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Freelance digital marketing step guide for dummies to find out if digital marketing and freelancing are for you, Freelance digital marketing step guide for dummies to pick the most compatible digital marketing freelance jobs
When you are looking at the part of freelance digital marketing for dummies, there are two parts to consider: freelancing (what is it???), and digital marketing. Freelancing is all about arranging your own time from anywhere and everywhere. Becoming a digital marketing means being an expert in online marketing from managing digital marketing campaigns, social media marketing, content marketing, and so forth. If you are looking for both of these, this article is aim for you.
In this article, you will be charmed by: what a digital marketer is, what it means to be a freelancer, is it for you, what the flavor of marketing is for you, where you can strengthen your digital marketing efforts, what your day may look like, from which influencers you can be inspired of and a bit on how to build a digital marketing business. This, will be followed by a small quiz to help you understand what you have been charmed of, and interactive features to help you engage with the article.
What is a digital marketer
Imagine a world without the internet. Can you really do that? When you wake up in the morning, you may check out the news. Then, you probably have little glance at social platforms like Facebook. You start your daily assignments through emails, cloud applications, reading articles, Zoom meetings and finish the day with a nice TV show on streaming. What is common to each activity is that, it is online. It means you probably have been exposed to online desktop marketing and mobile marketing. In other words, this is digital marketing.
Every marketing activity, being made on the internet is digital, like: digital campaigns (this annoying banners you see on a website or in search results), on social media channels, managing marketing on mobile devices, search engine marketing, etc. As a digital marketer, you will manage one or more of these fields in internet marketing.
Freelance digital marketers for dummies, the freelance question
Should I be a freelancer or not? As the famous saying: to be or not to be.
Let us charm you with what it means to be a freelancer, the good and the bad (there is no ugly).
You wake up in the morning at 10AM. Yesterday you finished your day at 12AM. So, you needed some sleep. You decide to work in a café facing the sea. You arrived at the café and opened the computer. There are many tasks to finish. Among them there are 4 emails from customers. One of the emails is from a customer who blames you for his failure. He doesn't succeed to close the leads you have generated for him. Another customer tells you that she can't pay right now. She will pay what she owes you next month. The other 2 emails are from satisfied customers. One is asking you to upgrade the services you give him. The other said that she would happily make recommendations to her colleagues.
Throughout the day, you will have to be creative. Hence, you analyze the 3 campaigns you published using Google Analytics. Then, you change what is not working. Also, to speak with your accountant regarding some tax payment you don't understand. Additionally, you will have to sell your services to a customer interested in your digital marketing strategies. At 17PM, your wife calls you. She tells you that she won't be able to pick your child, and she asks you to take her to the ballet class. Hence, you have to stop working and take her to the class.
From this example, you can guess the benefits of becoming a freelancer and the disadvantages.
On the one hand, it is flexible, you choose an occupation you love doing, and you can work anywhere. There are always challenges, you gain many skills that are unrelated to your role, like sales, budget management and so on.
On the other hand, sometimes, it is too flexible, and you find yourself working until 12AM. You have to do everything in your business. It means that you will have to retain customers, sell and so on. That, even if you don't like doing it. Also, you will have to know how to prioritize, manage your time and combine work with life - routine activities.
In short, this is the frame of being a digital marketing specialist.
Criteria |
Digital marketer freelancer |
Digital marketer employee |
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Time flexibility |
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Work frame |
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Work everywhere |
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Office |
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Requires business owner skills |
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Require selling |
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Hierarchy |
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Routine |
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Fixed salary |
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No limit on profits |
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Where can you be a digital marketing specialist
Think about children that are going to a candy shop. There are many treats they can choose from. If they could, they would have bought the entire store. However, their parents limit them to 3 candies each. It is a difficult choice, right?
Digital marketing is vast. It is so interesting and ever-changing. Still, you need to stick to 2-3 fields to be an expert. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed.
In this section we'll charm you with the most of the freelance digital marketing fields. We recommend that you click on each tab. Then, click on what really interests you.
- Manage social digital marketing channels
- Improving websites organic marketing by search engine optimization (SEO)
- Promoting paid campaigns
- Working on content marketing
- Planning or executing the elements of a digital marketing plan
This is another domain in the digital networks, the business social media platforms. From the content you will upload, to creating a social media marketing plan, connecting and engaging with prospects, sharing other members' content and prospective customers (lead generation).
