How to Calculate Standard Deviation in Excel, and Why It Matters for Marketers If you’ve ever taken a statistics class, the words ‘standard deviation’ might intimidate you. This complex formula provides insightful information for datasets that averages alone cannot reveal, and thankfully, Excel makes calculating this statistic easier than putting pencil to paper. Standard deviation is frequently used by financial professionals as it can help determine risks in stock portfolios and is often applied to return on investment (ROI). For marketing professionals, standard deviation can reveal variabilities and risks in datasets that will ultimately help guide campaign decisions. What is standard deviation? Simply put, standard deviation is a mathematical term that measures the variation in a set of values. In marketing, standard deviation can help account for widely varying costs or sales. If the numbers in a data set are spread far apart, they have a higher standard deviation. This measurement can help assess risk when deciding how much budget can be allocated toward certain campaigns based on the standard deviation of the ROI, just to name one example. How to Calculate Standard Deviation in Excel There are six standard deviation formulas in Excel, which will be used based on whether you need to calculate sample standard deviation or population standard deviation. This is easy to identify in Excel, as the three formulas for population standard deviation include a P (.P, PA, or P at the end of STDEV). STDEV.S STDEVA STDEV STDEV.P, STDEVPA, STDEVP...

Your Brief Guide to Using Goal Seek in Excel Successful marketers make informed decisions quickly using a combination of gut instincts and data analysis. They know the end goal, and figure out what it takes to get there. One way to fill in those gaps is by using Goal Seek in Excel. The function is helpful when you know your desired result, but you're not sure how to reach it. Maybe you want to improve your conversion rate to get more qualified leads but don't know how many people you need to attract. Or let's say your marketing team is aiming for an audacious revenue goal and you want to know how many customers you have to bring in with an upcoming campaign. If you're running a promotion, you likely need to figure out what discount to apply so you don't wind up with a loss. Goal Seek is the answer. Understanding how to apply it to your marketing or sales efforts can inform your strategy by letting you calculate the numbers required to achieve your goals. This post will explain how to use Goal Seek so you can start planning for your next campaign or making projections for the upcoming quarter. What is Goal Seek in Excel? Goal Seek is a powerful Excel function for conducting a what-if analysis. Also known as a sensitivity analysis, it helps you understand what can happen when you change one or more variables. Essentially, it's a way to conduct a reverse...

How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel "I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try." These Taylor Swift lyrics, in the song "mirrorball", perfectly explain my relationship with numbers, math, and anything concerning data analytics. However, as a marketer, data analysis is one of the most important aspects of my job. But like most marketers, who prefer strategy and creativity, numbers and Excel reports don't come naturally to me. That's why it's important to know how to work in Excel and find shortcuts to help make the process easier. Today, we'll dive into one of those processes -- how to find and remove duplicates in Excel. 1. Find and highlight duplicates in Excel through conditional formatting. The first step of removing duplicates will be to find them. An easy way to do this is through conditional formatting. You can do that by following these steps: Make sure you're on the Home tab. Select the entire table by hitting the button on the top left. Click Conditional Formatting → Highlight Cells Rules → Duplicate Values. In the area titled "Format With", change how you want duplicates to be highlighted. You can choose highlighting, bolding text, changing the color of text, etc. And voila. Your duplicates are now highlighted. It should look something like this: 2. Count duplicates in Excel. Now that you've found your duplicates, you might want to count them and see how many...

How to Merge Cells in Excel in 5 Minutes or Less Knowing the ins and outs of Excel is essential for organizing data, understanding analytics, and getting the most from your marketing efforts. The tool is great for quickly processing vast amounts of data, but it can be overwhelming if you don't spend the majority of your workday whipping up spreadsheets. Fortunately, a few basic skills are all you need to put together an easy-to-read spreadsheet. One is knowing how to merge cells in Excel. Whether you're planning blog articles for the upcoming quarter, creating an email list for a targeted campaign, or designing SEO-friendly Google ads, merging cells is a handy way to organize your information. To sharpen your skills, we'll cover several ways to combine cells. How to merge two cells How to merge and center cells How to merge multiple cells How to merge cells without losing data A shortcut to merge cells Why can't I merge cells? Don't want to start from scratch? Use these free Excel templates as a foundation for your own marketing spreadsheets. How to Merge Two Cells in Excel Merging is a way to turn two small cells into one new, large cell. This is useful for organizing information and creating headers, without the need to resize individual cells. Here's how to do it. Step 1: Highlight the two adjacent cells you want to merge (I'm merging A1 and B1 in the...

