Share metrics and insights with stakeholders

You will learn how to work with stakeholders by anticipating their needs and communicating progress or results from a campaign. You’ll explore how to analyze, filter, and prepare metrics and insights to share with them. You’ll also practice creating visualizations, presentations, and a dashboard to clearly summarize insights for stakeholders. Near the end of the course, you’ll apply what you’ve learned by presenting a set of practice insights to stakeholders.

---

Dedication to study

• Videos: 32 min

• Leitura: 3 h 40 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

---

Learning Objectives

• Understand the information required by stakeholders and identify the metrics to meet their needs.
• Apply spreadsheet features like sorting, filtering, and pivot tables to prepare data to be shared.
• Create charts in spreadsheets for visualization of metrics.
• Create presentations and reports to update stakeholders on the progress or success of a marketing campaign and important insights.

---

Content

1. Anticipate what stakeholders need to know
2. Prepare metrics and insights to share
3. Prepare Data Visualizations
4. Prepare insights to stakeholders
5. Review: Share metrics and insights with stakeholders

---

1. Anticipate what stakeholders need to know

Welcome to week 4

• Video Duration: 2 minutes

You spent a lot of time in this course working with metrics for analytics and performance measurement. Now it’s time to consider who values this work: Stakeholders. Communicating your work to stakeholders is important. Doing the work to launch and monitor a website, app, or campaign without communicating results to stakeholders limits the benefits of your work. Stakeholders want information and the results come directly from you. In this part of the course, you will identify stakeholders and how to build trust with them. It all starts by understanding what they need from you, and communicating effectively with them. You’ll learn best practices to prepare data to share with them. Typically, stakeholders don’t need all of the metrics that are available, so you need to choose which metrics to share. And, after you prepare the data, you also need to create visualizations and presentations that summarize your findings and insights. You will learn about and practice these tasks in the upcoming lessons and activities. You’ll be preparing data and visualizations and spreadsheets, which is the most widely available tool for analyzing data. Most associate-level jobs and marketing will require you to have a basic knowledge of how to work with data in spreadsheets. If this is your first time working with spreadsheets, spend some extra time to become more familiar with spreadsheet features. You can consult readings for additional references to help you get started with spreadsheets. Spreadsheets do have a limit on how much data they can handle. It’s not as common a requirement for entry-level jobs, but some employers may require additional programming or scripting skills to be able to work with big data. If data is stored in a database, people use the Standard Query Language, or SQL, to run queries to view and work with the data. A handful of employers may also be looking for skills in Python, another programming language that is useful for data analysis and machine learning. SQL also referred to as Sequel, and Python aren’t covered in this course. If you’re working towards a more specialized role in marketing that has a bigger emphasis on data, you can complete courses dedicated to these topics. Courses are available from many providers and are offered on a variety of platforms, including Coursera. That’s all for now. To keep stakeholders invested in your marketing project, you’ll constantly need to be aware of what interests them the most. Continue with the next video to learn more!

Work with stakeholders

• Video Duration: 5 minutes

In this video, you’ll learn who a stakeholder is and how to understand their needs and respond to their requests. You might be one of a few people who has access to the metrics and analytics tools. Stakeholders might not have direct access to the data. How will you share information with them? In business, a stakeholder is someone with an interest or a concern for a project and its results. A stakeholder can be an executive, a manager, or a colleague in your own organization or department. Sometimes a stakeholder can be a client outside of your organization. For example, a stake holder within your organization could be a director whose operating budget funds your project. Or, if you’re working with a client stakeholder paying for a project, they’ll be reviewing your results closely because they usually can’t perform the work themselves. Stakeholders are important because they fund projects. They can also have influence to ensure a project success. A marketing coordinator keeps stakeholders informed about a campaign’s progress, ongoing metrics, and insights gained along the way or at the end of a project. If you don’t know how you should interact with stakeholders, follow up by asking your manager, or stakeholders directly, if required. Start by understanding stakeholder interest in your project. How does your campaign goal relate to their overall sales goal? Do they have a certain revenue forecast? Are they introducing a new product? Do they have an expected ROAS? Are they comparing historical data? Are they monitoring budget constraints? What aspects of the customer journey are they interested in? Also, know when to keep stakeholders informed. Who initiates exchanges? Do they prefer that you send them reports to them regularly, or do they prefer to request information as needed? How often should reports be sent? What results are a priority? What triggers an escalation, or emergency communication? Know how to communicate with them. It’s best to communicate using the methods a stakeholder prefers, or if you’re working with a group of stakeholders, the methods that work best for a majority of them, including meetings, email, chat, and phone calls. It can help to establish a preferred method of communication early on in a project or before it begins. Finally, understand how data is best presented. If stakeholders don’t get useful information from the metrics you share, they won’t benefit from your insights. Summarizing data using a combination of text and visuals makes metrics easier to consume. Here’s an example that shows the data as a table and chart at the same time. Dashboards also summarize data well. This might not be required for every project, but some people find it helpful to create a stakeholder map to record how to interact with their stakeholders. Placing stakeholders’ names on a map like this helps you identify the type and amount of interaction you will need to maintain with each stakeholder. Your most invested stakeholders with a high level of interest and a high level of influence would be in the square at the top right. Let’s finish with some role-playing. I’ll take on the roles of two stakeholders and you’ll select the best way to respond to my questions. Pretend that I’m a sales manager with interest in your current campaign because I want to increase online sales of a particular product. I’m curious about the impact your campaign is having on online sales, but I don’t have a lot of time to look at data and reports. How’s your campaign going? What can you tell me about online sales of the new product? Which responses do you think would be the most helpful to me? A: It’s going great! B: I’ll send you the most recent update and report. Or, C: I’ll send you the numbers for online product purchases over the last three months. Did you choose C? You would best meet my needs by sending the numbers for online product purchases because an online sales update is exactly what I want. Answer B, sending me the most recent project report, isn’t as helpful because I would have to search through a report for the data. Answer A, telling me that the campaign is going great, isn’t as helpful either. That response makes me think that sales are good, but I don’t have any data to back that up. Let’s try again. This time, I’m a marketing manager in your organization who isn’t your supervisor. I’m closely monitoring campaigns because I need to revise my campaign budget, but I’m not on your distribution list to receive reports. Is your campaign on track to meet the ROAS? Knowing that I’m not on the distribution list to receive reports, what is the most helpful response? A: I’m not allowed to share this information with you. B: Can I get back to you later? Or, C: I don’t know. Let’s review the responses. Answer A, I’m not allowed to share this information with you, is an honest answer, but I could in fact be added to the distr ibution list. Answer C, I don’t know, dodges the question so you don’t share any information, but this can reflect poorly on your job skills. I might wonder why you don’t know since my question is related to a campaign you’re working on. Answer B, can I get back to you later, is the most helpful response of the three choices. Promising to respond later gives you time to talk to the right person about adding me to the distribution list before you share information with me. Hopefully you enjoyed your time spent with this video, including the role-playing. You should now have a better idea of how you can adjust your data sharing and communication strategies to meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders.

Stakeholder relationships

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

In a marketing project, stakeholders play a key role to help ensure its success. As a marketer, you’ll work with stakeholders across your own internal organization or with external partners to achieve your marketing goals. It’s important to know who the stakeholders are for a marketing project or campaign. This reading covers the process of identifying stakeholders, documenting their needs, and establishing and maintaining good relationships with them by building trust.