Running business pages and customer avatars
When, you decide to be an expert in this field, you have to know how to:
* Create an attractive customer's profile, easy to be found by the target audience.
* Form an engaging business page. Then, expose it to the target audience, as much as possible, to move traffic to it.
* Generate leads from both customers' profile and business page or increase traffic to website.
* Upload content to both properties.
Notice that, in many cases, you will also have to know how to connect, engage with prospective customers. Alternately, to manage a social group on the digital platforms, upload content to groups, share or like other members' content. You even have to know how to write attractive content via customer profiles and business pages.
Editing and publishing content on social media platforms
As a social media marketer, this is what you will do:
* Join groups where you can prospect the target audience.
* Publish posts and articles on these groups, business pages and customer avatars.
* Share, like and connect with other members of the group.
* Use calls to action to bring traffic to customers website, collects members' contacts or engage them privately.
* Do A/B testing to examine what content has reached the most engagement, website traffic, etc.
Generate leads from social online platforms
In this expertise, you will use online platform to collect prospects' phones and emails. This is how you will generate leads:
* Determine your customers' target audience. That, by profiling and apprehending their needs.
* Find where the target audience can be found: searching, groups, events, etc.
* Refer to the target audience by connection request, following, email marketing and private correspondence.
*Use calls to action to bring traffic to websites or take their contacts.
* Do A/B testing regarding connection request, call to action, email marketing, and target audience
You can read about other digital marketing freelancer roles from here.
SEO is still the heart of digital marketing and a powerful tool to pull current customers to your website.
When we speak about SEO, there are 3 organic marketing subdomains: technical, on-page and off-page.
Technical SEO
Think that you wouldn't buy a car that isn't working, correct? This is exactly technical SEO. Search engines analyze that your website is working properly, page uploading is fast, and that visitors are able to achieve what they are looking for. It affects your bounce rate, time spent on your website and page views.
To become a technical SEO expert, you have to:
* Learn programming: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and/or PHP.
* Apprehend how to improve Core Web Vitals.
* Make sure that the website hosting that are speedy and generates SSL. Most recommended servers are BlueHost and Site ground.
* Make sure that you connect DNS to your website, like CloudFlare. Many new website hostings will have DNS built in. You should look for DNS built in or ask them if they provide this kind of service.
* Minify websites codes and fonts
* Compress images. You should also use WebP format. To do that, simply install ShortPixel.
* Create lazy loads of images and videos. We are using WP Rocket, which is one of the best plugins for this matter. You will also utilize it to clean website's cache.
* Build XML, sitemaps. There is a great SEO plugin that will create an automatic XML named: Squirrly SEO.
* Analyze the website to investigate, if there are duplicate content.
On-page SEO
This is the inner SEO of your website. This is what signals search engines that these are topics you want to be found for. You will have to know how to:
* Analyze the website's content. Then, examine if it answers the visitors questions, they are seeking. In this matter, you should remember that a longer article will probably rank higher. That, unless a shorter article or video answers better current customers' questions.
* Form title tags that match your keywords.
* Add image descriptions to help search engine crawlers find your posts and pages.
* URL has to be modified into keywords.
* Insert long tail keywords on headers, article description, introduction and main content. You can use Frase to write a better complied SEO article.
* Build an internal link structure from one article to another. Hence, customers stay longer on your website.
Off-page SEO
This is the research you will be making with outer SEO. It is a digital strategy mixed of trend contents, level of competition of each keyword and being recognized by backlinks' creation.
You will have to:
* Find long tail keywords you want to rank for. Search for at least 4 keywords.
* Examine how much traffic you have for each keyword.
* Research how many competitors there are for the same keywords and their domain authority. Remember that, you want fewer competitors with low domain authority.
For these tasks, you can use digital tools like: Rank Tracker, Squirrly SEO and Ubersuggest.
* Then, you will analyze how many backlinks each competitor has.
* You should try to approach these resources and ask them to add links to your website.
You can use Ubersuggest for this task.
* You also have to write or cooperate with a content marketer to edit a better blog post than competitors. Examine what your competitors have missed answering their customer inquiries.
You probably have to become an expert in a marketing mix of at least off-page and on-page SEO or combine other completing marketing skills, like: managing paid campaigns or content writing.
You can read about other digital marketing freelancer roles from here.
This is another aspect of digital marketing. It is closer to promotion and advertising than marketing. Here, you will manage online advertisements on social digital platforms, business, leisure or news websites. Also, you can manage ads on search engines like Google.
