Background
Data and Marketing go hand in hand. In order to assess and improve your marketing you need data, lots and lots of data. However that becomes an issue as you drown in a sea of numbers. What do they mean, what should you do with all those numbers, what software should you be using to analyse all that data? There are many programs out there that can help you filter data from any point on the internet but when it comes to being able to interpret that data humans are still the go to option. However not everyone loves to stare at numbers all day long.
A marketing agency asked me to create a sequence of reports that would help them filter FB Ad and Shopify results so that the FB Ad Buyer and Agency owner could make more informed decisions on a daily and monthly basis without having to trawl through all of the FB and Shopify interfaces. They also needed to compare conversion rates being reported by the FB Ad Manager and Shopify analytics.
Aim
- Create a system to retrieve data from FB Ads Manager and Shopify
- Automatically massage that data into meaningful numbers so that results could be assessed, daily and monthly.
- Create a top level report for the agency owner to be able to see key data from all of the agency clients in one spot
- Automate as much as possible
- Create a system that was inexpensive and easy to use and could be accessed by anyone in the team on multiple platforms
Solution
- Setup a Google Sheet that allowed for the input of data then the calculations of that data daily and monthly for Facebook and Shopify
- Setup reports in the FB Ad Account
- Move the data from FB to the Google Sheet
- Move the data from Shopify Analytics to the Google Sheet
- Setup the formulas to massage the data on the Google Sheets
- Move appropriate items to the top level data sheet the agency owner was to use to monitor results
- Document the system and setup up SOPs in their project management software of choice
- Train the agency staff in how to run this system
- Scale the system for all of the agency clients
Results
Formulas that move data from one place to another within all of these sheets and to other files are behind all of these cells.
Data input into one spot on the first sheet live feeds through and goes into calculations in other cells on multiple sheets.
Setting up marketing campaigns is only the start of effective marketing
Being able to understand and make decisions based on the thousands of pieces of data is what really makes the difference between effective marketing and a waste of money.
There are many reporting systems out there that can pull marketing data from literally hundreds of platforms. BUT being able to manipulate and analyse that data is a skill set that not many have.
