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2 minute read
I was never a top maths student. I did well enough to get by, but to this day my mental arithmetic is awful, and I’d be the last one to put my hand up for anything maths-related.
On the other hand, I love working with data in Marketing. But it’s a learned skill. I learnt on the job.
With budgets on the squeeze and new technologies abounding, I believe that data-led marketing is becoming and will become more and more sought after.
So if you love your marketing role, but numbers are your achilles heel, it’s time to push into that uncomfortable space and put your learning hat on.
To help you know where to start, I’ve put together the below steps:
- Show up with curiosity.
Yep, ask all the dumb questions, be that person in the room. Others in the room will probably be relieved they don’t have to ask. Ensure you practice a growth mindset every day and you’ll be ten steps ahead already. - Seek to understand your customers journey, in as much detail as possible.
If you can get your head around this, then the data side becomes substantially easier to understand in context. It becomes far less intimidating and therefore easier to work with. - Seek out someone in your team or wider company who is really good with numbers and build a relationship with them.
In time, you may be able to take some theories or workings to them to ask their opinion and in the process learn about their approach, thinking and other golden nuggets. - Challenge yourself to have a go at using data by building conversion funnels.
Build funnels to translate your customer journey into a data funnel, so that you have pre-built assumptions allowing you to estimate the impact of tactic A vs tactic B, and even better, prove ROI on your marketing plan.
Top tip:
Don’t strive for perfection and don’t worry about making a bunch of mistakes. Just starting it, imperfectly, riddled with errors is the starting point. From there you can learn from the mistakes and gradually build confidence and skill over time. Just keep at it, keep practising and one day you’ll be a data-led marketing pro. - Proactively seek to educate yourself.
To learn essential data-led marketing skills, ask your leader for any company-available courses, or to be matched with a mentor with practical skills, or look into specific courses.
Enjoying your marketing role is brilliant. But being a brilliant marketer takes skill in working with data to guide the strategy, tactics and optimisations to make marketing effective.
Effective marketing is what any business is actually looking for. So make this year, your year to get comfortable with data-led marketing skills so you can be an effective marketer.
