Katie’s journey into Jerry’s world of marketing

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Hi, everyone! My name is Katie Fitzgerald, and I am a junior marketing major in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. I am looking to go into brand marketing, sales, content marketing or public relations. My favorite classes have allowed me to explore Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, consumer behavior and brand psychology, but as part of my degree plan I am taking marketing analytics (MKTG 3653) with professor Jerry Rackley.

Working creatively with others comes naturally to me, so I am apprehensive about taking a class that requires me to be thorough and analytically detailed.

This semester, I’ll use this platform to document what I am learning from the class and you guys can place (silent!) bets on if I’ll pass or fail. You could describe my understanding of analytics as beginner-level basics. I expect to learn some analytics tracking tools (the only one I have heard of is Google Analytics) and to become more familiar with tools in Microsoft Excel. I look forward to learning about analytics and the ways to track the progress of a company’s marketing strategy.

The main project that everyone in this class talks about is the Buzzfeed project. If you’re in any GroupMe with a Spears Business student, then you probably know what I’m talking about. Groups are assigned to create a Buzzfeed quiz and promote it to get over 2,000 views, and it’s a lot easier said than done.

My group met at the beginning of the semester to determine our target audience and the best way to reach it. We wanted to make our quiz simple and fun for all ages and genders. After a couple weeks of promoting it through social media outlets, QR codes around campus and using Buzzfeed’s marketing tools, we’re only about halfway there.

So far this semester, our class has also discussed career opportunities in marketing analytics, the importance of data and the struggles with implementing it. Last week we watched Moneyball, a movie about baseball and data. Moneyball shows how data and analytics are useful even in creating a baseball team. It also shows how reluctant people are to accept data as truth rather than to trust their own conventional wisdom.

With improving technologies, analytics has become more available than ever, which is great because companies can now get the most precise results. However, it comes with two main struggles: filtering through large amounts of data and convincing people to trust it.

Follow along with me this semester as I give you the CliffsNotes version on Marketing Analytics. Hopefully you won’t find it as daunting a class as I originally did.

Story By: Katie Fitzgerald | kaitlyn.fitzgerald@okstate.edu