Almost all metrics you currently use have one common thread: They are almost all backward-looking.
If you want to deepen the influence of data in your organization – and your personal influence – 30% of your analytics efforts should be centered around the use of forward-looking metrics.
Predictive metrics!
But first, let's take a small step back. What is a metric?
Here’s the definition of a metric from my first book:
A metric is a number.
Simple enough.
Conversion Rate. Number of Users. Bounce Rate. All metrics.
[Note: Bounce Rate has been banished from Google Analytics 4 and replaced with a compound metric called Engaged Sessions – the number of sessions that lasted 10 seconds or longer, or had 1 or more conversion events or 2 or more page views.]
The three metrics above are backward-looking. They are telling us what happened in the past. You'll recognize now that that is true for almost everything you are reporting (if not everything).
But, who does not want to see the future?
Yes. I see your hand up.
The problem is that the future is hard to predict. What’s the quote… No one went broke predicting the past. :)
Why use Predictive Metrics?
As Analysts, we convert data into insights every day. Awesome. Only some of those insights get transformed into action – for any number of reasons (your influence, quality of insights, incomplete stories, etc. etc.). Sad face.
One of the most effective ways of ensuring your insights will be converted into high-impact business actions is to predict the future.
Consider this insight derived from data:
The Conversion Rate from our Email campaigns is 4.5%, 2x of Google Search.
Now consider this one:
The Conversion Rate from our Email campaign is 4.5%, 2x of Google Search.
Our analysissuggests you can move from six email campaigns per year to nine email campaigns per year.
Finally consider this one:
The Conversion Rate from our Email campaign is 4.5%, 2x of Google Search.
Our analysis suggests you can move from six email campaigns per year to nine email campaigns per year.
We predict it will lead to an additional $3 mil in incremental revenue.
The predicted metric is New Incremental Revenue. Not just that, you used sophisticated math to identify how much of the predicted Revenue will be incremental.
Which of these three scenarios ensures that your insight will be actioned?
Yep. The one with the Predictive Metric.
Becaues it is hard, really hard, to ignore your advice when you come bearing $3 mil in incremental revenue!
Starting your Predictive Metrics journey: Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.
In a delightfully wonderful development, every analytics tool worth its salt is adding Predictive Metrics to its arsenal. Both as a way to differentiate themselves with their own take on this capability, and to bring something incredibly valuable to businesses of all types/sizes.
Simply put, Conversion Probability determines a User’s likelihood to convert during the next 30 days!
I was so excited when it first came out.
Google Analtyics in this instance is analyzing all first-party data for everyone, identifying patterns of behavior that lead to conversions, now looking at everyone who did not convert, and on your behalf giving a score of 0 (no chance of conversion) to 100 (very high chance of conversion).
Phew! That’s a lot of work. :)
What’s particularly exciting is that Conversion Probability is computed for individual Users.
You can access the report easily in GA: Audience > Behavior > Conversion Probability.
An obvious use of this predicted behavior is to do a remarketing campaign focusing on people who might need a nudge to convert, 7,233 in the above case.
But, there are additional uses of this data in order to identify the effectiveness of your campaigns.
For example, here is the source of traffic sorted by Average Conversion Probability…
In addition to understanding Conversion Rate (last column) you can now also consider how many Users arrived via that channel who are likely to convert over the next 30 days.
Perhaps more delightfully you can use this for segmentation. Example: Create a segment for Conversion Probability > 50%, apply it to your fav reports like the content ones.
There is so much more you can explore.
[TMAI Premium subscribers, to ensure you are knocking it out of the park, be sure to review the A, B, O clusters of actionable recommendations in #238: The OG of Analytics – Segmentation! If you can’t find it, just emial me.]
Bonus Tip: I cannot recommend enough that you get access to the Google Merchandise Store Google Analytics account. It is a fully working, well-implemented real GA data for an actual business. Access is free. So great for learning. The screenshot above is from that account.
Threee Awesome New Predictive Metrics!
With everything turning over for the exciting world of Google Analytics 4 you get a bit more to add to your predictive metrics arsenal.
Conversion probability is being EOLed with GA 4, but worry not as you get a like-type replacement: Purchase Probability
The probability that a user who was active in the last 28 days will log a specific conversion event within the next 7 days.
Currently, purchase/ecommerce_purchase and in_app_purchase events are supported.
You can do all of the same things as we discussed above for Conversion probability.
To help you get closer to your Finance team – you really need to be BFFs with them! – you also get a predictive metric that they will love: Revenue Prediction
The revenue expected from all purchase conversions within the next 28 days from a user who was active in the last 28 days.
You can let your imagination roam wild as to what you can do with this power.
Might I suggest you start by looking at this prediction and then brainstorm with your Marketing team how you can overcome the shortfall in revenue! Not just using Paid strategies, but Earned and Owned as well.
Obviously in the rare case the Revenue Prediction is higher than target, you all can cash in your vacation days and visit Cancun. (Wait. Skip Cancun. That brand’s tainted. :)
There’s one more predicted metric that I’ve always been excited about: Churn Probability.
The probability that a user who was active on your app or site within the last 7 days will not be active within the next 7 days.
What’s that quote? It costs 5000x more to acquire a new User than to retain the one you already have? I might be exaggerating a tad bit.
For mobile app/game developers in particular (or for content sites, or any entity for whom recency/frequency is a do or die proposition). Churn is a constant obsession and now you can proactively get churn probability. Make it a core part of your analytical strategy to understand Behavior, Sources, Users, who are more/less likely to churn and action the insights.
GA 4 does not simply hand you these metrics willy-nilly. The algorithms require a certain number of Users, Conversions etc., in order to ensure they are doing sound computations on your behalf.
These three predictive metrics illustrate the power that forward-looking computations hold for you. There are no limits to how far you can take these approaches to help your company not only look backwards (you’ll be stuck with this 70% of the time) but also take a peek into the future (aim to spend 30% of your time here).
And please consider segmenting Purchase Probability, Revenue Probability and Churn Probability!
Bonus Tip: If you would like to migrate to the free version of Google Analytics 4 to take advantage of the above delicious predictive metrics, here’s a helpful article.
