It’s time to face the fact that the classic marketing manager or marketing analyst position is no longer needed. A new world has begun with the increased adoption of big data. If you stick to the old-world methods, you will soon find yourself out of a job.
Stop saying, “The data is wrong!”
Sometimes a user acquisition (UA) manager will say the data is wrong, and then wait for the data analyst to fix it for them, just so they can again complain that the data is wrong. If you are a UA manager, it’s time that you learn some basic SQL so you can discuss with the business intelligence (BI) director how to resolve any issues with the data, and so you can understand the challenges and the solutions.
Stop saying, “I don’t understand this report.”
This is another complaint I often hear, as an explanation of why the client is downloading the data to Excel and building something by themselves. This is misguided in so many ways. You need to ask the BI director for the report you need. They do not know your job; you know it best, so you must define for them what you need to see. If they are incapable of supplying it, you should learn how to do it yourself and automate it; don’t wait for them.
Stop saying, “The partner/vendor interface is fine for setting campaigns.”
Partner/vendor interfaces were never easy to work with, and they are becoming more complicated every day. Above all, they require a high skill of concentration and manual work. Why keep using a tool that is more appropriate for the torture chambers of East Germany? Learn some Python skills and start building the interfaces to automate your campaigns, or hire someone with the skills and let him build you a game-changing tool.
Stop saying, “The developers don’t understand what I’m telling them.”
I often hear that developers don’t understand what marketers do, so they don’t listen to them. Well, maybe it’s time to stop this cycle. Everything the developers do should be for the users. Since you have the users’ data, start using it to create tasks for the developers. If 20% of your users land on a broken page and never convert, for instance, addressing that should be a task. Then attach price tags to the tasks: “If we do this, it will increase our revenue by X; if we don’t do it, we will lose Y each day we don’t have it done.” This will help the developers better understand your needs. If a task won’t increase revenue, it’s merely nice to do, but not essential.
Stop saying, “My soft skills are enough to survive in this world.”
If you, like me, are over the age of 30, you didn’t learn Python in school. You probably had some SQL classes that you didn’t think had much of a purpose, but today every 20-year-old has the skills to write SQL and code. It’s time to brush up your skills and expertise and learn some coding language yourself. I don’t expect you to become a coder, but understanding the basics of SQL will allow you to question the developers, which will result in a better product. The ability to write SQL will help you aggregate data easily from your database, so you won’t have to wait for the BI director to support you.
Start saying: “I will learn SQL, I will learn Python, and I will learn product management.”
We are increasingly living in a more tech-savvy world. You need not become a developer, but you should have enough technical understanding to work in synergy with your developer, to challenge them and question the path they are charting. You should learn to design a marketing product, keeping it simple and in small packages for the developers. You should start learning to use scrum. Start using lean and agile as well, and switch between them to achieve the ultimate goal of moving your product. Small, impactful packages of code will take you a long way toward building a stable product sooner.
SQL is one skill everyone should have. If you don’t know it, start learning it immediately. It will help you extract your own data, easily, aggregate it with other sources, but above all it will enable you to access data when you need it without the middleman. Become a data monster to drive your decision making, and don’t wait for an analyst or developer to supply you with the numbers.
Learn how you can become a doer at Tale About Data’s online workshop in November! Sign up here to receive a link for registration: http://eepurl.com/dysP11
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