Identifying stakeholders

Stakeholders typically come from:

• Your own team

• Internal organizations (outside your team)

• External partnerships (outside your company)

Stakeholders on your team

The people you work with on your team are going to be your closest stakeholders on a day-to-day basis. They want you to succeed and can provide meaningful feedback, help identify issues, solve problems, address obstacles, and review information and data before you share it with other stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders

Internal stakeholders are people from the same company but outside of your team who support a marketing project or campaign, or benefit from its results. The list isn’t comprehensive, but internal stakeholders can come from a large number of internal organizations, including:

• Sales

• Creative (content) teams

• Customer advocacy

• Market research

• Information technology (IT)

• Public relations

• Product management

External stakeholders

External stakeholders normally result from partnerships, such as when your company partners with an external ad agency for a campaign. Be aware of any prior contractual agreements, limitations, and requirements before you share information with external stakeholders.

Creating stakeholder maps

A stakeholder map, also referred to as a power grid, is a method you can use to keep track of the influence and needs of stakeholders and the level of communication that you require to work with them. A stakeholder map has two variables: influence and interest.

Influence can be defined as the degree to which a stakeholder can convince people to take certain actions. For example, if your marketing campaign needs more budget, a stakeholder with a high level of influence might be able to intervene to give your campaign a higher priority for funding.

Interest can be defined as the degree to which your project informs or impacts a stakeholder’s objectives. To remember this definition, think of it as a measure of a stakeholder’s vested interest.

Why is it helpful to place stakeholders on a map?

Placing stakeholders in one of the four quadrants in a stakeholder map can help you manage their expectations and share what they need to know without information overload.

If your time, resources, energy, and motivation is the organizational currency you spend at work each day, you want to make sure that you’re spending it on the things that have the most impact or value to the business. Stakeholder maps enable you to work with stakeholders effectively without having the process consume too much of your time or energy.

For example, referring back to the previous list of possible internal stakeholders for a marketing campaign, you might choose to place sales managers in the Inform and respond to needs box, and IT analysts in the Update box. Sales managers want to know if your campaign will help them meet their sales goals. You can plan on frequent and regular exchanges of information with them. On the other hand, IT analysts might not be using campaign metrics, but could play a role in archiving the results. Less frequent but regular updates would be more appropriate for them.

What’s at stake with stakeholders?

Trust. When you establish a high level of trust with your stakeholders, projects and campaigns can be executed in a culture of collaboration instead of a culture of doubt or skepticism.

The trust equation

Trusted Advisor Associates, LLC, has developed what they call the trust equation.

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation

Credibility means that you speak the truth. Reliability means that you do what you say you’ll do. Intimacy means that you know people well enough so they are comfortable sharing with you what they really think. These all help build positive relationships with team members, and internal and external stakeholders.

Self-orientation is the degree to which you’re looking out for yourself and your own interests. If left unchecked, a disproportionate amount of self-orientation can decrease the trust that others, including stakeholders, have in you and your marketing project or campaign.

Pro tip: A good investment you can make for your marketing project or campaign is to spend your organizational currency to build and maintain trust with your stakeholders!

Resources for more information

You can refer to the following links for more information about working with stakeholders:

• The Definitive Guide to Stakeholder Management: Learn more about managing stakeholders based on their need-to-know in this Smartsheet article.

• Understanding the trust equation: Learn more about the trust equation developed by Trusted Advisor Associates, LLC.

• Stakeholder analysis: a pivotal practice of successful projects: Learn more about identifying and classifying stakeholder influence from a paper published by the Project Management Institute.

Activity: Complete a stakeholder communication plan

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%
  • Access Quiz:

• On Step 1: Access the template

• To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

• Link to template: Stakeholder communication plan

Activity Exemplar: Complete a stakeholder communication plan

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Stakeholder communication plan

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed stakeholder communication plan. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Your stakeholder communication plan should include:

• The information to share with each stakeholder according to their primary information needs, as well as their level of influence and interest in the campaign.

• A description of how best to communicate the information to each stakeholder, based on the communication approach outlined in the stakeholder analysis.

Test your knowledge: Stakeholder needs and communication strategies

• Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

---

2. Prepare metrics and insights to share

Prepare data in spreadsheets: sorting and filtering

• Video Duration: 5 minutes

Sometimes data from analytics platforms is exported to spreadsheets. Spreadsheets offer the flexibility to analyze data sets in a manner you choose. For example, you can compare current data with data from previous campaigns in a spreadsheet. You might also use spreadsheets to sort metrics in a certain order, or filter out and exclude certain metrics before you share the data with stakeholders. This video covers how to sort and filter data in spreadsheets. You can use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Both environments offer sorting, filtering, and pivot table options in the main insert menu. This video demonstrates features in Google Sheets, but you can perform the same tasks in Microsoft Excel with slightly different menu choices. If you’re not already familiar with spreadsheets, they’re navigated by columns and rows. Columns are vertical and are labeled alphabetically. Rows are horizontal and are labeled numerically. People refer to cells or positions in a spreadsheet by combining the column and row designation. The cell highlighted in pink is cell A2.

When you sort data in a spreadsheet, you can uncover new patterns and relationships within data sets you might not have otherwise noticed. You can sort a range of cells, or data in a single column or in a single row, in ascending or descending order. In most cases, datasets have some initial organization, so you’ll need to keep that organization intact if you sort by a column or row. This spreadsheet called Sorting and Filtering contains user, session, revenue, and conversion data organized by browser type. Let’s sort the data by putting the values in the average session duration column, or column F, in descending order. Average session duration is measured in seconds and is calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions by the number of sessions. It tells you how long users spent interacting with your site before leaving. First, select cells “A1 to I11.” With the cells highlighted, select “Data” from the main menu and then select “Sort range” and “Advanced range sorting options.” In the window, click the “Data has header” checkbox. Check this box if the data selected has a header. In the spreadsheet, row one contains headers and you don’t want these headers to be sorted with the data. For Sort by, use the drop down to select “Average Session Duration”, which is the column containing the data in column F. Click the radio button for “Z to A” to sort in descending order. This will put the longest session duration at the top. Click “Sort.” The values for average session duration in column F are now in descending order, but the data in the other columns wasn’t sorted. It appears that internet explorer users had the longest sessions. An alternate method to sort is faster. Click “Undo” to put the data back in its original order. Now, click any cell in column F, select “Data” from the main menu, and then select “Sort sheet” and “Sort sheet by column F, Z to A.”

You get the same results as before. You can click “Undo” again to put the data back in its original order. When you filter data in a column, you display only the data that meets a certain condition you specify. All non-matching data is hidden when the filter is in place. Filtering is done on a column by column basis. In addition to filtering by conditions, you can filter by exact values or highlighted colors within cells. In the same spreadsheet, filter values in “Column F” to display only the browsers that had average session durations less than 100 seconds. Select “Data” from the main menu and then select, “Create a filter.” This adds a filter icon in each column header. Next, click the “Filter icon” in column F for average session duration. Expand “Filter by condition” and then change “None” to “Less than.” Finally, enter 100 for the value and click “OK” at the bottom of the window. Only three rows of data are displayed. All other rows in which the average session duration was greater than or equal to 100 are hidden. It turns out that the Samsung, UC, and Safari browsers had average session durations less than 100 seconds. Sorting and filtering in spreadsheets enables you to organize and prepare data to share with others. For more information about filtering by conditions, exact values, or highlighted cells refer to readings and references provided.

Data analysis in spreadsheets: sort, filter, and compare

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

A video in this course covered the steps to sort and filter data in spreadsheets. This reading illustrates how sorting and filtering can help you pinpoint campaign or business-related insights that you can share with stakeholders.

Description of spreadsheet

Suppose you have a spreadsheet that contains online sales data, like the one shown in the image below. Recall from the video that a cell in a spreadsheet holds data. Columns are vertical and are labeled alphabetically. Rows are horizontal and are labeled numerically. People refer to cell positions by combining the column and row designation, like cell A2. In the sample online sales data below, cell A2 contains the data, Alexander City.