Run a digital campaign via social digital channels
In this era, you will upload paid campaigns to potential customers via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Your marketing mix will be combined of:
* Setting retargeting pixels.
* Choose the marketing promotions goal.
* Profile the potential customer, like: occupation, demographic situation, location, gender, race, age, etc.
* Decide on the budget being spent a day, month, etc.
* Set when the campaign will start running and for how long.
* Declaring what will be considered a success.
* Write a short message.
* Pick the images or a video.
* Use call to action.
* Do an A/B testing for the audience, headers, images, videos, main content, call to action - everything!
* Analyze the results and improve accordingly.
Manage paid marketing tools on business, leisure or news websites
This is where you will upload banners directly to websites or by other content advertisements, like: Outbrain Taboola, etc.
* Setting retargeting pixels.
* Pick the marketing promotions goal.
* Choose how you will deliver the message via image, carousel or video.
* Decide on the operating systems the campaign will be shown and how.
* Set the budget.
* Find the location of the paid ad to be exhibited.
* Decide on the audience that will be exposed to the add
* Write the message and the referring article.
* Call to action
* Do A/B testing for the audience, headers, images, videos, main content, call to action - everything!
* Analyze the results and improve accordingly.
Setting and operating campaigns on search engines like Google Ads
This is the add banner being shown for promoted adds. The best adds will be set in the first places, get more exposure, conversion rate, downloads or traffic. So what you should know about setting paid campaigns via search engines. We'll take Google Ads as example:
* You will need to have a Google Ads account.
* Pick the marketing promotions goal.
* Decide on the results you want from Google. You can leave it blank to have more control over the campaign
* Define your target audience like: language, location and interests.
* Determine the budget.
* Schedule the campaign.
* Setting which keywords you want to be ranked for. You will have to know how to use Google's keyword planner.
* Write the content, headers, call to action and where you want the customers to be landed.
* Do A/b testing to analyze what is the best message, headers, call to action and landing page that convert the most. Improve according to results.
Notice that the steps to building a paid campaign are similar to mobile marketing and desktop on most digital platforms. However, it will reach different audiences, better or worse. Additionally, the ads will be shown differently, customers will have a different state of mind and thus cause other reactions.
You can read about other digital marketing freelancer roles from here.
Another huge era of freelance services you can offer is content writing. It can be writing social media posts, profiles and business pages, blog content, email campaigns or video scripts.
Managing email marketing campaigns' content
This is where you write email sequences. Hence, you offer potential clients digital marketing services' gifts and discounts, directing them to guest posts, videos websites articles, webinars, podcast, etc. Furthermore, you will write tips for their ideal clients. These may be your tasks routine on a daily basis:
* Apprehending customers needs, wants and interests by profiling them.
* Setting goals for the email. What is the desired action you want the potential clients, to take.
* Penning several headers and then choosing at least 2. Inserting them in the same content to examine what had a better opening rate (A/B testing).
* Writing a brief for the email. Here, you can also do A/B testing.
* Writing the entire content for the email.
* Adding graphics to the email. Many times, you will need to collaborate with a graphic designer. Also, notice that in many emails, you will just need to write without any graphics.
* Inserting call to action like offering services to clients.
* Analyzing the result of the email sequences: what had a better opening rate, click of a button, and increased the client base (had a better conversion rate).
Writing the content for the social media manager or the business owner
Next content marketing could be for the social media management. You can manage the entire social media online presence by yourself, as discussed before, or only the content delivery. This could be what you will be in charge of:
* Writing the titles for the posts.
* Recording the short brief of the post.
* Write the entire content.
* Call to action.
* Publish social media posts on groups, business owners feeds and pages.
* Analyzing what had the best results: likes, shares, comments, traffic to websites and conversion rate.
Notice that you may need to write the business owner's private profile and business page.
Writing digital marketing blogs on your client's website or referred websites
In this subdomain of content marketing, you will write the entire content of your clients' website. Alternately, you will write articles to add back links or traffic to your customers' website or landing pages. This is how it will be done:
* Defining the target audience, business idea and what you want to achieve from reaching it.
* Apprehending what the prospective client will ask on search engines (or social media), and how you will reply to the questions.
* Decide on 2 different main titles. H1 header that will be shown on the upper page and another main title that will appear on the search engines.
* Forming a brief as the first paragraph in the article. Also, add an introduction to search engines.
