A Day in the Life

Marketing analytics for the uninitiated sounds much more like a assemblage of buzzwords than profession. However, marketing analytics as a job field and as a career involves very real work. The difficulty of explaining it lies not with finding what it is involved in but rather what it isn't involved in. Instead of narrowing the search I will instead try to highlight some of the most important areas that employees find themselves in.

Refining Data

As discussed in previous posts, marketing analytics is search data for insights to drive marketing decisions. It should come at no surprise then that analysts can see whole days swallowed up by data cleaning. Data cleaning is simple taking the data in it's raw form and tweaking, shrinking, and refining it enough to be analyzed. This step requires many hours in a variety of programs doing things such as throwing out incomplete entries, clearing up errors, removing unnecessary data and so on.

Figure 1-SPSS

Searching for Insights

After the Data has been cleaned it is then run through a variety of software and models depending upon the user, goal, and resources. Picking the model is as important as picking the right software for the job. A program like Tableau is excellent for visualizing and presenting the data. Meanwhile a program such as SPSS can be used for raw statistical insights such as regression.

Show and Tell

One of the most unique aspects of a marketing analytics professional's day is linking traditional marketing with the in depth data analysis process mentioned above. Insights and discoveries have no value if they cannot be explained to and applied by those on the marketing side. Marketing analysts must not only explain what has been discovered in the data but also how it can be used. In many ways

Figure 2-Tableau offers many features for visualizing data

marketing analytics professionals are ambassadors for the larger world of analytics and data 

Though this a reductive view of the field and there are countless nuances in any area of employment I hope this helps crystallize what someone involved in marketing analytics might spend their day doing.


Figure 1
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