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Home > Blog > Digital Marketing > Data Visualization >

What is data visualization used for? The Ground-Breaking Data Visualization Tool for SMBs — 2023

They say, “a pen is mightier than a sword.”

Well, I have another exciting perspective. How about “a picture is worth 1,000 words?”

I trust your analytical skills are above average.

The former statement is more subjective, while the latter is more quantifiable.

what is data visualization used for
What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

Well, this is not to say that pens are less intimidating than images. The first thing that pops into your mind is probably a painting you saw at a local museum. It may be a horrific accident that’s deeply ingrained into your subconscious.

How about a funny image of a person you’ve always held in high esteem?

Remember the former US president, Bill Clinton, facing the whole world with unheard confidence and dismissing the entire Monica Lewinsky debacle with a simple sentence, “I did not have sexual relations with that ‘woman’?”

At least that’s how a majority of us remember Bill Clinton’s cheating scandal. The key giveaway is that visual content speaks louder than words and (numbers).

The human brain is hardwired for images and other forms of visual content. As an SMB, you need a marketing analytics app that provides you with insightful visualization of your ad campaigns.

Stick with me to discover the importance of visualization of brand data. You’ll gain in-depth insights enriched with both psychological and biological perspectives.

Table of Content:

  • Free Vs. Paid Digital Market Analytics Tools
  • What are the features of Google Sheets?
  • What are the Benefits of data visualization?
  • Example of data visualization at work
  • What are the qualities of a data visualization tool best suited for SMBs?
  • What are the top ten benefits of data visualization apps to SMBs?
  • To get started with ChartExpo for Excel add-in.
  • How do you install ChartExpo on Google Sheets?

Data Visualization and Marketing Analytics for Small and Medium-Size Businesses (SMBs)

Why is data visualization important to small and medium-size digital marketers?

  1. Humans are Visual Creatures

Reflect on your school days, when some of your elementary school tutors first exposed you to the mind maps. Why were some teachers more interesting than others? Were there subjects you understood more than others?

Chances are subjects you understood most were taught by teachers who used a smart combination of storytelling and visual content.

Let me give you a short exercise, ready?

Take a pen and a paper and try to describe the map of China using nothing but words. Why do you think Infographics have a higher clickthrough rate (CTR)? Simple Infographics can turn monotonous literature into emotionally appealing and highly engaging content.

Humans are always preoccupied with universal issues, such as romance, money, the need for recognition, and self-preservation. It would take a significant amount of effort to attract the mind of today’s population.

Why?

For starters, there are millions of content creators out there, including you. The picture you posted on Instagram about last weekend’s fishing expedition is a form of user-generated content.

Research shows that visual content is powerful in breaking up the issues preoccupying your target audience’s mind.

  2. Images are Universal

Have you ever asked yourself why children’s storybooks are full of pictures and fewer texts?

The mind of children is an EASY prey for content laden with interesting and highly engaging images. Visual images have a powerful effect on the biological makeup of the human brain.

Why?

Visual content straightforwardly tells the whole story. Storytelling is a fantastic way of establishing an emotional connection with your readers.

Try narrating an interesting story in your local bar and witness sudden attention. Now imagine using relevant images to deliver the story home.

If you won’t get a free drink by the end of the night, probably you’re not a good storyteller. As a digital marketer, one of your strongest attributes should be the ability to tell a story.

  3. The Core Impact

Have you ever heard that sight is a natural sense closely associated with human memory?

It’s easy to recall visual information more than written text. Why do you think the majority of people seldom read the terms and conditions clauses? It’s boring to read long pieces of literature. Pictures are known to evoke positive emotional responses, such as smiles and positive attitudes.

Do you tie a positive vibe on the product or service you’re selling?

  4. The Power of Visual Content

Recent researches show that the human brain can process visual content over 500,000 times faster than texts.

You’re seldom rewarded with a second chance when you mess up the first impression. The key giveaway is that images convey vast amounts of information than words and numbers.

