Embarking on a journey in freelance digital marketing involves helping clients devise, implement, and evaluate campaigns to promote their products or services. To start your career in freelance digital marketing, you have to follow specific steps, including audience creation and connecting to the core of what makes brands who and what they are.

This article delves into each step, offering detailed insights into what freelance digital marketing entails, how much money one can earn as a freelance digital marketer, recommended tech and tools, and a comprehensive guide on how to start your journey as a freelance digital marketer.

What is a freelancer?

Freelancers are workers who work on different defined projects for multiple companies instead of working for a single company. They work on a project-by-project basis and don’t adhere to traditional employment structures. This work style offers them more flexibility. So, they can work for only a few hours each week or for longer periods on multiple projects to maximize their earnings. Compensation is often project-based or hourly, varying in commitment from a few hours to a month.

What is freelance digital marketing?

A freelance digital marketer, a self-employed professional, collaborates with companies, businesses, or clients remotely to meet their marketing needs. There’s a wide range of skills needed depending on the projects the client needs to complete.

Some key project responsibilities are:

Market research (competitor analysis, SWOT, and other research)
Creating a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and executing it
Branding and brand awareness campaigns
Managing copy messages on the website, blog, and company social media accounts
Email marketing automation and newsletters
Strategizing, managing, and planning campaigns on social media accounts
Creating content for various media (advertising, blog, social media, website…)
Data analysis to understand a client’s data and opportunities
Consulting and advising on future strategies and ways to optimize campaigns

Salary range

A freelance digital marketing expert’s salary varies based on experience and skills. Nonetheless, a freelance digital marketer makes $56,626 annually on average according to Glassdoor. More senior marketers can expect to earn more while junior marketers can earn a bit less. But, this also depends on the skills and qualifications they have.

Beyond the salary expectations, The field of marketing is expected to grow much more than the average. So you can expect more opportunities and jobs in this field.

How to become a freelance digital marketing expert

It’s never easy to start on your own. You have to be independent and accountable for your work. From developing your skills and talents to prospecting and finding your buyers. Here are five key things to follow to succeed as a freelance digital marketer.

1. Choose your area of expertise that matches your skills

There are so many different areas of digital marketing that you can be knowledgeable about. But to be successful, you need to have one specialty in an area that elevates you above the competition. Ideally, you can even have two areas of expertise. The most important part though, is that you should be excellent in that specific area. It should match your skills and knowledge.

Here are some examples of Marketing areas you can specialize in:

Content Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Video Marketing
Direct Marketing
Database Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Growth Hacking
Event Marketing
Product Marketing
Market Research
Email Marketing
Ad Management

2. Become an expert in your field of specialization

Once you’ve decided what you want to specialize in, you have to become a specialist in that field. Learn as much as possible in that field. Look for resources online. Ask other specialists in your field for tips and advice. Another great way to gain expertise while also improving your profile is to complete certifications to show you have certain skills in high demand. The more skills and knowledge you have, the more likely you get work. You can also command higher rates if you have plenty of expertise.

When you choose an area to specialize in, you can also look at which fields are more in demand and have higher salaries.

3. Create your portfolio or resume and grow your online presence

Prospection is essential to land new jobs and have enough work to earn a steady income. To put the most chances on your side, you need to present a delightful profile that attracts potential customers and makes them believe you are the solution they need. There are many things you can do to convince potential clients that you are an expert. Talk about your experience, what you can do for them, why they should choose you, and your qualifications. If you have certifications, show them proodly.

You can also share examples of your past work to show your skills and give potential clients a taste of what you can do.

Don’t forget to close all your presentations with a strong call to action. Tell them what they should do next. If you want them to contact you, give them an easy way to. If you want them to place an order, tell them to place an order to start work on their project.

4. Choose your prices

You need to create a coherent pricing plan that makes sense both for you and your clients. Your prices can be set hourly, project-based, per day. Many freelancers price their services by the hour as it is easier to compare with different averages.

There are many factors to consider when choosing your prices. Taking the prices other freelancers charge can definitely help you choose your prices. But the most important is to make sure you earn more than the local minimum wage in your country. So consider how long it takes you to complete a service and use that time to calculate your prices ensuring you set your rates correctly.

If you still have doubts about the prices you should set, you can consult this article in our FAQ to ensure you choose the correct prices.

Another thing you need to take into account is that you won’t always be working. Your prices need to guarantee you earn enough for when you don’t have work opportunities. This will avoid causing desperation in times of need and reducing your rates just to satisfy a needy client’s unrealistic budget.

5. Find clients

Prospecting is key to securing enough orders to be successful as a freelancer. While you can rely on freelance platforms like ComeUp to generate orders for you, you also need to work on connecting with potential clients.

