6 minute read
Help Your Business Excel
with Data in Your Marketing
Marketing Manager of Poppy Design Studio, Simon Cox, takes a look at how marketeers should be looking at data and how to use Excel spreadsheets to record results to measure marketing activity success.
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Have you considered how recording data in your business marketing activities can help you grow? Without you reading any further, data has been around in business for years, but can data help predict our futures when it comes to marketing?
Think about sport and the performance of racing drivers, footballers, athletes etc, their growth and future performances include historical data to help key decision makers make interesting and more relevant decisions to what they are looking to achieve. It’s the same for business….. and you can start this almost immediately with a simple Excel spreadsheet and an analytical mind.
Here I look at some ideas for you to consider with your marketing and how monitoring data can help you help your marketing going forward with a simple Excel spreadsheet.
1. Monitor Your Competition
You could start a spreadsheet and identify your competitors in business. Nothing complicated, but list down your competitors on a sheet and record what they are doing. This could be the number of social media posts they put out across the month, how many testimonials they have visible on their social media accounts and how do they rank in search engine searches.
You could rank your competition with a points scoring system and produce a league table. Maybe 1 point for each social media follower they gain in the month, maybe a further point for the number of Facebook likes they gain on their posts throughout the month and maybe an additional point for each post they put out. Whatever you decide, this will give you an idea of what activity they are involved in with their social media marketing and would give you a focus to start and drill into the details of your competition.
You could measure all this on a set day of a month and compare their activity which means you would be able to increase your activity to still be ahead of them in line with your marketing.
2. Export Your CRM Data and Analyse the Output
Exporting your data from your CRM into Excel can lead to interesting results. You could look at your customer data to spot missing data, analyse out where your customers are located and even the last time they bought from you if you know where to look with the various tables and fields.
By exporting the data into Excel, you could link this to a product such as Power BI which is a free solution and great for analysing data. In the past, I have used Power BI to visually show where customers are located in the UK meaning that we have visibility of their geographic location which can be updated with a future export.
There is also nothing worse than receiving correspondence in the post and it is half addressed to you as someone hasn’t input all the full data into a CRM. By exporting your data, analysing out the customer addresses and contact data, you can gain a quick focus on missing data, meaning your customers won’t feel the “lack of care” feeling when receiving marketing literature or mailshots from you.
3. Short Cuts to Key Websites
Have you joined a number of Small Business Facebook groups and no idea how often you post in them? Why not list them all down in a spreadsheet with the relevant link to the group and then complete dates of when you post in those groups? You could then measure the engagement from those posts to record if your post is engaging and gaining traction.
You will also be able to market your business with a consistent approach in social media groups by simply entering the date of when you posted in the group and then monitor your activity going forward.
4. Testimonial Trackers
Tracking testimonials is a great way to increase your marketing activity. You supply your customer and ask them for a review or testimonial. Why not enter the customer details on a new Excel spreadsheet with the date of when you asked them for the testimonial.
In a month’s time, look at your social media accounts and update your spreadsheet with any increase in new testimonials or reviews. If you’ve seen an increase, then great. If you haven’t, by entering the date, you have a decision to make – ask the customer again or maybe review for the next month.
5. Hashtag Analysis
Do you monitor popular hashtags in your industry? We know hashtags can play an important role in digitally marketing a particular market, but how popular are they?
You could identify the growing hashtags in your industry to help you decide whether they are worth targeting with future posts or whether you should consider targeting different hashtags.
A simple search of a specific hashtag on Instagram (for example) will show how many posts have been posted with that hashtag. Maybe monitor this for one month at a set time and date and repeat going forward on a monthly basis. If you see increasing trends, is it worth considering posting with this hashtag? Maybe another option to consider.
6. Measuring Your Return on Investment
Measuring your return on investment in your marketing activities is critical. How do you know what is working and what isn’t?
Look at all your marketing spend, your social media advertising costs, church magazine advertising, exhibition costs and list them down in spreadsheet. You could give a specific advert or exhibition a code (eg EXPO2410) which you could use to monitor all activities and then when you receive an enquiry, ask the person enquiring where they found you or heard of your business. Once you’ve asked, add the code and measure this against the expenditure so you could have a cost of £500 for an exhibition stand on 24th October (EXPO2410) and when you receive 10 (for example) enquiries and have asked the prospect where they had heard of you, this could be attributed to the exhibition stand and lead to a cost of £50 per enquiry. (£500 divided by 10 enquiries).
If one of these converts to a sale of your product or service worth £2,000 (for example), then you know your EXP2410 exhibition stand has brought you in 10 enquiries, £2,000 of income and cost you £500.
You could also use the data to not market or advertise your business or brand in the future if you record the data and performance of the marketing activity.
Finally, with all this data, you could move your business forward. Use the data to create graphs and charts so it’s visible and colourful and also easily understood by key decision makers who don’t understand statistics and facts, but can understand a graph.
Whatever you choose to do, by monitoring your data, measuring regularly and making decisions based on the data, you can certainly grow your business with little financial investment and a more scientific approach.
ARTICLE RESOURCES 2 – Power BI - powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
Simon Cox is Marketing Manager for Northamptonshire based Poppy Design Studio who specialise in WordPress websites and graphic design. He is also Leader of the Kettering Business Network, founder of the Kettering Business Awards, Vice Chair of the Kettering Town Centre Partnership, 2020 FSB Champion for Small Businesses in Northamptonshire and leader of the North Northants Business Network. www.poppydesignstudio.com 37