  5. Engagement

Try to read 10 paragraphs of texts with no visual content.

What are the odds that you’ll finish reading the content?

Assume you have a website that’s well optimized to attract organic traffic. However, your articles and posts are long prose with no engaging visual content and subheadings.

How would your bounce rate look like?

No one has time to scroll through uninteresting web content. You have a maximum of 2-seconds to attract the attention of your prospect.

A website that’s well organized into relevant subheadings and engaging visual information is likely to increase your Quality Score in Google Ads.

What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

Free Vs. Paid Digital Market Analytics Tools

What free tools are available to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs)?

A spreadsheet is an application with rows and columns to do the following:

(a)          Sort

(b)          Organize

(c)           Arrange data efficiently

Spreadsheet apps are very useful to digital marketers due to their ability to calculate values using inbuilt formulas. Some of the popular softwares in the market include Libre, MS Excel, Google Sheets, OpenOffice, and iWork Numbers.

However, Excel is regarded as a free tool because it comes as part of the Microsoft suite. Google Sheets is completely free provided you have a Gmail account.

  1. Excel

Excel is a spreadsheet application developed and published by Microsoft.

Unlike the word processing app, it organizes data in columns and rows. Each cell can accommodate different forms of data, such as texts and numbers. Excel can analyze marketing data and generate visual insights using its inbuilt charts.

For example, you could create an Excel spreadsheet that calculates a monthly budget, tracks expenses, or interactively sorts data.

Each of the rows, columns, and cells can be modified in many ways, such as adding background color or changing the size and font of the data.

What are the weaknesses of Excel as a data visualization tool of choice for SMBs?

  1. Excel sheet reporting is susceptible to human error, especially if vast amounts of data are involved.
  2. It’s not agile, especially in handling two-dimension data sets, such as keyword analysis and corresponding Cost per click (CPC). Creating a Pareto chart using Excel is tedious.

Other dimensions have to be crafted manually to gain in-depth insight about your digital marketing campaigns.

  1. Excel spreadsheet is not collaborative like other tools, such as Google Sheets.
  2. The application is not intuitive and intelligent like other AI-driven chart tools to support complex and personalized formulas.
  3. Google Sheet

Google Sheets is a free, web-based spreadsheet application. The app is also available on Android, Windows, iOS, and BlackBerry platforms. The spreadsheet allows users to edit, organize, and analyze different types of information. Most importantly, it allows collaboration.

Multiple users can edit and format files in real-time. Changes made on the Google sheet are trackable by a revision directory.

What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

What are the features of Google Sheets?

  • Editing

One of the key features of Google Sheets is its collaborative attribute. A single document can be opened and edited by multiple users simultaneously and in real-time. Users can track changes made by other collaborators.

Did I mention that all changes are automatically saved on Google servers?

  • Offline Editing

The web-based spreadsheet supports offline editing. You can edit your documents without internet connection. There’s a Chrome extension for offline editing for PC users.

Smart device users have an option of either Android or iOS version to access offline editing service. A survey conducted recently discovered that over 69% of digital marketers use free data visualization apps to manage their ad campaigns.

The major WEAKNESS of free visualization apps, such as Google Spreadsheet is that they only answer the ‘what’ question.

Conversely, paid marketing analytics tools provide in-depth insights by diving deeper into more questions, such as ‘what else’, ‘how much’, and most importantly ‘why’.

A smart data visualization tool uses both qualitative and quantitative sets of data to provide a comprehensive analysis of the following:

  1. Your close competition

  2. Potential customers

  3. Actual customers

  4. Brand’s website.

Any additional insight generated by a data visualization app can help you optimize your ad campaign for more revenue, clicks, and impressions.

You can use the information to correct lost impressions or even exploit profitable opportunities ahead of time.

Small and Medium-Size Enterprises (SMBs) Vs. Smart Marketing Data Visualization

What are the Benefits of data visualization?

  1. Product intelligence

Product intelligence is an in-depth analysis of your offerings using parameters, such as competition. Essentially, you want to know how your brand offering stacks up within your niche market. Most businesses accomplish the aforementioned by doing the following:

(a)                      Issuing product surveys

(b)                      Polling the customers

(c)                       Requesting for feedback after a sale engagement.

You need a smart and intelligent visualization app to paint an accurate picture of the market’s perception towards your product.

  2. Dynamic Preferences and Tastes of the Customers

Good data visualization app should correctly report about your customers. People’s tastes are constantly evolving due to complex socioeconomic factors, such as fads.

What trending products are they buying?

Why is the search pattern varying in certain periods?

Which ad campaigns are profitable and why?

Are your marketing campaigns aligned with the current trends in your niche market?

 3. Effective Customer Support

AI-driven data visualization tools can help you identify the crucial aspects of your prospects’ journey that need improvement.

Where are your users struggling on their path to purchase?

  4. Media Traffic Opportunities

With a smart chart tool, it becomes EASIER to display your brand message to targeted users. Data visualization paints a picture of where the majority of traffic is coming from and at what cost per unit.

For instance, you’re running parallel PPC campaigns in both Facebook and Google. You’re desperate to know the ad platform aligned with your business’ goals.

What’s your solution?

You need a visualization app that instantly maps your campaign data using real-time charts to produce accurate insights into the best and worst performers.

You’re able to see vital attributes that would easily go unnoticed.

Example of data visualization at work

Let’s analyze the chart on the screenshot below for deeper understanding.

You don’t want to miss this, especially if you’re an SMB.

The blue line represents impressions. The grey curve depicts clicks. The X-axis (orange vertical scale) represents conversions of a PPC campaign.

On 05/01, the PPC campaign recorded 0 conversions, 411 clicks, and 4,141 impressions. On 05/04, the campaign registered an improvement. There were 7.74 conversions, 1,256 clicks, and 12,312 impressions.

How easy was it?

Visual representation of data uncovers interesting cause-effect relationships among variables in your digital ad campaigns.

Let’s revisit our earlier analysis.

What could have resulted in the sudden growth of conversion, clicks and impression after the fourth day of the campaign?

What do you need to maximize to continue getting positive outcomes?

Data visualization answers the questions above as fast as the former 100-meter world champion, Usain Bolt. It is literally impossible to make sense of a data set without some form of visualization, especially if you work with large data sets.

what is data visualization used for
What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

What are the qualities of a data visualization tool best suited for SMBs?

As a small and medium-sized business owner, you need a tool that maximizes your profits and eliminates waste. More so, you need a cost-friendly tool that answers in-depth questions, such as ‘why’, ‘when’, and ‘what else’.

What do you do with the vast amounts of data generated by your pay per click campaigns?

Do you know that data is the lifeblood of today’s digital marketing?

You need a data visualization application that possesses the following qualities to save you time and cut ad costs.

   1. Requires No Coding at all

A huge chunk of visualization tools in the market require some form of programming skills.

Who has time to code and optimize ad campaigns profitably at the same time?

Coding implies switching back-and-forth between a chart and a text editor interface. Essentially, you need a tool with a friendly user interface (UI) to improve your personalized experience (UX).

   2. Includes an Expanded Set of Basic Charts

Aside from traditional statistical charts (line, bar, scatter, etc.), there should be an expansive library of charts aligned with your paid search campaign.

There’re new charts that don’t exist in the industry yet and are aligned with marketing analytics, such as Sankey and Adjacent Bar charts. The aforementioned charts are vital in generating accurate keyword insights and other significant PPC metrics.

  3. Customizable Charts

Tweaking labels, color schemes, and other attributes should be incredibly EASY.

  4.Templates

Tools aligned with SMBs should grant you the ability to customize your own templates for recurring tasks.

 5. Support for Visual Pivoting

Research shows that most SMBs are heavy users of pivot tables – a tabular technique found in spreadsheets and reporting tools.

Visual pivoting replaces tabular presentation with charts. A smart chart app should support engaging visual reporting.

6. Support for Analytics

Traditional visualization tools lack significant analytic capabilities, which is a backbone of any ad campaign.

Conversely, AI-driven data visualization tools support insightful analysis for effective and accurate reporting.

What are the top ten benefits of data visualization apps to SMBs?

Data visualization technology is today’s disruption in the digital marketing industry. It uncovers the true effect of your marketing dollars across all channels.

As search engine marketer (SEM), you can leverage the application maximally to enjoy the following benefits:

  1. It’s VERY possible to compare performance across platforms
  2. You can visualize the cross-channel impact of your marketing campaigns
  3. AI-driven data visualization eliminates guesswork and save time
  4. It strengthens the impact of messaging for your audiences
  5. It lets you comprehend vast amounts of data at a glance and in a better way.
  6. Insights generated facilitate unbiased and data-driven decision-making.
  7. Effective Data Visualization is the key to unlock big data. It can solve any data inefficiencies and instantly absorb vast amounts of data presented in visual formats.
  8. It reveals the differences in the trends and patterns vital for your business’s survival. Besides, it’s critical to know what’s causing losses or what’s required to maximize gains.
  9. It promotes storytelling in the most compelling way. Visuals are used in the most meaningful way to convey the right message to the audience.
  10. Data visualization allows for fast analysis and instantly digests critical metrics.

Is there a cheaper and easy-to-use data visualization platform for SMBs?

You don’t realize yet, but in the next few seconds, you’re going to learn about a data visualization tool for SMBs that’s trending in most digital marketing and analytics forums.

There’s a revolutionary and intelligent analytic library called ChartExpo that gives you the sales intelligence needed to develop a winning strategy.

By using ChartExpo for your data visualization needs, it becomes EASY to get access to all the information needed for fantastic pipeline management, forecast planning, and increased revenue. You can easily evaluate the performance metrics to ensure you have resources in place for upcoming opportunities.

It’s very possible to monitor sales activities or calls to action (CTA) that deliver the greatest impact. For many users, the most commonly used output format for reporting is Excel spreadsheet.

Why not run your reports directly in Excel?

With most other data visualization apps the aforementioned fact isn’t an option. ChartExpo provides an add-In for Excel and Google sheets that allows you to do just that!

What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

How do you install ChartExpo on MS Excel?

Manually analyzing data requires coding and endless clicking through spreadsheets. ChartExpo for Excel add-in makes it simple to gain insights from numbers.

Earlier on, we explored the importance of visual content in small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

Data visualization is a smarter way to make sense of the data generated by your pay per click campaigns.

To get started with ChartExpo for Excel add-in.

  • Open your Excel application.
  • Open the worksheet and click on the INSERT menu, and you will see the My Apps
  • Click on My Apps and then click on See All.
what is data visualization used for
  • You’ll see the following as depicted by the screenshot above. Here you can see your add-in ChartExpo for Excel.
  • Click on the Refresh button if nothing happens.
  • Select the add-in and click on the Insert
what is data visualization used for
  • The add-in will be integrated into your Excel. You’ll see the following as represented by the image above.
  • Login with Microsoft account, or you can create a new account by clicking the Create New link button.
  • Login with a newly created account and start using ChartExpo.
  • You’re only required to log in for the first time. Next time, ChartExpo won’t ask for your details again.
what is data visualization used for
  • Now you can start using ChartExpo™ for Excel to enjoy excellent and customizable visualizations of your data.
  • Now click on the Create Chart to get started.
what is data visualization used for
  • You’ll see an extensive library of visual charts categorized into six different groups.
  • More so, you can expand any group by clicking on it to see a list of available visualizations.
what is data visualization used for

Simon, a PPC manager, is running a brand awareness campaign on two different social media channels.