The good news is that there are many ways to do so. You can leverage LinkedIn to reach out to potential buyers. You can also leverage other social media channels to reach potential buyers worldwide. But don’t just randomly message people. Make sure to target the right person with the right message. If it’s your first time reaching out to them, pitch them an idea that can help them grow their business. It’s a creative and efficient way to stand out from all the other people prospecting.

You can also use other creative ways to find new clients. The advantage of selling your services online is that there are countless ways for you to offer those services.

Here are five tips to help you achieve results from your prospection:

Introduce yourself before making a sale. It’s indeed important to make a sale. But not everyone needs a service at the moment you reach out to them. So make a human connection instead. That way the person you connect with may think of you when they need a service.
Reach out to the right prospects. As mentioned, you should not reach out to anyone at random. Instead, you should target the right potential clients. Do some research on people and find the ones who are likely to place an order.
Match your skills with a client’s needs. This is connected to the previous point. You can’t just offer digital marketing services to everyone, including people operating physical shops that may not need your services. Instead, do some research on prospects and ensure you find prospects that have a real need for your skills.
Offer a logical next step. You need to present the next step to your prospects, but that next step needs to make sense to your potential client. You can’t just say “Place an order now”. Instead, offer a chat to discuss the client’s problem. Or a sample writing about a topic related to what you discussed with them.
Allocate time to prospect weekly. Even when you already have work. As you can imagine from the above tips, prospection doesn’t bring clients right away. So you need to prospect in advance to secure orders in the future. The more time you can allocate to prospection in the future, the more you can ensure to have continuous work.

Another thing to consider is to target industries that are more likely to need a digital marketer’s services. Some of these industries are:

Consulting
Public Relations and Advertising
E-commerce
Finance
Insurance
Education

Are there any skills or knowledge that are essential to become a freelance digital marketing expert?

Beyond skills and knowledge in your area of expertise, there are no skills that are required. But, there are some skills that can help you succeed. Keep in mind that digital marketing is a broad field and that you may have all kinds of different clients. Ranging from small businesses to medium-sized companies. Having some basic understanding and knowledge of different areas of digital marketing than your own can help a lot.

Here are some other abilities you may need to be an expert:

Data analysis
SEO
Content creation
Copywriting
Quick learning and adaptability to learn how to use tools and platforms
Organization
Time management
Listening
Teamwork

Use ComeUp to get orders

While you’ll still probably need to prospect to get some orders. ComeUp is a great way for you to get orders from clients. You just have to create services and have them published on the platform. Once the services are approved, anyone who needs them can order them.

On ComeUp, you can offer your digital marketing services in a wide range of categories. There are categories for SEO, data analysis, ad management, social media management, email marketing, influencer marketing, growth hacking, and other areas. It will be easier for you to place yourself as one of the top sellers on the platform if you have an area of expertise in which you’re the authoritative voice. The best freelancing expert in that subject.

There are multiple advantages to selling your services on ComeUp. From the $1-only commission option to the possibility of becoming a top seller and having lots of visibility for buyers to find your services easily on the platform. Try ComeUp today!

Having trouble choosing an area of expertise?

If you’re not sure which area of expertise you should specialize in, here’s more information about the key areas of expertise.

Content Marketing

There are different tasks a content marketer works on. However, it often relies on a blog and crafting content that adds value to products and brands. A content marketer can also create a guide on how to use a product or how to become an expert on a platform.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is all about optimizing content and websites for Google and other search engines. Being optimized for SEO is important for all businesses is important because that’s how customers can find them. SEM also includes search-based ads on platforms like Google. Become a Search engine marketing pro to attract many customers.

Video Marketing

There’s such a strong emphasis on videos nowadays that most companies use them in some form. Being an expert in video marketing can help you land jobs regularly.

Social Media Marketing

Another trend subject, companies around the world are leveraging social media to connect with potential customers and current ones too. Become an expert in the subject and you will find that many companies invest heavily in improving their social media marketing strategy.

Influencer Marketing

It has grown so much over these last few years that some businesses prefer influencer marketing over ads. And seeing the results it only makes sense. These businesses are investing more and more time and money to find the winning combination. Help them build an influencer marketing strategy that generates results, and they will reward you.

Email Marketing

Another huge part of a business’s revenue, email marketing has become the best way for companies to reach out to their customers. From email marketing automation flows to newsletters for campaigns. An Email marketer has to leverage email marketing platforms to achieve the best results possible. Build solid email marketing strategies for companies and find lots of job opportunities.

Ad Management

Ad management is another great freelancing opportunity as some companies want to run ads without investing in a full-time marketer who has all the experience and knowledge needed. If you gain the experience needed to run successful campaigns on Facebook and Google ads, many companies will need your services.

Conclusion

We hope you find all this information helpful and that you are motivated to become a freelancing expert. It may seem overwhelming with everything that needs to be done, but you can take it one step at a time. Every step you take will go a long way in helping you succeed. So follow this guide and create a plan to follow step-by-step and you’ll start achieving success in no time.