How Freelance Digital Marketers can help your Business Grow

Smack-bang in the middle of the Internet revolution, no business today can afford to ignore Digital Marketing. While Digital Marketing can be seen as more of the same old marketing, simply on a new set of channels to reach your consumers, the truth is that it has changed the way marketing is done. For the simple reason that technology and internet access has changed the way consumers consume and interact with brands. 
 
None of this will be news to a visionary entrepreneur, who more likely than not is a digital native themselves, what might be interesting is to know for any business owner is that the route to hiring good talent in the Digital Marketing space is changing. Startups, small businesses, even MNCs and enterprises, are beginning to recognise that in a fast-changing space like Digital Marketing, having access to a freelance pool of Digital talent can be a competitive advantage, Here below are some underlying factors to this phenomena - 
 
1# Freelancers upskill themselves
 
Digital spaces today are growing by leaps and bounds, and with each new app, new business models of consumer engagement, a new way of marketing to consumers emerges. It’s important for Digital marketing Talent to keep abreast of these developments and build them into their skill-set. Freelancers are naturally situated to keep upskilling themselves - firstly because they work across multiple companies and projects, they get to learn about the latest advances earlier than most, and secondly because as freelancers they are constantly selling their skills, and they have to keep themselves updated in order to do that
 
2# Hiring a team of freelancers is cost-effective  
 
It takes a village to do good Digital Marketing. You have to have a good SEO specialist, a Social Media Marketer, a Paid Marketing specialist, a Content writer and a Designer as bare minimum. Some of these skills can be found in the same person like a paid campaign specialist might also be a good social media marketer, but that still leaves you with 4 people to hire, to create, deliver and optimise your digital content and I am not even getting into Marketing Strategy or Content Strategy here. How does a small business afford to hire these many people? 
 
Hiring freelancers on part-time and flexible models is one great way to do this. 
 
3# Freelancers can be hired for Short-duration projects basis the skill-sets needed at the time
 
The Digital Marketing needs of a company don’t always stay consistent. When you start out with your Digital presence, you might want to first hire an SEO specialist and a good website content writer. To build some organic presence and see what works, you would want to get in a good Social Media Marketer, a content writer and a designer, who can deliver organic campaigns for you. Once you have your marketing strategy in place, have some revenue coming in, and can invest in paid marketing, you get in a Digital Marketer or Paid Campaign specialist to identify the right channels, do your media budgeting, and manage and optimise your paid campaigns to meet your objectives - traffic, sign-ups, registrations, downloads, business leads, etc. Depending on these objectives you will also need to hire the right kind of Digital Marketer for your business who has expertise in your space and on the channels that you need to use. 
These stages will overlap for most businesses and hence the need to hire multiple people at once. However, some parts can be sequential and it helps to then hire specific skill-sets as per the skills your business most needs at the time. This can be well achieved with freelancers who work on a project basis of say, 3-6 months, making you - nimble and competitive. 
 
4# The Freelancer model allows for a trial period
 
It is not easy to hire good Digital Marketing talent. With a proliferation in the skilling universe, there are many offline and online courses available today which can help a freelancer upskill. However, for a company it is important to gauge the skill-level and separate those who have merely done courses from those who have practical experience. While startups such as ours take on the onus of doing this evaluation and help startups and small businesses save their time and effort in doing this selection themselves, we also encourage short contract durations of 3 months to begin with, for both entities - the freelancer and the company - to get a sense of fitment and mutual understanding. Being able to try talent before taking them on more permanently is one of the many advantages of the flexible on-demand economy and startups stand to gain the most from it
 
5# Digital Marketing Talent prefers Freelancing
 
And finally, today several businesses are realising that often the talent itself wants to freelance as a life choice. Flexible working is a legitimate career and indeed life choice today, with many people and certain demographics choosing it over having a traditional 9 to 7 career. Depending on the motivation, it helps in different ways - either in getting to do a variety of roles and assignments and building your profile, in balancing your work and personal priorities, and many times in both these ways. If you as a business wants to hire the best talent in new and upcoming areas, it is possible that you might have to hire them on a freelance and flexible basis. 
 
So folks, whether you are a start-up founder or heading a team in a corporate, if you want new-age Digital Marketing skills in your team, do not leave freelancers out of your consideration set. And if you want to know how to go about it, drop us a line here. Cheers!