Also recall from the video that sorting can put data in a certain order, and filtering can display data you want while excluding other data. Sorting and filtering in this spreadsheet enables you to gather insights like these:

• Number and percentage of purchases made from each campaign (by campaign codes)

• Campaign-related purchases (overall and by state)

Example 1: Purchases made from each campaign

1. To determine the number and percentage of purchases made from each campaign, sort the data in the sheet by Column F, which contains a discount code used in each campaign. Sorting in descending order (Z to A) places campaign-related purchases at the top of the sheet followed by blank cells.

2. Next, after sorting, create a filter for Column F to display the purchases for each campaign separately by deselecting the other two campaigns. For example, unchecking 39343E and CGRWAT displays only the purchases made from campaign EZ3043.

3. And finally, count the number of instances of each code each time you filter. Divide the number of instances of each code by the total number of purchases to get the percentage of purchases made from each campaign. For example, 15 purchases made with the code EZ3043 out of a total of 563 purchases is 2.66% of purchases.

Pro tip: For large datasets, instead of manually counting instances, you can use the COUNTA function in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. COUNTA returns the number of non-blank cells in a range. For example, if the data range is F2:F500, enter the following in a blank cell: =COUNTA(F2:F500). The number of cells in the range that contain data (such as a campaign code) is returned in that cell.

Insight you could share with stakeholders: 2.66% of all purchases resulted from Campaign EZ3043.

Example 2: Campaign-related purchases (overall and by state)

If you add the number of campaign-related purchases and divide that value by the total number or purchases, you get a percentage of campaign-related purchases. For example, if 59 purchases were related to the three campaigns, the overall percentage would be 59 divided by 563, and then multiplied by 100, or 10.48%.

Insight you could share with stakeholders: 10.48% of all purchases were campaign-related:

You could then filter the data by state (Column B) to get the breakdown by state. For example, if filtering for Alabama in Column B displays nine results, two of which are campaign-related, you can conclude that 22% of purchases from Alabama were campaign-related. You would have to repeat the filtering process for each state to complete a state-by-state comparison.

Insights you could share with stakeholders:

• 22% of purchases in Alabama were campaign-related

• 0% of purchases in Alaska were campaign-related

• 38% of purchases in Arizona were campaign-related

• (and so on for each subsequent state in the U.S.)

Resources for more information

You can refer to the links listed below for more information about sorting and filtering data in spreadsheets.

Google Sheets

• Sort and filter your data: This resource can help you organize data in Sheets. Use this guide to sort part or all of a spreadsheet. You can sort by text, number, and color. Then, learn how to create filters to show only certain data while hiding the rest. Finally, the article includes information on creating, saving, and removing a filter view.

• COUNTA: This Google Help Center article provides syntax and usage examples for the COUNTA function in Google Sheets.

Microsoft Excel

• Sort data in a range or table: This page guides you through all the steps you will need to sort data by number, text, and color. You’ll also have the option to sort by custom list so that you can customize exactly what you want to sort.

• Filter data in a range or table: This article has step-by-step instructions on how to filter an Excel spreadsheet to show only the data you want to see. You can also use built-in comparison operators, such as “greater than” and “top 10” to reveal only the most relevant data.

• COUNTA function: This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the COUNTA function in Microsoft Excel.

Activity: Sort and filter spreadsheet data

• Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

  • Access Quiz:

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will sort and filter data in a spreadsheet and answer a series of quiz questions.

Sorting and filtering data can help you discover campaign- or business-related insights that you can share with stakeholders. In a later activity, Analyze data using pivot tables, you will gain additional insights from this data by creating pivot tables.

If you need a refresher on how to sort and filter data in a spreadsheet, watch this video: Prepare data in spreadsheets (part 1): sorting and filtering.

Note: This activity contains instructions for Google Sheets. To review instructions for sorting data in Excel, visit the Microsoft Support page about sorting data in Windows or the web or sorting data in macOS. To review instructions for filtering data in Excel, visit the Microsoft Support page about filtering data in Windows, the web, and Mac OS.

• On Step 1: Access supporting materials

  • To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

    • Link to supporting materials: Paid ads campaign data

Prepare data in spreadsheets: pivot tables

• Video Duration: 3 minutes

You learned to use spreadsheets to sort data in a certain order, and filter out and exclude certain data. This video covers how to use pivot tables to categorize data. You can use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Both environments offer pivot table options. This video demonstrates how to create a pivot table in Google Sheets. Creating a pivot table in Microsoft Excel will follow a similar process. A pivot table changes your view of data in a spreadsheet to a different perspective to categorize it, or to identify an insight or trend. A pivot table doesn’t actually change the data in the spreadsheet. Here is an example of a pivot table that compares the number of units and average price of units sold in each campaign for both online and offline stores. A pivot table has 3 basic parts: Rows, Columns, and Values. Rows display selected values from the data horizontally in a pivot table. In the example, Store, Offline and Online, and Campaign 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the rows displayed horizontally. Columns display selected values from the data vertically in a pivot table. In the example, Units Sold and Price per Unit are the columns displaying values vertically. Values are used to perform calculations or count instances of repeating data. In the example, values were used to calculate the sum of units sold and the average price per unit sold. Now let’s create this pivot table. The parts of the pivot table will become much clearer as you observe the steps to create a pivot table. First, select the data, such as in cells A1 to E15 in the Pivot Table Data spreadsheet. Next, select “Insert” from the main menu and choose “Pivot table.” Most people create pivot tables in a new sheet, so leave new sheets selected and click “Create.” In the pivot table editor, click the “Add” button for rows and select “Store.” You can go with the default settings. Click the “Add” button for rows again and select “Campaign.” Again, you can keep the default settings. Both rows will be listed in ascending order. This means that the store types will be displayed in A to Z order and campaigns will be displayed in numeric order. Because “offline” comes alphabetically before “online”, offline data will be displayed before online data. Now, create the columns of the pivot table. Click the “Add” button for values and select “Units sold.” Keep the default setting to summarize the data as a sum. Click the “Add” button for values again and select “Price per unit.” But this time change “Summarize by Sum to “Summarize by Average.” The result is the pivot table that was presented earlier as an example! A final feature of pivot tables is filters. You can use filters to display only the data you want in a pivot table. In the pivot table you just created, click the “Add” button for filters and select “Campaign.” Click the drop down for “Showing all items for status” uncheck “Campaigns 3 and 4” and click “OK.” Notice how the pivot table now shows the data for campaigns 1 and 2 only. To remove the filter, simply click the X for the campaign filter. Pivot tables are a powerful way to analyze and prepare data to share with others. The steps to create pivot tables are quite detailed, so feel free to replay this video as a review or for help creating pivot tables and other activities. You can also refer to online help articles for more guidance and examples.

Data analysis in spreadsheets: pivot tables

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

A pivot table enables you to calculate, summarize, and analyze data for comparisons, patterns, and trends. A video about pivot tables in this course reviews the steps to create a pivot table. You can replay the video, if needed.

Another reading in this course that covers sorting and filtering in spreadsheets offers two examples of how sorting and filtering enables certain insights. This reading uses the same examples from the sorting and filtering reading. The examples are repeated to show how pivot tables enable the same insights more quickly.

Description of spreadsheet

Suppose you have a spreadsheet that contains online sales data, like the one shown in the image below. Recall from the video that a cell in a spreadsheet holds the data. Columns are vertical and are labeled alphabetically. Rows are horizontal and are labeled numerically. People refer to cell positions by combining the column and row designation, like cell A2. In the sample online sales data below, cell A2 contains the data, Alexander City.

