Marketing has undergone some drastic changes in the last few years.

With today’s technology, there are now endless streams of information available to marketers, and that information includes more about customer behavior than ever before. Today’s marketing culture has become very data-centric, focusing on all kinds of data points around consumers’ searching, shopping and purchasing habits.

Because of this abundance of meaningful data, companies are changing the way they do business—instead of taking a product-focused approach, they are shifting to one that is customer-focused. Marketers need to do a lot more data analysis than they used to in order to create meaningful campaigns for both their company and their customers.

To prove this point, Jeff Zanella, Vice President and Associate Media Director at Hill Holliday (a Boston-based marketing and communications agency) says that data analytics is an extremely important part of his marketing strategy, and even referred to it as "the new currency."

"We like to employ data for a strategy whenever we can, because we find that it influences all the decisions we make. From media decisions around where we buy and who we buy against, to helping us inform our creative and our content... From that, we can then derive our communication plan to align with that data, which gives us a sense of what to bring to market, how a client’s campaign is performing, and how that messaging and communication is resonating.”

Now that companies see the value in this data, they also see the value in hiring employees who have the skills needed to monetize it in the marketplace. This shift has produced the need for a new type of graduate marketing degree.

The “New” Master’s In Marketing

Now that marketing has a strong focus around the numbers, data analysts are playing much greater roles in influencing current marketing decisions. As a result, the curriculum being taught in a master’s in marketing has shifted toward analysis, statistics, and strategy. Employers are looking for people who know how to collaborate, think through problems, and come up with solutions (as they always have) but the type of problem is not one that can be solved without some hard skills.

Nathan Carter, Chairman of the Mathematical Sciences Department at Bentley, says interest in analytics programs have increased significantly in recent months, especially in programs such as Bentley’s MS in Marketing Analytics (which has actually been around for quite a while).

“A surprising number of students said that they were working in a company and being asked to do analysis that they didn’t know how to do. So their company (or they themselves) chose to send them back to school to learn the skills they needed out in the workforce. So there’s a lot of demand, and people are really interested in finding the skills they need to meet that demand.”

Students in Bentley’s MS in Marketing Analytics program begin with a foundation of statistics, economics, and marketing management, then move to strategic marketing, research and analysis, and relationship marketing. Upon completing the program, students are comfortable with numbers and are able to make marketing decisions based on quantitative analysis.

If you’re getting an MBA at Bentley, you can also choose to do a concentration in marketing and analytics. Both of these marketing programs teach students how to become more engaged with consumers, how to design and deliver robust statistical analysis, and how to effectively communicate the resulting insights.

Is It Time To Get Your Master’s In Marketing?

Marketing has become more of a two-way conversation than it ever used to be, allowing the consumer to influence content and marketing decisions. In order for marketers to survive this change, they need to understand and take advantage of this new stream of information. Getting a master’s in marketing analytics will teach you the skills needed to analyze this data and turn it into the meaningful information that employers are seeking. Is it time to get your master’s in marketing?