A Marketer’s Guide to Hiring Digital Marketing Freelancers and Agencies

Every business needs marketing.

At a time when people spend most of their time surfing the internet and hanging out on social media, it would also be a huge waste not to take advantage. As a marketer, you realize how important it is to seize this opportunity. It’s impractical not to get your content in front of a huge audience with the potential to become customers.

Having a sound digital marketing plan definitely goes a long way.  Unfortunately, implementing such a strategy involves a ton of work. With more businesses turning to the gig economy for help, hiring a digital marketing freelancer or agency makes a lot of sense.

What’s Your Reason for Hiring?

As a marketer, you’ve probably got everything figured out from a marketing perspective. And you know more than anyone else what’s good for the business marketing wise. You also know who your audience is and you know how to get their attention. That’s awesome!

The problem is with tasks like social media and content creation (among others). They need attention and expertise, and getting everything done on your own would be virtually impossible.

It’s also important to identify what your motivation is behind hiring before anything else. Answering these questions will help you decide which direction to take when it comes to outsourcing:

• Is it because of a lack of knowledge?
• Are the tasks just too overwhelming for you?
• Will the business gain more if you focus on higher-value tasks?
• Is your marketing strategy going to be more effective when you have additional hands to rely on?

To Get More Things Done

Having an idea of what goes on in every marketing task puts you in a better position to decide whether you need to hire someone or not. Let’s face it, some of these tasks do seem quite simple but the reality is, they require a lot of time and dedication.

Let’s take social media marketing for instance. Most businesses today have a presence in various social media channels. They exist on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn just to name a few. Each of these channels requires a different set of strategy when it comes to content publishing and promotion.  It’s not going to be easy for one person to do all these.

We haven’t even mentioned other marketing tasks like PPC, SEO, and link building for example. With the barrage of tasks you’re faced with, hiring a digital marketing freelancer makes sense. There’s just a lot more work that can be done with more hands on deck.

To Focus on High-Value Tasks

For a marketing strategy to achieve its goals, constant monitoring and adjustment are needed. You need to be on top of things and identify the adjustments that need to be made based on the results gathered.

This may not be possible when you have other marketing tasks to attend to.  You may not be able to give it the attention and dedication it requires.

By hiring freelancers who have the skills you need, you’re able to free yourself up.  By doing this, you’ll be able to focus on tweaking your strategy and work on your weaknesses.

To Add Skills and Expertise

You are where you are as a marketer because marketing is your specialty. You have the skills and the experience to drive a marketing strategy towards success.

As good as you are in this department, there are facets of marketing that other people can do better.

Graphic design and SEO, for example, require a very specific set of skills not everyone is blessed to have.  You may be able to learn how to do them but that would take time.

Hiring digital marketing freelancers will give you the skills and expertise you’re looking for.  You don’t even have to train them to get them acclimated with your processes.

All you need to do is tell them what you need and they’ll deliver the results even without much supervision.  This is not only practical, but it also helps put the business in a better position to succeed.

Where to Begin?

If you’ve been thinking about outsourcing for quite some time, this is probably the biggest question you have in mind. It’s perfectly understandable not to have all the answers at this stage.

What’s important is to plan everything out the best way you can. You can’t just jump in and hire someone without thinking it through.  You’ll just be throwing away money if you end up doing that.

To make the process more organized, below are some of the things you need to do:

Decide Which Tasks You Need to Outsource

It’s easy to say that you’ll be outsourcing graphic design or copywriting for example.  Unfortunately, you have to be more specific than that.

Will the graphic designer be in charge of scouting photos? Is social media copy part of the copywriter‘s tasks or will the social media manager have this covered?

The answers to these questions may seem obvious but everything needs to be explicitly stated to avoid misunderstandings.

You have to remember that you’re going to be paying these individuals for work hours rendered.  It would cost you more if everything’s not clear once you’ve already hired them.

To keep things organized, start by listing down all the activities you would like to outsource. If you need some guidance, here’s 7 digital marketing trends to inspire you. Make sure to also do your due diligence in finding out how long each task would take to complete.

Try to be flexible.  You don’t want freelancers rushing some of their tasks just to fit your budget.  You’ll be sacrificing quality if it comes to that.

Below are some of the common marketing tasks you can consider outsourcing:

• Graphic design
• Video Editing
• Copywriting
• Social Media Management
• Blogging
• SEO
• PPC

These are just some of the more prominent marketing tasks to date.  You can always add more to the list depending on what the business needs.

