Digital marketing is one of the fastest-growing industries today. As more businesses realize the importance of establishing an online presence, the demand for digital marketing services continues to rise. This presents a massive opportunity for digital marketing freelancers with the skills and knowledge to help companies grow their brands and get results. But is freelancing in digital marketing a good career choice? Let’s take an in-depth look at freelance digital marketing.
The Digital Marketing Freelancer Landscape
The digital marketing industry will be worth over $129 billion by 2023. With this kind of growth, it’s no surprise that digital marketing freelancers are in high demand. As a freelancer, you can choose your clients, set your rates, create your schedule, and work from anywhere. Here are some key advantages of being a freelance digital marketer:
Freedom and Flexibility
This is one of the biggest perks of freelancing. You are your boss, which means you can choose when, where, and how much you want to work. You can take time off for vacations whenever you want. You can work from a coffee shop down the street or from a beach in Thailand. You can run your freelance business from anywhere as long as you have a laptop and internet connection.
Income Potential
Successful freelance digital marketers can make a very comfortable living. With in-demand skills like social media marketing, SEO, and PPC advertising, you can charge clients decent hourly or project rates. Top freelancers quickly charge $50-$150 per hour or higher. You get to set your rates based on your expertise and experience. As you build your reputation and portfolio, you can increase your rates over time.
Variety of Projects
Freelancing allows you to work on various digital marketing projects for different business sizes and industries. One month, you may be doing SEO for a real estate startup; the next, you’re running Google Ads for an e-commerce store. This variety keeps your job exciting and expands your skill set. Your clients benefit from your exposure to different verticals.
Low Overhead
With a freelance business, your overhead expenses are pretty low compared to traditional agencies. You don’t need ample office space, support staff, or other costly infrastructure. Your main expenses are just a laptop, software tools (many are free or low cost), and co-working space memberships. This means more profit and earnings left for you.
Be Your Boss
This appealing perk gives you complete control over your work. You develop services you enjoy, choose your clients, implement strategies your way, and set your policies and processes. You don’t have a boss micromanaging you or limiting your earning potential.
Skills Needed to Succeed as a Freelancer
While going solo as a freelance digital marketer has many advantages, it also requires specific skills to thrive and find consistent work. Here are some of the critical abilities you need:
Solid Technical Expertise
Technical solid know-how in SEO, Google Analytics, email marketing, social media ads, and conversion rate optimization is essential. Specializing in one or two high-demand skills can help you stand out and charge top rates from the start.
Project Management Skills
You need to be able to scope new projects, set timelines, manage deadlines and deliverables, and communicate with clients effectively. Solid project management is vital to ensuring successful campaigns and satisfied clients. Tools like Trello or Asana can help you stay organized and on track.
Self-Motivation
As a solo freelancer, you must be self-driven and disciplined to get work done without supervision. You may not “feel” like working some days, but you must push yourself to put in the hours and be productive. Having strong self-motivation keeps you focused.
Time Management
Between client work, marketing yourself, administrative tasks, and accounting, it’s critical to manage your time wisely and stay efficient. Set a schedule, block off time for non-client tasks, avoid distractions, use productivity tools, and prioritize the most critical activities. Good time management maximizes your workday.
Accounting & Billing
While freelancing gives you freedom, you must also handle money matters like invoicing clients, keeping records, paying taxes, and managing income and expenses. Using accounting software and a billing system will ensure you get paid on time and can sustain your freelance business.
Legal Knowledge
As a freelance business owner, you should know essential legal matters like contracts, liability, copyright, and taxes to protect yourself. Having contracts and scope of work agreements signed with each client can prevent issues. Talk to a lawyer if needed.
Personal Marketing
While freelancing gives you freedom, you must also handle money matters like invoicing clients, keeping records, paying taxes, and managing income and expenses. Using accounting software and a billing system will ensure you get paid on time and can sustain your freelance business.
Finding Your Niche as a Freelancer
One key to success as a freelance digital marketer is identifying and specializing in a profitable niche. This allows you to hone your expertise, build authority quickly, and offer niche-specific services that help you stand out.
Here are some examples of potential niches to consider:
- Local service businesses (plumbers, roofers, gyms)
- Law firms
- Dentists or orthodontists
- SaaS companies
- E-commerce stores
- Real estate agents or agencies
- Nonprofits and associations
Take inventory of your skills, interests, and experience as you evaluate potential niches. Identify underserved markets with solid growth potential. You may need initial research and outreach to validate demand in your chosen niche. Over time, your website content, portfolio, and marketing materials should reflect your niche expertise.