A pivot table in this spreadsheet enables you to gather insights like these:

• Number and percentage of purchases made from each campaign (by campaign codes)

• Campaign-related purchases (overall and by state)

Example 1: Purchases made from each campaign

With sorting and filtering, you determine the number of purchases per campaign code by filtering for one code at a time. With a pivot table, you can view the number of purchases per campaign code all at once. This can save you time when working with a large amount of data.

1. Create the pivot table with Code as the Columns and State as the Rows, and then add Code as a Value summarized by COUNTA.

The resulting pivot table is similar to the one shown below, where the number of purchases for each campaign is shown in the row labeled Grand Total.

Note: Some rows (states) in the pivot table have been hidden to save space and show the counts at the bottom of the table.

2. You can then insert a formula to calculate the percentage of total purchases by dividing each grand total by 563. The formula in cell C53 is: =C52/563 which takes the value in cell C52, or 28, and divides it by 563. The resulting percentage is 4.97% for Campaign 39343E. Copy this formula to cells D53 and E53 to calculate the percentages for the other two campaigns.

Insights to share with stakeholders

Using the the pivot table and subsequent calculations, you could share the following information with stakeholders:

• 4.97% of all purchases resulted from Campaign 39343E

• 2.84% of all purchases resulted from Campaign CGRWAT

• 2.66% of all purchases resulted from Campaign EZ3043

Conclusion

The pivot table returned the same results as sorting and filtering the Code column and manually counting instances for each code.

Example 2: Campaign-related purchases (overall and by state)

Instead of filtering for each state one at a time to get the counts per code, each state’s count is already summarized in Column G (grand total) in the pivot table. But now you need a count of the non-campaign related purchases. If you insert None in the data as the campaign code for non-campaign purchases, the pivot table automatically adds another count for None in Column G.

Finally, you can insert a formula in Column I to calculate the percentage of campaign-related purchases for each state. In cell I4, enter =(D4+E4+F4)/H4. Next, copy and paste the contents of cell I4 into all remaining cells in Column I.

For example, after copying and pasting the contents from cell I4 to cell I6, the formula in cell I6 for Arizona becomes =(D6+E6+F6)/H6 which adds the values from the three campaigns and divides that sum by the grand total of purchases in Arizona.

Calculation in cell I6: =(1+1+5)/18 = 0.38, or 38%

Insights to share with stakeholders

Using the calculations for campaign-related purchases, you could share the following information with stakeholders:

• 22% of purchases in Alabama were campaign-related

• 0% of purchases in Alaska were campaign-related

• 38% of purchases in Arizona were campaign-related

• (and so on for each subsequent state in the U.S.)

Conclusion

The pivot table returned the same results as filtering the State column state by state to get a breakdown of the data by state. However, using the pivot table saved some time!

Resources for more information

You can refer to the following resources for more information about working with pivot tables:

• Create and edit pivot tables: Instructions to create pivot tables in Google Sheets

• Create a PivotTable to analyze worksheet data: Help creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel

Activity: Analyze data using pivot tables

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

  • Access Quiz:

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will create pivot tables from the same dataset you used in the activity Sort and filter spreadsheet data. Then you will analyze the data for themes and trends and recommend changes to ad campaigns based on your findings.

Like sorting and filtering, pivot tables can help you gain insights from spreadsheet data. But pivot tables reframe and categorize data, allowing you to compare metrics and identify trends. They can help you analyze complex datasets and make better, data-driven decisions.

Be sure to complete this activity before moving on. The next course item will provide you with a completed exemplar to compare to your own work. You will not be able to access the exemplar until you have completed this activity.

Note: This activity contains instructions for Google Sheets. To learn about creating pivot tables in Excel, visit the Microsoft Support page If you are using Numbers, visit the Numbers User Guide for Mac to learn how to create a pivot table and add and arrange pivot table data.

• On Part 1 - Create pivot tables - Step 1: Access the template.

  • To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

    • Link to template: Pivot tables

• On Part 2 - Analyze the data and inform your team - Step 1: Access the template

  • To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

    • Link to template: Data insights email

Activity Exemplar: Analyze data using pivot tables

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplars for this course item, click the links below and select “Use Template.”

Links to exemplars:

• Pivot tables

• Data insights email

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed activity. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: While your pivot tables should be very similar to the tables in the exemplar, your suggestions for improving conversions likely differ somewhat. It’s okay if the number and timing of the blocks you selected do not match the exemplar completely. What’s important is that you identified blocks of time that fit the criteria outlined in the activity instructions.

Let’s review each exemplar:

Pivot tables

The exemplar contains three pivot tables. Each table uses “Hour of Day” for rows and “Day of Week” for columns. The values are set to sessions, conversions, and conversion rate.

The conditional formatting uses a white to green color scale for the tables and a white to yellow color scale for the Grand total column and row. Lower values are lighter and higher values are darker, making it easier to identify patterns in the data.

Data insights email

The notes use the guiding questions to identify both general and specific insights about each pivot table.

The recommendations use the pivot tables and the insights recorded in the notes to identify blocks of time to run more ads (primarily Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in the afternoons and evenings). These blocks have above-average conversion rates and a moderate volume of sessions.

They also identify times to run fewer ads that have a high session volume, a low conversion rate or few conversions (each day in the early morning and midday on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).

Test your knowledge: Spreadsheet features

• Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

---

3. Prepare Data Visualizations

Create data visualizations in spreadsheets

• Video Duration: 5 minutes

You learned that spreadsheets provide flexibility to sort, filter, and analyze data in a manner you choose. Spreadsheets also provide flexibility to create visualizations of the data. This video covers basic chart types in spreadsheets. One advantage of creating charts in spreadsheets is you can copy and paste them into slides when you need to present the data to others. Basic visualizations in spreadsheets include vertical column charts, horizontal bar charts, line charts, area charts, pie charts, and histograms. If you’re comparing how a metric or variable changes, you can use a vertical column chart for the different measurements. In a vertical column chart, individual measurements are each shown as a vertical column. You can compare how one metric changes over time in a single column chart. For example, you could compare the number of new users in January and February in a single column chart. Or, you might need to compare two metrics or variables side-by-side, like the number of new users and the number of returning visitors in January and February. In this case, you can use a grouped column chart. Finally, if you want to compare related metrics or variables to avoid the spread of a grouped column chart, you can use a stacked column chart. The stacked column chart shown here would be appropriate to compare the total number of users in royal blue, the number of users who abandon their shopping carts in dark blue, and the number of users with completed purchases in light blue. A horizontal bar chart is simply a 90 degree rotation of a column chart. You might opt for a horizontal bar chart if there’s a large difference between the measurements you’re comparing. For example, if you’re showing a large spike in new users, a horizontal bar chart saves space because a vertical column chart might be too tall. Like vertical column charts, horizontal bar charts can be single, grouped, or stacked. If your data shows how a metric changes over an extended period of time, you can use a line chart. In line charts, individual data points for a changing variable are connected with a continuous line. A line chart can be a single line chart showing one metric changing, or stacked line charts to show two or more metrics changing. An area chart represents data in the same way as a line chart, but with the space under the line filled in to form a visual area. Area charts can be single, unstacked, or stacked. The unstacked format of an area chart is unique because data points don’t align on the x-axis, causing the areas to have a different shape. Unstacked area charts can result if measurements weren’t collected on the same days, but you’re still trying to show an overall trend. A pie chart is useful to show data that has partial and whole results. For example, you could use the pie chart here to represent the percentages of sales attributed to each of the four campaigns shown here in green, blue, red, and yellow, adding up to 100 percent or the whole pie. A histogram shows individual data points that had been categorized into ranges, with the frequency of each range represented by the height of a unique column. For example, you could use the histogram here to show the demographics of online sales classified by age groups. Returning to the Sorting and Filtering spreadsheet, let’s create a chart that compares the number of new users versus the total number of users for each browser type. These steps are for Google Sheets, but the steps in Microsoft Excel are pretty similar. First, select cells “A1 through C11.” Then click “Insert” from the main menu and select “Chart.” A vertical column chart may appear by default. If you want to change the chart type, use the chart editor on the right. Click the “Setup” tab in the chart editor, then make your selections. In this case, click the drop-down arrow for “Stacking” and select “Standard.” This changes the chart from a column chart to a stacked column chart. You can select other charts in the chart editor to pick the type of chart you like best. If you’re working in Microsoft Excel, after you select cells A1 through C11, click “Insert” from the main menu and then choose the icon for the chart type you want. You’ll be creating other types of charts in activities in this course. The chart examples in this video are also included in a downloadable guide in a reading. As mentioned at the beginning of this video, charts in spreadsheets can be easily copied into slide presentations. You’ll also get a chance to create a presentation with charts from a spreadsheet. All of these skills will help you share insights and data with stakeholders.