After finalizing your list, the next step is to start looking at your budget.

Assess Your Budget

Budget plays a huge role in the hiring process. Not only will it determine if you are capable of hiring freelancers or not, but it also dictates the quality of the freelancers you’ll get.

Seasoned ones will naturally cost you more.  Since you’ve probably been already assigned a budget to work with, your role is to make each penny count.

You also need to decide this early how you will pay the freelancers you hire.  While most of them work on an hourly basis, there are freelancer marketplaces that offer fixed rates which may better for you depending on your current situation.

No matter how much you have to work with, make sure to decide on the budget for the following as early as possible:

• Tools and apps the freelancers need
• freelancer pay
• Workshops and subscriptions
• Advertising
• Affiliate marketing
• Marketing analytics
• Mobile marketing
• Webinars

The list can go longer depending on your strategy but the key here is to be smart when it comes to budget allotment. You need to manage your budget efficiently for your first venture into hiring to be considered a success.

Determine What Your Ideal Candidate Looks Like

Finding your ideal candidate requires preparation as well.  It will save you a lot of time going through piles of resumes if you already have an idea of what you’re looking for.

Be very specific on the following:

• Skills and experience
• Familiarity with apps you use
• Track record
• Availability
• Online portfolio

With all of these clearly written out, there’s a better chance of landing the services of someone who closely resembles the requirements mentioned.

It won’t even matter whether you are heavily involved in the hiring process or not.

Make it Official

With the tasks, budget, and qualifications clearly defined, you should now be ready to hire a freelancer.

The good news is there are dozens of online freelance marketplaces to choose from.  Each of them having a deep talent pool with lots of digital marketing freelancers to choose from.

Check Out Online Freelance Marketplaces

The problem with having a ton of choices is it makes the decision-making process a lot more difficult. From the hiring process to freelancer management, each of these services has something unique to offer. Use that to narrow down your options.

Some will provide you a list of the best candidates that match your requirements.  You will then need to interview each candidate and decide which one suits you best.

There are also freelance marketplaces like FreeeUp that provide pre-vetted freelancers for you to speak with.  What makes this process more efficient is that they do most of the dirty work on your behalf.

With FreeeUp, you don’t need to sift through countless resumes or conduct interviews anymore.  The freelancer you’ll be sent was already pre-vetted so all that’s left is to determine if you are the right match.

It all boils down to how much involvement you want in the hiring process as well as your availability.  If you have a full schedule day in day out, hiring pre-vetted freelancers is the way to go.

If you are the hands-on type who wants to be the one to pick the candidate of your choice, there’s a lot of this type of service all over the internet for you to choose from.

Formally Onboard the Freelancers You Hire

Your involvement in the hiring process doesn’t end as soon as you press the “Hire” button. In fact, there’s still a lot to do after officially hiring a freelancer, all of which involve proper onboarding.

Leaving them to figure everything out on their own after hiring them is a bad idea.  Not only will this cause confusion, but it can also set false expectations.

The proper way to handle this is to set a one-on-one meeting with the freelancer.  Use this meeting to talk them through on what you expect from them and business’ goals are so they can align their work with those goals. This will also give you the opportunity to tackle specific issues like work hours, reports, and existing processes they need to comply with.

The next step is to provide them access to all the apps and tools they’ll need to perform their duties.  Make sure that they’ve got everything they need to begin with so everything will be smooth-sailing moving forward.

More than the technicalities, onboarding gives you the opportunity to know them on a personal level.  If you want to build a good rapport with the freelancers you hire, you need to make an effort to know them better. Do they have families?  How many kids do they have? What time do they usually work?

Lastly, make sure to remind them about how they can contribute to the business’ growth and success.  This will inspire them to be always at their best and not just do it because they’re being paid.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot to gain in hiring digital marketing freelancers. Apart from increasing productivity, getting experts onboard helps add legitimacy to the business you’re trying to the products and business you’re trying to introduce.

Your experience and vision combined with their expertise create a killer combination that can take any business to the next level.

If you are a marketer looking for some much-needed help, we strongly suggest that you follow this guide.

Sign up as a client so you can kick off the hiring process and begin working with a freelancer who will help you achieve your digital marketing goals and implement your strategy.