The North West Marketing Analytics Sector Skills Survey

The respondents came from senior company employees in a range of sectors and backgrounds including retail, travel and finance and have representation from both in-house and agency environments.

With every respondent surveyed having at least one person in a marketing analytics position, the main role of those in this sector was ‘website performance analysis’ and ‘research and insight.’ Of those surveyed, around half believe they would have at least 4 people in an analytics role in the next 3 years.

We found that the best routes into an analytics career were those with strong methodical and mathematical minds that were comfortable with data. Whilst a degree isn’t absolutely necessary, those entering the industry would benefit from a formal education and an aptitude for statistics.

From a remuneration perspective, findings showed that approximately a 1/3 believed their analytics salaries were only ‘good’, 1/3 believed they were above average and the rest believed that they were below average or poor. Clearly many think they are undervalued.

The main issues for the recruitment of analytics staff were exposed. Experience and quality, provable skills, unrealistic expectations and cultural ‘fit’ were all barriers for recruiting the best staff. 

Recruitment timescales for these businesses were examined and it was highlighted that generally, it takes a number of months to find the ideal candidates. When recruiting people with less than 1 years’ experience, the majority of respondents believed that it would take no more than 2 months to recruit the ideal person. With professionals with 1-2 years’ experience, the majority of respondents believed this would take less than two months however for those looking to recruit professionals with 3-4 years the processes are more likely to take between 3 and 4 months. For the most experienced, 5 years and more they believe that the process will take more than 4 months. So careful planning and execution of recruiting analytics staff is crucial.

The report also highlighted that over 60% of analytics departments found it necessary to recruit from outside of the North West and we have case studies from candidates who were particularly attracted to the region and what it has to over.

In the months that we spent researching the topic, we got a real sense that we are on the edge of an explosion in marketing analytics which will impact how we approach marketing techniques. The professionals we spoke to give us a sense of what can be done and how this sector is booming and its potential.

We hope you enjoy our research and if you would like to see what other areas of digital research we have carried out click here.

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