Data Analysis: Profiting From Numbers

Data Analysts have the opportunity to work in several different domains or sectors, for example as banking data analysts, retail data analysts, telecommunications data analysts and as marketing data analysts.

The marketing data analyst role is one of the more common ones and a marketing analyst may be found analyzing databases of prospects, leads and customers for the marketing department.

In this post, we will take a peak into the day of a marketing data analyst…

First – Collect and Store Data

Your first challenge may be to collect and store your data so that you can analyze it. However, if you are lucky, your Information Technology (IT) Department will collect the data for you in a database.

If that is not the case, you may be able to get them to build you a data entry form otherwise, you will have to enter the data yourself or perhaps build a desktop client for collecting data using Microsoft Access or a web-based database data-entry form using a software development environment like ASP.NET and SQL Server

Second – Analyze Data

Perhaps your marketing department just finished a campaign where they advertised on three different channels (Billboards, Direct Mail, Radio and Internet Blogs). You may be tasked with finding out how each of your segments responded.

To accomplish this, you may use a relational database like SQL Server or a spreadsheet like Excel to find the top performing marketing groups, for example, your best customers may have been referred from blogs that are based in Western Europe.

Third – Report Data

You typically have to present your findings to your manager or marketing department in a form that they can digest easily.

This will usually be in the form of a report but bear in mind that your reports must be customized for the target audience and that there is no one-size fits all solution.

For example, your marketing department may prefer tracking statistics in the form of ratios or as pie charts / bar charts or they may prefer that you compare one group to another or one time period to another.

Regardless of their preferences, go over your results and make sure that they are accurate. Ensure that you understand what is causing the results or trends and make sure that your recommendations are as actionable as possible.

Last – Execute or Take Action

Finally, you may summarize your analysis and make clear recommendations or calls for action. Granted that not all your findings are actionable but after a while, if no-one is taking action then something may be wrong.

Either your organization is paying for insight which they are unwilling or incapable of executing or no-one believes you or your calls for action are not clear enough.

However, if you are detail oriented, you like to working with numbers and you have logical /critical thinking skills required, it may not be long before you have the ears of management and a good ride to the top!