Marketing Career Focus: Marketing Analytics
Each of these Marketing Career Focus posts will cover a specific track or specialty track within the MS in Marketing degree program that can lead to the acquisition of many, if not all, the skills needed to successfully enter the career under discussion.
MS Marketing – Marketing Analytics Specialty Track
In addition to completing the MS in Marketing’s fifteen credit hours of core courses, students pursuing this track must do nine credit hours of core track courses, which consist of a database marketing, Spreadsheet modeling and a Business Intelligence course. The remaining eighteen credit hours are from the analytics sub track and tend to be courses on topics such as advanced statistics, econometrics, advanced modeling, machine learning and Big Data analytics. Details of the courses in the degree and this sub-track are available at the UT Dallas Graduate Catalog page. Our program prepares students to enter this dynamic and high growth field by providing quantitative skills but also managerial critical thinking and consumer behavior knowledge. Our courses offer a wide range of learning opportunities with software and programming skills such as SQL, SAS, SPSS, Python-Machine learning, Watson Analytics and web analytics platform.
Indeed.com is a good job search site because at a glance it shows average salaries, years of experience for many mid-level positions, quantity of available jobs, as well as locations. I looked at 10 to 15 job descriptions from major companies and the skills most frequently mentioned at such employers as Amazon, United Airlines, Wunderman, AT& T, Citibank, and others. However, there is NO substitute for your doing your own searches and analyses.
What does a marketing analytics manager do?
Chief marketing officers are becoming increasingly data-driven. That is driving the demand for these specialists. According to PayScale.com:
Analytics managers are responsible for coordinating analytics tasks for their organization, including creating effective strategies to collect data, analyze information, conduct research, and implement analytics solutions for their products or services.
This professional is involved in creating regressions, predictive and segmentation models.
Average years of experience and salary average
Analyst role, one to two years of experience: salaries range from $55,000 to $75,000.
Manager-level position, three to seven years of experience: salaries range from $75,000 to $120,000.
(Note: students requiring visa sponsorship tend to receive less money.)
What is the size of the job market?
Searching for “marketing analytics” on Indeed.com yields more than 32,000 job postings. Limiting the search to “marketing analytics manager” yields fewer jobs (530), but these are much higher paying. The demand for qualified individuals in this field means that companies are willing to pay more for talent.
Typical marketing analytics job description
From a United Airlines posting for “Manager – Data Analytics”
Overview
The analyst is responsible for developing analyses, processes, and reporting that deliver actionable insights. This position will also partake in cross-functional projects that require significant analytical and data-mining skills. Large-scale data analysis will leverage SQL, R, Spotfire, Tableau, and other analytical tools. Activities may include visualization, experimental design, performance assessment, and predictive analytics.
Responsibilities
- Solve a variety of complex business, sales, marketing, pricing or operational problems by analyzing data and market trends.
- Data mining and analysis for ad hoc projects will include: exploratory data analysis, predictive analytics, and data visualization.
- Develop insightful dashboards that management can use to produce informed business decisions.
- Understand and utilize available tools to solve evolving business problems.
- Effectively communicate findings and complex analytical solutions to upper management.
Education
- Background in quantitative discipline (Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Engineering, Operations Research) preferred
- Master’s degree in analytical discipline preferred
Knowledge/Skills Required
- Willingness to expand upon known programming skills and continually develop/learn new technical skills in support of new tools/methods
- Significant experience with SQL and relational databases
- High degree of proficiency in Excel
- Strong analysis, data manipulation, and problem-solving skills
- Desire to attack complex data sets
Experience Required
- 4+ years of experience as Data Analyst, Business Intelligence Developer, or a related analytical role
Preferred
- Experience with Big Data and Hadoop
- Familiar with machine learning
- Exposure to R, Python, JavaScript
- Experience with Spotfire
- Management consulting background
These charts from Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com provide examples for this specialty and average salaries in the career area.
