Let’s be clear – extracting and analyzing the data from Google Analytics and other analytics platforms is a complex and dull task for most people. Whether you’re a CEO, marketing expert, or a product manager, you likely need help a of data analytics consultant because you faced these problems while analyzing data:
1. You get confused with the information from analytics, especially if some of the results don’t match your real sales numbers.
2. Even if you can extract data into a more transparent form (a sheet, for example), you’re not 100% sure if the results are accurate.
3. You’re unsure which data is more important to analyze than the rest.
4. Most importantly, you lost a ton of time. Your more important tasks are waiting while you’re wasting days/weeks in data analysis. And on top of that, you’re not even sure you’re on the right track.
That’s where data analytics consultants jump in. Their job is to help you extract and prioritize your data, show solutions to potential problems, and finally, give you insights on how to do it yourself in the future while not losing your precious time.
In short, to make you more productive.
What does a data analytics consultant do?
Among many responsibilities (that I’ll mention in the next section), a few primary things set up the foundation of a data analytics consultant’s work.
1. Understanding business needs
First, they have a thorough conversation with the company’s CEO or marketing managers and ask what problems they face. Also, they ask about solutions the client is using to fix these problems.
That’s typically the starting point.
Common example:
Let’s say you’re an ecommerce owner and struggle to define the complete customer journey. Besides the final touchpoint before converting, you want to know through which channels a lead went through before landing to the last touchpoint.
Then a data analytics consultant comes in, analyzes all the relevant data, and shows you which channels deserve the most credit.
2. Exploring the data sources
Almost all companies store their data in multiple places – order management systems, customer service platforms, ad platforms, or others.
Data analytics consultant examines this data to provide answers to questions companies need.
Common example:
You have plenty of data sources, and results somehow do not match. Don’t worry; it happens pretty often. After addressing these gaps and analyzing all the data, the consultant will be able to show you precisely the truth behind all these results.
3. Extracting data and organizing information
After the initial data analysis, they set up different hypotheses. The ultimate goal is to understand why problems are happening.
Data analytics consultant summarizes the information and shares opportunities to improve outcomes or recommendations on what the data can help with, so the CEO or other people within the company could better understand it.
Common example:
As a marketer, you might lose a lot of people in the funnel. So you want to know who are the people you’re losing, who are people that actually become conversions, and what are the ways to improve the whole funnel to create more conversions (what steps can you add/skip, who you should be targeting in the future, and much more).
Usually, all the answers come from customer data. If there is a pricing problem (your competitor’s product is cheaper), expert customer analysis will give you all the possible solutions.
4. Automating the process
Once you’re sure that their professional analysis is on point, the next step is to make it easier for you to do it independently. Data analytics consultant will help you build automatic reports and dashboards or set up alerts so you can immediately notice when something important happens.
Common example:
Part of our work is data engineering – building a system that’ll get you data in a suitable format. Besides extracting and analyzing data, data consultants will also help you automate the whole process. That will make it easier for you to look at the data and understand it correctly.
Data analysts or data engineers only work on their specific duties and tasks. On the other hand, data analytics consultants like me understand the complete picture, depending on clients’ needs.
A list of customer data analytics consultant responsibilities
Now, after I mentioned all the essential points of our work, let’s quickly list (almost) all the responsibilities. So, here’s what data analytics consultants bring to the table:
- Addressing gaps in customer journeys
- Evaluating potential problems and opportunities
- Following protocols for processing confidential data
- Creating reports, data visualizations, and dashboards
- Providing technical expertise on how to store your data
- Building the suitable attribution models
- Giving valuable insights on what are the most important focus points for your attribution
- Helping you understand why you should give more priority to a particular channel or why one campaign is more critical than others
- Helping you take action for example, helping you target the right customers in marketing platforms.
- And much, much more
You can schedule a free strategy call with us with no hard strings attached.
How can marketers benefit from data analytics consultant services?
As a marketer, you have one big goal – to bring leads to the product or service and improve the conversion rate.
Let’s see how data analytics consultants can help you get these results.
1. Have a better performance visibility
You must know how all your efforts are performing on all channels. That way, it’ll be much easier for you to improve the results and outcomes.
Metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV) can help you achieve that goal.
2. Send the data from GA back to the each channel
Facebook, Google ads, or any other platform you’re using now has more intelligent systems. So once data analytics consultants help you get the right data results, you can implement them into these platforms for better outcomes.
For example, these results can help you do better and more narrow targeting or retargeting to improve the conversion rate.
3. Understand who is the better customer
Finally, by looking at the user behavior, data analytics consultants will tell you which group of people is more likely to buy so that you can pay more attention to them.
It is crucial for marketers since you have to reduce the number of lost leads and put more effort into those with higher conversion potential.
How can product managers benefit from data analytics consultant services?
Unlike marketers that want to bring leads to the product or service, product managers are interested in keeping people using the particular product.
As mentioned before, a data analytics consultant will first talk with product managers about their challenges.
- What are the problems you’re currently facing?
- What are you focused on primarily right now?
- Is it onboarding, upselling the product, or something else?
After receiving that information, they’ll be able to analyze your customers and their behavior and determine the hidden benefits you can get from that data.
1. Understand how engaged the user is
First of all, data analytics consultants can give you the answers to the most critical questions:
- What features do customers use the most?
- Where do they get stuck?
- What causes them to keep using your product?
- What causes them to upgrade to a more expensive pricing plan?
As you can see, they are primarily focused on collecting information about user behavior, both within the app and website.
2. Predict retention and churn
Retention and churn are two key terms on the mind of a product manager. So, without using data correctly, it’s almost impossible to improve the retention rate.
Again, by analyzing user behavior and other relevant metrics, data analytics consultants can show you precisely what feature in your tool/app has to be improved to make more users happy.
But also, don’t forget to talk about your product with existing users. Combining their answers with data is the winning combination.
3. Get the right information out of database
Every digital product has a database, which stores information about users (basic and more complex data). Even if you don’t have a digital analytics platform, data analytics consultants can still help you understand your customer using your own database. Or otherwise enrich the data you have in your analytics platform with user attributes from your database.
They can help you get all the critical data out of it. For example, how many times is a user logging in during a week/month, what features are they using, and much more.
Afterward, they simplify that information so you can better understand each group of your users. Of course, there will be more engaged groups and those with higher churn chances.
Final verdict
Here are the final takeaways on how marketers and product managers can benefit from data consultant services:
1. As a marketer, you’ll have better visibility of your efforts and have a clear picture of what parts of the funnel need to be improved to boost conversion rates.
2. As a product manager, you need all the relevant data on user behavior to improve the retention rate and user experience.
3. Since I’ve worked with many product managers and marketers for a long time, I’ve already seen the problems you’re facing multiple times. So for me, after all these years, it’s easy to spot potential issues and offer you effective solutions to fix them.
4. When working with any technical person, you have to be very specific about what you need from them. It usually takes a lot of time, which is not the case when working with data consultants. I already know how things work from a business perspective, which makes a massive difference in problem-solving.
In short, I offer both technical and business expertise, resulting in better solutions and less time spent.
