What is Marketing Analytics?
Marketing Analytics focuses on the marketing functions within an industry or company, primarily analyzing results provided by data teams from a marketing perspective and delivering constructive recommendations and guiding reports.
In today's data-saturated world, Marketing Analytics has become a core direction within the Marketing major. By using data analysis to better understand the proportional relationship between market supply and demand of goods, businesses can adopt effective operational strategies to meet market needs and improve economic performance.
Marketing Analytics (or Marketing Research/Market Analysis—different names but similar content) is often offered as a concentration within Marketing, Integrated Marketing Communication, and similar majors; some schools also offer it as a standalone degree.
Why Did Marketing Analytics Emerge?
Marketing Analytics is an emerging discipline, not previously offered at any university domestically, and even in the U.S., it has only appeared in the last 3–4 years.
The emergence of Marketing Analytics was driven by the talent demands of businesses, which ultimately stem from big data.
As everyone knows, data is a goldmine, so someone needs to analyze it. However, traditional enterprise Marketing Analytics couldn't handle such vast amounts of data. Traditional marketing analysts lacking statistical knowledge simply didn't know how to analyze it. Yet statistics majors, while skilled in analyzing experimental results, knew nothing about business or markets.
In addition, both traditional marketing analysts and statistics graduates were clearly deficient in the computer science knowledge needed for data storage systems and increasingly popular open-source analysis software. But computer science students knew almost nothing about business or statistics.
In other words, Marketing Analytics combines knowledge from three fields: business, statistics, and computer science.
It takes a hybrid of the traditional business analyst, statistician, and programmer to become the Marketing Analytics professional suited for the new era.
Thus, companies called on universities—especially business schools—to create programs training individuals with proficiency in business, statistics, and computer science. And so Marketing Analytics came into being.
What Do You Learn in Marketing Analytics?
Typical Marketing Analytics curriculum includes:
Marketing analytics (modeling, segmentation, etc.)
Marketing research (surveys, focus groups, consumer behavior, etc.)
Pricing
Market strategy
Digital marketing
Beyond basic marketing courses, Marketing Analytics primarily focuses on these broad areas:
Data analysis: Proficient use of Excel and more advanced data processing software such as SQL, SAS, SPSS, R for data mining and data visualization.
Market analysis/testing: Forecasting and analyzing market demand based on data to formulate sound marketing strategies.
User interaction: Understanding customer needs through data to improve and manage user experience.
Interaction refers to the interaction process between a product and its users. Designers analyze, predict, define, plan, describe, and explore the interaction mechanisms between products and users, i.e., defining the behavior of artifacts.
Overall, MA courses tend to be more quantitative.
The Difference Between Marketing Analyst and Data Analyst
Marketing analyst: Focuses more on marketing functions within an industry or company, analyzing results from data teams from a market perspective, offering constructive insights, and publishing guidance reports.
Data analyst: Specializes in mining and analyzing data from both structured and unstructured sources (i.e., "big data").
Marketing analysts and data analysts often collaborate, though data analysts require stronger coding skills.
What Does a Marketing Analyst Do?
1. Collect information on competitor strategies, market conditions, and consumer demographics.
2. Study customer opinions, purchasing habits, preferences, and needs/demands.
3. Create and evaluate methods to accumulate data, including surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and polls.
4. Analyze data using statistical programs, predictive analytics, and other data-driven tools.
5. Develop tactics and metrics to assess the effectiveness of existing marketing, advertising, and communication programs.
6. Monitor and forecast marketing/sales trends; highlight opportunities for new initiatives and promotions.
7. Translate complex data results into text, tables, graphics, and data visualizations.
Marketing Analyst Career Prospects
Due to the rapid growth of big data, the marketing analyst role has quickly become a hot job. It is predicted that marketing analyst positions will grow by 32% from 2017 to 2027, much faster than the average for all occupations.
Today's marketing analysts 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 factors that must be deeply explored.
After graduating with a Marketing degree, students typically enter an advertising agency of varying size or a company's marketing department. From there, your title can progress from assistant, consultant, executive, director, manager, planner, specialist all the way to Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Likewise, your career may also branch into the advertising and media world—advertising, brand management, digital marketing, international marketing, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and more. You’ll interact daily with diverse people and departments, such as consumers, designers, and agencies. The work is colorful and varied, allowing you to engage with all kinds of ads, invite celebrities to endorse products, and fully unleash your creativity.
