing
Digital marketing utilizes the internet and web based digital platforms to promote products or services. This includes the use of digital advertisements, social media, brand identities, and more.
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Excel
Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft that runs on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It is used for calculation, graphing, data visualization, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro programming.
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SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic using tactics like keywords and backlinks to create organic, high-ranking search engine results.
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Google Analytics
Google Analytics measures your advertising return on investment while tracking your video, Flash, social networking, and applications. Google Analytics works by tracking website activity through a block of JavaScript code that the web developer, designer, or website owner, embeds within pages on a website.
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Tableau
Tableau is a data visualization tool. This tool can be used to simplify raw data, reformat data, and perform efficient data analysis. Tableau can also be used to create data visualizations, dashboards, presentations, and worksheets.
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Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms to connect with your target audience or end-user. Social media marketing aims to build brand awareness and loyalty, increase sales, convert leads, and drive website traffic. Social media management can be done through content creation, keyword and target audience research, and the use of social media management platforms like Buffer and Hootsuite.
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Email Marketing
Email marketing is the practice of sending a commercial message to a group of a target audience using email. These emails might be advertisements, business requests, offers, services, sales solicitations, newsletters, donation requests, petition signature requests, and other calls to action.
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Google Ads
Google Ads is the new name for Google AdWords. It is an online advertising service that allows advertisers to pay for the display of brief advertisements, video content, listings, and calls to action within the Google Display Network (GDN) to web users. You'll see Google ads on the GDN which includes Google Search, YouTube, and over 2 million other sites.