Data visualization in spreadsheets: charts

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

A video on data visualizations in this course introduced a variety of charts that can be created from data in a spreadsheet. When you share data visualizations to help stakeholders consume metrics and data, it’s important for them to be able to scan through them to get the main points in a few seconds. This reading provides examples of when you might need to adjust or regroup data to create a chart that’s easier for stakeholders to read and understand.

Avoid crowded charts

If a chart shows many categories, it can look crowded. For example, suppose you need to show the percentage of conversions in each state in the United States for a national marketing campaign.

A column chart doesn’t have enough room to label the data for all 50 states.

A pie chart has too many slices that can’t be clearly labeled and displayed.

You can create a stacked chart, or reduce the number of categories, to have a more visually appealing chart that’s easier to read.

Create stacked charts by region

If you stick with a column chart, you can group states by region (such as Northeast, Midwest, South, and West). Then, you can create a stacked column chart. Each column cumulatively shows the data for each state in the region. The resulting chart has four instead of 50 columns.

Display states with most conversions and combine others

If you stick with a pie chart, you can reduce the number of categories. You can show the states with the largest percentages of conversions and put all other states in a grouped category, such as states with less than 3% of conversions. The resulting pie chart has eight instead of 50 slices which is much easier to read.

Key takeaway

When you create a chart to share with stakeholders, you need to select the most appropriate chart type for your data. Sometimes you have to try different charts to find out which looks the best. Other times you need to adjust the data to create a more visually-appealing chart.

Bonus guide to creating charts

• How to choose a data visualization: Refer to this pictorial guide for help selecting the right type of chart for your data. You may download and keep it for reference.

Other tools for data analytics and visualization

• Video Duration: 4 minutes

You have observed how spreadsheets are useful for basic data analysis. You have also seen how spreadsheets can be useful for creating charts for data visualization. However, spreadsheets may not be suitable for more advanced or custom data analysis, or for more dynamic visualizations that change in real time. Many businesses need qualified data analysts to solve problems and help them make the best possible business decisions. A marketing organization or an e-commerce business is no exception. If a marketing specialist performs data analysis or creates visualizations for campaigns, that role may actually be a hybrid one. A hybrid role could blend a marketing coordinator and a data analyst role into a single marketing specialist role. Marketing coordinators coordinate marketing activities and initiatives, identify target audiences through research, run campaigns, and evaluate trends. Data analysts collect data, query databases, apply statistical methods to data, and create data visualizations. Some additional tools and skills may be required for a hybrid role in marketing. A combination of a marketing coordinator and a data analyst. You have worked with Google Analytics, but a marketing team may want to analyze data in different ways or create reports not available on a particular platform. Coding or programming skills are required for more customized data analysis. The programming language, Python, has become popular for data analysis. An increasing number of data analysis libraries are available in Python. Python is also used for data mining, data processing, and data visualization. Another programming language, R, is also used for data analysis and visualization and has packages for statistical calculations. Programming is a good skill to have in a hybrid marketing role. You were also introduced to big data. Big data often resides in large databases instead of in analytics tools. You learned how data might be exported from Google Analytics to BigQuery, Google’s cloud based data warehouse solution. Structured query language, or SQL, is a standard language used to communicate with databases developed by different vendors and hosted on multiple platforms. SQL queries enable people to pull data from databases for analysis. Knowing how to run SQL queries is a good skill to have in a hybrid marketing role. You have created charts and spreadsheets, these charts are created from snapshots of data that don’t change. But a marketing team may want to present data and insights in a dashboard that reflects data in real time while allowing users to interact with the data. A dashboard is a tool to track, analyze, and display KPIs, metrics, and insights dynamically based on interactive user criteria. Knowing how to create dashboards is a good skill to have in a hybrid marketing role. Tableau is a visual analytics platform that makes it a lot easier to explore and manage data and to create custom dashboards that incorporate different data visualizations in one place. Tableau public is a version of the platform where you can explore, learn more about its features, and even try creating your own visualizations and dashboards. After you create an account on Tableau Public, you can click “Discover” in the menu bar. Enter “Marketing dashboard” in the search field to find marketing dashboard examples. When you work in Tableau public, you can choose to keep your work private or share it with the rest of the Tableau Public community. In fact, the marketing dashboard examples were created by Tableau Public community members who allowed their work to be visible to the entire community of users. Google Data Studio is another solution to help you visualize data with customer reports and dashboards. It’s free to use and connects to many data sources. You can click “Templates” to explore the template gallery. Templates are available for google analytics, Google Ads, BigQuery, Google Sheets, Youtube Analytics, and Search Console. If you’re interested in developing a broader range of skills in analytics, you can check if the Google Data Analytics Career certificate is right for you. It includes an introduction to SQL queries, Tableau, and the R programming language. Having familiarity and experience with SQL queries, Tableau, and a programming language, like python or R, will help you stand out for a hybrid role in marketing.

Activity: Create data visualizations for a presentation

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%
  • Access Quiz:

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will create charts for the dataset you examined in the Analyze data using pivot tables activity. If you have not completed this activity, you will need to do so before starting this exercise.

Effective visualizations can make it easier for stakeholders to understand a dataset and why it’s important. By using charts and other visualizations in reports and presentations, you can convey insights to stakeholders clearly and help them make data-driven decisions.

Note: This activity contains instructions for Google Sheets. To learn about creating pivot table visualizations in Excel, visit the Microsoft Support page. If you are using Numbers, visit the Numbers User Guide for Mac to learn how to create a pivot chart.

Be sure to complete this activity before moving on. The next course item will provide you with a completed exemplar to compare to your own work. You will not be able to access the exemplar until you have completed this activity.

• On Step 1: Access the template

  • To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

    • Link to template: Data visualizations

• On Step 3: Select a chart type

Keep in mind that these guidelines are not hard rules. The most important thing is that the type of chart you select makes the data clear for your audience. For more guidance on selecting charts, review the How to choose a data visualization guide or visit the Google Help Page on Types of charts and graphs in Google Sheets.

• On Step 4: Edit and format the chart

You can modify other chart elements (like the chart and axis titles, labels, text sizes, and color choices) in the same way.

You can learn more about how to add and edit a chart or graph in Sheets in the Google Help Center. You can also learn how to create a chart from start to finish in Excel in the Microsoft Office Support Center.

Activity Exemplar: Create data visualizations for a presentation

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

• Link to exemplar: Data visualizations

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed data visualizations. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: Each tab in the exemplar contains 2–3 chart options. There’s no one right way to visualize data, so yours may differ. What’s important is that your charts present the data points clearly and makes it easier for your audience to understand.

Let’s review the advantages and drawbacks of the charts in each tab (you may need to scroll down to find some of the charts):

Sessions

1. Stacked column chart (vertical): This chart visualizes how hourly sessions for each day contribute to the total volume over a 24-hour period. It allows comparison between both the hours of a day and the days of the week. An area or line chart is often a good choice when displaying changes in value over time. However, depending on your audience, a bar chart may be a more accessible choice.

