5 Free Excel Add-Ins to Help Digital Marketers Decipher Big Data

Wherever a marketer turns these days she is confronted by the idea of big data. Mining this storehouse of user activity for actionable intelligence can seem a daunting task to a business without an in-house data analyst. Data captured will do no good if teams can't interpret it quickly and efficiently - it needs to be easily accessible.

Luckily you likely have a powerful analysis tool at your fingertips - Excel.

Excel has become so indispensable that 76 percent of agency media planners rely on it for their media planning, according to Chris O'Hara from NextMark. To turn your raw data into an asset, many powerful add-ins have been built to plug in to Excel.

GeoFlow for 3D geographic visualizationPowerPivot and Power View for massive data crunchingBing Ads Intelligence for rich PPC dataExcellent Analytics pulls in analytics data directly into ExcelSeoTools for Excel for robust SEO-specific tasks

All of these can help you harness the power of your data quickly and save time. As marketers, we should have a conversation around getting more from a tool we already know well (but not well enough).

GeoFlow: Big Data + Great Mapping Visualization

The Excel team just released a new free Excel add-in called GeoFlow that displays geographic data using Bing Maps to tell your story in a 3D visualization. The visualizations attract attention, are easily understood, and can even be incorporated into dashboards.

The example above maps electric power usage from Dallas Utilities from publicly available data. In digital marketing, advertisers can easily map sales and website interaction over time by geography. This sort of visualization for your data can make your reports and presentations pop.

PowerPivot: Pivot Tables on Steroids

Another key tool in Excel is PowerPivot, included with Excel 2010 and 2013. PowerPivot is pivot tables on steroids. PowerPivot can load even the largest data sets from almost any source and process this massive amount of data in seconds. After the initial learning curve, it's surprisingly lightweight.

Many businesses are putting together dashboards created from PowerView, a complement to PowerPivot.

Now, PowerPivot and GeoFlow are fantastic tools all marketers can use to help sift and visualize big data. But there are a whole set of free tools that bring search marketing or analytics directly into Excel. You don't have to leave Excel, so you can use an interface you're already familiar with.

PPC: Bing Ads Intelligence

Need keyword ideas or bid estimates by position? Bing Ads intelligence, a free add-in from Bing Ads, can give you the number of searches per search term, cost-per-click data, keyword ideas, age/gender data, and even more.

It also offers time-saving keyword research templates, like the "Search Query Insights Dashboard," which is similar in some ways to Google Trends. Nick Kastner from Red Clay Interactive echoes this point: "This awesome extension offers you seven standard keyword research templates to help you get started."

Analytics: Excellent Analytics

Spending too much time on reports? Excellent Analytics lets you pull Google Analytics data directly into Excel. There is a free, open-source version that has been downloaded tens of thousands of times by marketers looking to automate reporting. One review in the analytics app gallery highlights the time-savings: "This is a real time saver for me. What used to take me an hour now takes about 2 minutes."

SEO: SeoTools for Excel (Now With Majestic SEO Data)

Last but not least is a free set of SEO tools, fittingly called SeoTools for Excel. This donation-supported toolset adds many SEO-specific tasks to the Excel ribbon. Mitch Monsen from WhiteFireSEO says, "It has one of the most robust feature sets I've seen in an extension, and Nielsen is updating it constantly. It has mind-boggling scraping capabilities (get a proxy if you plan on using them a lot) and a ton of on-page analysis tools."

This isn't a complete list by any means. I'd love to hear your favorites in the comments section.

That said, countless late, coffee-filled nights putting together proposals have led me to this conclusion: digital marketing runs on Excel and caffeine. As the volume of data grows by the hour, take comfort in knowing "big data" can be sifted through an interface that you're already familiar with - Excel. And there are plenty of add-ins to help save you time!

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5 Reasons Search Marketers Should Watch the Regulatory Landscape

You may wonder what a recent hack of a U.S. government website, purportedly by the group "Anonymous," has to do with search engine marketing and online marketing, but bear with me as we use this as a segue into the regulatory environment, both in the U.S. and globally.

The conspiracy theorists (including some very bright and sane people) believe that this was a "False Flag" event and that an element or faction of the U.S. government actually hacked one of its own sites in order to pave the way for easy passage of Internet security reform with an emphasis on governmental control to regulate communications.

Whether or not the conspiracy theories are right could end up being a moot point. It wouldn't be surprising to see some mobile and Internet wiretapping bills proposed that gain far greater bipartisan support due to the ammunition provided by this and other hacking incidents. Not many people in Congress even understand the digital ecosystem as well as they should, so a poorly worded law could have far-reaching consequences (both intentional and unintentional).

Before we move on to our discussion of the Internet regulatory landscape, I have to mention that I find myself chuckling every time a hack is claimed by "Anonymous" or blamed on "Anonymous" because anyone can claim to be anonymous… Those of you who watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm" probably remember when Larry gets upset because Ted Danson gets to be "Faux Anonymous," which of course means the reverse is even more true when being the "Anonymous" hacker means your hack will get far more coverage in the press. So when it comes to being a hacker, everyone wants to be "Anonymous."

