The Data Driven Newsletter
​Harnessing Data to Drive Growth
​Volume 11.10.1
October 6, 2023

Reading time: 5 minutes

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Hey Reader,

It’s that time of year! MeasureSummit is happening this month, and I’ll be there. You can get your free ticket below:

📌 MeasureSummit 2023: October 11-13

MeasureSummit 2023 is almost here, and I couldn't be more thrilled to be a part of it.

My session will be on How to Get Freelance Clients in the World of Data and Analytics. Especially clients who respect your work and pay you well.

I chose this topic because getting clients is so difficult that 75% of freelancers return to a full-time job after 3-6 months of starting out. I managed to do it for over 20 years, so I have plenty to say on this topic.

I’ll go deeper on the topic during MeasureSummit, but for now, here are four actionable tips to succeeding as a freelancer, especially in the world of data and analytics:

1) Find anchor clients to provide income stability while you build a client pipeline. Your anchor clients could come from your warm network, people who know you

2) Spend at least 15% of your time on business development activities. If you find that difficult, I recommend blocking off time on your calendar so others can’t book calls with you during your time blocks.

3) Create an offer stack with low-risk, medium-ticket, and high-ticket services to appeal to a variety of budgets and company sizes.

4) Price services at four times your employee’s rate and use “blended rates” across resources to increase profit margins.

Obviously, there’s a lot more nuance that I can’t unpack in one newsletter. But I’m excited to share more when at the MeasureSummit event on October 11-13.

And if you don't want to hear me nerd about freelancing, then definitely come for Fred Pike, Simo Ahava, Charles Farina, and so many others who have great stuff to share!

The best part? It's completely free.

​Get free ticket​

🤝 X Joins Forces With Google Display Network

Well, I didn’t see this coming. After a 59% drop in ad revenue this year, X (formerly Twitter) decided to team up with Google in the advertising space.

What does this mean for advertisers?

It just means they can soon serve Google Ads on X’s feeds via Google’s Display Network.

The exact details of this deal still need to be worked out, but if you’ve wanted to advertise on Twitter (or have done so before), this can be your chance to do it again.
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It will be interesting to see what the costs and ROAS of these display ads on X at first, given the exodus of advertisers earlier this year.

​Read more​

🎙️ Business Unfiltered Podcast EP #22: Roles vs. People

What’s holding most small businesses from growing?

It’s not revenue, or lack thereof. It’s team structure.

An inefficient organization chart that doesn’t assign roles effectively results in bottlenecks, mostly at the founder’s level. And these bottlenecks limit growth potential. To scale, these bottlenecks must be removed.

This starts with drawing out an organization chart, not just for today, but also to map out what your company structure might look like in the future. It’s important to distinguish roles from job descriptions and map out a "minimum viable resource" before you post any job opening.

Our latest Business Unfiltered Podcast episode breaks down proven frameworks to get your organizational chart right.

​Listen here​

🤖 [Privacy] Privacy Risks of Using AI for Your Business

AI is getting a lot more adoption among us now. But here’s a caveat:

Blindly using AI opens many potential pitfalls around consumer and employee data according to privacy expert, Jodi Daniels. Here are some things to be aware of:

AI systems rely on large volumes of consumer data for training, and that raises consent and transparency concerns. It could violate client confidentiality if sensitive data is exposed through use of AI. Pending regulations like the EU AI Act could impose requirements on transparency and acceptable AI uses.

AI can perpetuate biases if the training data contains any according to privacy expert Jodi Daniels. Employee data privacy is also at risk if AI is used for profiling or automated decision-making.

Finally, companies may be liable for IP or copyright issues with AI-generated content.

See what privacy expert Jodi Daniels has to say about this topic:

​Read more​

💡 Blog Post: How to Identify and Remove Bot Traffic in Google Analytics 4

How do you deal with bot traffic on your site? Let's talk about bots in Google Analytics.

Most of the time, bot traffic in our analytics data gets a bad name. We think of it as spam, but there are good bots too.

Whether or not you welcome them, 99% of the time you don't want to see bot traffic in your analytics reports.

Here are 4 ways you can keep them out:

1) Install website protection software

2) Block bots in your robots.txt file

3) Filter bot traffic with IP addresses

4) Customize GA4 (details in article below)

For more details on this, click below:

​Read article​

🎥 YouTube: Chatbot Tracking in GA4

Chatbots aren't accessible by GA4's standard tracking methods, making third-party chatbot software integration challenging due to privacy concerns over personally identifiable information.

We created a video tutorial to demo native chatbot tracking, focusing on when someone opens the chatbot on a website and linking this to traffic and user data in GA4.

Check it out!

​Watch video​

That's it for now. See you next week!