2. Stacked bar chart (horizontal): Similar to the stacked column chart, but the horizontal orientation allows more room to display the differences in volume between the very low (e.g., 2:00) and the very high (e.g., 10:00). However, depending on your audience, a vertical chart may seem a more natural way to present the hours of the day.

3. Stacked area chart: Like the stacked column chart, this visualization breaks down hourly sessions for each day and displays the volume over a 24-hour period. This chart makes it easy to understand the flow of traffic over the course of a typical day, but may be less familiar to a general audience than a bar chart.

Charts to avoid: Because the dataset includes so many variables, a grouped/clustered column chart would become crowded and could be difficult to understand.

Conversions

1. Stacked column chart (vertical): Like the sessions column chart, this chart visualizes how hourly conversions for each day contribute to the total volume over a 24-hour period. It allows comparison between both the hours of a day and the days of the week.

2. Stacked bar chart (horizontal): Similar to the stacked column chart, but the horizontal orientation allows more room to display the differences in volume between the very low (e.g., 2:00) and the very high (e.g., 10:00).

3. Stacked area chart: Like the stacked column chart, this visualization breaks down hourly sessions for each day and displays the volume over a 24-hour period.

Charts to avoid: Because the dataset includes so many variables, a grouped/clustered column chart would become crowded and could be difficult to understand.

Average conversion rates/day of week

1. Column chart (vertical): Column charts are good for comparing a limited number of values. This format clearly demonstrates the differences in the average conversion rates for the seven days of the week. The values are similar, so a vertical bar chart is sufficient.

2. Bar chart (horizontal): Similar to the column chart, the bar chart allows comparison among the days of the week. The space allowed by a horizontal chart is not necessary for this dataset. However, if your sessions chart was horizontal, you may want to keep the same orientation.

Charts to avoid: A line or area chart may make it harder to distinguish between the different values.

Average conversion rates/hour of day

1. Single area chart: Since this dataset demonstrates changes in a single value over time, an area chart is a good choice.

2. Line chart: A line chart is also a good option for visualizing changes in a single value over time. However, an area chart may be easier for your audience to see, allowing them to understand the importance of the data more quickly.

Charts to avoid: A column or bar chart may make it harder to understand the changes over time.

Monday/Wednesday/Friday conversion rates/hour of day

1. Line chart: Since this dataset demonstrates changes in a limited number of values over time, a line chart is a good choice. To make it easier to compare the lines, the exemplar line chart has been made taller than the default chart.

2. Unstacked area chart: Like the line chart, this chart demonstrates changes in value over time. However, the filled area below the lines may make it difficult to identify all the lines at every point in the chart.

Charts to avoid: A grouped/clustered column or bar charts may become too crowded, making it harder to identify the values and understand how they relate to one another.

Test your knowledge: Charts in spreadsheets

• Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

Make presentations accessible

Reading Duration: 10 minutes

In this reading, you will learn how to ensure accessibility in your presentations.

Focus on inclusivity

Throughout your career, you will work with people who have disabilities. There are some specific design choices you can make to design your reports, presentations, and content so that they have the intended impact with your colleagues, particularly those with vision or hearing impairments. These decisions include evaluating any text you’re using in your presentation, as well as any visuals you’re adding to it, like charts, graphics, and photos.

There are a number of things you can do to make your visuals more inclusive to people of all abilities.

Note: You won’t always know when a person has a disability, which means you need to prepare for every possibility. Even if you know everyone you are presenting to, there’s a chance they may not have disclosed to you that they have a disability.

Checklist

As you’re creating presentations for your colleagues with disabilities, refer to this checklist to ensure they are as accessible as possible.

Visuals

• Choose high contrast color combinations for your visuals. If your background is white, use a dark color for text and images. If your background is dark, use white or lighter colors for text and images.

• Use large text and easy-to-read fonts on your slides.

• If you’re using videos in your presentation, make sure there are captions on them, and offer a downloadable transcript.

• For visuals like charts and graphs, clearly identify the important data using labels rather than a legend.

This slide, pulled from a presentation earlier in this certificate program, includes high contrast colors and large text for easy visibility

• Don’t rely solely on colors to tell your data story. For instance, some people will need to see graphs that feature varying patterns so they can decipher the information.

Note: Fictional data used in above graphs

Designing the slides

• If you’re presenting to a group, take your time so that everyone can understand the main points of each slide.

• Include alternative text on any images or visuals you include in your presentation.

• Don’t crowd your slides — too much info can be distracting, overwhelming, and prevent listeners from focusing on your presentation.

This slide, pulled from a presentation earlier in this certificate program, includes lots of negative space and isn’t too overwhelming for audience members.

Presenting

• Read all of the text on each slide clearly and slowly. Call attention to visuals and most important details so nothing is missed by your audience.

• If you’re giving this presentation virtually, ensure every attendee can hear you, and that you utilize the caption feature on your video call platform.

• Share the presentation with the audience so they are free to zoom in during the presentation, and revisit the presentation afterwards, in case they missed something.

• Leave time for questions at the end.

Key takeaways

Ensuring your work is accessible and inclusive is integral to creating quality presentations and fostering a healthy working environment. You never want anyone to lack understanding or clarity because of their disabilities, and you also don’t want a lack of accessibility to lead to goals not being met. Make sure to follow this checklist every time you create a presentation and everyone is more likely to feel included.

Resources for more information

• Make your document more accessible with Google’s help

• Article on accessibility for color blindness from Medium

• Additional info from the Web Accessibility Initiative on accessible presentations

---

4. Present insights to stakeholders

Create effective presentations

• Video Duration: 3 minutes

Marketers gain insights by monitoring the metrics for ongoing or completed campaigns. They prepare data to share with others. They create visualizations for the data. The last step is to create a presentation to share their findings with stakeholders. This video will describe how to prepare an effective presentation for stakeholders. A presentation is like a map. A map uses Global Positioning System, or GPS, data to get people to a final destination. When you create a presentation, you use marketing analytics data to lead an audience to your final conclusion. To do this, first develop a clear outline or flow of the presentation. Then, decide which data to use. Include the most relevant metrics that led you to your insights. Too little data can cause an audience to have a lot of questions. Too much data can cause an audience to lose their focus on the main topic. When you create a presentation with these things in mind, your insights, the flow, and the data, your audience will be able to arrive at the same conclusion. Here are some best practices when creating slides for a presentation. Progress from general to specific topics. State any insights clearly and upfront. Repeat the insights when presenting the relevant supporting data. Introduce data visualizations using titles that relate back to the insights. Allow time for questions so the audience can reach the same conclusion. End the presentation with a call to action, such as making a decision. In the next example, you will get a feel for the process of creating an outline and selecting relevant data. Pretend you’re working on a campaign for your company, and you are requesting an in-progress change to the budget spend. To get this changed approved, you need to present your analysis to stakeholders. In this case, they are a mix of people within and outside your department. You’re recommending a change in budget spend based on ongoing measurements of ROAS for two channels in your campaign. You want to double the spend on the more profitable channel by cutting the budget for the less profitable channel. So this is your conclusion. Your outline or path forward could be a summary of current spend, followed by a projected outcome if the current spend is adjusted. You could also describe the benefits of making the change as well as any lost opportunities if the change isn’t made. Notice in the outline, the flow starts with a general status of the campaign spin and then moves on to the specifics of making a change to the budget. This satisfies the best practice of moving from general to specific topics. The outline also ends with a call to action, another best practice. The data could potentially include ROAS for both channels, the conversions attributed to each channel, and the conversion rates for each. These metrics support display ads being a more profitable investment. The data would support the request to make the budget change. If you create visualizations of the data, titles like “Higher spend for higher ROAS”, and “Spending where conversions happen” could help map the data to your conclusion. This would also satisfy the best practice of naming data visualizations so they relate back to your insights. In another activity, you’ll create a presentation for stakeholders using the strategy you learned in this video. You’ll also be able to evaluate completed presentations to check whether they follow the best practices that were introduced.