* Writing the main content. Most of the time, there should be more than 1500 words to be ranked. Still, most importantly, it should have a low bounce rate, attract visitors to read many pages and stay longer on the websites. Meaning it has to answer what they are looking for.
* Summarize the main message of the content. Remember that, many readers will start by scrolling down to read the summary.
* Add images with descriptions that match the keywords. Here are some great websites where you can add images: VistaCreate and Jumpstory
* Sometimes, you will be asked to add internal or external links to other pages on the website or other websites.
* Sometimes, you will also be asked to add different call to action for lead generation. You may need to write a short banner to register for a newsletter, free consultation, etc.
Pay attention that many times you will need to have a basic understanding of off-page and on-page SEO. However, to have a competitor advantage, you should master these digital marketing skills.
Writing video scripts for digital marketing managers
The last type of content freelance marketers do is writing scripts to brand, demo, tip and even online courses videos. This is how they do that:
* Again, profiling the types of clients, needs, behavior, interests and desires.
* Setting goals. What action do you want the customers to take?
* Penning the first 2-3 sentences to attract customers to keep on watching. It should contain what the customers will gain from watching.
* Writing the main content. You should note that you give the viewers the value, you have promised.
* Summarize the video with conclusions. When it is a demo, tip or online course, it should also contain tasks for improvement. The viewers should feel, they had a transformation.
* Most likely, that you will be asked to collaborate with a video editor.
Pay attention that in freelance writing, there is a need to master with a few skill sets. It can be, for example: a blog writing and writing social posts. There can also be skill sets from different niches of the digital marketing industry, like: blog posts writing and on-page SEO.
You can read about other digital marketing freelancer roles from here.
In freelance digital marketing, there is another interesting niche, you can master. You can be a digital marketing consultant or be an implementer of marketing funnels.
Be in charge of goal setting, strategy building, and digital marketing execution planning
(digital marketing consultant)
In this role, you will outline the digital marketing activities from digital marketing strategy and targets to implementation. This is how you do that.
* Apprehending the business's main revenue targets
*Analyzing the business profits now. Then, how much is needed to reach the main revenue target.
* Examining the conversion rate. Meaning, how many marketing leads are required to reach the main revenue target.
* Checking what marketing tools and actions have been used, increased the profits and what didn't. Then, you will have to imitate the successful marketing action being taken.
* Forming a strategy to reach the main revenue goals
* Setting milestones to achieve the primary goals. Meaning minor targets each day, week, month, quarter and half a year.
* Creating a digital execution plan: What actions should be taken as a routine, weekly, each period of time, etc.
* Analyzing if the actions being taken, have made the business owners come closer to their main targets, or not. When needed, you should change the digital marketing activity.
Generating marketing funnels
As a digital marketer who owns a freelance business, you can build funnels for your customers. Meaning, marketing baits that prospects will leave their contacts: emails or phone numbers. Here are examples of funnel builders.
* Landing page with free worksheets, guides, checklists, consultation, etc. You can use Beacon, Docktopus, etc.
* Videos with registration forms. You can use interactive video editors or hostings.
* Publishing social media content. You can ask members on Facebook or LinkedIn groups, who want a free consultation, checklist report, etc.
* You can use surveys. Then, at the end, ask the responders to give their email or phone number. You can try Formaloo.
* You can insert bots on your website, use Facebook Messenger. You can try Ideta.
* You can use lead generation automation applications on social media. You can start a conversation or simply ask if there is a need for one of your free products. This can be done by Texau. Notice that you should respect the social platforms' limitation.
You can read about other digital marketing freelancer roles from here.
The quiz on how to do digital marketing freelancing
Let's play a short game. Its purpose is to help you understand the last part of: "where can you be a digital marketing specialist". We'll charm you with 6 questions. You will have to guess the role behind the riddle. The first four images will have one role. The fifth and sixth each, have 2 roles. After guessing, just hover on the image, and the answer will be revealed.
A day in the life of a digital marketer
In this section we will charm you with what your day, might look like. Please notice that you will have to add a launch break in between. Furthermore, there will be unexpected events, weekly and monthly tasks like: sending the entire receipts and invoices to the accountant, retaining customers and so on.
How much digital marketing professionals can make in freelancing
After, you know what your day as a freelancer may look like. Now, you should note how much you can earn from providing digital marketing services.
There are a few factors you should consider:
* First, what is your digital marketing specialty? For instance, are you an ads manager, content writer, SEO expert, etc.
