Marketing technologies and practices are changing a lot, and fast. One huge ongoing transition is toward the “bilingual” marketer — someone who is fluent in data as well as marketing processes. The availability of massive amounts of data, along with the tools to analyze and manage it, make systematic analytics a virtual must have for any current marketing operation.

But what does this all mean? There are many forms of data, from business intelligence to SEO and beyond, and many tools to manage the data. What should you focus on? What are the best tools? What kind of staffing or training do you need? Implementing a thorough marketing analytics program is not a simple undertaking.

Not surprisingly, marketing analytics has become one of the fastest growing enterprise platform areas — meaning that you already have many options, and there will be many more. In this post, we’ll focus on some links that provide a quick overview of marketing analytics. In later posts, we’ll dig into specifics.

In the blog Strategy + Business, David Meer discusses Educating the Next Analytics “Bilinguals”, with a focus on educating this class of marketing professionals — what’s needed and who’s doing it.

For a well-rounded look at the large panorama of marketing analytics topics, check out this compendium of “Best Columns” published in December by MarketingLand — Digging into Data: Our Top Analytics and Marketing Columns for 2015

Evaluating and selecting analytics software is a big chore, with significant implications. G2 Crowd can give you a start with theirGrid for Digital Analytics, a handy look at some of the most popular options. Similarly, in this post, The Big List: 80 Of The Hottest SEO, Social Media & Digital Analytics Tools For Marketers , John Lincoln offers an extensive listing of marketing tools, including short descriptions, links, pricing and terms.

For a steady flow of ideas, tips and insights, visit The Marketing Analytics Daily. The publication is updated every day and covers a huge range of analytics-related subject matter.

In future posts, we’ll look at more facets of marketing analytics and in more detail. Want to hear about anything in particular? Get in touch.

Guy Page

Guy Page has a long history in the science and the business of Life Sciences. After an extensive research career, including post-doctoral appointments at UCSF, Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT, he entered the Life Science business world. Beginning his career at Promega, he has created and led Marketing and Sales programs at diverse companies, including Gelman Sciences (now part of Pall Corporation), Genisphere, BD Biosciences, Amnis Corporation, AMG, Adaptive Biotechnologies and IntegenX.