Predictive Metrics Nirvana – An Example.
For a Marketing Analyst, few things come close to nirvana in terms of forward-looking predictions from sophisticated analysis than to help set the entire budget for the year including allocation of that budget across channels based on diminishing returns curves and future opportunity and predict: Sales, Cost Per Sale, and Brand Lift.
Here’s how that looks from our team’s analytics practice…
Obviously, all these cells have numbers in them. You’ll understand that sharing them with you would be a career-limiting move on my part. :)
I can say that there are thirteen different element sets that go into this analysis (product launches, competitor behavior, past analysis of effectiveness and efficiency, underlying marketing media plan, upcoming industry changes, and a lot, lot, lot, of data).
Supercool – aka superhard – elements include being able to tie Brand Marketing to short, medium, long-term Sales.
Forward-looking allocations are based on simulations that can take all of the above, to answer low, medium, high-risk plans – from which our senior leader gets to choose the one she believes aligns with her strategic vision.
[Note: Strictly speaking what we are doing above is closer to Predictive Modeling, even though we have a bunch of Predictive Metrics. Potato – Potahto.]
I share our work as a way to invite your feedback on what we can do better and in the hope that if you are starting your Predicted Metrics practice, that it might serve as a north star.
From experience, I can tell you that if you ever felt you as an Analyst don’t have influence, that your organization ignores data, then there is nothing like Predicted Metrics to deepen your influence and impact on the business.
When people use faith to decide future strategy, the one thing they are missing is any semblance of what impact their faith-based strategy will have. The last three rows above are how you stand out.
BOOM!
The Danger in Predicting the Future.
You are going to be wrong.
A lot, initially. Then less over time as you get better and better and predicting the future.
(Machine Learning comes in handy there as it can ingest so much more complexity and spit out scenarios we simply can’t imagine.)
But, you will never be exactly right. The world is complicated.
This does not scare me for two reasons, I urge you to consider them:
1. Very few companies drove straight looking out of the rear view mirror. But, that is exactly what you spend time trying to do every single day.
2. Who is righter than you? The modern corporation mostly runs of faith. You are going to use data, usually a boat-load of it. It is usually far better than faith. And, when you are wrong, you can factually go back and update your models (faith usually is not open to being upgraded).
So. Don’t be scared.
Every time you are wrong, it is an opportunity to learn and be more right in the future – even if perfection will always be out of reach.
Bottom Line.
My hypothesis is that you are not spending a lot of time on predictive metrics and predictive modeling. Change this.
It is a great way to contribute materially to your company. It is a great way to invest in your personal learning and growth. It is a fantastic way to ensure your career is future-proof.
Live in the future – at least some of the time – as an Analyst/Marketer.
I’ll see you there. :)
As always, it is your turn now.
Please share your critique, reflections, tips and your lessons from projects that shift your company from only backwards looking metrics to foward looking metrics that predict the future.
It’s just not the most efficient way to get clients.
I know because I tried the cold pitching thing before.
In 2014, I planned to quit my job as a radio ad writer and go full freelance. To make it happen, I sent approximately five dozen emails to various businesses I thought would be fun clients.
Seven years later, I’m still waiting for a response.
(That’s not entirely true. One guy replied to try to sell me a new vacuum.)
In May 2021, I decided to take another shot at becoming a full time freelancer. But this time I refused to send out a flurry of cold emails. (However, if that’s your thing, email copywriter Nikki Elbaz says you should start with a mindset shift.)
Instead, I went with a much different method to get clients: referrals.
The result?
In 46 days (as of this writing) I’ve earned more than $19,000 for my services.
All without sending a single frosty email to a stranger.
And it’s not slowing down either.
My referral network is becoming an ever-growing celtic knot of copy requests and I’ve got two “Referral Trees” going that keep stacking freelance opportunities. More on that later.
First, let’s see why cold pitching is an inherently flawed method to get clients.
Doing a little quick napkin math, for the best odds of getting one response from your cold emails, you’d have to send out around… 400 emails!
No wonder my 36 email experiment didn’t get any traction. I guess I should have written 364 more.
Finally, Apple’s iOS 14.5 update adds a whole new fog of mystery to cold outreach campaigns. Users can now block tracking in emails, making it harder to gauge how effective they are.
Flaw #2: Cold pitching properly takes up too much time.
Your time is incredibly valuable.
Like Bitcoin, oil, or pop culture treasure Tom Hanks, your time is a finite resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Do you really want to spend your limited time researching potential clients and writing 400 personalized emails to maybe get one response?
Spoiler alert: my failed cold pitch attempt did not allow me to move to an acreage with a sea salt pool in the South of France.
But it did put me in a funk.
For months, I second guessed my abilities and felt dumb and angry for putting myself out there. I even started to pull away from the idea of being a copywriter altogether.
Worst of all, when rejection hits hard, it doesn’t respond to reason.
Technically my experience wasn’t writer rejection, which is a special concept of its own (yay, we’re special!). I was simply being ignored… which feels worse. I’d rather hear “No” than nothing at all.
Flaw #4: It’s not fun because it’s monotonous and inefficient.
Writing with purpose and personality is rewarding.
Writing hundreds of emails with purpose and personality that 99% of businesses will ignore is the opposite of rewarding.
It is boring.
It is time-consuming.
It is annoying, both for you and the recipient.
Cold pitching through email is the textual equivalent of telemarketing. (And we all love telemarketers, right?)
You could speed up the process with cold email templates, except:
By not personalizing your emails, you’re pretty much ensuring you’re going to get that 1% (or lower) response rate.
The hair I brush off my cats has more personality than most templates. You’d have a better chance of getting a response if you skipped the copy and emailed a photo of the last sandwich you ate.
The gist of all those flaws is this:
Cold pitching wastes too much time for too little payoff, plus you feel crappy and won’t have any fun.
“So what do you recommend instead of cold pitching?”
It’s easier to get a yes as the potential client actually needs your services.
You spend far less time getting them.
They have a better built in client vetting process than cold pitching. i.e. If someone refers you to a prospect, they feel there’s a match there. With a cold client, you don’t know about the fit until you end up working with them.
