Guest Blog by Traci Williams of Excel Ace
When you think about Marketing your business, I’m sure you think of the common Marketing Tools such as Social Media, E-Mail Marketing and Branding etc, but I’m sure you don’t think of Spreadsheets??
Well, I can assure you, they are one of the most valuable assets to your Marketing Campaign, and can help with:
- Identifying your Target Audience
- Measuring the effectiveness of your Marketing
- Following up and prioritising Leads
……and you don’t need to be a Spreadsheet Whizzkid either, here a few simple tricks:
Identify your Target Audience
You probably have a box full of Business Cards that you’ve collected over a period of time, but which ones do you select to aim your Marketing at?
I’d recommend listing ALL of your Contacts (from Business Cards, FB (Facebook) Friends, Linked In Connections etc) on a simple Spreadsheet……… but don’t only include the standard information you find on a business card, add a couple of additional items of information, like those columns at the end of this example:
If you are then trying to find Contacts within a particular Geographical Location, or within a specified Industry, you will be able to apply Filters, to your spreadsheet to pick them out quickly and easily.
Filters enable you to drill down into your data, by temporarily hiding rows and just leaving your selection visible. Once complete, the Filter can be unapplied showing all of your data again.
To apply Filters, highlight all of your headings, go to ‘Data’ Ribbon’, and select the ‘Filter’ icon.
This will apply ‘Filter’ arrows at the top of each column. You can click on the arrow at the top of each column to see a list of all the items in that column, then manually select or de-select them as required. (Tick ‘Select All’ to un-apply Filters and return to all of your original data).
Measuring the effectiveness of your Marketing
Keep another Spreadsheet, where you collect the details of all the Enquiries you receive, as follows (copy & paste data from ‘Contacts’ spreadsheet as necessary):
By using Filters, you will be able to track the total ‘Value’ of the Enquiries that relate to each ‘Source’ or type of Marketing Activity, to see how effective it has been.
I would also recommend taking this sheet one step further by adding columns for ‘Action’, ‘Date of Next Action’ and ‘Status’, as this sheet shows:
The ‘Status’ column contains Data Validation which provides a ‘Pick-List’ to select one of three statuses from, and also contains Conditional Formatting which will also change the colour of the row according to the status selected. This makes it easier to pick out those enquiries that are still ongoing (you can also apply Filters using these colours too).
You can also use Pivot Tables & Pivot Charts to analyse this data:
This Pivot Table & Chart show the Value of Enquiries converted to ‘Clients’, by Marketing Source.
Following up and prioritising Leads
The ‘Date of Next Action’ column can be used to identify a list of Actions that need to be completed for a selected period of time, providing a ‘To-Do-List’. These dates can be simply overwritten as actions are taken and dates are amended.
The data on this sheet can also be ‘Sorted’ in order of ‘Estimated Value’ (in descending order, to put the highest value first), to help to prioritise which actions to take first.
Hopefully this has given you some idea of just how valuable a Spreadsheet can be to your Marketing……..and it’s not really that difficult either……..I promise!!!
The ‘Lead Tracker’ is a FREE Template you can download form my Website and it already contains the Filters, Data Validation, Conditional Formatting, Pivot Tables & Pivot Charts………so all you need to do is add your own data:
http://www.excelace.co.uk/alt.htm
Please don’t hesitate to give me a call if you need any help with any aspect of your Spreadsheets……..they’re easy when you know how………and Excel Ace can show you how!!