This niche specialization does several things for your freelance business:
- It helps you understand the target audience deeply
- It lets you tailor campaigns to specific needs
- It gives you higher visibility for ranking related keywords
- Builds your reputation as an authority figure
- Allows you to provide increased value to niche prospects
- Enables you to charge premium rates
A niche focus provides enormous advantages over trying to serve every market as a generalist. Determining your niche early allows you to start crafting content, case studies, and thought leadership tailored to your ideal type of client. So, do your research and choose your specialty wisely right from the start.
Building Your Freelance Portfolio
As a freelance digital marketer starting, one of your top priorities should be creating an impressive portfolio website. This allows you to showcase your work, demonstrate your abilities, establish credibility, and convince prospects to hire you.
Here are some tips for developing a stand-out portfolio:
Pick a Platform
Your portfolio site needs to look professional, with all your essential content in one place. A dedicated platform like Dribbble, Behance, or WordPress can save you time versus building a custom site from scratch. Make sure to get a portfolio-focused domain name and hosting.
Showcase Your Best Projects
Carefully curate your top 6-10 case studies to feature on your portfolio. For each one, explain the client’s challenge, goals, your process and recommendations, results achieved, and takeaways. Use metrics like increased traffic, conversions generated, and ROI.
Tailor Content to Your Niche
Ensure the portfolio reflects your niche specialty through relevant projects, content, testimonials, and messaging. This reinforces your expertise. For example, a freelancer specializing in law firms would showcase work specifically for attorneys and practices.
Include Client Testimonials
Social proof is powerful. Sprinkle in short videos or written testimonials from happy clients describing their experience working with you and the results you delivered. This builds trust and credibility.
Show Personality
While professional, don’t be afraid to infuse some personality into your portfolio through your writing, images, color schemes, and page design. This allows prospects to get a sense of who you are and your work style. A dull or overly corporate portfolio won’t make you stand out.
Optimize for Search
Leverage SEO best practices to optimize your portfolio site for search visibility, like meta tags, alt text for images, keyword-optimized content, backlinks, and shareability. This helps you get found by prospective new clients searching relevant terms.
Continually refine and update your portfolio as you complete new projects and gain more testimonials. This “show, don’t tell” website is perhaps your most valuable freelance marketing tool for turning prospects into clients.
Digital Marketing Finding Freelance Clients
Once you have established a polished portfolio and services, your next step is getting your first (and second, and third) freelance clients. While it may feel daunting initially, there are proven tactics to find genuine leads and land clients.
Here are ten effective ways to find freelance digital marketing clients:
Network Online and Offline
Networking through local business events, conferences, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, and Twitter can connect you to potential clients. Tell connections what you do and ask for introductions or referrals to companies that may need your services.
Get Listed on Freelance Job Sites
Create profiles on top freelance job sites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, and Guru. Build your reputation by bidding on and completing projects successfully to get more job invitations.
Utilize LinkedIn for Outreach
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify prospects, connect with company decision-makers, and send customized outreach messages pitching your services. Offer value in your messages.
Create Free Tools and Resources
Develop free tools like calculators, ebooks, templates, guides, and checklists with valuable tips that attract leads. Gate them behind opt-in forms to collect emails for your list to nurture.
Guest Blog for Niche Sites
Research websites in your target niche and pitch contributing blog posts with your expertise. Include a bio with a link back to your site. This helps build relationships with audience members.
Run Retargeting Ads
Use display ads to target people who have visited your website and portfolio to bring them back and convert them into leads. Retargeting keeps your brand top of mind.
Partner With Complementary Freelancers
Partner with other freelancers offering services like web development and design to offer complete service packages to clients. Cross-promote each other.
Attend Local Networking Events
Chamber of Commerce mixers, small business meetups, industry conferences, and other local events are great for meeting business owners. Have an elevator pitch ready. Collect business cards and follow up after connecting.
Start as a Subcontractor
Offer to subcontract for established digital marketing agencies to gain experience and build your portfolio before going entirely solo.
Leverage Existing Contacts
Letting your existing personal and professional contacts know you’re now taking on freelance clients. They can help refer new clients from their networks.
The key is using multiple methods consistently to build a steady inbound pipeline of potential new clients. Over time, you can expect more repeat business and referrals from happy clients to grow your freelance digital marketing business.
Digital Marketing Delivering Results and Retaining Clients
Simply landing the first client is just the beginning. To build a thriving freelance business, you need to over-deliver value, achieve results for clients, and nurture these relationships to drive repeat business and referrals.