Anyway, the following are some reasons we, as advertisers and as consumers, should watch the regulatory landscape carefully over the next several years starting immediately:

Security concerns and the ability of law enforcement agencies to request information adds a cost burden on businesses running on the Internet. So far, the businesses most heavily hit have been bigger organizations that can absorb the costs of complying with government requests. Google, for example, gets thousands of requests a month for private information. Google even launched a transparency report page to educate consumers on the ways Google protects identity and personally identifiable information (PII) whenever possible, as well as the volume of requests Google gets of each type. Twitter has a similar page on transparency. My guess is that every email provider and social network finds itself inundated with a variety of government requests. The time will come when marketers with PII may find themselves at the receiving end of similar requests (see No. 3).Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concluded its anti-trust investigation of Google. Many pundits think that Google got off easy, but there were changes made to internal and external policies as a result of the FTC's recommendations. Google is striving for a higher level of transparency within both its paid and organic search dashboards (Webmaster Tools and AdWords), and I believe there are some changes that are being made to its API terms of service (haven't had a chance to compare, but there was definitely room for improvement there). Even the new version of Chrome - being released within a month or two (no firm date) - apparently has some changes in functionality as a result of the FTC's recommendations.Last year, the FTC announced that it is starting an investigation into data brokers who collect, store, and sell non-PII and PII data that is often appended to or matched to online cookies.Industry-led efforts may not be seen as sufficient by the regulatory agencies. For example, within display advertising, ads targeted based on the user ID of behavioral cookie data are supposed to provide notification of such. The group leading the charge here is the Digital Advertising Alliance's (DAA) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. However, the way in which the icons are used is varied and may confuse consumers (because clicking on the triangle (i) icon provides a different user experience depending on the partner organization and/or publisher). Another group taking a broader role is the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA).Mobile devices potentially know even more about you than desktop and laptop devices. Furthermore, TVs are becoming Internet-enabled. This opens up opportunities for abuse, and governments are prone to take action if any high-profile abuses happen.

Even internal teams at companies can't agree. Microsoft wants IE to block third-party cookies by default (or at least send the Do Not Track request), but Microsoft has lots of people in the publishing and advertising side of the organization who think that's not the appropriate setting.

As search engine marketers, the results of both of these investigations and any guidelines, policies, or sanctions that arise from regulatory intervention into our industry will have a direct or indirect impact on our strategies and tactics.

Anonymous image on home page via Shutterstock.

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Why Marketers Should Care About Tax Refunds

Did you know about 84 percent of taxpayers filing Jan. 1 through Feb. 15 receive a refund, compared to only half of those who file in April? Or that it's estimated that Uncle Sam will pay out $230 billion in federal tax refunds to U.S. consumers this tax season? The average refund in 2012 was $2,700 per household; and your customers are receiving an influx of cash in a short, predictable timeframe. The bottom line is simple: tax season isn't just for accountants and tax software companies, it's for all marketers.

Think about incorporating tax refund season into your long-term editorial and promotional calendars just as any other seasonal event like Mother's Day.

Search Trends During the 2012 Tax Season: Two Peak Times

Bing Ads put together an analysis of search behavior during the 2012 tax season (PDF download) that shows two clear peaks in search activity. The peaks correspond to Jan. 30 when the IRS typically begins processing returns, and the filing deadline on April 15.

A study from American Tax and Financial Center at TurboTax gives us an interesting view into the households filing early and their motivations. They say 84 percent of taxpayers filing Jan. 1 through Feb. 15 receive a refund, and those who file prior to Feb. 15 mirror the profile of a paycheck-to-paycheck household. And they also claim refunds are the primary reason taxpayers file returns by mid-February.

In marketing, timing matters. What does all this mean during tax season? Well it means cash starts flowing into the pockets of our customers around Valentine's Day and well into May.

The IRS typically starts processing returns Jan. 30 (refunds are typically processed within 21 days).If you file electronically it's 8 to 14 days, and it's estimated that nearly 62.5 percent of Americans will file electronically this year.And the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates nearly 60 percent of Americans have filed their taxes by March 1.

How They Plan to Spend the Refund

Tax refunds provide one of the largest single paydays for average American families, and the NRF expects nearly 24 percent of families to use their tax refund to purchase a large household item or even take a well-deserved vacation.

Clearly, this is valuable information for car dealerships, electronics retailers, travel agents, and appliances sellers (to name a few).

Quick Search Marketing Application

Your customers are getting extra cash, they're spending it on your products, and now you have to reach them. In search marketing campaigns, you may see higher conversion rates or more click volume on big-ticket items. You can consider customizing your ad copy, site links, or landing pages to highlight your top suggestions of where customers should invest their refund check.

See these concepts in action at SES New York 2013:Paid Search Analytics and Multi Touch Attribution AnalysisSee the full agenda.

As usual, some networks will index higher for your target market than others. Sticking with tax and search marketing, Bing Ads sees a 50 percent+ increase in its share of clicks vs. Google for the tax-related searches this time according to a 2012 comScore study (going from 23 percent to 35 percent of tax-related clicks). This is because Bing Ads' audience skews to users who typically have higher incomes ($60,000+), and are older (25+). Whether it's search, display, or mobile ad networks, think about where you'll find your best return.

Think about your business and customers, ask how they're impacted by tax refunds, and then determine where tax season fits into promotional calendars. After you've figured that out, the next step is to determine what do to with your refund (if you get one).

Tax Refund image on home page via Shutterstock.

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