ANALYST AND DATA SCIENTIST SKILL SETS IN DIGITAL MARKETING

Owing to the digitization of the consumer products economy, data scientist and analyst are highly essential to the marketing profession. Analyst skills are not as advanced as the data scientist, but they both have a similar objective which is to discover how data can be used to answer questions and solve problems.

Being a data scientist or analyst requires highly specialized skill sets which are

•                     Technical skills

•                     Business skills

Technical skills

•                     Education

Technical skills are acquired academically in disciplines like computer science, machine learning, advanced statistics, and other related fields.

•                     Technical tools usage

As an analyst, it is required of you to have an in-depth knowledge of analytical tools like SAS or R and as well be familiar with data warehousing and business intelligence concepts.

An analyst must have a better understanding about java, MySQL, python, and Hadoop-based analytics like MapReduce job developments.

It is essential for a data scientist to understand various analytical functions, median rank and to know how to use them on data sets. An analyst must be versatile with data storing and retrieving skills and be perfect in using the tools and components of data architecture.

An analyst must be familiar with various ETL tools for transforming different sources of data into analytics data stores.

Data scientist must be a perfectionist in mathematics, statistics, data mining, and predictive analysis. He should be able to give better predictions for business decisions, with deep statistical insights and working experience in machine learning techniques like Bayesian and mahout.

Data scientists should be an expert in database design, programming, data management, data consolidation, data cleansing, data modeling, data mining, and data visualization.

Business skills

Problem Solving: A data scientist needs to know how to productively approach a problem by identifying the problem’s salient features, figuring out how to frame a question that will yield the desired answer, consult the right co-workers at the appropriate junctures of the analytic process and know the data science methods to apply to the problem at hand.

Communication and visualization: A good data scientists and analyst must be able to fluently interpret their technical findings to a non-technical team including the Marketing or Sales departments. It is required of a data scientist to be able to present data in a visually compelling way, this can be achieved by mastering data visualization tools also familiarize oneself with the principles of visualizing data effectively. Visualizing data is very important especially in companies where data scientists are viewed as people who help in making data-driven decisions. It is important to not just be familiar with visualizing tools like ggplot and d3, but also the principles behind visually encoding data and communicating information.

Intellectual Curiosity: A data scientist and analyst must have a curious and explorative mindset to be able to explore new territories and find creative ways to solve problems.

Industry Knowledge: As an analyst or data scientist, one must understand how the industry functions and how data are being collected, analyzed, and utilized.

Business acumen: Following technical skills, business acumen is highly desired in digital marketing, you’ll need to be cognizance of the business problems your company is trying to solve. Apart from identifying new ways in which the business could leverage its data, a data scientist must be able to discern which of the industry problems are critical to resolving for the successful running of the business.

Generally, a key requirement for analytical excellence is the right mindset. Data scientists and analyst must need to have an intrinsic, high level of curiosity and a strong appetite for intellectual challenges. They should be able to pick up new methods and mathematical techniques within a short time to solve the problem at hand.

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