Here are some tips for delivering outstanding work and retaining happy clients over the long term:
Set Clear Expectations
Leave no room for mismatched expectations by being specific about what results you expect to achieve, requirements, timelines, communication methods, and policies upfront. Get everything in writing.
Stay Organized and Meet Deadlines
Missing deadlines or letting things fall through the cracks will anger clients quickly. Use project management tools and calendars to stay on track. Give plenty of lead time if delays come up.
Show Results and Impact
Provide regular reporting to showcase the concrete impact you’re driving, like leads generated, sales gained, traffic growth, and ROI. Quantify your influence. Clients love stats.
Over-Communicate
Proactively send progress updates, ask questions, provide recommendations, and flag any issues early. Don’t leave clients guessing. The more you communicate, the happier they’ll be.
Go Above and Beyond
Look for ways to exceed expectations, add value beyond the initial scope, and wow clients by being responsive and fully caring about their success. This leads to loyalty.
Request and Respond to Feedback
Check-in regularly to ask if clients are delighted or what else you could do to improve. Welcome constructive feedback and implement it. This shows you care.
Offer Ongoing Education
Send relevant content like articles, guides, videos, and webinars to educate clients. Position yourself as a trusted advisor, not just a freelancer they use once.
Consistently delivering high-quality work and actual value builds client satisfaction. This paves the way for ongoing projects, larger budgets over time, referrals, and glowing testimonials to help you land more clients.
Digital Marketing Managing Your Schedule and Pipeline
One potential drawback of freelancing is that your income relies 100% on securing enough client work to fill your schedule. Especially when starting, you want to avoid the feast or famine cycle.
Here are some strategies to effectively manage your pipeline and schedule:
Dedicate Time to Sales and Outreach
Block out regular weekly time for sales activities – reaching out to prospects, following up with leads, and networking online/offline. Treat this time like client work. Funnel new leads into your pipeline.
Take Some Projects at a Discount
Offer an introductory rate or small project discount to first-time clients with whom you want to build long-term relationships. Once they see your skills, they’ll pay the total price next time.
Don’t Rely on Just a Few Big Clients
Try to cultivate multiple smaller retainers versus just 1-2 big clients. This mitigates risk if you lose one. Steadier income comes from diversified sources.
Have a Runway Fund
Maintain a cash buffer in savings to cover at least six months of living expenses. This cushions you during any unforeseen dry spells in finding new business.
Avoid Overbooking Yourself
While having a full calendar feels excellent, don’t risk burnout or unhappy clients by over-committing your hours. Build in margins to accommodate non-billable work.
Keep Prospecting Even When Busy
The biggest mistake is halting sales and outreach once you fill your schedule. Continually nurture your pipeline so you have new leads to contact when upcoming capacity opens.
Utilize Project Management Tools
Use Trello, Asana, or similar tools to map out all projects visually on a timeline. This lets you forecast capacity, prevent double booking, and manage workload.
Offer Retainers
Retainer agreements guarantee recurring monthly revenue vs. one-off projects. Offer set monthly hours at a discounted hourly rate for guaranteed income.
With some savvy pipeline management, you can enjoy a steady stream of inbound leads and book projects in the future. This ensures you don’t have to start back at zero with new client prospecting each month.
Essential Freelance Digital Marketing Tools
Beyond core skills, having the right tools of the trade at your disposal is invaluable as a freelance digital marketer. The best tools simplify your workflows, automate tasks, save vast time, and provide powerful analytics.
Here are some of the most beneficial freelance digital marketing tools to power your business:
HubSpot CRM – Free client CRM to track leads & manage contacts
Wave – Free accounting and invoicing software
Grammarly – Catch writing errors and improve your copy
Buffer – Social media scheduling and automation
Canva – Graphic design for creating visual assets
SEMRush – SEO keyword research and backlink analysis
Google Analytics – Track website traffic, leads and sales
ZoomInfo – Identify and find contact info for prospects
Calendly – Allows prospects to book meetings with you
MailChimp – Email marketing campaigns and automation
Hootsuite – Manage all social media profiles in one dashboard
Slack – Client communication and file sharing
Investing in the right software can streamline your processes, reduce manual tasks, and help provide better service to clients. Over time, build your technology stack with the must-have tools for running a simplified and scalable freelance digital marketing business.
Keys to Mastering Work-Life Balance
One lingering downside of freelancing is that it can easily lead to overwork and chronic stress without the structure of a 9-5 job. Without careful boundaries, your work can consume your whole life. That’s why it’s so essential to make work-life balance a priority.
Here are some tips to better maintain balance as a freelancer:
Separate Work and Home
Have a designated office space in your home or work from a co-working space. This creates a psychological separation between work and personal time.
Set Office Hours
Define your regular work hours and stick to them. Communicate these availability windows clearly to clients to set expectations.
Schedule Breaks
Take 5-10 minute breaks every 1-2 hours to stand up, stretch, rest your eyes, grab water, etc. This refreshes your mental focus.
Limit Email Checking
Only check emails 2-3 times daily during designated times to avoid distraction. Set automatic out-of-office replies outside your work hours.
Use a Calendar
Plan out your workdays and personal time in advance using a calendar. This ensures you make time for exercise, family, friends, and fun.
Take Real Vacations
Put out-of-office on, let clients know you’ll be unreachable, and go off the grid on vacation to recharge. Disconnect fully and come back refreshed.
Separate Work and Home
Have a designated office space in your home or work from a co-working space. This creates a psychological separation between work and personal time.
Set Office Hours
Define your regular work hours and stick to them. Communicate these availability windows clearly to clients to set expectations.
Schedule Breaks
Take 5-10 minute breaks every 1-2 hours to stand up, stretch, rest your eyes, grab water, etc. This refreshes your mental focus.
Limit Email Checking
Only check emails 2-3 times daily during designated times to avoid distraction. Set automatic out-of-office replies outside your work hours.
Use a Calendar
Plan out your workdays and personal time in advance using a calendar. This ensures you make time for exercise, family, friends, and fun.
Take Real Vacations
Put out-of-office on, let clients know you’ll be unreachable, and go off the grid on vacation to recharge. Disconnect fully and come back refreshed.
Leave Work at Work
When your workday ends, step away completely. Avoid the temptation to do just one more quick task, which stretches into the night. Discipline yourself to be present at home.
Outsource and Delegate
Hire VAs, freelancers, or agencies to offload activities outside your core expertise. This lightens your workload so you don’t risk burnout.
Prioritizing work-life balance takes constant intention and effort but pays enormous dividends for your mental health, physical health, relationships, and overall wellbeing. The flexibility of freelancing vanishes if you become a workaholic.
FAQs About Freelancing in Digital Marketing
What skills do I need to succeed as a freelance digital marketer?
Solid expertise in high-demand skills like SEO, PPC, social media advertising, email marketing, web analytics, and conversion optimization is essential. Project management and communication skills are also vital. Specializing in one or two key areas can help you stand out.
How much can I earn as a digital marketing freelancer?
It varies based on your experience and rates, but $50-$150+ per hour is common for top freelancers. Consistent client work makes six-figure annual earnings possible within a few years of dedicated freelancing. Residual income through retainers helps stabilize cash flow.
Should I niche down or offer a wide range of services?
It’s best to niche down and specialize versus being a generalist, at least initially. This lets you establish expertise and authority in specific, profitable areas faster. But over time, you can expand your service offering once established.
What legal considerations should I make when starting?
Register your freelance business, get proper business insurance, use contracts/SOWs with clients, be aware of tax implications, and understand liability issues. Consider speaking with a lawyer or CPA for guidance. Don’t expose yourself to undue risk.
How much time do I need to devote to finding new clients?
At least 20% of your weekly work hours, especially when first launching. Consistently nurture your pipeline through outreach, content creation, referrals, marketing yourself, and networking to maintain a steady flow of new business over time.
How can I ensure a good work-life balance as a freelancer?
Set boundaries and office hours. Designate a separate workspace. Take natural breaks and vacations. Use a calendar to schedule personal time, too. Outsource non-critical tasks. Say no to scope creep. Be disciplined about “leaving work at work” when your day ends. Don’t let work take over!
Conclusion
Launching a freelance digital marketing business has many advantages, including freedom, income potential, flexibility, low overhead, and various projects. However, it also requires discipline, a stellar portfolio, identifying your niche, ongoing client prospecting, delivering results consistently, pipeline management, and work-life boundaries.
While becoming an independent digital marketing freelancer has challenges, it can ultimately be gratifying and give you a level of control unmatched by a typical 9-5 job. Embarking on the entrepreneurial path can be an exciting and lucrative journey for those willing to build their skills, reputation, and client roster, with massive upside. To navigate this journey successfully, consider these 7 tips for avoiding errors, and remember to take it one step at a time rather than getting overwhelmed. If you approach freelancing with realistic expectations, make intelligent strategic decisions, stick to your niche, continually add client value, and care for your well-being, you can build a freedom-focused lifestyle and notable career as a freelance digital marketer.
