Have you been wondering how to become a digital marketing freelancer? If yes, trust us. We’ve got you!
This tutorial will walk you through the processes of how to become a digital marketing freelancer. It’s a comprehensive handbook for people who are new to the term “freelancing” and wish to make a career change in the fascinating field of digital marketing.
The term “digital marketing freelancer” refers to marketing specialists who work for clients on a freelance basis. Independent contractors or freelancers in digital marketing typically work from home or anywhere they wish to assist businesses with a variety of digital marketing activities.
Internet marketing positions are in high demand, making the question of – how to become a digital marketing freelancer a viable career choice.
You may be your own employer, set your own schedules and regulations, and accomplish something helpful and meaningful as a marketing freelancer.
If you ever choose to cease freelance, you may put your expertise and abilities to good use by starting your personal internet business (a digital marketing agency or any other type of online business) or finding a high-paying position as a digital marketing director.
The Rising Demand For Digital Marketing
The digital marketing business is expanding at a 41% growth rate, while other sectors are battling to develop at a pace of just 9 to 11%. The fact that digitalization has a firm presence in the Indian market has made things clear. 5-6 years ago, a profession in digital marketing was almost non-existent.
In addition, in 1995, only 1% of the population used the web, contrasted to 44% in 2015. Furthermore, there is a significant shift in the digital marketing employment market. According to a report, there was a 15% increase in 2015 and a 75% increase in 2016 and counting.
As per LinkedIn statistics, the need for marketers with social abilities has risen by 116.5 per cent, with paid social media growing.
However, the need for social media marketing has risen by 46.9%, Instagram competence has climbed by 28.5%, social media optimization has risen by 26.3 percent, and LinkedIn understanding has expanded by 25.8 per cent.
Aren’t the above figures intriguing?
Furthermore, Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, demand for digital and data abilities has risen dramatically, with eight of the top ten most in-demand talents pertaining to tougher marketing knowledge.
Ad serving (84.5 per cent), analytics (46.2 percent), and web content authoring are among them (30.4 per cent). Advertisers have also improved their eCommerce skills, which have climbed by 7.9% in the last year, with 13.4% of advertisers now possessing this talent.
Considering the emphasis on digital skills, particularly social media abilities, it’s no surprise that the top three fastest-growing positions are all in social media, with social media coordinators up 18%, community managers up 18.2 per cent, and social media assistants up 16.6 per cent.
Today’s digital advertisers must be constantly aware of where their consumers spend all their time, what extra updates are available on social media, and also how social media networks’ algorithms function. Such considerations must be kept in mind, and abilities are required to incorporate these changes into enterprises as soon as possible.
Companies have witnessed a significant shift in customer behaviour online over the last decade, and they are continuously attempting to adopt new features and technological advancements to make it more comfortable for them. Companies want digital marketers that can analyze consumer data and come up with fresh ways to advertise their products to the public.
The web has acted as a leveller. For the very first time in human history, a smaller brand may battle online with well-known names. Everybody is attempting to maximize earnings in an age wherein firms may operate on the Internet 24 hours a day, 365 days annually. Any volume of business faces stiff competition as a result of globalization and localization.
As a result of a worldwide consumer base and rising competition, the growth of digital marketing services is increasing.
It’s no surprise that Instagram, which started with just a few thousand users, quickly grew to become the most popular picture app, with over 120,000 account holders in just just one week and a million in just two months.
Perhaps Instagram’s creators foresaw the potential of pictures in virtual reality and how companies would be influenced as more people were seen digitally rather than offline, which aided in the platform’s growth.
Roles of The Freelancers in Digital Marketing
A freelance marketing expert, unlike other freelancing careers, must wear multiple hats. Digital marketing encompasses a variety of platforms and procedures, and you’ll need a diverse skill set to provide a variety of services to clients.
As a freelancer, you must know how to generate job offers for clients, handle bills and bookkeeping, program management, and report, in addition to technical chores.
These are the most frequent duties performed by marketing freelancers to give you a sense of what the job entails:
- For fresh project chances, keep an eye on job advertising websites.
- Job proposals are being submitted in order to obtain new clients.
- Connecting with new and current clients and interacting with them
- Email correspondence
- Making contact with other contractors
- You’re working on a website or a blog of your own.
- Creating a personal brand.
- Search engine optimization for clients’ sites (SEO)
- Using Google AdWords and Bing Ads to run PPC campaigns
- Putting Facebook promotions into action (free and paid)
- Programs for email marketing design
- Content creation to meet the demands of various internet marketing campaigns
- For clients, developing a digital marketing plan and plan of action
- Creating project reports on a monthly basis
- Invoice creation for clients.
