How To Become A Digital Analyst: What It Is and Career Path

What is a digital analyst and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Expert

Eduardo Zambrano

You have superb understanding of intelligence tools, and you ace data analysis work on software that tracks customer relationship managment. Of course, you're a digital analyst! Your company turns to you to analyze data about its digital assests and competition and create clear reports of your findings to send to departments and company executives.

You train your eye not just on your own company but also on your competitors. You learn their strengths and weaknesses through massive amounts of data and analyze this against your company's data to pinpoint your company's brand positions. As a digital analyst, you know data, but you also have a good grasp of SEO and social marketing strategies so that you can propose actionable steps to your company based on your analysis.

To work as a digital analyst, you need at minimum an associate's degree in finance, logistics, mathematics, or statistics, and you should have experience with multiple analytics tools and software. As a digital analyst, you might find a full-time position in a company, or you may work more on an as-needed, part-time basis. On an hourly scale, digitial analysts can earn an average of $30.

What general advice would you give to a Digital Analyst?

Eduardo Zambrano

Professor of Economics, Orfalea College of Business

First, here is some 'technical' advice:
Every Economics graduate should feel very comfortable with coding and data management. This training can be obtained, if your school does not offer it, by attending software and data carpentry workshops online (https://carpentries.org/). A graduate with good Python and R skills, and working knowledge of SQL, will stand out in a crowded field, no matter what sub-field of economics the graduate may be interested in.

Now, here is some 'big picture' advice:
Economic data does not analyze itself, and it does not come from 'nature.' Economic data is the result of the decisions of individuals. To understand data generated by a human activity, you need to think about the incentives that lead individuals to make the decisions that are captured in this data. Therefore, knowledge of econometrics is essential, as it is knowledge of economic theory. What distinguishes Economists from other kinds of data analysts is this emphasis on the understanding that if you do not factor accurately how individuals respond to incentives in the analysis of your data, your review is likely to be flawed or, at least, incomplete. Getting good at this way of data analysis takes many years, and graduates should be prepared to continue learning how to do this well past their college years. With this advice comes a caveat, and an acknowledgment of responsibility: every data analyst must understand that decisions based on data have ethical implications, and can affect some gender or ethnic groups in different ways. These considerations must be explicitly addressed, or the analyst may provide biased and ultimately undesirable advice to the decision-makers.

ScoreDigital AnalystUS Average

Salary

6.5

Avg. Salary $83,493

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

4.9

Growth Rate 19%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.0

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.13%

Asian 14.31%

Black or African American 4.75%

Hispanic or Latino 11.30%

Unknown 4.89%

White 64.61%

Gender

female 30.48%

male 69.52%

Age - 34

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 34

Stress Level

4.9

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.2

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

4.6

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a digital analyst

Explore digital analyst education requirements

Most common digital analyst degrees

Bachelor's

75.3 %

Master's

12.1 %

Associate

9.3 %

Start to develop specific digital analyst skills

Skills	Percentages
Digital Marketing	10.05%
Google Analytics	8.70%
Tableau	5.67%
Visualization	5.13%
SQL	5.04%

Complete relevant digital analyst training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New digital analysts learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a digital analyst based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real digital analyst resumes.

Research digital analyst duties and responsibilities

Work with key stakeholders to define and manage online customer insights through definition of KPIs, web metrics capabilities and reporting.
Manage analytics for social media platforms utilizing BrandWatch for competitive analysis and Hootsuite for social listening management.
Handle daily maintenance and troubleshoot issues.
Track and prove ROI from digital sales efforts.

Prepare your digital analyst resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your digital analyst resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a digital analyst resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Digital Analyst Resume templates

Build a professional Digital Analyst resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Digital Analyst resume.

Apply for digital analyst jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a digital analyst job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do digital analysts rate their job?

-/5

5 Stars

4 Stars

3 Stars

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1 Star

Digital Analyst reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Jul 2020

Pros

Compiling data of organization and implementing strategies to measure growth in business

Cons

Fundamental Economics

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2019