If the goal is to stay in marketing yet develop deeper skills, why not move toward analytics -- esp. data mining? There has to be a huge potential market for marketing analysts who understand marketing AND analytic metrics.
All the marketing people I know at large companies have little or no knowledge of how metrics are acquired or whether they're accurate/precise. If someone like the OP added skills in data mining and probability distributions, especially if they could conduct experiments on databases to shape marketing campaigns, they'd be worlds ahead of a) pure marketers or b) pure data miners.
In general, neither expert (a or b) knows enough to properly propose and explore new marketing ideas. Someone who can 1) walk the analytic walk, yet 2) speak the language of business and 3) understand consumer psychology and sales priorities, ought to be an essential contributor indefinitely in a business niche that should outlast us all.
All the marketing people I know at large companies have little or no knowledge of how metrics are acquired or whether they're accurate/precise. If someone like the OP added skills in data mining and probability distributions, especially if they could conduct experiments on databases to shape marketing campaigns, they'd be worlds ahead of a) pure marketers or b) pure data miners.
In general, neither expert (a or b) knows enough to properly propose and explore new marketing ideas. Someone who can 1) walk the analytic walk, yet 2) speak the language of business and 3) understand consumer psychology and sales priorities, ought to be an essential contributor indefinitely in a business niche that should outlast us all.