Now that we have understood the basics, let us now dive into your question – How to become a digital marketing freelancer?
How To Become a Digital Marketing Freelancer in Just 10 Steps
1. Choose Your Niche
There are a lot of activities in digital marketing, and a freelancer only has so much time. You can get confused if you try to offer a comprehensive variety of digital marketing services right once, so it’s better to specialize.
It’s preferable to specialize in a few areas rather than try to wear several hats at once. One can broaden their services as one gets more expertise and clientele.
You’ll also discover which solutions are more lucrative and simpler to manage, and you’ll be able to adapt your operations accordingly.
You can specialize in the following areas of digital marketing:
- A PPC expert
- An SEO expert
- Expert in email marketing
- Expert in content marketing
- Expert in social media marketing
- Expert in digital marketing (person of all trades)
The path to becoming a digital marketing freelancer discipline is the same as it was previously: understand the theory by taking a course or studying credible online resources, then apply the principles to your own sites.
While you’re still in the ‘process of learning,’ make a strategy and a checklist so you’ll know precisely what to do when it’s time to apply the same approaches to a client’s website.
2. Get Your Training Done
Another requirement for working as a freelancer is to possess the necessary abilities.
When working in a ‘traditional’ job, you have some other team members who may assist you with a job, and in many situations, the firm will provide training and growth opportunities, but this is not the scenario when operating a freelancing business.
As a freelancer, you’ll need to keep up with your training and develop the essential skills through online digital marketing course, other internet materials, and plenty of practice.
Solopreneurs don’t have the option of raising difficulties to leadership or outsourcing to other firms; instead, they must be able to create answers and handle problems even without the assistance of others.
3. Create a Website for Yourself
One must develop a website for the freelancing job when you’re honing your digital marketing talents. This is a critical stage that so many freelancers either overlook or don’t pay that much attention to.
Your company’s centre point is your site. It’s where you may highlight your accomplishments, advertise your services, and allow clients to reach you. It should be simple to use, SEO-friendly, and professional.
Is it better to have a business or personal website?
At this step, you must decide whether your website will be personal or business-oriented (i.e. www.digitalscholar.com).
This will be simpler to advertise at the start if you make it personal because your identity will represent your business. However, it will not be a good match if you decide to transform your freelancing service into a digital marketing firm later.
Therefore, ponder about the future for a few minutes while making a final decision. What do you want to accomplish in the next four years?
Consider that as your freelancing business expands, you will be unable to manage all of the work on your own and will need to hire people.
4. Create a Blog for Digital Marketing
Whatever path you take, writing should be one of the first things you do, even before you start accepting clients.
Create a digital marketing weblog and provide material that explains how you can assist your prospective clients with digital marketing.
Without having to ‘sell’ oneself or your business, blogging is a very effective approach to ‘close’ new clients.
You may avoid the need to sell your services through paid advertisements and save a huge amount of time attempting to locate clients through job portals by blogging.
Try to address themes that are directly relevant to the freelancing activities you provide while producing material for your website.
The key to leveraging your blog to generate leads is to demonstrate to prospective clients that you comprehend the issues and difficulties they experience while operating online marketing campaigns.
It’s simpler for people to trust you as a viable solution supplier if you explain everything in depth.
5. Build Connections with Other Digital Marketing Freelancers
One of the mistakes one could make is failing to network with other freelance marketers and digital marketing experts.
Whenever We say “connections,” We’re not talking about making friends on social networking sites but rather initiating a “genuine” dialogue via email or even videoconferencing.
There are several reasons why you should do this on a regular basis;
- To begin, you can share thoughts and concepts with other professionals who share your interests.
- Secondly, you may market your own brand and content by leveraging your relationships.
- Thirdly, you have the ability to receive and send referrals.
- Fourthly, you may collaborate with them on services you can’t supply while maintaining your client connection.
- Finally, becoming a digital marketing freelancer is a solitary career, so having someone to talk to who knows the challenges and can offer advice is beneficial.
Starting by monitoring and talking with the other freelancers on social media and then approaching them with a tailored email is the best way to go.
Consider that you won’t be doing this in bulk, so you can devote more time to knowing more about an individual before making contact. Try to clarify why you’re making contact and how a prospective collaboration will benefit both sides from the start.
This might include discussing ideas, supporting each other’s material, or collaborating on a task.
6. Learn How to Write a Proposal for Services
Writing and submitting a proposal for solutions to prospective clients is part of your work obligations as a freelance web marketing specialist.
Because this might be a time-consuming and inconvenient process, particularly at first, it is strongly advised that some preparation work be done ahead of time.