He gets a call from one of his clients regarding ad campaigns’ status in a brief but informative manner. He consolidates all the data generated by the ad campaigns into a Google spreadsheet.

What happens?

Simon goes a mile extra and uses relevant visual charts to communicate the paid search campaign’s vital signs.

Simon’s client is very impressed by the accuracy and brief visual presentation. What he doesn’t know is that Simon is using a highly intelligent ChartExpo to filter noise and communicate what engagingly matters to him.

How do you create insightful and easy-to-read charts using ChartExpo?

  • Open ChartExpo by clicking on INSERT. Then click on ChartExpo for Excel and Create a Chart.
what is data visualization used for
  • Select a chart category aligned to your objectives.
  • For the sake of illustration, click on General and then click on Hierarchical Bar Chart.
what is data visualization used for
What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for
  • Then click on Update Chart from Sheet Data.

How do you install ChartExpo on Google Sheets?

  • For installation, go to the Google Spreadsheet app.
what is data visualization used for
  • Click on Add-ons on the toolbar.
what is data visualization used for
  • Click on Get add-ons.
what is data visualization used for
  • Search ChartExpo.
what is data visualization used for
  • Click on Install
what is data visualization used for

Samantha runs an ad agency. Her client wants to know the status of two metrics: cost per click (CPC) and clickthrough rate (CTR). She proceeds and pulls all the campaign data for analysis and visual reporting.

Samantha is smart enough to know visual content is more appealing to the human brain than mere numbers. She uses ChartExpo to answer questions, such as:

How well did the keyword perform?

How do you create smart charts using ChartExpo?

  • Open ChartExpo. (Follow the steps mentioned earlier under Excel
  • Then click on Comparative Analysis Charts due to the multi-dimensional nature of the data.
  • Proceed and click on Adjacent Bar Chart. The chart mentioned above is best suited to analyze two-dimensional information.
  • Select Sheet Name
  • Click on Add new metric and select the column you want to fill with CPC data.
  • Click on Add new metric and then select a second column you want to assign CTR.
  • Click on Add new dimension and then select Keyword attribute.
  • Create a Chart.
what is data visualization used for
What is data visualization used forWhat is data visualization used for

The chart above displays a direct relationship between search terms and the average cost per click. Keyword 8 has a higher CTR and a relatively lower CPC. This implies that the search terms are optimized to match intent effectively.

Conversely, keyword 7 has the lowest CTR (2.9%) and a sizable CPC ($3.32).

This is one of those situations where you ask many ‘whys.’ It’s also a chance to review your search terms and ad copy for misalignment.

Wrap Up:

Like I said earlier, the human brain is designed to digest visual content more easily than texts and numbers. Besides, a picture is worth a thousand words. Visual analytics is one of the most overlooked areas by emerging SMBs.

Are you accessing all those in-depth and actionable insights your data is trying to whisper into your ears?

It’s very easy to miss out on mini insights, such as the implicit relationship between metrics. Besides, they may be the bridge to your success. Small and medium-sized brands (SMBs) need a smart data visualization that is affordable and easy-to-use (friendly UI).

Spreadsheet apps, such as MS Excel, are handy to digital marketers due to their ability to calculate values using inbuilt formulas. However, they seldom answer insightful questions, such as ‘why.’

What’s the solution?

ChartExpo is an AI-driven data visualization app that gives you the ability to grasp the insights hidden in your numbers instantly. Besides, it’s designed for a busy marketer. It’s affordable to SMBs and provides seamless integration with Google Sheets and Excel.

You have nothing to lose when you try ChartExpo and everything to gain in your digital ad campaigns.

What are you doing with the vast amounts of information generated by your digital ad campaigns?

What tools are you using to derive actionable insights from your data?

How  inexpensive are they?

If you’re yet to answer the questions above, including the latter one, check this out.

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