| Top skills Mentioned by at least 10 major companies with this job title posting |
Courses See the syllabus for each course for relevant skills, as not all skills are taught in every course. |
|---|---|
| “Connecting the dots” to make data-based recommendations |
MKT 6310 Consumer Behavior Science and Practice MKT 6339 Capstone Marketing Decision-Making MECO 6312 Applied Econometrics and Time Series Analysis MKT 6345 Quantitative Marketing Decision-Making |
| Advanced Excel, SQL (very important), SPSS, R, SAS, Tableau, Python, Machine learning |
Excel: OPRE 6332 Spreadsheet Modeling and Analytics SQL: MIS 6320 Database Foundations R: MIS 6356 Business Analytics With R MKT 6337 Predictive Analytics for Data Science SPSS: MKT 6309 Marketing Data Analysis and Research Tableau: MIS 6380 Data Visualization Machine Learning: BUAN 6340 Programming for Data Science Python: BUAN 6340 Programming for Data Science |
| Econometric and Predictive Models. Regressions, segmentation and attrition |
MKT 6337 Predictive Analytics for Data Science MECO 6312 Applied Econometrics and Time Series Analysis |
| Secondary: Web and social media analytics |
MKT 6352 Marketing Web Analytics and Insights MKT 6384 Advanced Marketing Web Analytics and Insights |
| Additional advanced skills suggested for students to learn, especially for international students, in order to make themselves even more marketable |
Python: BUAN 6340 Programming for Data Science Machine Learning: BUAN 6341 Applied Machine Learning |
Is SAS still important?
One question that we get with the rise of R and Python: Is SAS still relevant?
SAS has a 30% market share and thus continues to have an important place. This is true because many analytics departments, especially in Fortune 1000 companies, are staffed with 15+ year SAS professionals who are not going to easily change. In addition, previous models done in SAS are not easily replicated if a company abandons SAS, so there are switching costs. However, new agencies or agencies with mid-tier clients are dropping SAS or not adopting it, given the high licensing costs.
Much will depend on how SAS adapts. Fortune 1000 companies and businesses in finance and pharma are heavy SAS users. For international students, the companies/agencies most likely to sponsor visas are those using SAS, so that fact is an added reason to take SAS courses.
For the near future, knowing SAS is a differentiator, given that many junior candidates, according to our advisory board, are not at all proficient in SAS. A good combination for marketing students is the double degrees MS in Marketing with the Marketing Analytics Subtrack and MS in Business Analytics with the Data Science Track in which a student can get into Python and machine learning, which along with SAS, are key software/programming key skill sets.
Recommended Books
Both the Consumer and Shopper Insights and Marketing Analytics tracks require critical thinking. This term can mean many things to many people, but often those who think they don’t need critical thinking training are the ones who need it most. These can include otherwise smart people who have a blind spot in this area. All of our Advisory Board members tell us that finding recruits who are both software proficient and who can generate regressions is relatively easy.
However, finding someone who can also think critically and “storytell” is extremely difficult. The table shown below came from an article that summarizes the skills referred to as “critical thinking.”
Skill Areas Assessed by the CAT Instrument
From Stein, Haynes, Redding, Harris, Tylka and Lisic, 2010, Faculty driven assessment of critical thinking: National Dissemination of the CAT Instrument, Proceedings of the 2009 International Joint Conferences on Computer, Innovation, and Systems Sciences and Engineering
Professional Associations
There is no specific local professional organization focused on this field (as there are for digital and advertising areas). However, some worth exploring are:Note: The Digital Analytics Association is really only about web analytics, which is not a core area of an analytics professional. An analytics professional would do well to know web analytics. Web analytics is more for digital or customer insights professionals.
Free Publications and Newsletters
- Analytics
- Quirk’s Magazine (a bit more focused on market research)
- R4Stats
Professional Certifications:
SAS certifications add additional validity to a student’s résumé. Often, certain keywords are looked at to pull up résumés, so relevant certifications could help. These also show that a student has initiative beyond his or her degree. However, the most important factor, especially when you have no previous analytics work experience, is to be able to thoughtfully answer the questions during the interview, show sample work from projects and, in some cases, actually perform certain tasks.
The bottom line is that certifications are not critical but are suggested to help make sure you have the knowledge, especially when you have NO related work experience.
SAS Certified Base Programmer. See blog by one of our alumni, Jerry Hao on how to get SAS certified.Other exams after the Base exam:
The Advanced Programming Professional certification is useful because of how important SQL is in any analytics job postingTwo other relevant exams for marketers are:
