Digital Marketing Freelancer (How to find a good one?)
Digital marketing is all the rage these days, and it’s quite understandable.
Entry barriers are quite low and there are no minimum budget requirements (for most channels).
Also, it doesn’t matter whether you are a small local business or a large business operating worldwide. Most likely, digital marketing (if done well!) will help you boost your sales and help you achieve growth.
59% of the world population is online. That amounts to 4.57 billion people globally! Insane right?
If you are considering hiring a digital marketing freelancer, this article might be for you!
We will be going through the following points:
- Who is a digital marketing freelancer?
- What should you look for in a digital marketing freelancer?
- Where to find a digital marketing freelancer?
- Conclusions
1. Who is a digital marketing freelancer?
A digital marketing freelancer is a professional marketer with a wide range of digital marketing skills. Their range of skills will most probably include 1 or more of the following: Performance Marketing, Social Media Marketing, SEO, Ad Creation, Copywriting, Analytics, CRO, Landing Page Creation and more.
I like to split digital marketers in 2 main groups (I love to keep things simple!).
- The Digital Marketing Specialists
- The Digital Marketing “Generalists”
1) The Digital Marketing Specialist is someone that has a good understanding of Digital Marketing, however specialises in 1-2 main channels. For example a PPC specialist, a Social Media Specialist and so on.
If you already know what channel works best for you and you want someone to help you manage/optimise/maximise a specific channel (i.e. Adwords, Facebook etc)…then I suggest you look for a Digital Marketing Specialist.
2) The Digital Marketing “Generalist” (I like to call them this way), are marketers which have great skills across the board. Most likely they will know how to run Ads across multiple channels, have very good understanding of Google Analytics Events, Conversion Rate Optimisation, Landing Page creation and more.
They’ll most likely be able to help you also with the digital marketing strategy side of things and fit in perfectly with your team of developers and marketers. They can basically act as a digital marketing department, taking on all digital marketing tasks for you.
In short:
If you already know exactly what/who you need…The digital marketing specialist is the person for you. In fact, the digital marketing specialist is someone that can help you manage and scale a specific channel thanks to their extensive experience within that specific area.
If however, you are not 100% sure what/who you need or you are looking for someone to take ownership of your digital marketing activities…The digital marketing “generalist” is definitely the person you are looking for. They will take over some/most of your digital marketing activities and help you drive growth for your business.
2. What Should you Look for in a Digital Marketing Freelancer?
Once you clarified what/who you are looking for, it’s time for interviews!
How do you know if the person you have in front of you is the right person for the job?
You need to shortlist some key questions that will help you understand if he/she is the one!
These are some of the questions I would most probably ask myself:
1) How many years of experience do you have?
2) What clients have you worked for?
3) Can you please showcase some of your work?
4) What is your approach to growth?
5) Tell me more about your processes
6) How would you improve our Conversion Rate (CR)?
7) How would you reduce our Cost per Acquisition (CPA)?
There are many more questions you could ask…I personally like to give particular importance to their previous experience, whether they have a data driven approach, if they have data analytics skills and a creative mindset.
3. Where to Find a Digital Marketing Freelancer?
The most popular way to find a digital marketing freelancer is the freelance marketplaces. They have established themselves as an affordable option for businesses to hire freelancers.
Through these platforms you can access thousands of freelancers all over the world.
These marketplaces however are not the only option out there.
Below I am going to list a few other options. Starting of-course, from ourselves, The Growth Hustlers (aka ‘The Growth Jedis’). Yes, we all love our Star Wars Movies…to the point I have posters in my office (see below).
I) The Growth Hustlers
If you are reading this article you probably already know who we are and what we do!
I will keep it short!
“We are a collective of growth marketing specialists deploying on demand growth services into your business.”
To find out more about us go HERE or simply contact us HERE.
Now, let’s move on!
II) Job Posting Websites
You can post a job on LinkedIn or Angel.co, as both of these options are pretty popular today. Both of these sites have a huge user base. It means that your job post will get lots of views.
The only issue here is that your job post may or may not get enough applications. It depends on the number of job posts ahead of yours, and if you are paying for posting the job or not.
III) Social Media Platforms
Many businesses leverage popular social media platforms to find candidates.
The most popular social media platforms are Facebook and Twitter for hiring purposes. By using relevant hashtags, your posts will be viewed by thousands of digital marketing professionals.
You can use a combination of hashtags to get your post noticed. The popular hashtags are #hiring, #digitalmarketer, #freelance and more.
A combination of hashtags will enable you to reach out to digital marketing professionals on these platforms.
The only issue might be the quality of the applications. Worth a shot though!
IV) Freelance Marketplaces
There are lots of platforms that you can leverage to hire a digital marketing freelancer.
Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer are the top freelance marketplaces.
These freelance marketplaces have thousands of digital marketers looking for freelance opportunities.
The great thing about these platforms is that they have experts from almost all digital marketing specialties. The only issue I can think of here is the high number of low quality applications you might get…you might have to do a lot of filtering…Again, worth a shot!
4. Conclusions
There are many options to find a digital marketing freelancer. I have only listed some of the most commonly used (used in particular by small businesses).
That said, the most crucial aspect of this search is understanding what your real needs are. Are you looking for a Specialist or a Generalist?
If you are still confused about what you should do, please feel free to reach out to us HERE. I will be more than happy to have a chat and help you make the best decision.
May Growth Be With You!
