Who is a Marketing Analyst and how do you Become one?

If you’re looking to combine marketing expertise with data analysis, becoming a marketing analyst is the perfect career path. This exciting role primarily focuses on measuring campaign success, tracking customer behavior, and helping businesses make smarter decisions. In this article, I will share all you need to know to become a marketing analyst.

What is Marketing Analytics

Marketing isn’t just about creativity anymore. Sure, great copy and eye-catching visuals still matter, but data is what drives real decision-making. Marketers are investing billions in social media ads, email marketing, and search engine campaigns, but without someone analyzing the results, it is impossible to judge the efficiency of these campaigns.

That’s why marketing analysts are in high demand. Their job is to break down customer behavior, track campaign performance, and spot industry trends to help businesses make smarter marketing moves.

If a company is spending thousands on Facebook ads but not seeing an increase in sales, a marketing analyst can pinpoint what went wrong and suggest a better, data-driven approach.

That’s exactly the type of analysis we teach with the SQL for Marketing learning track. If you are serious about learning marketing analytics, go ahead and check it out. It’s full of hands-on SQL challenges, which are the best way to learn SQL. But before you dive into writing SQL queries, let's briefly discuss what you’ll do as a marketing analyst.

What Does a Marketing Analyst do? 5 Pillars of Marketing Analytics

Marketing analysis is all about using data to make smarter business decisions. Every campaign generates valuable insights, but without analysis, it’s just numbers nobody understands.

As a marketing analyst, your job will be to analyze, understand, and then communicate the insights of your analysis. You’ll track performance, study customer behavior, and identify trends to help your team optimize their marketing campaigns.

To put it simply, here are the key responsibilities of a marketing analyst.

1. Collecting and Organizing Data

To make informed decisions as a marketing analyst, you’ll need accurate, well-structured data. That means pulling information from multiple sources, such as:

• Google Analytics – tracks website visitors, traffic sources, and user behavior.
• CRM systems – stores customer purchase history and interactions.
• Advertising platforms (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads) – provides details on campaign performance and spending.
• Email marketing tools – measures open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.

Before you can analyze any of this data, it will need to be cleaned and structured. Inconsistent, duplicate or incomplete data can lead to misleading takeaways, so the first part of your job would be making sure everything is accurate and ready for analysis.

2. Measuring Performance and Finding Patterns

You can have all the data in the world, but what matters is making sense of it. Working in marketing analytics is kind of like being a detective.

You'll be looking for answers to questions that keep marketing teams up at night: Which campaigns are actually bringing in customers? What's the real cost of acquiring a new business? Where are people dropping off in the sales process?

Imagine your company's running ads across multiple platforms. Everyone on the team has an opinion about what's working, but you're the one who can actually prove it. Maybe the Instagram ads look flashy, but your analysis shows they're not converting. Meanwhile, that "boring" email campaign is quietly crushing it with a 3x return on investment.

That's the kind of insight that makes marketing analysis so fun!

3. Presenting Insights in Reports and Dashboards

Numbers alone, however, do not tell a full story. You’ll also have to know how to create clear reports and presentations to share findings with the marketing team and other departments. Here are the most common tools marketing analysts use for reporting and data visualization:

Gaining experience with at least one of these tools can greatly increase your chances of getting hired for your first position in the marketing analysis sphere.

4. Researching Customer Behavior and Market Trends

Marketing analysts also study current and upcoming customer trends to help businesses stay ahead of the competition. They research:

• Buying behavior – what is important for a customer when making a purchase decision?
• Competitor strategies – what marketing tactics are other businesses using?
• Industry trends – how is the market changing, and what new opportunities may appear?

For example, if a clothing retailer sees that more people are searching for sustainable fashion, they might invest in eco-friendly clothing lines and adjust their messaging to highlight sustainability.

5. Forecasting Trends and Developing Strategic Insights

The final part of marketing analytics is turning data into future opportunities for your company. You'll have to develop a keen eye for patterns that tell you where the market is heading in the future. Your analysis might reveal that sales consistently surge two weeks before major holidays, or that customers follow predictable buying journeys, like purchasing related products within a three-month window.

Through careful analysis and strategic thinking, you'll help your organization make smarter decisions about where to invest time and resources. As your forecasts prove to be accurate and drive real results, you'll become the go-to expert for making informed marketing decisions. This blend of analytical skills and strategic insight makes forecasting one of the most rewarding aspects of marketing analysis.

Skills you Need to Become a Marketing Analyst

Succeeding as a marketing analyst requires more than just the ability to work with data. You need a mix of technical expertise, analytical thinking, and strong communication skills to fully manage in this role. Let’s break down the core skills that you’ll need.

Technical Skills: Working With Data and Tools

As you can see, marketing analysts work with large amounts of data, using different tools to collect, organize, and make sense of it. That is why having experience with the right technical skills will help you work faster and find insights that businesses can actually use.