Best practices for presenting data

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

In this course, a video about creating effective presentations suggested the following best practices when presenting data and insights to stakeholders:

• Progress from general to specific information

• State insights clearly and up front

• Repeat insights with data

• Introduce visualizations with insightful titles

• Allow time for questions

• End with a call to action

This reading provides tips and a sample layout to develop a presentation with these best practices in mind.

Tips for effective presentations

Use the following tips to create a presentation for stakeholders.

Tip 1: Know your flow: progress from general to specific information

Just like in any good story, a presentation provides some background before going into the details. The amount of background or general information depends on your audience.

• If your intended audience is executives, your background can be kept at a high level and be brief. Executives tend to focus on forward thinking and improvement, so you’ll want to spend most of the presentation on your results and recommendations.

• If your intended audience is managers, they might have more interest in background information. For example, be prepared with talking points about the performance and target audiences of previous campaigns and why these apply to your campaign.

• If your intended audience is other team members and individual contributors, you will have the most freedom—and perhaps the most time—to go more deeply into the background before presenting your insights.

Tip 2: State insights up front

Some people are tempted to skim-read a story’s ending when they start reading a book. People in your audience could have the same inclination, so go ahead and satisfy it! You can gain their attention by stating insights up front. Then, keep their attention when you show them the data and metrics that support the insights. Another advantage of doing this is if people have to leave before the end of a presentation, they have already heard about your insights.

Tip 3: Introduce visualizations (and repeat insights with metrics)

Following up your stated insights with metrics and visualizations is like getting your audience to a mountaintop. It can be hard work, but showing visual representations of the metrics while repeating your insights will help your audience reach the same conclusions you have. The titles you choose for your visualizations ought to relate back to the insights and relay the main point immediately. For example, if you are presenting data about ad spend on YouTube compared with your competitors, instead of naming the slide “YouTube Spend by Competitors,” name it ‘We’re spending 200% less on YouTube than competitors.”

Tip 4: Allow enough time for questions

Assume that everyone in your audience is busy. Keep your presentation as short as possible by:

• Being aware of your timing. This applies to the total number of slides and the time you spend on each slide.

• Presenting your data efficiently. If a slide isn’t that distinct, think about combining the information on that slide with another slide. On the flip side, if a slide appears crowded because it has more than one insight or chart, create a separate slide for each.

• Saving enough time for questions at the end, or allowing enough time to answer questions throughout your presentation.

Tip 5: End with a call to action

Whether you’re asking for a decision to be made, a process change, additional budget, or even recognition of a team that performed well, it’s always a good practice to end a presentation with a call to action. Based on their understanding of the insights you presented, stakeholders will then be clear about what they need to do with that information. A call to action can include assignment of action items and deadlines for completion.

Sample layout for slides

The following is a sample layout for a slide presentation.

First slide: Agenda

Provide a high-level list of the topics you will cover and the amount of time you will spend on each. Every company’s norms are different, but in general, most presentations run from 30 minutes to an hour at most. Here is an example of a 30-minute agenda:

• Team introductions (three minutes)

• Background (three minutes)

• Insights and recommendations (five minutes)

• Metrics and data (ten minutes)

• Call to action and next steps (five minutes)

• Questions (four minutes)

Note: You can alternately present insights and recommendationsbefore the background. However, if the background information provides required context to understand the insights, it should come first.

Second slide: Background

Everyone might not be familiar with your campaign or marketing project or know why it is important. They didn’t spend the last couple of weeks thinking about the metrics and results like you did. This slide summarizes the purpose or background of the campaign or project and its importance to the business.

Third slide: Insights and recommendations

First, it really is possible to tell the story in a single slide summarizing your insights. But in most cases, you’ll include slides after this one with the metrics and data that support your insights.

To emphasize particular insights, you can:

• Fade in one bullet point at a time as you discuss each insight on a slide.

• Only display the bullet that is relevant to what you are talking about (fade out non-relevant bullets).

• Use arrows or callouts to point to a specific area of a slide that you are using.

Fourth slide: Metrics and data

Be ready to communicate how metrics support your insights in different ways. If including visualizations of your metrics, clearly label data points using annotations or chart legends. Also, prepare multiple ways to rephrase what is shown in them to help anyone who is having difficulty interpreting the data.

Note: It depends on how much data you’re sharing, but you often won’t be able to fit everything on one slide. You can create as many additional slides as you need after the fourth slide.

Last slide: Call to action and next steps

To complete your presentation, provide a simple, yet powerful summary, and a list of steps detailing what you are asking the audience to do next. If you list action items, provide a timeline for when everyone should complete their work.

Key takeaway

When you implement the best practices for effective presentations and create presentations with an organized flow, you’ll be well on your way to clearly presenting the insights from your work as a marketing professional.

Activity: Present data insights to stakeholders

• Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%
  • Access Quiz:

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will create a presentation using insights from the Analyze data using pivot tables activity and data visualizations from the Create data visualizations for a presentation activity. If you have not completed these activities, you will need to do so before starting this exercise.

• Step 1: Access the template

  • To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

    • Link to template: Presentation

• On Step 2: Review the slide presentation

Examine the slide presentation, paying attention to the content and the order of the visualizations. As you review the presentation, you may want to consult your notes from the Analyze data using pivot tables activity. Keep them open as you complete this exercise. They can remind you of contextual details, as well as your own thoughts and conclusions about the data.

• On Step 3 (optional): Add your visualizations to the presentation The template for this activity includes versions of the charts from the exemplar for the Create data visualizations for a presentation activity. If you’d like, you may replace the provided charts with your visualizations from that activity.

Activity Exemplar: Present data insights to stakeholders

• Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Presentation

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed presentation. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Note: The exemplar represents one possible version of the presentation. Yours will likely differ in certain ways. What’s important is that your presentation explains the data clearly and interprets it in a way that’s relevant to the audience.

Let’s review Slides 5-8 one at a time:

Slide 5: Total conversions by hour of day

The speaker notes summarize the chart data and explain why it’s relevant: They describe how conversions rise and fall throughout the day. They also compare this pattern to the sessions chart on the previous slide. They highlight representative data points that are relevant to the audience, but don’t overwhelm the audience with detail. Finally, the notes draw a conclusion supported by the data.

Slide 6: Average conversion rates by day of week

The speaker notes explain that comparing average conversion rates for each day of the week can help narrow down when to change the ad strategy. They compare each day to the average conversion rate and identify three potential days to run more ads and three to run fewer.

Slide 7: Average & Monday-Wednesday conversion rates by hour of day

The speaker notes compare the two charts, which display the conversion rate data in more detail. They point out selected examples of when the rates are highest and lowest to demonstrate the types of blocks identified for running more (and fewer) ads.

Slide 8: Conclusion and next steps

The conclusion slide states the recommended actions that resulted from the analysis. It also explains how these suggestions will contribute to departmental and company-wide goals.

Evaluate and improve presentations

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

In this course, a previous reading covered how to avoid crowding in a chart by adjusting or regrouping data so it’s easier for stakeholders to understand it. That practice becomes even more critical if you decide to include a chart in a slide presentation. This reading covers other design principles to think about when you incorporate visualizations of data in slide presentations.