Developing a handful of templates in Google Docs that addressed the most typical circumstances works.
There are several common aspects of a service offer for any form of digital marketing activity. Introductions, portfolios, an explanation of how your solutions function and cost are all standards.
So take some time to complete this exercise and create a handful of templates to utilize for your initial projects, which you may enhance as you go.
You may even design a series of templates for the customer onboarding process if you want to go any further.
7. Determine Your Rates
The next step in your quest how to become a digital marketing freelancer is to choose a pricing plan and set your rates.
‘How much would you start charging?’ will be one of the first inquiries clients will ask, so be prepared with an answer.
You may organize your pricing strategy in a variety of ways:
- Hourly rate
- project-by-project
- once a month
- a mixture of the preceding
clients will have varying demands, and they will need freelancers to be flexible with pricing structures (and rates).
Everything you need to do is figure out what your hourly pricing will be, what types of tasks you’d like to work on, and what your monthly service requirement would be.
I’ll go over it in more detail in the following part, but for now, know that you should handle freelancing, in the same manner, you would like a genuine business.
8. Create a Company Entity
As soon as you finish your first assignment as a qualified freelancer, you’ll hit a milestone in your profession that you’ll never forget: it’ll be time to get compensated.
This may seem apparent to most freelancers, but with all of the various stuff you have to accomplish, you may overlook the essentials.
You’ll need the following to be paid for your freelancing services:
- Having a bank account
- A mechanism for processing invoices.
- A contract between a company and a client.
- A legally recognized company (for tax purposes)
- A payment provider’s account, such as PayPal, Google Pay and more.
9. Obtain Your First Customer
When you get to this point, you’re ready to start giving clients digital marketing services. You’ve developed the essential skills, established your procedures, registered your company, and are familiar with the various tools.
It isn’t easy to get into the field of digital marketing as a freelancer. It’s an entirely different story when you begin doing this as your real career, regardless of what you’ve learned or what experience you’ve earned working as someone else’s assistant.
Even if you are able to obtain some paying clients right away, there is a potential that you may become disoriented, anxious, and unsure of what to do.
Everything within digital marketing is trackable, therefore it’s not about doing things correctly but about getting results. clients will demand you to offer real-world, quantifiable outcomes, and if you fail to do so in a reasonable amount of time, they will go, and you will have to start all over again.
Therefore, rather than hurrying to obtain your first paycheck, you may allow yourself extra time to acclimate to the new normal by working on tasks you pick, refining your methods, and putting up a small portfolio.
10. Gather Feedback From Clients and Expand Your Portfolio (An ongoing responsibility)
Creating two separate web pages on your freelancing website is one of the things you should accomplish right away. The first is to provide consumer reviews, and the other is to keep a record of all the firms or projects with whom you have collaborated.
Make absolutely sure to include the customer’s identity and website in each review. Past evaluations will be checked and read by potential clients, so they must be honest and genuine. It makes no difference if the ratings are posted on your website; as long as they have a name and a URL, they are useful.
Conclusion
It’s a fantastic experience to work as a freelancer in the web marketing field. Online marketers can pick and choose which jobs to complete, and it’s a career that never gets boring.
It is, however, not a career for everybody. To operate as a freelancer, you must be self-motivated and possess a high level of self-assurance. It may rapidly become a highly stressful profession if your home and family are on the line.
The greatest method to increase your trust is to improve your talents first. To provide clients with digital marketing services, you must be knowledgeable in a variety of areas. This won’t happen overnight, but it’s something you can study and practise to achieve.
We hope we have helped you understand how to become a digital marketing freelancer!
Are you a digital marketing freelancer already? Do let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to know about your career.
FAQs
1. What is Freelance Digital Marketing?
Freelance digital marketing refers to providing digital marketing services as an independent contractor to clients without being committed to a long-term contract.
2. How to Make Money as a Freelance Digital Marketer?
As a freelance digital marketer, there are several ways to make money. You can offer your services directly to clients, work through freelance platforms, or even create and sell your own digital products.
3. How Much a Freelancer Can Earn in Digital Marketing?
According to various sources, freelance digital marketers can earn anywhere from $50 to $150 per hour, or even more for specialized services.
4. Which Freelancing Site is Best For Starting?
There are several freelancing sites that are great for starting out as a freelance digital marketer, including Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and PeoplePerHour. It’s important to research each platform to understand its fees, payment structure, and competition before deciding which one to use.
5. Can I do a Freelance Digital Marketing Course?
Yes, you can do a freelance digital marketing course. There are many online digital marketing courses and resources available that can help you learn the necessary skills to become a freelance digital marketer.