You avoid “sticker shock” because the prospect you get referred to usually has an idea of what you charge (through the person who connected you).
Even if you don’t get the gig, at least you get a reason why (unlike the 99% no-response wasteland of cold emailing). Plus, they might think of you next time someone they know needs copy.
You don’t have to “sell” your services as hard because referrals are like a badge of trust. Someone is vouching for you because they know you do good work. No wonder referrals account for 19% of all purchases, and influence as much as 90%.
Plus, referrals just make you feel good.
Getting one feels like being nestled in a weighted blanket on your couch, drinking tea and reading a novel on a rainy day.
Grow your client list (and income) by planting “Referral Trees”
Referral Trees happen when you have one client that acts as an initial “seed.” You do some work for them and/or connect with them, then they refer you to other clients, who refer you to other clients, and so on.
Right now, I have two on the go:
Clients who are “locked and loaded” clients (aka, they paid and the work is done) are in dark blue boxes. If you only look at those, these are small trees. Saplings really.
But keep in mind it’s only been 46 days.
The light blue boxes are clients who 1) need my services at a later date or 2) want my services soon but are still figuring out exactly what they need.
There are a couple of potential retainer clients in those future branches. Between those and my per-project work, I’m looking at consistent $10k+ months.
Not quite South France acreage money but not too shabby either.
Keen-eyed readers have probably spotted a $0 hidden amongst the branches there.
Full transparency on why I (technically) worked for “free”: that $0 client was a copy audit for my wife.
She runs an online sales coaching business and her clients get “free” monthly copy audits from me as part of their mastermind program. One of those audits resulted in a paid gig… which led to a second follow-up project.
I firmly believe you should never work for free. You’re a specialist and people should pay for your expertise.
How much do I believe in this? Well, now you know “Seed client #1” up there is my wife…
Referral Tree #2 technically starts with a $0… but that’s also not accurate.
That “seed client” is a company I left in January. I haven’t made money from them in six months but kept in touch with some of the people there.
As soon as I started freelancing, five of those connections came out of the woodwork requesting copy help.
Referrals can come from anywhere. Here are 5 ways you can find your own.
If there’s one flaw with referrals, it’s that they might be hard to get if you’re a beginner. It’s not impossible though (points 3 and 4 below are where you should start).
But if you’ve done any work for anyone – even just one gig – you have a potential “in” for a referral.
Any of the following methods can help you plant some Referral Trees of your own.
1) Ask your previous clients for referrals (and make it easy for them to share your info).
This is the easiest method. Who better to hook you up with a referral than someone you’ve already impressed?
“When starting out, juggling all the different aspects of being a freelancer at once can be quite cumbersome, but it is possible. As your business grows, however, you will increasingly find yourself in the need of extra help.”
If you want to level up, you’ll have to meet/hire/do work for and with all sorts of people: page builders, designers, developers, social media managers, photographers, media buyers, etc.
There are two routes to go with the motley crew of professional contacts you’ll collect:
A) Trade opportunities you come across.
I worked with a fantastic graphic designer at a start-up company. We became friends and still talk every week.
We also send each other job opportunities we hear about in our respective circles. In fact, I just referred him to a company that hired him for $90k a year. He got me… nothing.
For example: I want to get a website done for my business. But I’m terrible at it.
It’s tedious.
It’s frustrating.
And it’s never an easy “drag and drop” process because the second you try to move one image, your entire page rearranges itself like a goddamn Transformer.
All I wanted to do was make my headline bigger. (Source)
Instead of wasting my time with that torture, I’m hiring a designer to help me… specifically, the designer that hired me last month to write a sales page for her.
And not only am I hiring her. I’m also recommending her to any clients that need websites. And she’s referring her clients to me for copywriting.
You should be trying to get referrals from other writers too.
“But I’m a freelancer! A lone wolf! A single banana! A… a… a some other idiom that does everything by themselves! Why would I reach out to other writers!”
Pffffft.
We all need help. This image of freelancing/entrepreneurship having to be a one person show needs to stop.
If I’m too busy to take on a project, I don’t hesitate to reach out to my writer friends to see if they’re interested. They do the same for me.
We look out for each other. Like a big ol’ copywriting family.
Editor’s note: This is precisely why we have a #copy-tunities channel inside the10x Freelance Copywriter Slack mastermind. Busy, ambitious freelancers can’t do it all – so why not share the opportunity with another ambitious freelancer? It’s a win-win for the referrer and the referee.
We shouldn’t view other copywriters as “the enemy”.
They should be seen as fellow members of a community we are part of.
Being part of a community is good for your mental health. Especially because writing can be an intense, lonely job at times.
“Writing is a lonely occupation at best. Of course there are stimulating and even happy associations with friends and colleagues, but during the actual work of creation the writer cuts himself off from all others and confronts his subject alone.”
It’s good to have friends who can help you stave off any bouts of deadline terror and/or imposter syndrome.
5) Form a partnership with an online sales/marketing coach.
As mentioned earlier, my wife is an online sales coach. She started her business two and half years ago. Over the past year I’ve started working with her more.
I write her sales pages and do occasional copy edits for her clients. This has led to a few of her clients hiring me to do their copy as well.
Now, you might call shenanigans because I have an unfair “in” due to my wife. Fair.
But I counter by saying you should think of me as a case study on whether partnering up with a coach (uh, business partnering – not marrying) gets you copywriting clients.
Not only will you get work writing for the coach, you also get access to an ever-filling stable of potential clients being influenced by someone who loves what you do.
Do good work and referrals will ensue.
(I should note, you don’t need to marry the coach like I did. It leads to a lot of pillow talk about aligned offers and stages of awareness.)
Conclusion: Referrals rule. Cold pitching drools.
My last bit of proof for why referrals is a bit meta: a referral led to me writing this Copyhackers blog post about referrals.
Door #1: you waste hours of your life launching emails into the cold void of the internet like desperate space probes searching for intelligent life that might respond but probably won’t?
Door #2: you get to make friends, surround yourself with a community of professionals, and clients who are happy to pay you solid Earth money come to you… all while leaving you plenty of free time?
