Beginner’s Guide to Building a Marketing Analysis Tool for Your Business
- Michelle Hatch
- Feb 17
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 31
If you’re struggling to determine whether your marketing efforts are effective, you’re not alone. Many small business owners face the challenge of measuring what works and what doesn’t. The good news? You don’t need a big budget to gain meaningful insights.
With the right strategy and free or low-cost tools, you can build a marketing analysis tool using a Google Sheet to streamline data collection, understand your customer journey, and optimize your efforts for better engagement and conversions.
This guide will walk you through the process of developing a data-driven marketing system using the Marketing Hourglass framework. We’ll cover the seven stages of the customer journey—Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer—and the key metrics and tools to track at each step.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Map the Customer Journey
According to a study by Harvard Business Review, 73% of consumers use multiple channels during their buying journey, and using a framework to map out your customer's decision-making journey is key to connecting the dots across all channels and every experience your customers have with your business.
Data collection is meaningless if you're unable to connect the dots.
By first understanding what customers are thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage, you can deliver the right message at the right time and create a seamless, engaging experience that builds trust and drives conversions. Armed with this outline, you'll stay focused on the right marketing channels and tactics that make an impact on your business growth, and understand which metrics to track daily, weekly, and monthly.
To get started mapping your customer's journey:
Step 2: Define Key Metrics and Measurement Tools at Each Stage
1. Know – Awareness Stage
The goal of the Know/Awareness stage is to increase visibility and attract potential customers. Not just any customers, but your ideal customers. Marketing efforts in this stage focus on increasing visibility and first impressions through social media, paid ads, and search engine optimization.
Key Metrics and Where to Find the Data
Important awareness metrics to start tracking are:
Website traffic and visitor sources: Google Analytics readily gives you traffic info and user behavior in the Reports section.
Search engine rankings for relevant keywords: Use Google Search Console to monitor search rankings and keyword performance.
Social media reach and engagement: If you're using Instagram or Facebook for your business, and we're guessing you do, Meta Business Suite is free, and has become an actually useful tool to track reach and engagement.
Use this data alongside sales data like number of appointments scheduled, and deals closed, to analyze the quality of leads generated by your efforts.
2. Like & Trust – Consideration Stage
At this stage, potential customers are evaluating whether your business has the right solution for their needs. Your goal is to build credibility with reviews and testimonials, provide value with educational content, and nurture relationships through storytelling that move prospects closer to conversion.
Key Metrics and Where to Find the Data
Examples of consideration metrics to track are:
Downloads, page views, blog views and video watch time – Using Google Analytics, monitor key web pages and content, tracking how much time users spend engaging with the specific content created to meet the goals of this stage.
Customer reviews and testimonials – Positive "social proof" enhances trust and reassures hesitant buyers. Leverage your Google Business Profile to collects and displays customer reviews to build trust.
Email newsletter opt-ins, open rates, click through rates, and unsubscribes – Gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns in nurturing leads leveraging the reports built into your email tool and customer relationship database. Both Hubspot and Mailchimp have free plans with great analytics.
3. Try & Buy – Conversion Stage
Conversion in this stage has a dual meaning: moving prospects from interest to action—Try—and turning them into paying customers—Buy. Marketing efforts focus on converting interested prospects into customers by providing compelling reasons to take action.
Key Metrics and Where to Find the Data
Consultation bookings and quote requests – Track how many calls are booked by prospects during email nurture campaigns to understand how to make the process better.
Phone calls and inquiries – Measure direct engagement with your sales team.
Landing page conversion rates – Use Google Analytics to identify which pages and offers are effectively converting visitors into leads.
4. Repeat – Retention Stage
Once a customer has made a purchase, the focus shifts to maintaining engagement and encouraging repeat business. The key to retention is delivering ongoing value and maintaining strong relationships.
Key Metrics and Where to Find the Data
Examples of retention metrics to track are:
Customer retention rate and revenue growth rate – Track how many customers return for additional purchases and the revenue growth rate from this segment. It costs less to retain a client than win a new one, so take care of these people. Collect their feedback with Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to improve their experience.
Repeat purchases or service renewals – Monitor frequency and patterns of repeat business in a Google Sheet to identify trends and opportunities. Find a free template to get started.
Engagement with post-purchase content – Using your CRM, measure interactions with newsletters, follow-up emails, or educational resources to identify potential opportunities for repeat business, and to track loyalty.
5. Refer – Advocacy Stage
Your most satisfied customers can become your most powerful marketers. A well-structured referral strategy encourages them to share their positive experiences and bring in new business.
Key Metrics and Where to Find the Data
Examples of advocacy metrics to track are:
Number of customer referrals – Track how often customers recommend your business with manual tracking or a referral marketing platform.
Social media mentions and shares – Find this data in your social media reports. Mentions and shares are great brand advocacy indicators along with referrals.
Testimonials and case studies collected – Capture success stories that build credibility and prominently place on your website, in email and on social media. Track referral traffic to the website in Google Analytics using UTM codes, and impressions and engagement on these posts in social media.
Step 3: Build the Marketing Analysis Tool
Now that you’ve identified key metrics and where to find the data, it's time to create a centralized system to track and analyze performance. A simple spreadsheet or template dashboard, and Google Analytics custom Exploration reports can help you monitor trends, identify opportunities, and make data-driven decisions.
Essential Elements of Your Analysis Tool
Data Input – Automate or manually enter key performance indicators on a consistent basis to keep the data up to date. Consider integrating Google Sheets with automation tools like Zapier to pull data directly from marketing platforms. This reduces manual work and ensures accuracy.
Visual Insights – Charts or graphs to track trends over time. Use Google Sheets' built-in charts or Google Looker Studio dashboards to visualize performance, making it easier to interpret data and identify patterns.
Customizable Reports – Filter data by marketing channel, time period, or customer journey stage. By leveraging pivot tables and conditional formatting in Google Sheets, you can dynamically adjust reports based on specific marketing campaigns or audience segments.
Step 4: Implement and Iterate
Once you’ve set up your marketing analysis tool, it’s time to put it to use. Set up daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly activities to:
Regularly review your collected data to identify trends and opportunities.
Optimize campaigns by adjusting your content and engagement strategies.
Test and refine different approaches to maximize effectiveness.
Benefits of a Structured Review Process
Daily tracking allows you to detect issues early, react quickly to insights, and make incremental changes to head off potential problems.
Weekly activities provide insights into immediate shifts in audience behavior, ensuring that businesses optimize performance without waiting for long-term reports.
Monthly reviews provide a big-picture perspective on marketing efforts, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and that minor inefficiencies don’t compound into bigger issues.
Quarterly reviews focus on long-term performance, ensuring businesses evolve and maintain strategic alignment with broader market trends and consumer behaviors.
Tracking data across the entire customer journey using a structured process ensures that your business is agile, and your marketing efforts are data-driven, strategic, and results-oriented.
Final Thoughts
A marketing analysis tool isn’t just a spreadsheet filled with numbers—it’s a structured system that helps you make informed marketing decisions and maximize return on investment. By tracking key performance indicators across the customer journey, you can identify areas for improvement, refine engagement strategies, and build a scalable, high-performing marketing system.
The power of data-driven marketing lies in continuous measurement and iteration. Whether you’re just starting or refining your analytics approach, start with the data that's easily accessible—like website data from Google Analytics, social media data from Meta Business and LinkedIn, and SEO data from Google Search Console—and perfect your review process and frequency before adding more sophisticated data to your analysis system.
Using the right measurement tools and tracking frameworks will empower your business to stay ahead of trends, optimize campaigns, and drive sustainable growth.
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