In the U.S., marketing analysts earn an average annual salary of $63k. Worldwide, salaries range from $36k to $77k.
Regionally, marketing analysts earn the highest salaries on the U.S. West Coast. According to PayScale, the top 5 highest-paying cities for marketing analysts in 2017 were Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Minneapolis—three of which are West Coast cities.
For MA salary, Glassdoor reports a national average annual income of $62,829.
Introduction to Popular Marketing Analytics Programs
Marketing Analytics programs emphasize students' data analysis skills; students often excel in computer modeling, time series application, etc., requiring a solid quantitative and computing foundation—suitable for applicants with a science background.
Although these programs are housed in business schools, their curricula lean toward using data mining/processing to analyze and explore consumer behavior preferences, aiming to provide evidence-based guidance and technical support for businesses.
Many schools include Marketing Analytics under the broader Marketing major, but direct marketing program rankings aren't fully representative. So here we mainly introduce several of the most popular Marketing Analytics-related master's programs and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of applying to each.
1. Northwestern University
MC program, Marketing Analytics concentration, Medill School
Strengths: This program is outstanding—the Northwestern name and Medill's flagship offering. Both in reputation and rigor, it's top-tier, with the highest industry employment rate.
Weaknesses: Difficult to get into, high tuition—$20k+ per semester (Quarter system, 5 quarters total), and it's a 15-month program, so students must start job hunting as soon as classes begin.
2. University of Georgia
Marketing Research program, Terry College of Business
Strengths: Along with Northwestern IMS, this is a Tier 1 program with excellent reputation and very good employment prospects; generous scholarships, with some students even receiving full funding.
Weaknesses: Relatively competitive admissions; courses are very intense with difficult assignments.
3. University of Rochester
Marketing Analytics program, Simon Business School
Strengths: A highly quantitative program with a strong academic atmosphere; renamed from Marketing to Marketing Analytics a few years ago, and importantly, it is eligible for STEM OPT extension; affordable tuition and living costs.
Weaknesses: Remote location with few large companies nearby, so job hunting is more challenging compared to similar programs in big cities.
4. Bentley University
Marketing Analytics program, Business School
Strengths: Another STEM OPT extension-eligible program; strong local reputation in Boston with abundant internship opportunities; the school's career services are renowned.
Weaknesses: Originally Bentley College, recently changed to a university, so it's not widely known domestically.
5. New York University
IMC program, Marketing Analytics concentration, School of Professional Studies (SPS)
Strengths: NYU's prestigious halo; relatively lower admissions difficulty compared to other programs; prime location with numerous networking and job opportunities; program emphasizes practical experience, enabling students to gain solid skills that can be immediately applied at work.
Weaknesses: Varying student quality; while the school's name has been updated to SPS (School of Professional Studies), it still gets criticized; relatively high living and tuition costs.
Essential Skills for a Marketing Analyst
Specialized courses: In addition to foundational marketing courses, it is necessary to focus on advanced statistics and information science courses, as quantitative skills are essential for employment.
Hard skills:
Statistical analysis software (e.g., R, SAS, SPSS or STATA)
SQL databases and database query languages
Programming skills
Survey/query software
Business intelligence and reporting software
Data mining
Data visualization
Essential soft skills:
Analytical problem-solving: Accurately process large volumes of complex data and translate them into measurable results.
Critical thinking: Maintain an innate curiosity about consumers; evaluate all available information to make key financial decisions.
Effective communication: Build strong relationships with consumers, respondents, researchers, clients, and management; be able to explain your analysis in plain language so even non-experts can understand.
Industry knowledge: Understand your chosen industry as well as data collection, analysis, and methodology.
Marketing Analyst Application Requirements
Marketing program applicants should have an undergraduate background that supports marketing functions, such as statistics, media, or communications. A market-related background, media communication, or business English background is also necessary. Applicants with a science/engineering background account for a minority, while those with a statistics background make up the majority.
If your undergraduate background is in fine arts design, it's important to appropriately package relevant experiences like advertising design when applying. Statistics/math students should highlight the advantages of their data statistics, modeling, and analysis skills.
On average, students admitted to marketing master's programs have 2–3 years of work experience. Among the Top 100 universities offering marketing master's programs, only about 7 or 8 do not require work experience (though it may be preferred).