One of the business side effects of the pandemic is that it has put a very sharp light on Marketing budgets. This is a very good thing under all circumstances, but particularly beneficial in times when most companies are not doing so well financially.
There is a sharper focus on Revenue/Profit.
From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to, hey, am I getting all the credit I should for the Conversions being driven by my marketing tactics? AKA: Attribution!
Right then and there, your VP of Finance steps in with a, hey, how many of these conversions that you are claiming are ones that we would not have gotten anyway? AKA Incrementality!
Two of the holiest of holy grails in Marketing: Attribution, Incrementality.
Analysts have died in their quests to get to those two answers. So much sand, so little water.
Hence, you can imagine how irritated I was when someone said:
Yes, we know the incrementality of Marketing. We are doing attribution analysis.
NO!
You did not just say that.
I’m not so much upset as I’m just disappointed.
Attribution and Incrementality are not the same thing. Chalk and cheese.
Incrementality identifies the Conversions that would not have occurred without various marketing tactics.
Attribution is simply the science (sometimes, wrongly, art) of distributing credit for Conversions.
None of those Conversions might have been incremental. Correction: It is almost always true that a very, very, large percentage of the Conversions driven by your Paid Media efforts are not incremental.
Attribution ≠ Incrementality.
In my newsletter, TMAI Premium, we’ve covered how to solve the immense challenge of identifying the true incrementality delivered by your Marketing budget. (Signup, email me for a link to that newsletter.)
Today, let me unpack the crucial differences between attribution and incrementality to empower you – and your Senior Leaders – to have intelligent discussions about the actual problems you need solved, and justify an investment in additional Analysis Ninjas.
Understanding this difference will also help you ace your job interviews – a lovely bonus. :)
An introduction to multi-channel digital attribution analysis.
When you open a report in any digital analytics tool, like Google Analytics, almost all the reports you look at attribute full credit for the Conversion to the referrer associated with the last session where the conversion occurred.*
(*For the Analytics super nerds, my sisters and brothers: Strictly speaking Google Analytics reports are not last-click conversion, they are last-non-direct-conversion.)
In English, this means if someone clicked on a Paid Search ad on Bing and converted..
…Bing gets all the credit for that conversion in your Analytics reports.
For example, a report like this one…
This report is not an entirely accurate representation of advertising’s performance because the last-click rarely represents the complete consumer journey.
The customer might have seen, or been forced to see :), other ads preceeding that last touch-point which happened to be Bing in our example.
The act of identifying all the touch-points (impressions and/or clicks) and their influence is what’s known as attribution analysis.
Many analytics tools, including Google Analytics, come built with functionality to help you understand the complete consumer journey and all the touch-points leading up to a conversion.
What Marketers do, in particular the ones whose job descriptions include only paid media, is say ok fine, let us look at all the touch-points that led to conversions.
In a nifty bit of sleight of hand, they create analysis that is reflected in this picture…
This does sucks less.
But. Notice a pattern. They are all paid ads.
Paid Media Marketers (sometimes referred to as Direct Response Team or Performance Marketing) love doing attribution analysis across only paid media channels becuase it allows them to distribute credit only across their work.
This inflates the importance of paid advertising, at the expense of owned and earned tactics – which your company is also investing in.
That of course suits the agenda of your Paid Media Marketers just fine.
But. It is wrong.
Because the complete consumer journey to conversion, in this instance, actually looks like this…
The advertising played a role in driving the conversion. Yes. Absolutely!
So did owned media. Email, was a crucial second to last before conversion.
So did earned media. Organic Search, got the individual to an optimal page on your site.
As you do digital attribution analysis, watch out for Paid Marketers who say they do attribution analysis but only count paid media channels. Work to help them, and your Senior Leaders, understand that this inflates paid marketing’s value well beyond what’s deserved.
The paid media team might resist saying omg but that will require expensive tools and more data and take so much time and it is so painful and omg why do you hate us so much!
Worry not. Every decent web analytics tool now includes built-in attribution analysis across owned, earned, and paid across digital platforms.
It will, literally, take 30 seconds to get going (of which 25 seconds is you booting up your computer).
Is my attribution analysis awesome?
Here’s how you can measure how sophisticated your attribution approach is:
If you are using the full power of the attribution modeling across owned, earned, and paid, you are at an industry-average level of analytics sophistication.
If you have hooked up the owned, earned, and paid multi-channel attribution analysis results directly to platforms you are buying ads on to ensure smarter bidding, you are at an industry-leading level of analytics sophistication.
(In English: Attribution analysis will give proper credit to AdWords instead of an over/under-inflated value. This can be connected to AdWords. AdWords will lower/raise your bids to account for the credit it deserves. Nice.)
Getting to industry-leading level is not just about being able to do the analysis, it is about automating the actions that can be take from the analysis.
Now you understand why attribution is important, how your Paid Marketing team is likely inflating its value, and how to check how sophisticated your approach is… Let’s take a small detour and understand two attribution analysis challenges I want you to be careful about. Then, we’ll get back to Marketing incrementality.
Attribution Challenge #1. Which attribution model rocks?
If last-click and last-non-direct-click are not the best options, which attribution model should you use?
Some people like to use first-click.
First-click attribution is akin to giving my first girlfriend 100% of the credit for me marrying my wife.
TL;DR: I recommend not using last-click, first-click, linear, time decay, or position-based, models. If you are a genius, you can use custom attribution modeling. See the post above for all the delicious details, pros and cons.
Don’t overthink it. (In this instance…) You and I are not as smart as machine learning algorithms that can analyze insane complexity across terabytes of information from millions of customer interactions.
Trust the machines. There are more productive uses of your time.
Attribution Challenge #2. Wait, what about all my offline media?
This is not the complete picture for so many companies…
The real world also exists!
For so many companies, the reality of their marketing efforts looks like this…
The real world also exists, in addition to the digital one!
When you create a full view of your total marketing budget, for most companies the reality of your marketing efforts looks like this…
So what do you do with your Google or Adobe web analytics tool?
Not much.
Sure every company will tell you that you can stand on one feet, curl three left toes, raise your right hand, close only one eye, stand under a shower of arctic-cold water, and fast for 27 days and then do some hard coding to jury rig some sort of signal gathering mechanism with JavaScript hacking and maybe get your offline media into your web analytics tool and maybe you have complete attribution modeling ability.