Design principles for visualizations

Visualization design is important to your work as a marketing professional. Your primary goal is to use visualizations that communicate your data effectively to your audience. By keeping the following design principles in mind, you can plan and evaluate your visualizations and decide if they add value to your presentation. If they don’t, you can adjust or remove them.

Choose the best format

One of the first things you have to decide is which visualization format is the most effective for your audience. Sometimes, a simple table is the best visualization for an audience of executives or managers. They tend to focus on the big picture and strategies instead of the data itself. Other times, you need a more complex visualization to illustrate your insights for more technical teams that require a deeper understanding of the data.

Minimize distractions

Focus your audience on the part of the visual that is key to understanding an insight. The term data-ink ratio is used to describe the proportion of ink (or pixels in digital content) that is used to present actual data compared to the total amount of ink (or pixels) used in the entire visualization. Try to maximize this ratio and minimize distractions in your visualizations. For example, remove lines or boxes around charts and legends, or remove shadow effects for text.

Use the appropriate orientation

Make sure the text components of a visualization, like labels on a chart, are easy to read. You can change the orientation of your visualization to make text easier to read and understand.

Choose colors thoughtfully

There are a lot of important considerations when choosing colors in your visualizations. Using some colors can promote unintended effects. For example, red is often used to alert people of danger or emergencies. Green is often seen as unopposed, like a green light to move along in traffic. Red and green color combinations can also be problematic for people with color blindness. Therefore, consciously and meaningfully select colors for your visualizations, and use them consistently throughout. When you’re considerate of what colors mean to different people, and use inclusive color combinations, your visualizations will be accessible to everyone in your audience.

Evaluate visualizations for improvement

When you review the visualizations for a slide presentation, ask yourself these questions:

• Is the scale appropriate for order of magnitude comparisons?

For example, changing the scale on the y-axis of a chart can make differences between data groups seem more drastic when differences are actually quite small.

• Am I artificially limiting the scope of the data?

Be careful about including only a portion of the data in a visualization just because it is favorable to your conclusion or insight to do so. Limiting the scope of the data can be misleading.

• Did I hide or misrepresent any trends when I regrouped data?

Regrouping data can simplify visualizations to make them easier to read, but be careful that the data hasn’t been oversimplified to a point where trends become less apparent. For example, suppose you are showing demand trends for car loans and you want to share insights about the loan industry as a whole. However, since the trends for car loans are quite different from the trends for home loans, it wouldn’t be helpful to combine the data. In this case, regrouping the data makes the insights inaccurate for both types of loans.

• Do individual parts accurately add up to the whole?

If you are using a part-to-whole visualization (such as a pie chart) to describe your data, the individual parts should add up to and equal 100%. If they don’t, your data visualization is misleading.

Key takeaway

Data visualization is a bit of an art form. As you gain more experience creating and using visualizations in presentations, you’ll be able to apply the design principles and evaluate how well your visualizations convey meaningful insights to your audience.

Test your knowledge: Best practices to present data

• Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%

---

5. Review: Share metrics and insights with stakeholders

Wrap-up

• Video Duration: 1 minute

As you finish this part of the course, here are some key points to remember about working with stakeholders. Anticipate stakeholders’ needs, including how they like to be informed, communicated with, and how they prefer to consume data. Having a consistent plan for exchanging information and communicating with stakeholders helps build trust. Sharing data and visualizations with a combination of text and graphics appeals to a variety of preferences amongst stakeholders. Use data organization and visualization features in spreadsheets to prepare metrics to share with stakeholders. Data organization features include sorting, filtering, and pivot tables. Spreadsheets support many types of charts for visualization, including line charts, column and bar charts, area charts, pie charts, and histograms. There’s always an opportunity to create dashboards and more advanced visualizations for stakeholders, although they may require additional skills from your team. These skills include but are not limited to using Tableau or Google Data Studio and programming in languages like Python or R. Some hybrid marketing roles place a high value on these skills. Finally, present results and insights effectively to help stakeholders reach the same conclusion you have. This involves stating insights clearly, outlining your presentation’s flow, and selecting the most relevant data to support your conclusion. Always remember that when your stakeholders are successful meeting their business or marketing goals, you’re successful. Stakeholders’ success translates to your success on the job.

Glossary terms from module 4

• Reading: Duration: 10 minutes
  • Access the glossary

Module 4 challenge

• Quiz: 10 questions. Grade: 100%
• Link to challenge 4

---

6. Course review: Access for success: marketing analytics and measurement

Course wrap-up

• Video Duration: 1 minute

Congratulations on completing this course on marketing analytics and measurement! Here is a review of what you’ve accomplished. You learned to create media plans and performance goals for digital marketing campaigns. You learned to use software tools to monitor website and campaign performance metrics. You created A/B test plans to optimize ads. You also learned the importance of measuring the success of campaigns by monitoring KPIs and metrics. And finally, you learned to anticipate stakeholder needs and choose best-fit ways to communicate and share data with different types of stakeholders. As you pursue roles in marketing, you can highlight these achievements from this course on your resume and in your interviews. Here are some examples. A company wants to hire a marketing coordinator to create, maintain, and strengthen the organization’s overall brand through all media avenues. You could highlight media plans on your resume to map your skills to this role. Another role requires someone to track marketing campaigns and online activities. You could highlight your ability to monitor metrics in tools like Google Analytics and Google Ads. A different company is looking for someone to manage internal communications in marketing. Your experience with stakeholder communication could be relevant for that role. For more help and ideas to include relevant analytics skills on your resume, consult the reading provided in this course. Best of luck with your career plans. If you’re continuing on in the certificate program, stay on track to finish. You’re almost there!

Course 5 glossary

• Reading Duration: 20 minutes

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

• Link to glossary: Course 5 Glossary

Your learning journey

• Discussion Prompt Duration: 10 minutes

In this course, you have learned about how best to work with stakeholders by anticipating their needs and communicating progress or results from a campaign. From analyzing, filtering, and preparing metrics and insights, to creating visualizations, presentations, and dashboards, this course covered a lot of material.

Let’s reflect on how far you’ve come. Consider the following questions:

• Are there concepts or portions of content that you would like to learn more about?

• Is there anything unexpected or surprising that you have learned?

• How do you feel about interacting with stakeholders in a workplace environment?

• What have you learned about working with stakeholders that can help you in the future?

Submit 5–10 sentences (100–200 words total). Then, visit the discussion forum to read what other learners have written. Choose two or more posts to comment on to help encourage fellow learners on their learning journey.

Answer

Embarking on this lengthy and challenging course, I’ve navigated a comprehensive journey to master stakeholder engagement for successful marketing campaigns. From anticipating needs to effectively communicating results, the course demanded a substantial investment of effort. I’ve honed skills in analyzing metrics, creating visualizations, and crafting presentations, finding confidence in stakeholder interactions. Despite the course’s length, an unexpected highlight was the revelation of stakeholder mapping’s significance for streamlined communication. Understanding the impact of transparent communication and adaptability, I now approach workplace interactions with newfound confidence. These hard-earned insights, acquired through considerable effort, will undoubtedly shape future endeavors, emphasizing the importance of promptly addressing stakeholder needs for fostering positive and productive professional relationships.

Get started on Course 6

Reading Duration: 10 minutes

Congratulations on completing Course 5: Assess for Success: Marketing Analytics and Measurement in the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce certificate program!

In the next course, you’ll learn about:

• Market research, target audiences, branding, and budgets for e-commerce stores

• Platforms, like Shopify, for hosting e-commerce stores

• Online advertising and shopping campaigns

• Creating engaging online experiences for customers

To continue with the certificate program, begin the next course by clicking this link: Course 6: Make the Sale: Build, Launch, and Manage E-commerce Stores.

Keep up the great work!

---

END! - Week 4 - Course 5

Final Grade of this course: 97.50 %