* Second, what is your level of experience. How long have you been a digital marketer?
* Third, how good are you as a digital marketer?
* Fourth, what is the added value you give your customers?
We'll charm you with potential salaries in the USA. That, according to a survey being conducted by Glassdoor. We'll start with general salaries that is being affected by your level of experience. Then we'll dive into each field separately. The income is calculated on average.
Criteria |
Income |
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Digital marketer 0-1 years experience |
$76741 |
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Digital marketer 1-3 years experience |
$79513 |
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Digital marketer 4-6 years experience |
$84585 |
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Digital marketer more than 7 years experience |
$84585< |
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Digital marketing manager |
$101456 |
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Digital marketing specialist |
$63898 |
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SEO |
$69538 |
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Content writer |
$62678 |
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Lead generator |
$68333 |
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Digital marketing consultant |
$72597 |
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Social media marketing |
$78329 |
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Ads manager |
$72880 |
Examples of figures who skyrocket their digital marketing career
There are many great digital marketers entrepreneurs that can be a role model. We have picked 2 that stand out for a long period and are among the best in 2022.
Neil patel
Neil Patel is considered to be one of the top 100 entrepreneurs by president Obama. Also, one of the best marketers by Forbes. Read here.
He was born.
1985
He had his first client named Elpac electronics
2003
He became a top influencer by the Wall Street Journal.
2005
He and Hitten Shah founded the Crazy Egg agency.
2006
He started his first blog: ProNet advertising. Later on, this year he was announced as having the best social media blog and considered to be at the top 100 blogs.
2006
He launched the Quick Sprout Blog.
2007
He founded Ubersuggest website.
2010
He was announced in the top 10 digital marketers.
2014
Ann Handley
Ann Handley is one of the top digital marketers in the world. She was chosen to be one most influencing character on modern marketing. Read here.
She was born.
1963
She founded ClickZ digital marketing agency. She was one of the first.
1989
She sold ClickZ and became famous.
2000
She launched MarketingProfs, a marketing training and education company.
2000
She was listed as one of the most influencing on marketing evolving in IBM.
2009
She was selected as one of the marketing leaders by Forbes.
2009
She wrote one of the best book for marketing books named: content rules.
2012
MarketingProfs has reached 600000 subscribers.
2022
If we try to compare Ann and Neil they both weren't afraid of taking calculated risks. They are initiative, push themselves forward even to the limit. They are not afraid to make mistakes and do what is necessary to learn.
How to do and build a digital marketing business and what to consider
In this section, we will start with the question: is it for you to become a digital freelancer? We will finish with a short explanation of what is needed to become a freelance digital marketer.
Before you push yourself to become a freelancer, it is very important to apprehend that success takes years. Remember the examples of the successful digital marketers.
You will have to struggle in the beginning to stand out It will be expressed in acquiring customers, marketing and promoting yourself, managing your budget , building business and technology infrastructure, collecting money, selling and of course doing your customers' digital work.
In the beginning you won't have stable profits. You might need to combine between being an employee and freelancing.
If you understand that building requires patience, persistence, a tone of learning, doing mistakes and improving and above all, fire in your eyes for success. You can start your freelancing journey.
This is how you can charm you digital marketing business:
Conclusion of freelance digital marketing for dummies' article
In this article we have charmed you with: the definition of becoming both digital marketer and a freelancer. Then, what may be advantages and flows of becoming a digital marketing freelancer. In the next part, we discussed on digital marketing niches, on which you can become a professional, how your day may look like, what is needed to open a business and influencers to get inspired of in this field.
We recommend that before jumping into the freelancing pool. Take a few days to really think, if it is for you. Ask yourself:
Can I persevere in achieving my goals?
Can I manage my time without the need of a framework?
Do I want to acquire business skills?
Do I want to know how to sell on the phone, face to face or on Zoom?
Do I understand that it may take time to build the business?
Do I understand that it will require many efforts to build the business and run it?
Do I understand that I'll have to mistake, and be able to study, and improve myself all the time?
These questions may be overwhelming at first, Remember that, there are many freelance marketers who are successful. You just have to be honest with yourself, and apprehend what is required to succeed.
If you answered positively to each question above, then think what 2-3 digital marketing skills you can be best at. Select them and learn everything required in these niches. Additionally, examine what niches have less competition, or it will be easier for you to acquire customers faster.
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