I just want to observe that their recommended solution is difficult to pull off.
There are other options at your disposal. I refer to this full attribution quest: Marketing Portfolio Attribution Analysis.
Your primary solution will consist of advanced statistical modeling.
These are custom built for each company, there is no off-the-shelf product worth its salt.
Some consulting companies will sell you media-mix modeling solutions, from experience I’ve come to see them with suspicion due to data access issues, stretching math and data beyond a stretching point and so much more.
If you spend so much on marketing that Portfolio Attribution Analysis is worth it for you, you need to hire a small number of brilliant people and empower them. It is the only way to ensure digital is not being over-credited for the conversions that are rightly being driven by offline channels – or vice versa.
Let’s get back on the, more exciting, incrementality train.
Attribution is not Incrementality.
Now that you are so much smarter with a new level of appreciation of the nuances involved…
Let’s say we got 10 conversions this month (each worth $14 million :)).
When we do attribution analysis, whatever kind you like, what we are essentially doing is taking the credit for those 10 conversions and distributing it across identified marketing activity…
This is good.
Be proud of yourself and your company peers.
When done right, it helps you identify how to invest your marketing budget across owned, earned, and paid media optimally (the last-wish of every CMO).
But above is not the full picture of reality.
Marketing is not the only thing that drives conversions for your company.
This one is the full picture of reality…
By existing as a company what I mean is that there is a whole bunch of activity that could cause people to buy your company product – that has nothing to do with any kind of Marketing.
I’ve constantly recommended that you buy Patagonia products because it is a company for social good and I love them.
You might have seen me wearing my blue nano puff jacket and thought I looked snazzy in it hence right then and there you decided to buy it.
Perhaps you read a review of Patagonia products by my friend Daniel and you decided to buy it.
(True story) You might have landed in Frankfurt on a really cold day without a jacket – because California is warm! – and you bought the first jacket you bumped into, and it happened to be Patagonia.
I could keep going on about all the pathways to purchase that don’t have anything to do with the work of your Marketing team (though the team, and everyone in it, is incredbily awesome!).
The company will sell a whole bunch of products merely by existing.
This is true for your company as well.
The 10 conversions above, that you were crediting only to Marketing, is wrong.
Reality is more like this…
Marketing’s Incrementality then is being able to identify how many of the 10 conversions would have happened anyway – even if you did no Marketing.
A whole bunch of Conversions you are attributing to Paid Search or Facebook would have happened any way. Do you know how many?
I’ve done loads of incrementality analyses during my career across different types of companies.
Using the highest percentage incrementality that the data has demonstrated, the answer as to how many of the 10 conversions are incremental would look something like this….
It is measuring what's known as True Incrementality…
Typically, if measured accurately, the true incrementality of your Marketing will be in the range of 8% or 22%.
To recap:
Your Paid Search campaign did not entirely drive 10 Conversions.
Expanding the view, your Paid Media did not entirely drive 10 Conversions.
Expanding the view further out, your digital Owned, Earned, and Paid Media did not entirely drive 10 Conversions.
Expanding the even more, your Online AND Offline Marketing efforts did not entirely drive 10 Conversions.
One last expansion of the view, all your Marketing efforts drove 3 Conversions that you would not have gotten any way.
Marketing’s Incrementality!
Oh, now go back and do attribution analysis to determine how to distribute the credit for those 3 Conversions across your Online and Offline Marketing using my recommendations in the first part of this post.
The very best companies on the planet know the number of outcomes incrementally driven by their Marketing (and other) initiatives.
Bottom line.
1. Whatever you do, never say attribution is incrementality. It’ll hurt my feelings.
2. Do you know what your Marketing’s true incrementality is?
Carpe diem.
As always, it is your turn now.
Please share your critique, reflections, and your lessons from the quest to measure Marketing’s incrementality via comments below. Thank you.
You’re healthy as you enter the mine – full of joie de vivre. Singing to your heart’s content as you enter into the darkness. Fluttering your wings as only birds like you can.
Later, you exit the mine. Except now you’re:
Covered in soot. Frail from disease. Your song is gone.
And you’re no longer able to do what you’re uniquely qualified as a bird to do:
Fly.
Was it you that made yourself sick? Or was it the coal mine?
To most of us, the answer to these questions likely feels fairly obvious:
Of course it was the environment. Why would you possibly make yourself sick?
Except people like you – freelancers – and me – full-time employees – are exposed to risky work environments every day. And there’s a key proponent that intensifies this in our environment:
Hustle culture.
Many of us – including me, when I was a freelancer – buy into it hook, line and sinker. Even if it seems to be abundantly obvious that it can create a risky work environment.
If you’re running a freelance copywriting business, chances are good that hustle culture probably already has its gnarly little hands around your business’s delicate neck – ready to strangle it if you’re not careful.
“I’ve got a dream that’s worth more than my sleep.”
I bought into the always-on hustle for most of my adult life – I spent most of my career as a freelancer until a year ago when I joined the Copyhackers team.
I’m coming to you from the other side – from my 9 to 5 at a company that values rest – to pick a serious fight with the idea. And with hustle culture in general.
As Aytekin Tank, founder and CEO of JotForm, puts it:
“In the western world, for example, success typically means money, power, and public recognition. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. But a single-minded, sleep-deprived race to attain them can come at a price.”
Here’s what hustle culture isn’t:
Working hard to achieve your dreams.
Staying disciplined as you work towards your goals.
And doing the not-so-fun but oh-so-necessary stuff that’ll benefit your biz.
No, the hustle culture I’m picking a fight with is the always on, always available, “go big and don’t go home” mentality that has seeped into so much of our daily lives. Especially in North America.
Stay motivated? Sure.
Find the discipline to do the work? Sure.
But go big and don’t go home? Rise and grind 24/7?
No thanks. I’m calling bullsh*t on that one. ‘Cos it’s not good for you. And it’s not good for your business.
And there’s one big, dark reason why:
That type of hustle and grind can be a slippery slope towards burnout.
Dr. Christina Maslach first defined occupational burnout in 1976 as “a level of continuous emotional stress caused by the working environment.”
Since then, our understanding of burnout has evolved, and with it, our definitions.
Maslach and her coauthor, Dr. Michael Leiter, propose that:
“Burnout is a psychological syndrome of chronic exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy, and is experienced as a prolonged response to chronic stressors in the workplace.”
And in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), here’s how WHO defines burn-out:
“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:
feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job;
and reduced professional efficacy.
Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
So we know what it is. And what it looks like. But what really causes burnout?
Here are the 5 key factors most highly correlated with burnout:
Were the factors most likely to contribute to burnout.
As a freelancer, you are solely responsible for managing your workload, deadlines, client communication, client boundaries and project scopes. All of which, if handled poorly, create a work environment that exposes you to the 5 key factors listed above.
Now, compare Gallup’s 5 key factors list (above) with Maslach and Leiter’s 6 areas of work life that can reduce the risk of burnout:
A manageable workload
Job control
Rewards
Community
Fairness
Values
See the overlap between the two lists?
That’s actually great news for you and I because the overlap demonstrates that preventing burnout is a totally realistic and achievable goal if you give it the focus it deserves.
So, who does burnout affect?
In short, burnout affects anyone that’s in the workforce.
For example, a 2018 Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that:
23% of participants reported feeling burned out at work very often or always.
44% reported feeling burned out sometimes.
Tally those numbers up and you’ll arrive at the startling realization that approximately 2 in every 3 full-time employees feel burnout on at least a semi-regular basis.
Right now I can almost hear you saying to yourself:
“Ha! But Carolyn… I’m a freelancer, not a full-time employee. These stats don’t apply to me.”
Freelancers are self-employed. Even though you might not call yourself an entrepreneur, you’re an entrepreneur. You’re both the employee and employer.
The bad news?
Entrepreneurs seem to be at an even higher risk of burnout.
This study sums up the heightened entrepreneurial risk in a few words:
“The role ofthe entrepreneur is subject, more than others, to psychological and nerve pressure, loneliness, lack of time and total involvement, especially during the first years of the entrepreneurial process.”
Sound familiar? It did to me. This describes a good chunk of my years as a freelancer.
Authors Amina Omrane, Amal Kammoun and Claire Seaman go on to explain that:
“Nascent entrepreneurs are frequently subject to a great number of professional stressors caused by their work activities and thus making them potential candidates for burnout. This phenomenonmay threaten their health as well as their new ventures. Indeed, it has some detrimental effects due to the fact that those new business owners have few resources, energy and skills, enabling them to deal with the psychosocial risks derived from the entrepreneurial burnout.”
In other words, typical constraints – like limited resources, energy and skills – make new entrepreneurs particularly susceptible to burnout.
Likewise, an HBR study found a direct correlation for entrepreneurs between burnout and:
Job fit. Defined as the degree to which the entrepreneur thinks their current job matches their ideal job.
Job passion. Defined as how strongly the entrepreneur is inclined to agree that the work they do is what they like and find important.
Job mindset. Which measured how the surveyed entrepreneurs thought their career would evolve over time.
And, similar to the findings of studies done on burnout in full-time employees, studies (like this one and this one) demonstrate that factors like the manageability of workload and responsibilities are directly correlated with an entrepreneur’s likelihood of experiencing burnout.
Then layer on the glorification of hustle culture. Where you see your fav biz gurus (and colleagues!) post on social media about their always on, go go go mentality. And you feel the pressure to keep up. And immense guilt when you take a measly 10 minutes to sip your coffee in peace, device-free.
The “go big and don’t go home” side of hustle culture only increases your risk of burnout.
As a freelancer, you are your business’s single most valuable asset.
This is especially true if you’re just starting out:
You’re the rainmaker, the sales person, the operations manager, the communications manager, the event manager and the talent. If you’re unable to work, then your business is unable to work. Which means your business probably isn’t earning any money. And all of this means:
Burnout could kill your business.
For example, a Gallup study on burnout revealed that:
Burned-out workers are 23% more likely to visit the emergency room.
And burnout typically lowers confidence in your performance by 13%.
Whether it’s your mind or body, burnout has some pretty nasty effects.
Yikes. So… what now?
In this HBR article, workplace expert Jennifer Moss recommended the following solution:
“We need to stop offering better protective gear and actually do the work to make [the workplace] healthy and free of the toxic conditions that are contributing to their burnout.”
I’m arguing that one of those toxic conditions is hustle culture.
Here’s the kicker for you, my freelancing friend:
As a self-employed person, it is your sole responsibility to ensure healthy working conditions.
The good news?
As the great Maya Angelou said: “When you know better, do better.”
Hustle culture doesn’t have to be your thing.
“Rise and grind” doesn’t have to be your modus operandi.
Burnout doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of your future either.
You know better, so now you can do better.
It’s absolutely possible to work hard, achieve your goals AND live a fulfilling life outside of work.
How do I know? I’m livin’ proof. Here are the two things that changed:
Focus.
Intentional rest.
Are focus and rest the antidotes to hustle culture? I think so.
Consider this:
If we look at the opposite of unfair treatment at work, we find fair treatment at work. When you’re a freelancer, “fair treatment” is often a result of creating and enforcing boundaries with clients. And sometimes it looks like letting poor-fit clients go. But you need focus to determine what your own boundaries are. And you need time away to reflect on how you will enforce said boundaries.
Now consider the unmanageable workload and unreasonable time pressure:
If we look at the opposites – a manageable workload and reasonable time pressure – there are some ways to help manage this in your work environment:
proper project planning (i.e. a booking calendar, accurate project scope estimates)
a good understanding of your own personal workload capacity
Maintaining reasonable time pressure also relies on an up-to-date booking calendar, scope estimates, an understanding of your own personal capacity and boundaries to say “no” or “not now” or “how does 4 weeks from now sound?”
On the other hand, if you subscribe to hustle culture mindset, you might just book the project, get those coins and convince yourself that you can simply sleep next month.
Sidenote: I fully recognize that financial circumstances do not always afford individuals the luxury to say “no” to projects. That said, you allllllwaaaaayyyyyyys have the agency to negotiate timelines. Even if you don’t feel like you do. Clients will always want things done yesterday. And they can almost always wait a little bit longer than they initially say to get their deliverables. As a freelancer, you are the sole owner of your calendar. If you feel stuck managing your calendar,the 14-Day Freelance Bootcamp can help.
Here’s the thing:
Focus allows you to make the most of the limited time you have available.
Rest allows you to make the most of the limited time you have available.
Here’s how focus and rest have changed the way I operate:
1. Focus.
Your time is a finite resource.
Bad news:
As author and productivity consultant Chris Bailey writes in his book Hyperfocus: “your ability to focus isn’t limitless—while you can improve your attention span, it’s only a matter of time until it begins to waver.”
Good news:
Managing focus can help you make the most of this finite resource.
So, what’s occupying your focus?
Focus and your business:
As a freelancer, you likely wear many – if not, all – of the hats in your business.
But if you feel like you’re doing all the things and not getting anywhere, it might be time to look at your focus. What’s the overarching goal you’re trying to accomplish?
If you haven’t already done so, I highly recommend reading The ONE Thing by Gary Keller. Keller proposes one simple question to focus your energy and efforts. It goes like this:
“What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Notice that it doesn’t ask about ALL the things. Just. One. Thing. Which requires focus to determine what you’re aiming at. And focus to determine which one thing will get you there in the simplest, most direct way possible.
It also requires you to say “no” (or “not now”) to things that are not your one thing.
If the thought of saying “no” makes you break into a cold sweat, consider what Seth Godin’s approach:
“You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly, and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work. Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.”
At Copyhackers, we’ve also recently adopted a similar approach. It looks a li’l something like this:
Our CEO Jo determines the quarterly goal and supporting success metrics for marketing and product.
In consultation with Jo, our VPs Paul (marketing) and Cristina (operations) determine team focus for our 6-week cycles.
Throughout the course of the 6-week cycle – 5 weeks of focused work and 1 week (typically) of rest – each team member works through projects that directly support their team’s focus.
There are an infinite number of things the Copyhackers team could be doing.
Truth be told, the MKTG backlog alone is already rather long – and we’re just 1.5 cycles into this new work rhythm. But this new working rhythm is really excellent at forcing us to focus. We have to say no (or not now) to great ideas, simply because it’s not our team’s one thing.
And – let’s be clear – it’s really, reeeaaaaaaaally hard to say “not now” to great ideas.
But saying no ensures we accomplish what we’ve set out to accomplish. It also helps ensure we’re not burning out trying to do all the things. And, most importantly, it supports Jo’s vision for Copyhackers.
There are an abundance of great ideas. The great ideas will still be there next cycle. Or the cycle after that. Or the cycle after that 🙂
Here’s how you might apply this type of focus to your freelance business:
Set ONE big quarterly goal – could be a revenue goal, could be a visibility goal, could be something else. Then, determine what your supporting success metrics look like. For example, if you’ve set a revenue goal, maybe your success metrics are tied to cold emails or sales calls or proposals sent.
Consider creating a standardized work cycle, like the Basecamp six week cycle we’re using at Copyhackers. Or use theme days, which the 14-day bootcamp touches on. And 10x Freelancer covers this A LOT (plus, heaps of other ways to find the focus to do what matters most for your biz). You could even use a standardized work cycle AND theme days.
Be brave. Say no. So you can keep your workload manageable, your deadlines reasonable and give yourself the resources to say yes to your one thing. All of which will help you keep those 5 burnout factors in check.
Real world freelancer example: The team at Content Bistro follow a similar 90-day goal-setting approach to stay focused and integrate it with their revenue roadmapping to create predictable profitability. So saying “no” is easier than ever.
Focus and your process:
Beyond your biz, you’ll also want to find focus in your day-to-day work process.
“Timothy Wilson, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, estimates that our brain receives eleven million “bits” of information in the form of sensory experiences each second. But how many of these eleven million bits can our minds consciously process and focus on at once? Just forty of them.”
So, out of the 11 million pieces of sensory info flying at our brain each second, we can only process 40.
Oh, and when it comes to trying to actually remember that info, the number shrinks down to 4.
In other words, your brain can focus on just a teensy amount (3.6363636363636E-5% to be precise) of the info flying at it at any given moment.
With such a teensy amount of focus to direct, the really critical question you should ask yourself is:
How are you managing your focus?
Here are two strategies I now use in my process to preserve my focus:
Alternating between hyperfocus + scatterfocus.
Controlling my distractions.
Let’s dig in:
How I alternate between hyperfocus + scatterfocus:
As a freelancer, I muscled my way through projects on the regular. I would sit at my computer, pulling my hair out, as I tried to solve the latest problem I encountered. I hated working like this – it made me truly miserable – but I felt like I was getting things done. The operative word in that last sentence is felt.
In truth, I was not getting things done. I was simply trying to feel like I was getting things done.
Thankfully, a lot has changed since then and I’ve discovered quite possibly my favorite way to work – especially when it comes to finding answers to challenging problems, like writing Solution Designs for a complicated 40+ behavioral-triggered email map for a technical enterprise SaaS.
Here’s how I do it:
I work in intervals, using Bailey’s hyperfocus and scatterfocus.
Bailey explains hyperfocus as “intentionally directing your attention toward one thing.” And if you’re familiar with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, you might be happy to learn that pursuing hyperfocus is an effective way to enter into a state of flow. I find it makes work very enjoyable. As I write this, I’m in fact in a hyperfocused state of flow and lovin’ every minute of it 🥳
On the other hand, Bailey describes scatterfocus as “deliberately letting your mind wander.” I enjoy this type of focus as well, but it can be harder to use if you’re not accustomed to it. This type of focus also happens to be my solution for muscling through problems.
Here’s what I mean by that:
Hyperfocus is my default work mode in most of the projects I work on.
But, when I encounter a problem in hyperfocus that I can’t see a path through, I stop what I’m doing, walk away from my desk and use scatterfocus to work my way through the problem.
