What Exactly Are BA and MA?
Business Analytics
Simply put, Business Analytics is the analysis of data possessed by companies and organizations, not just market data, but also user behavior and preferences, with the goal of extracting useful information for business decisions and activities.
More and more companies, especially tech firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter abroad, and Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Sina domestically, are placing increasing importance on data collection and analysis.
In the eyes of these tech giants, the world has entered the Big Data era. The ability to leverage data for decision-making is a requirement of the new age. Although different companies may define the responsibilities of their business analysts differently, the core always involves "data analysis" to maintain business operations or manage small projects.
Hmm... this feels a bit like a major incident that happened on a social media giant not long ago...
Yuzu didn't say anything~
Marketing Analytics
Marketing Analytics focuses more on the marketing function within an industry or company, primarily analyzing results provided by the data team from a market perspective, offering constructive recommendations and issuing guidance reports.
In today's data-saturated world, Marketing Analytics has become a core concentration within the Marketing major. It uses data analysis to gain a better understanding of the supply-demand relationship in the market, enabling the adoption of correct business strategies to meet market needs and improve the economic efficiency of business operations.
Marketing Analytics (also called Marketing Research or Market Analysis, with different names but similar curriculum) is usually a concentration within Marketing, Integrated Marketing Communication, etc.; some schools also offer it as a standalone major.
What Do You Study in BA and MA?
Business Analytics
This major is entirely job-oriented, with practical courses: basically, fundamental practical programming (VBA + SQL) + statistics (using statistical software or programming for analysis) + some business management knowledge. Therefore, almost all schools' BA curricula include: data analysis, programming, optimization, statistics and probability, calculus, and more.
BA is an interdisciplinary field combining math, computer science, and business management.
Marketing Analytics
In addition to basic marketing courses, Marketing Analytics primarily covers these areas:
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Data Analysis: Proficiently using Excel and more advanced data processing software like SQL, SAS, SPS, R for data mining and data visualization.
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Market Analysis/Testing: Predicting and analyzing market demand based on data, and proposing correct marketing strategies.
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User Interaction: Understanding customer needs through data to improve and manage user experience.
Interaction refers to the interactive process between a product and its users. Designers analyze, predict, define, plan, describe, and explore the interaction mechanisms between a product and its users, essentially defining the behavior of the designed object.
In short, MA courses tend to be more quantitative.
What Do BA/MA Graduates Do?
Business Analytics
Wherever there is data, data analysis is needed. Currently, there is high demand in industries like IT, internet, gaming, telecommunications, finance, pharmaceuticals, consulting, and retail domestically. Job titles may vary across industries: market researcher, data analyst, consultant, statistical analyst, data miner, etc.
In summary, a BA should be a data analysis expert with in-depth knowledge of business models and a technical background.
Descriptive Analytics: Transforming data into information to better understand the competitive landscape and development level.
Predictive Analytics: Using modeling, machine learning, and data mining to forecast by analyzing historical data.
Prescriptive Analytics: Finding optimal decisions through simulation and optimization.
How does Amazon know how many of which product sold today? — Descriptive
How does Amazon know I want to buy this kind of book? — Predictive
How can Amazon get me to buy more and more in the future? — Prescriptive
The primary value of BA is to use data to generate the above reports, and leverage business knowledge to provide rational decision-making recommendations.
Marketing Analytics
The main tasks of Marketing Analytics include:
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Collecting competitor strategies, market conditions, and consumer demographic data
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Studying customer opinions, purchasing habits, preferences, and needs
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Creating and evaluating methods for accumulating data, including surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and polls
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Analyzing data using statistical programs, predictive analysis, and other data-driven tools
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Developing tactics and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of existing marketing, advertising, and communication programs
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Monitoring and forecasting marketing/sales trends; highlighting opportunities for new initiatives and promotions
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Translating complex data results into text, tables, charts, and data visualizations
Career Prospects for BA/MA
Business Analytics
BA graduates primarily become data analysts and programmers, specializing in data collection, organization, and analysis across various industries, and using data to conduct industry research, assessment, and forecasting. Thus, common job titles include business analyst, market analyst, risk analyst, model analyst, and so on.
Common industries include enterprises and institutions, group companies, IT, finance, securities, consulting and planning, covering economic analysis, market research, intelligence studies, data collection and aggregation, and related fields. Frequent employers include: government, foreign investment banks, commercial banks, investment companies like GlaxoSmithKline (China) Investment Co., Ltd.; computer companies like IBM, HP; mobile phone industry like Apple, Samsung; internet companies like Google, Yahoo, Baidu; professional third-party data analysis companies; large chain retail institutions like Wal-Mart, Carrefour, etc.
Of course, the only requirement is to be at a large company, because small startups often don't need data analysis.
Marketing Analytics
Due to the rapid development of big data, marketing analyst has quickly become a hot job. It is predicted that marketing analyst positions will grow by 32% from 2017 to 2027, a growth rate much higher than the average for all occupations.
Today, as a marketing analyst, you need to handle millions of factors that may affect product demand. Traditional structured data is gradually being replaced by messy unstructured data. Mobile purchasing habits, social media data, and more are all factors that need to be deeply explored.
After graduating with a Marketing degree, students typically join an advertising agency, large or small, or a company's marketing department. From there, your career path can progress from assistant, consultant, executive, director, manager, planner, specialist, all the way up to Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Similarly, your career may enter the advertising and media circle, including advertising, brand management, digital marketing, international marketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and more. Not only will you interact with a variety of people and departments every day, such as consumers, designers, and ad agencies, making the work diverse and colorful, you'll also get to encounter all kinds of advertisements daily, invite celebrities to endorse products, and fully unleash your creativity.
In the U.S., the average annual salary for marketing analysts is $63k. Worldwide, salaries range from $36k to $77k.
However, geographically, marketing analysts on the U.S. West Coast earn the highest. According to PayScale, the top 5 highest-paying cities for marketing analysts in 2017 were Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Minneapolis, with West Coast cities accounting for three of them.
According to Glassdoor, the average annual income for MA in the U.S. is $62,829.
Application Requirements for BA/MA
Business Analytics
As an interdisciplinary field, Business Analytics requires applicants to have both a business background and a quantitative background. However, since most universities at home and abroad do not directly offer BA as an undergraduate major, students with a business background need to focus on supplementing coursework and practical experience in math, statistics, and programming. Students with a background in math, statistics, or other quantitative fields need to enhance their research or internship experience in business analytics and undergo systematic interview training.
Specifically, academically, BA programs expect or require applicants to have at least one year of advanced mathematics and linear algebra, knowledge of probability and statistics, and some programming ability, such as having learned at least one programming language or being able to use data analysis software. In terms of practical experience, research projects or internships that align well with BA include but are not limited to credit card user behavior analysis, new song recommendation systems, business operations analysis and optimization, web data analysis, identification of "water army" on Weibo, etc.
Marketing Analytics
Marketing program admissions require that applicants' undergraduate study support marketing functions, such as statistics, media, communications, etc. A background in marketing, media communications, or business English is also necessary. Applicants with a STEM background are in the minority; most have a statistics background.
If an applicant studied art design as an undergraduate, they should properly highlight their background in advertising design. Students from statistics/math should highlight their strengths in data statistics and modeling analysis.
For master's in marketing, admitted students typically have an average of 2-3 years of work experience. Among the top 100 schools offering master's in marketing, only about 7 or 8 do not require work experience (though it may be preferred).
Yuzu's Advice
Finally, Yuzu wants to remind everyone that both BA and MA fall under STEM!
International students in STEM fields get 36 months of OPT when job hunting, meaning more chances for H1B lottery compared to other majors.
