How to Become a Digital Analyst Without a Degree in 2024

Learn how to become a Digital Analyst without a college or university degree or with a degree in another field. Becoming a Digital Analyst without a degree includes needing to gain experience with digital marketing and data analytics to build your portfolio to show to future employers. It can also involve taking shorter certificate programs and bootcamps to learn the skills necessary to become a Digital Analyst outside of college or university. 

What is a Digital Analyst?

A Digital Analyst collects and analyzes digital marketing data to aid a business in optimizing their digital performance and sales. Digital Analysts, also sometimes called Digital Marketing Analysts, are tasked with gathering and analyzing all manner of data from an organization’s various channels across websites, social media, applications, emails, and advertisements as it relates to who uses what digital asset and how, along with information about market saturation, trends, performance, and sales. Digital Analysts must analyze and make sense of this data to write reports, create dashboards, and generate presentations that communicate vital insights about an organization’s current digital performance and effectiveness, make predictions about future outcomes, and build strategies for more effective and competitive performance.

Many companies employ full-time and part-time Digital Analysts and it is also a career that one can do as a freelancer. Whether working singularly or with other Digital Analysts, this job has a unique role in analyzing a company’s data and preparing easy-to-understand reports for stakeholders and those from other departments and will need to communicate and work well with others in marketing, sales, and finance departments. Often, Digital Analysts will need to prepare reports daily, weekly, and/or monthly to communicate key insights into the customer’s digital experience and the effectiveness of the business’s current and future digital marketing strategies. As such, Digital Analysts need to have excellent communication and presentation skills, along with their ability to analyze detailed datasets and make predictions based on this information. 

Can You Really Become a Digital Analyst Without a Degree?

While most employers are looking for a Digital Analyst to have a bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, statistics, or a related field, you can become a Digital Analyst without a formal college or university degree. In this case, you will need a solid portfolio to show future employers that you have experience working on digital marketing campaigns and that you can use data collection and visualization tools to aid a company’s marketing performance. You can gain this experience by volunteering to work for a small, local business or even an individual and help them with their digital marketing campaigns and online audience engagement. Additionally, look to smaller and online-only businesses, especially, as they are more likely to not require a formal college or university degree as part of their hiring process. These will be companies that prioritize the outcomes you have achieved instead of a list of degrees you have earned. You can often find these businesses through networking and building relationships with others in the field who can recommend you as a Digital Analyst and also recommend places where you can look for work. 

You might also be looking to become a Digital Analyst after receiving a college degree in a different field. With a degree in something other than business, marketing, statistics, mathematics, or data-related fields, you can still transition into doing Digital Analyst work. Here, too, you will want to gain experience to supplement your degree. You can use the skills you have gained and the projects you have completed as part of your degree to explain your abilities to future employers. Communication and analysis skills are critical for a Digital Analyst, so, you should think about how you used these skills in your degree program so that you can translate them for future employers to understand that you can extract meaningful insights from complex data and explain hard-to-understand topics to a general audience. 

Whether you have a degree in a different field or no college or university degree, consider taking a shorter certificate program or bootcamp to learn the skills you will need as a Digital Analyst. Educational classes from a reputable source can help to communicate to employers that you have the information you need and the skillset they require to be a Digital Analyst. Additionally, many of these classes can serve as networking experience and can get you started building a portfolio that you can show to future employers. 

Steps to Become a Digital Analyst

A Digital Analyst needs to know digital marketing strategies and data analytics. A useful first step to becoming a Digital Analyst is learning more about these topics so you can figure out if this is the right career for you and plan accordingly. Without a college or university degree, an employer will want to see more of your experience to make sure that you can handle being a Digital Analyst. You can gain experience in digital marketing by volunteering to help a friend, family member, or local small business grow its digital audience and increase its performance on different platforms online. An employer wants to see that you know about standard digital marketing strategies and that you have a track record of helping a person, business, or organization optimize their online performance. 

You can use this initial volunteer experience not only as the beginning of your work portfolio but also to transition into finding clients who will pay for your services. This can also be the start of your networking work. Networking and building relationships with current and future clients is key. Networking can help you find employers looking to add a Digital Analyst to their teams and it will be especially appealing if you come recommended by past clients who can speak to your abilities and work ethic. 

Once you have some experience with digital marketing, you will want to also gain experience with data analytics. A necessary-to-use service like Google Analytics is free and you can find tutorials and bootcamps dedicated to teaching how to best utilize Google Analytics. Additionally, many data visualization services used by Digital Analysts, like Tableau and Power BI, do offer free trial periods. Once you are helping businesses or individuals with their digital marketing campaigns, consider signing up for a free trial of one of these services and seeing how to integrate data analysis and visualization into your volunteer or paid digital marketing services. Being able to explain to future employers how you have experience using industry-standard software and services will indicate to them that they can do the work of a Digital Analyst even without a college degree. 

It can be overwhelming to teach yourself the necessary skills and information to become a Digital Analyst, so, you should consider not only utilizing free online resources but also taking a certificate program or bootcamp from a reliable educational provider. Noble Desktop offers both a Digital Marketing Certificate and a Data Analytics Certificate, programs that are quicker and less expensive than a full four-year college or university degree program. Additionally, Noble Desktop offers many shorter skills-based bootcamps, from those that teach the basics of marketing on different social media platforms to those that will teach you how to use Google Analytics, SEO, SQL, Tableau, and other programs and services that you will need to become a Digital Analyst. 

Learn the Skills to Become a Digital Analyst at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a variety of certificate programs and shorter, skills-based bootcamps to get you started on the pathway to becoming a Digital Analyst. To learn comprehensive digital marketing skills over a short period of time, consider pursuing Noble’s Digital Marketing Certificate program which can be taken in person in New York City or live online. During this program, you will learn the basic tenets of digital marketing across different platforms, including all major social media platforms, blogs, and email, as well as what you need to know about search engine optimization (SEO), how to track and analyze key performance data utilizing data analytics, and how to implement paid advertising. During this program, you will receive expert one-on-one mentoring as you work on real projects to improve your digital marketing skills. 

Additionally, Noble Desktop offers a complete Data Analytics Certificate program, which can be taken part-time or full-time, either live in New York City or remotely online from any location. This comprehensive, project-based certificate program teaches how to analyze and visualize data and includes units covering Excel, SQL, Python, and Tableau. The Data Analytics Certificate is a great option for someone who either needs training on how to interpret data as a Digital Analyst or someone looking to transition into more data analysis work. Similar to the Digital Marketing Certificate, you will receive expert instruction and mentoring during this course. 

If you are looking to learn specific skill sets quickly, consider taking a bootcamp. Bootcamps are a great option for those needing to upskill or quickly learn about a more specialized topic. Consider taking any of Noble’s marketing-related bootcamps, like those offered for individual social media platforms (TikTok Marketing, Instagram Marketing, Facebook Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing, and Social Media Marketing: Blogs and Twitter) and skills such as Content Marketing, Email Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization. 

Noble also offers a bootcamp to learn the basics of three important tools you will need for data analytics as a Digital Analyst, Microsoft Excel, SQL, and Tableau, in their Data Analytics Technologies Bootcamp. If you need to learn how to utilize just one or two of these tools, you can also take a bootcamp for each individually: Excel for Data Analytics, SQL Bookcamp, and Tableau Bootcamp.