Bailey outlines three different types of scatterfocus, but my favorites for efficient problem-solving are problem-solving scatterfocus and habitual scatterfocus. I like to combine the two by doing the following:
First, I use problem-solving scatterfocus. I’ll grab a pen and paper and set a timer for 5(ish) minutes. As the timer runs, I brain dump on the page, noting what I’m trying to achieve, what I perceive as the current blocker, any questions I have, possible solutions I’m currently considering, and any other bits and bobs of info occupying my attentional space. That last step – the bits and bobs – might not feel related to the problem in the moment, but it usually is. I brain dump until the timer buzzes. I read through my notes once, then I set them aside.
After that’s done, I use habitual scatterfocus. I walk away from my desk to engage in an activity I can do with minimal effort on autopilot. Typically I’ll make a cup of coffee or tea if it’s a small problem, like organizing the structure of this blog post. Or I’ll go for a quick walk around the block if it’s a bigger problem, like organizing heaps of research into a complex Solution Design. As I complete the habitual activity I let my mind dance around allllllll the notes I just brain dumped.
Once the habit is complete and my brain has danced around the problem, I return to my desk. And almost without fail, I’ve solved the problem I’m encountering.
Here’s what’s really cool about scatterfocus:
I used to (and still occasionally do) need to sleep on problems (or drafts) to come up with stronger solutions. And this makes sense – studies (like this, this and this) have linked creativity and problem-solving to sleep, specifically dreaming.
And studies (like this one) have used neuroimaging to study the similarities between daydreaming and actual dreaming. It turns out many of the same parts of our brain that fire during actual dreaming also fire when we’re daydreaming.
With scatterfocus being a slightly more focused version of daydreaming, this allows me to intentionally engage those incredible creative problem-solving parts of my brain.
As Bailey suggests:
“The mode helps you connect old ideas and create new ones; floats incubating thoughts to the surface of your attentional space; and lets you piece together solutions to problems.”
This type of dual focus method – switching between hyperfocus and scatterfocus – allows me to efficiently connect old ideas to new ones while relieving the time pressure I might be feeling on the project. Scatterfocus also fills me with energy – as new ideas often do.
These methods of focus help me fight off focus fatigue, makes my workload feel more manageable and relieves any time pressure I might be feeling. All of which help me fight burnout.
Control distractions
You are the master of your distractions. It may not always feel that way, but in most cases it’s true.
In order to control distractions, you’ll need to consider which distractions are truly worth being interrupted for. Especially when studies (like this one) have shown that any given task could take up to 40% longer if you’re multitasking.
For me, most distractions aren’t worth interrupting my focus (and, hint, Bailey agrees).
This looks like no email on my phone. No Slack on my phone. Silent Slack on my computer – I check in regularly throughout the work day, but only at designated times. I have designated time-blocks to check emails. And, as a team, we have a daily meeting window where meetings can be scheduled to help us protect our focus from unnecessary context switching.
“Setting a specific time to focus on distractions like email, meetings, your smartphone, and social media transforms them from distractions into merely other purposeful elements of your work and life.”
Lemme tell you. These sorts of boundaries have done wonders for my ability to do deep, thoughtful work. And maintain my energy throughout the day.
Focus also helps me disconnect efficiently, for better rest periods. Which brings me to:
2. Rest.
Truth be told, I find rest a bigger challenge than focus. Bailey writes:
“Taking a break feels less productive than getting real work done, so you feel at fault when you even consider stepping back.”
And hustle culture only amplifies the pressure to always be on.
For me, I was unable to rest successfully until I learned how to focus.
And here’s what else I learned about rest from listening to my colleagues:
Everyone’s version of rest is different.
For example:
Our paid acquisition lead Erin feels totally energized and rested when she’s out and about on adventures, like hiking and horseback riding.
Whereas I feel really well rested when I get ridiculous amounts of sleep, enjoy little daily luxuries (like a slow-paced morning on the balcony with a latte and a book) and knock out habitual tasks on my to-do list (think: cleaning windows and large appliances).
Considering how varied rest looks from one person to another, this section is much shorter than the Focus section of this post. Because you’ll need to determine what rest should look like for you, so you feel rested and energetic.
Still, here’s something you might want to consider:
A survey, conducted by the American Psychological Association’s Center for Organizational Excellence found that:
53% of employed adults check work messages at least once a day over the weekend ( ← typically considered days of rest)
52% check work messages before or after work during the week ( ← typically considered periods of rest)
54% even check work messages when they’re home sick ( ← definitely a time when you should be resting, so you feel better)
And 44% check work messages when they’re on vacation ( ← also definitely a period of rest)
Granted, these stats are pulled from 2013. But I would be surprised if those figures have decreased, especially given the rise in tech use over the last decade as well as the sudden increase in blended work-life spaces caused by covid. If anything, the numbers have probably increased.
As a freelancer, my smart phone made it very, very hard to disconnect. Which made it hard to actually rest. Hi, hustle culture. Hello, burnout.
Here’s what I found when I turned my attention to focus:
The boundaries I use to control my distractions not only allow me to focus. They also help me rest.
For example, I can’t check Slack while I’m relaxing on the balcony, even if I have my phone on me, because my boundaries – no Slack on my phone – don’t allow it.
I like how Keller explains it:
“When you intend to be successful, you start by protecting time to recharge and reward yourself.”
I now feel confident and unapologetic in saying:
Focus is an essential part of my process. So is rest.
I so, soooooooo wish I had known this as a freelancer. If I had allowed myself the opportunity to actually experiment with focus and rest, I would’ve seen what a profound impact it could have on my work. And on my life.
I would’ve also seen that I don’t need to buy into hustle culture to get great sh*t done.
“A new answer usually requires new behavior, so don’t be surprised if along the way to sizable success you change in the process. But don’t let that stop you.”
Which begs the question:
What behaviors do you need to change in the way you plan, execute and run your day or your projects or your business to rebel against hustle culture?
How can you create an environment conducive to more intentional focus?
How can you recover more of your time for rest?
I’ve outlined some strategies that helped me. I wish I knew them when I was freelancing – it woulda saved me a whole lot o’ frustration, heartache and, yup, burnout. But only you can truly determine what’ll work for you.