Running Into Issues in Shared Excel Sheets? Learn How to Lock Cells Ever left something perfectly fine and came back to a total disaster? Any pet owner will probably say, "yes." At work, the same can happen when collaborating on a shared document. It's usually an accidental keyboard stroke that does it. Unless it's done by your cat, in which case, it's not accidental – it's definitely sabotage. While a mistake like this is understandable, it can be frustrating and time-consuming to fix. When working on shared Excel sheets, you can prevent these mishaps altogether by locking cells and protecting your worksheets. Whether you're working on an upcoming report or planning out next quarter's budget, learn how to prevent anyone from changing or deleting important information on an Excel document. Can you lock cells in Excel? Yes, you can lock cells on Excel by following a few simple steps. When you lock a cell in Excel, you restrict users from making changes to your sheets. It's particularly helpful when working on a project that involves multiple team members. For instance, let's say you're the marketing director and you've asked each channel lead (email, website, social) to report their quarterly numbers for an upcoming meeting. You wouldn't want someone accidentally deleting important information, or changing formulas or conditional formatting before consulting with key stakeholders. This process ensures that only pre-approved users can edit the cell, which will save you a headache in the future. Another method is locking your...

How to Create a Pie Chart in Excel in 60 Seconds or Less At the beginning of 2021, I was tasked with an assignment: Create a pie chart showcasing which types of content performed best on the Marketing Blog in 2020. The question was an undeniably important one, as it would influence what types of content we wrote in 2021, along with identifying new opportunities for growth. But once I'd compiled all relevant data, I was stuck — How could I easily create a pie chart to showcase my results? Fortunately, I've since figured it out. Here, let's dive into how you can create your own excel pie chart for impressive marketing reports and presentations. Plus, how to rotate a pie chart in excel, explode a pie chart, and even how to create a 3-dimensional version. Let's dive in. How to Make a Pie Chart in Excel 1. Create your columns and/or rows of data. Feel free to label each column of data — excel will use those labels as titles for your pie chart. Then, highlight the data you want to display in pie chart form. 2. Now, click "Insert" and then click on the "Pie" logo at the top of excel. 3. You'll see a few pie options here, including 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional. For our purposes, let's click on the first image of a 2-dimensional pie chart. 4. And there you have it! A pie chart will appear with the data and...

How to Learn Excel Online: 19 Free and Paid Resources for Excel Training Like many marketers, I have a bit of experience with Microsoft Excel. I've used it to organize events, plan meals, and sort data -- but I don't have nearly the advanced knowledge I wish I did. And thanks to those limited skills, I'm constantly subjecting myself to the tedium of updating my spreadsheets manually. Like me, you're missing out on a world of Excel training courses that could teach me how to automate my reports and save hours of time. When I asked even my most Excel-savvy colleagues where they picked up their knowledge, they told me things like, "I mostly learned from colleagues and friends," or, "When I have a specific question, I ask someone or search on Google." Fair enough. But as a beginner, I probably have a few too many Excel questions to rely on colleagues -- or Google -- to answer every one. I can't be the only one out there who wants to master the world's most popular data analysis and visualization solution -- or at least learn how to create charts and graphs that'll impress my manager. So in the spirit of becoming a more productive, data-driven marketer, I scoured the internet for the best online resources for learning Excel. Half of them are free, and the ones that aren't might be worth the investment. In these trainings, you'll learn the following: Learning Excel Create PivotTables to find...

Totally Free Microsoft Excel Templates That Make Marketing Easier Many of us can recall a time in high school when we were sitting in math class and thinking, "When am I ever going to use this stuff in the real world?" And then we suddenly find ourselves in the real world, only to realize that numbers actually do play a pivotal role in what we do -- especially in digital marketing. The trouble is, many marketers are right-brained, meaning Excel spreadsheets riddled with numbers and formulas aren't all that inviting. Making them from scratch can be especially intimidating. While we won't argue with that, we will say that the advantages of leveraging Excel's functionality to organize information and streamline tasks are unparalleled. To help those of you looking for a way to sharpen your skills, we've put together a detailed list of ways you can start using Excel to simplify your marketing tasks. Complete with templates, these suggestions will have you making strides in no time. Know what's even better? You can download this full collection of Excel templates in one fell swoop. 1. A Marketing Budget Template While marketing budgets vary from business to business, the need for structure and a clear sense of alignment between your goals and your spending is critical across the board. To ensure you're always prepared for unanticipated costs, it's important that you're not only allocating your budget thoughtfully and properly, but that you're also keeping tabs...