How To Become a Marketing Analyst
If you have an interest in the dynamic field of marketing and a solid understanding of statistics, you may be wondering how to become a marketing analyst. Whether they provide goods or services, companies know that the only way for them to stay competitive in a tough economy is by giving customers what they want. It’s a marketing analyst’s job to gather information about market trends, including sales and consumer preferences, and evaluate that data in order to determine what directions a company should explore in the future.
A marketing analyst helps shape a company’s new products and services, marketing strategies, pricing and sales promotions, influencing the company’s success in important ways. To begin, marketing analysts conduct research. To learn what products consumers are interested in and how they respond to the company’s marketing strategy, these professionals develop questions for phone, written, or electronic surveys and interviews. To understand the market on a larger scale, marketing analysts search for patterns across the industry and specifically scrutinize the business practices of competing companies, including sales numbers, product development and marketing programs.
After they have collected all of this data, marketing analysts must, of courses, analyze it. To do this, they use their thorough knowledge of statistics as well as software programs. During these analyses, these professionals look for quantitative trends in sales or pricing as well as qualitative information, such as what preferences a majority of surveyed consumers reported having. Marketing analysts must then translate the information they discover into formats that are meaningful to management. They do this by presenting their data in written documents, often with the help of visual graphs and charts to illustrate trends. Business managers consult a marketing analyst’s work when deciding what new products or services to implement, how to go about promoting the company, what price point is appropriate for their products and how to solve other problems within the company or industry.
Developing the skills to be a successful marketing analyst requires an investment in higher education. Aspiring marketing analysts may begin their career by earning a bachelor’s degree from an accredited school in a subject such as marketing, business, statistics, mathematics or computer science. To really improve their chances of attaining a job in their desired field, these candidates may consider pursuing a graduate-level degree, like the much sought-after Masters of Business Administration (MBA). Undertaking internships during one’s college career can be an excellent way to begin gaining real-world experience that will impress prospective employers.
The median annual salary for marketing analysts is $76,000, according to online job-hunting resource Indeed.com. As companies become ever more focused on getting positive returns on their marketing investments, they have increasingly turned to marketing analysts for help, creating a positive job outlook. If you are comfortable analyzing and interpreting large amounts of data and have a desire to help shape a company’s future, knowing how to become a marketing analyst may be the start of a fulfilling new professional life.
