How to become a freelance digital marketer?
Introduction
A freelance digital marketer is a self-employed marketer who assists companies, organisations and individual clients with their marketing needs. Freelance marketers usually specialise in a particular niche. This could include: Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Paid Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Email Marketing and more!
Why become a freelance digital marketer?
Freelance digital marketing is the perfect job if you are someone interested in marketing and products, and desires flexible work arrangements that revolves around your lifestyle and not the other way around.
It could also be a part-time career option for hustlers who would like more sources of income, separate from their full-time job!
How to become a freelance digital marketer
If you are enticed to work as a freelance marketer, here are 5 tips we have for you, to get you started on your career!
Step One: Choose your specialisation
Before becoming a freelance marketer (or really, before choosing to pursue any career), you must do your research carefully. Take some time to understand what digital marketing is about, how it is used in different industries and how your strengths can be leveraged to pursue marketing. You can visit blogs (check out our articles on affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and marketing funnel while you are at it!), follow corporate influencers in digital marketing or network with professionals to learn more about both the technical and soft skills required of the job, and what it generally entails. Other considerations may include: whether you have the time to pursue this career, does freelance digital marketing align with your future career goals etc.
If you have confirmed your ambitions in freelance digital marketing, move on to selecting your specialisation. Ideally, this is something you are both passionate about and what you’re good at. Take some time to reflect on your past experiences and see how these could align with a specialisation. A few popular marketing specialisations are as follows:
Social Media Marketing – Producing social media content that generates impressions through aligning with prevailing trends
Paid search marketing – Setting Search Ad campaigns on commonly used search engines like Google, Bing and Baidu
Marketing Analytics – Inferring marketing performance through available data to improve marketing strategy
Influencer marketing – Engage influencers to help promote a company’s products or services to relevant audiences
SEO – Improve a company’s website ranking through ensuring that it can be found via relevant searches
Public Relations – Maintain a company’s positive image and enhance branding through handling its media presence
Step Two: Build and showcase your portfolio
Next, develop a strong portfolio to prove that you are capable of meeting your clients’ marketing needs. The most direct way would be to attain a relevant degree – for example, in design, marketing or communications. However, while desirable, a degree is not always necessary for marketing work and anyone who loves brands and products has the opportunity to break into the field! Even if you do not come from a marketing background, you can improve your portfolio through:
Screenshot taken from: Coursera
Using online courses to learn about marketing. For example, ‘Google Digital Garage: Fundamentals of Digital Marketing’. While most of these courses (on Coursera, Udemy etc.) are free, you might want to invest in obtaining their certifications at a cost to include in your CV.
Offering your services pro-bono to non-profits, friends, relatives or family members to bolster your portfolio. You can also request for a testimonial if they are satisfied with your work!
Create brand mock-ups to show at interviews and client calls.
Existing university students can join marketing or business related societies and competitions, and look out for marketing-related internship opportunities to kickstart your career!
Step Three: Set your rates
As a freelancer, you are responsible for setting your own rates, so do so wisely. Check the market rate and compare your services before setting a price. This could be done through asking around on reddit threads, or visiting freelance platforms like Upwork or Fiverr.
Screenshot taken from: Fiverr
It is very important to do research before setting your price because charging too low could set an unhealthy precedent for the pricing practices of the entire industry. While your prices might appear higher than the hourly rate of a full-timer marketer, remember that you also spend more time networking and sourcing for clients to sustain your business, unlike marketers working the average 9 to 5, so don’t be afraid to charge the rate that you’re worth!
Finally, learn how to invoice your clients. There are many online videos and templates you can refer to for this. Setting invoices will help you appear more professional and formalise agreements with your clients.
Step Four: Proposal Building
Starting out is difficult. It may be hard to win over your clients, especially when you are competing with seasoned professionals that have an established presence in the industry. Hence, building a strong proposal is necessary to obtain clients.
In structuring and writing your proposal, consider your unique selling point (USP). What is your USP and how does it meet your client’s needs? If you are a fresh graduate, your USP could be exclusive knowledge of content that attracts the Gen Z audience on familiarity with new social media platforms like Bereal and Tiktok, which is something more experienced marketers might be less familiar with. If you are an experienced marketer, emphasise how your past work has provided proven and tangible results for your clients. For example, OtterHalf managed to achieve up to a 51% reduction in click-through rates and a 25% decrease in cost per acquisition for our past client Lendela, through refining their marketing campaigns and advertising strategy. A tip would be to quantify the outcome of your work as this is the most straightforward way to prove your credibility to potential clients.
Having established your USP, you can move on to structure your proposal. Your proposal could be briefly structured this way:
Summary of your services
Your experience and portfolio
Include testimonials, certifications and successful case studies. ALWAYS use quantifiable metrics to describe your past work.
How to contact you
Step Five: Sourcing for Clients
There are two main methods for lead generation – outbound and inbound. Outbound strategies include networking and cold emailing, and is most commonly used at the start of your freelance career. You can visit offline events, start-up forums to get to know founders and introduce your service. To cold email, borrow templates online, such as through Hubspot.
A good tip is to find networking events that match your profile. For example, attend ‘women in business’ events if you identify as a woman or networking sessions for tech start-ups if that is the profile of clients you are targeting.
It could also be beneficial for you to join a freelancer community. There, you could gain access to industry knowledge and receive advice from freelancers who have faced (or are facing) similar challenges to you. Always support your community as they are your collaborators, not competitors!
While it is unlikely that you will rely on inbound leads at the start of your freelance career, try to maintain some social media presence through managing an account. You might be surprised by a few requests!
Lastly, you could consider joining a fractional marketing agency or work at an agency part-time to build your portfolio and network. Newer companies (like us) offer part-time/ freelance work arrangements to best suit your lifestyle choices.
