The Advanced Analytics Books Don’t Exist (and Never Will)

A question came up yesterday in discussion with a friend about how all of the digital marketing analytics books seem to cater to the beginner level crowds, and they wanted to know where the advanced analytics books are. In the same vein as where the advanced conferences are, there are no super advanced analytics books for a few reasons.

1. Most advanced analytics needs are highly customized. Think of it like becoming a connoisseur of something. Once you get past the basics, your needs and wants are tailored specifically to you. Everyone’s got a favorite beer or coffee or wine or sushi or fried chicken or… you get the idea. There’s something unique about your favorites that other similar preparations simply can’t mirror.

2. Most advanced analytics solutions don’t come from packaged tools. Instead, the advanced analytics stuff comes from raw mathematical ideas and formulae that aren’t bundled up into existing tools. Running an oscillating indicator or a moving average indicator isn’t something you’re ever going to find in a stock, off-the-shelf marketing analytics package, and that’s okay. It’s not about the tools anyway…

3. Most advanced analytics power isn’t about tools or technology, but about how to think and, as Tom Webster often says, how to tell a story with the data you have. Seeing a 12/26 moving average converge is important, but if you don’t know what it means and you don’t know what to do next, then that particular tool is a hindrance, not a help. To reach this point, you need a lot of experience in your career, you need a lot of experience looking at what the data tells you, and you need a lot of experience running campaigns and testing things to find out what works to fix or improve things when you see a known, recognizable pattern in the data. There is no packaged solution, no book, no course that will ever substitute for this hard-earned experience.

With that in mind, I do want to give a plug for Chuck Hemann and Ken Burbary’s latest book on Digital Marketing Analytics, which is a nice tour of the many tools and basics you need for getting started in collecting and understanding your marketing data.

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