If you’re a new business and need to hire freelance digital marketers to get your brand name out there, it might seem like a bit of a minefield. The trick to a successful campaign is to always look for a digital marketing professional who knows your sector and resonates with your values and aspirations.
Unsure how to hire a digital marketer or how to check their experience and credentials? Never fear, we’ll explain how it works and what to look out for.
Creating a Digital Marketer Job Spec
Whether you have a defined list of tasks you’d like a digital marketer to take off your plate or a broad scope of responsibilities to assign, it all starts with a job description. Freelancers regularly check for new projects to bid on. The more detail you can offer about the required skills, work involved, and pay rates, the better your response rate will be.
For example, if you want a digital marketer to develop a new startup marketing strategy, execute campaigns, and design new content for your website, you’ll want to be as specific as possible.
Example Freelance Digital Marketer Job Description
In the example below, you might want to include all of the day-to-day activities or break them down into individual projects so you can see how well you work with the freelancer before getting in too deep. Areas to mention could be:
- Create new digital marketing promotions and monitor success
- Develop a social media strategy and review engagement
- Manage or add to the content on the company website
- Set up a Google Analytics account (or something similar) to review traffic rates
- Find and fix errors on the website or pages
- Post videos and brand-based content on the site or on social media outlets
- Work on optimizing the search engine optimization (SEO) of a business website
Your job description might be much longer or shorter; either way, pay attention to the wording so that it’s clear what you want, whether it’s for a digital marketer to perform one action or continue monitoring outcomes.
How to Choose the Right Freelance Digital Marketer for a Startup
Once you’ve posted your job description and whittled down the replies to a few candidates who look like they might be a great fit, how do you decide which digital marketer is right for your startup? Marketing encompasses a broad set of skills, You could find freelancers who specialize in one area or another, including:
- Pay-per-click ads
- Analytics
- SEO optimization
The best digital marketers will cover all the bases, although it’s worth considering what you want to prioritize if you have a finite budget. It’s also important to learn a bit about the basics of digital marketing so you can get a firm handle on the talents and experience of freelancer candidates and how relevant they are to your needs.
Having a little knowledge of digital marketing ensures you will be in a better position to review any proposals and determine if they seem suitable. Check your preferred candidate’s portfolios, previous projects, and client reviews to get a picture of the quality of each proposal.
Why Use a Freelance Digital Marketer on a Startup Budget?
Most startups don’t have surplus capital to invest in digital marketing—no matter how important it may be. There are many benefits to using a freelancer rather than committing to a monthly salary (and associated benefits) to hire a permanent employee:
- Freelancers tend to offer exceptional value for money. You can often find highly skilled freelancers who are new to a platform or have just left an agency who will charge affordable rates as they build a profile.
- Employers can hire a freelancer for small, ad hoc tasks or regularly if they are happy with the work. There is no obligation to offer more work if the timing isn’t right or you don’t have the budget.
- Client reviews make it much easier to determine which freelance digital marketers are worth hiring as you get impartial opinions from other businesses on the standards they experienced.
- If you aren’t happy with the marketing services received, there is a fair amount of negotiating space. You can contest an invoice if there are tasks outstanding or withdraw from a project if the freelancer fails to deliver, minimizing risk along the way.
Startup budgets can be precarious, but hiring a professional freelance marketer through a respectable, easy-to-use platform like Guru gives you the best of both worlds. You have expertise when you need it, and zero costs when you don’t.
