Doing more with less is the mantra of the current economy.  But how can you boost your productivity? 
 
Exel-lent Marketing Formulas, our Microsoft Excel add-in, can help.  It puts marketing answers at your fingertips.  It's packed with 75 commonly used functions and macros that solve sales and marketing problems.  Upon installation, they're all available through your normal Excel GUI.  Some of the most popular are:

 

Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).  Easily compute a CAGR by simply entering the starting value, ending value, and number of periods.

 

Weighted Average.  Simply indicate the cells with your values and the weighting factors and get the weighted average.

 

Lifetime Value.  Just use acquisition cost, unit revenue, unit variable cost, lifetime, and the discount rate and you'll receive the customers lifetime value.

 

There are functions and macros for marketing strategy

product

price

promotion

place

sales

forecasting

research

financial evaluations, and

general utilities. 

 

You also get a complete 109 page users guide describing each function and how to use it.  Of course, the built-in help system answers most of your questions while you work.

 

For more information or a free 30-day trial, go to

www.exel-lentmarketingformulas.com.

 

With the recession and unknown future economic conditions, what can be done to cope and potentially prosper?  Here are five tips on what you can do. 

1.  Retain Your Existing Customers

It costs much less to retain your existing customers than obtain new ones.  Now's the time to go the extra mile for your current customers.  Take the extra time to delight your customers.  Don't stop with just what's acceptable -- deliver the truly exceptional.  You might also look to your current customers for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.   

 

 

2.  Develop New Products

The pause in the frenetic pace of filling orders gives time to develop new products.  If you have a product platform, can you use value analysis to relatively cheaply develop new products?  Perhaps you can take some features out of your existing products to produce value-based products the market will now embrace   

3.  Control Costs

Knowing where your prospects are can be a key to reaching them.  New data from the American Time Use Survey allows you to track where your prospects are and what they're doing.  If you're doing B2B marketing and targeting construction managers/supervisors, 68% of them are working at their place of business at 10:00 a.m. local time.  If you're targeting marketing professionals, only 51% are in their office working at 10:00 a.m. local time.  If you're planning your calls, the problem gets even greater when you factor in time zone differences.

 

Instead of businesses, let's say you're targeting adults aged 65 and older.  At 10:00 a.m., 68% are at home, although many are sleeping.  If you're target group, on the other hand, are married women aged 25 - 45, only 51% are at home, and 43% are sleeping.  This information should be incorporated into your advertising and promotion tactics.

 If wealthy Americans are your target, you should take a look at the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances just released by the Federal Reserve.  This survey overweights for wealthier Americans who possess most of the wealth in the U.S.  Surveys that don't overweight have too few respondents to reach valid conclusions about wealth.

 

The data has detailed descriptions of the assets owned and liabilities owed.  Assets include checking accounts, CDs, bonds, stocks, life insurance, homes, vehicles,  business, equity, etc.  Mortgages, home equity lines of credit, credit cards, and installment loans are just some of the liabilities with detailed data.

 

In addition to assets and liabilities data which can be combined with demographic variables, the survey also includes some questions about consumer choices.  Since the Fed conducts the survey every three years, you can look at the data longitudinally as well.  We will be obtaining the public data upon its release in the next few weeks if you need in-depth analysis.  To see the summary data that's been released so far, click here.