How SQL Helps in Marketing Analytics

Since businesses store massive amounts of customer and campaign data in relational databases, knowing how to retrieve and analyze this information is essential. SQL (Structured Query Language) is the primary tool used to work with these databases and is the first tool that you’ll need to add to your resume.

Why so? Because with SQL, you can work directly with marketing data instead of relying on pre-built reports. Need to find customer trends? You can pull data based on demographics, shopping habits, or engagement history. Want to measure campaign success? SQL helps you analyze conversion rates and track performance over time.

SQL also makes spotting trends easier by comparing past and present data. And the best part? You can even use SQL to work with data in spreadsheets. Check out this guide for a more detailed introduction to SQL.

Beyond SQL: Essential Technical Tools for Marketing Analysts

While SQL is essential for marketing analytics, you'll want to expand your skills with other critical technologies. For example, web analytics platforms like Google Analytics will help you track user behavior, understand how visitors interact with websites, and discover which marketing channels drive the most sales.

On the other hand, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho are equally important. These platforms collect crucial details about customer interactions, sales data, and email engagement, providing a 360-degree view of a customer’s relationship with your company.

You’ll also have to gain some experience with data visualization tools like Tableau or Power BI. These tools will help you transform your SQL queries into compelling visual stories, making it easier to present insights to non-technical coworkers.

But remember – SQL remains the foundational language that connects you directly to your most valuable asset: your data.

Analytical Skills: Becoming a Data Detective

Here's the truth: anyone can look at numbers, but a great analyst sees the story behind them. You'll have to learn to spot patterns that aren't obvious to everyone else. Achieving that requires a certain degree of analytical mindset and problem-solving abilities.

Your job would be to find insights that can, sometimes, completely transform a company's strategy. You'll have to learn to ask the right questions, connect the dots that others can't see, and turn complex data into simple, powerful recommendations.

None of that is possible without being curious about what you might discover. Imagine being the only person who can explain why a marketing campaign did or didn't work – that's the magic of analytical thinking.

Soft Skills: the Human Side of Data

Having strong technical skills is important, but they only go so far. If you can’t explain your insights clearly, they might not have the impact they should. You'll need to translate those complex data findings you have into something your teammates, managers, and even non-technical colleagues can understand and get excited about.

All data can tell a story, but in order for it to happen, you’ll need to become a storyteller. Your data is the plot, and your ability to explain it is what makes people listen. The better you are at turning numbers into conversations, the more influence your work will have. Because, at the end of the day, great marketing is about human interaction too, not just analyzing numbers.

Industries Hiring Marketing Analysts

Marketing analysts are needed in many industries, so don’t limit yourself to just one field you’re familiar with. Instead, look at job opportunities across different sectors that depend on skillful analysts, such as:

• E-commerce – online retailers need analysts to track customer behavior, identify best-selling products, and reduce abandoned carts. Your analytical insights will help improve digital advertising strategies and create personalized shopping experiences.
• Technology – software companies and mobile apps rely on analysts to measure user acquisition, engagement, and retention. You’ll help track which marketing channels bring in the most valuable users and what features keep them engaged.
• Finance – banks, credit card companies, and financial services firms need analysts to measure the effectiveness of campaigns, track customer lifetime value, and optimize advertising budgets for the best return on investment.
• Healthcare – hospitals, insurance providers, and healthcare companies depend on analysts to study patient engagement, track outreach efforts, and improve communication strategies to ensure services reach the right people.
• Retail – both online and physical stores need analysts to predict demand, study sales trends, and understand customer preferences. Your work here will help businesses stock the right products at the right time and maximize revenue.

With businesses across industries investing more in data-driven marketing, professionals skilled in marketing analysis are highly valued and will not have any trouble finding interesting and well-paid job opportunities.

Marketing Analyst Career: Where to Start?

A great marketing analyst blends technical skills, analytical thinking, and clear communication to drive smarter marketing decisions. If you are interested in starting your marketing analyst career, learning SQL is a great first step. Take the SQL for Marketing course today and start building your skills.

The track consists of four SQL courses:

• SQL Basics: learn SQL from scratch. Understand how databases are organized and how to create SQL queries.
• Basic SQL Practice: Blog & Traffic Data: discover how SQL data analysis enhances your understanding of customer behavior. Dive into realistic scenarios like analyzing online blog performance.
• Creating Basic SQL Reports: transform data into actionable knowledge. Learn to aggregate, filter, and present data skillfully in comprehensive reports.
• Customer Behavior Analysis in SQL: dive into the dataset of a fictional online supermarket. Explore customer behavior and lifecycle stages, such as acquisition and churn, with SQL. You’ll master skills such as calculating registration and conversion rates, performing cohort analysis, and generating churn reports to uncover insights into customer dynamics.

The SQL for Marketing Track consists of 450 interactive exercises in total. In each of them, you’ll have to solve real-life database tasks by writing your own code. With each piece of code written and exercise completed, you’ll develop your SQL skills and boost your confidence in your abilities. By the end of the learning module, you’ll have gained hands-on experience, and be ready for the analytical challenges ahead!