Top Five Microsoft Excel Tips for Digital Marketers

In earlier days it was pretty difficult to manage data and with the introduction of Microsoft Excel things changed. There are several data manipulation possible with the help of excel as far as Digital Marketers are concerned. Following are some of the tips which can be done with the help of excel for making the process of digital marketing easy.

1. Flash Fill
Sometimes it is difficult a set of information continuously on Excel. There is a feature in Excel called Flash fill which enable sorting of data based on a particular pattern. This is especially true when the data have consistency across a series of cells. Usually Flash Fill is on by default and fills when the software recognizes a pattern. However if it is off it can be taken from files menu under options. In the advanced tab there will be a checkbox for automatically flash fill the data. If the flash filling is not working then it can be initiated from data ribbon menu. This is extremely useful when the contact list is imported from Social Media Websites or sorting the Email list taken from the subscription list.

2. Pivot Tables
This is one of most useful features of Excel which people don't use widely. Sometimes when there are a lot of data existing in the excel sheet it will be difficult to sort out which should be given importance. Pivot tables are easy for summarizing, analyzing and sorting out data based on a short set of parameters. Clicking on the table of data and going to insert Pivot Table Option and highlight what all parameters need to be analyzed. Then dragging the fields will create a pivot table in a separate sheet.

3. Goal Seek
Sometimes while analyzing data that are predicting an output from a particular formula, the user might not be sure about adjusting what value will yield a result. The Goal Seek feature of excel is a wonderful example of finding what value of a data set can affect another data set value. Sometimes expected organic visits and paid visits need to be analyzed to find out which will be going to yield the desired number of leads. Creating a set cell and selecting what if analysis from the data ribbon can make the goal seek value function to run. The target value and the current value can be find out by adjusting the parameters in the excel sheet.

4. Conditional Formatting
This feature of Excel is particularly useful for tracking the search engine ranking positions and the pagerank values for a web page. Conditional formating is used for highlighting a  value based on a condition. Depending upon the value in a cell the cell can be colored based on the period in which it stands. The Highlight cell rules can be taken from the conditional formating and used for sorting out if the ranking of a keyword is with the 1 to 10 position in search engine results page.

5. Forecast and Trendline
Forecast is done in order to predict the future values based on an old set of values. This can be extremely helpful for digital marketers for showing yearly trends based viists and conversions based old previous years results. Trendline also gives the values based on old values which can be accesed from the char line right clicking option. However Display Equation on chart should be turned on in order to see how the values vary based on old values.