Digital Marketing Analytics in Practice

Week 1 : Course Overview and The Art of Analytics

In the orientation, you will become familiar with the course, your instructor, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation also helps you obtain the technical skills required for the course. Every analyst dreams of coming up with the “big idea” – the game-changing and previously unseen insight or approach that gives their organization a competitive advantage and their career a huge boost. But dreaming won’t get you there. It requires a thoughtful and disciplined approach to analysis projects. In this part of the course, I detail the four elements of the Marketing Analytics Process (MAP): plan, collect, analyze, report. Module 1 also explains the role of the analyst, the six mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (“MECE”) marketing objectives of analytics, how to find context and patterns in collected data, and how to avoid the pitfalls of bias.

Week 2 : Storytelling with Data

In Module 2, we dive headlong into the most important aspect of digital marketing analytics: transforming the data the analyst compiled into a comprehensive, coherent, and meaningful report. I outline the key characteristics of good visuals and the minutiae of chart design and provide a five-step process for analysts to follow when they’re on their feet and presenting to an audience. The goal is to equip analysts with the tools they need to tell a compelling and memorable story that “cuts through the noise” of the overwhelming amount of information audiences experience every day.

Week 3 : Bellabeat Case Study

Module 3 brings to life the concepts, theories, techniques, and tools discussed in the course in a business case written about Bellabeat, a high-tech design and manufacturing company that produced health-focused smart devices for women. Students will see each step in the MAP illustrated through the case.

Week 4 : The Future of Analytics

Data’s road from crude maps to gigabytes of multidimensional information has been a long and winding one. But it is far from over. If anything, the industry finds itself at a critical crossroads that will determine its future for decades to come. Module 4 explores this predicament while casting an eye toward what comes next for digital marketing analytics. 

Kevin Hartman 

Visiting professor & Head of Analytics at Google

Université de l'Illinois à Urbana-Champaign 

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a world leader in research, teaching and public engagement, distinguished by the breadth of its programs, broad academic excellence, and internationally renowned faculty and alumni. Illinois serves the world by creating knowledge, preparing students for lives of impact, and finding solutions to critical societal needs.