How to Create a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy with Freelancers

Businesses are constantly looking for ways to stay ahead of the competition. The freelancer economy has opened opportunities for them to create a winning digital marketing strategy without relying solely on in-house teams.

Before diving into the steps to building an effective strategy, it’s essential to understand the growing influence of freelancers in digital marketing. According to Fiverr’s Freelance Economic Impact report, freelancers earned over $191 billion in revenue and contributed 1.1% of the U.S. GDP in 2023.

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Freelancers continue to be an influential economic force. They drive this trend by their flexibility, specialized skills and expertise, and cost-effectiveness.

But how can you craft a winning digital marketing strategy when you have freelancers on board? Let’s break it down with data, steps, and best practices.

Why Choose Freelancers for Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

Hiring freelancers allows you to tap into a global talent pool with diverse skills. Freelancers provide flexibility and expertise, often costing less than traditional full-time employees.

Here are why integrating freelancers into your digital marketing strategy is beneficial:

• Cost efficiency: According to Forbes, freelancers are the force multipliers in the modern economy. You can save 20-30% on payroll and overhead costs by hiring freelancers instead of full-time employees.
• Specialized skills and expertise: Freelancers offer niche expertise, whether it's SEO, web design, content marketing, or social media management, enabling you to leverage industry-specific knowledge. They are also keen to upskill themselves to contribute to the growth of businesses.
• Scalability: As your digital marketing needs evolve, you can seamlessly scale your efforts up or down by hiring freelancers without long-term commitments.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Digital Marketing Strategy with Freelancers

Let’s look at the step-by-step process to work with freelancers for an effective digital marketing strategy that drives business growth.

1. Define Your Digital Marketing Goals and Objectives

Define your needs and goals to create an effective digital marketing strategy. 

Ask yourself: What do I want to achieve? Is it a greater brand awareness, more leads, or a higher number of sales? Then, associate your goals with clear and measurable KPIs such as traffic growth, social media follower growth, or better conversion rates.

For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic by 20% in six months, determine how SEO, content creation, and social media marketing freelancers can contribute to this goal. After that, set a budget based on how much you are willing to invest in these freelance digital marketing services.

2. Find the Right Freelancers for Your Digital Marketing Goals Identify roles to outsource to freelancers

First, determine the essential digital marketing roles you want to outsource to freelancers. Some common ones include:

• Content writing and editing
• Video content creation
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media management
• Web design and development
• PPC and social ad campaign management
• Email marketing and automation
• Guest posting
• Link building

Before deciding the type of freelancers to work with, it’s important to assess your current team’s skills and identify gaps freelancers can fill.

Find freelancers through different channels

Once decided, the next step is to find the right freelancers based on skills, expertise, and budget. But where can you find freelancers for your digital marketing strategy?

• Popular freelancer platforms: Use freelance marketplace platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer to find qualified candidates and gigs for your marketing efforts. On Fiverr, you can search for freelancers by skills, not just by service gigs.

• Industry-specific communities: You can find expert content creators, social media managers, and other freelance digital marketing professionals through specific niche communities on LinkedIn, Slack, and Superpath Marketplace.

Evaluate freelancer profiles

When hiring freelancers, don’t look for generalists; hire specialists in specific areas of digital marketing, such as blog posts, content marketing, online courses, or SEO.

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For example, if you want to find someone to build high-quality links for your website, don’t search for “SEO.” Instead, search for freelance services related to “SEO link building.”

You’ll likely find freelancers whose charges vary greatly. One may charge $10 for 550 links while another charges $185 for 150 links.

So, how do you choose the right ones to work with?

Assess the freelancer’s capabilities, expertise, and what they are offering. You’ll notice the difference.

Check out the freelancer’s portfolio, experience, past work samples, and client testimonials. You can also ask for case studies of projects they are proud of working on.

Other than skills and expertise, a freelancer’s behavior, responsiveness, and transparency are also key factors in ensuring the success of your working relationship and meeting your goal.

Platforms like Fiverr let you see how well and clear a freelancer’s communication is.

If you are looking to collaborate with a freelancer for a major campaign or a long-term project, consider testing multiple candidates on relevant small-budget tasks. Then, finalize and select the ones you find reliable, good at their job, and enjoy working with the most. 

3. Create a Clear Project Scope and Brief

To ensure your freelancers deliver top-quality work that aligns with your digital marketing goals, create a clear project scope and brief. This brief should outline the project’s goals, deliverables, deadlines, and specific expectations for each task.

A well-defined brief will eliminate ambiguity, allowing freelancers to focus on delivering results without confusion. Don’t miss including important details such as:

• Target audience
• Key messages or themes
• Brand voice, brand guidelines, and existing content for consistency
• Marketing goals and deliverables
• Milestones and deadlines
• Expectations on communication, response times, and quality of work
• Examples of past successful campaigns

Fiverr has an AI tool that assists in creating a detailed brief based on your needs.

By setting clear guidelines from the start, you’ll reduce revisions, ensure higher-quality work, and keep projects on track. Schedule regular check-ins (meetings or reports) to discuss progress, address concerns, and make adjustments as needed.

4. Collaborate Effectively with Freelancers

When working with freelancers, communication is critical. Decide on the best way to communicate with your freelancers. It could be through email, instant messaging, or communication tools (like Slack and Zoom).

Use project management tools such as Asana, Trello, or ClickUp (my favorite) to keep everyone on the same page. These tools help you create and assign tasks, hold people accountable, and track the progress and blockages of your digital marketing project.

Ensure your freelancers and in-house teams work on Google Docs and Sheets for easy file-sharing and document collaboration. It gets easier to give feedback and suggestions, and track changes when working on the same file.

Freelance platforms like Fiverr also offer in-app communication tools such as inbox, notifications, order page conversations, and video call features.

The platform also offers a project management feature — Fiverr Project Partner to support your large projects. It helps you manage everything from strategy to execution and increases project completion rate by 40%.

When collaborating with freelancers for your digital marketing strategy, define clear expectations and conduct regular check-ins. Weekly or biweekly meetings or reports will help you monitor progress and address any challenges your freelancers may be facing.

Provide constructive feedback to help freelancers improve deliverables and ensure seamless collaboration. You may also assign a project manager or point of contact to streamline communication if your budget allows.

5. Optimize and Scale Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Tracking performance is essential in any digital marketing strategy. Make sure you establish KPIs (key performance indicators) from the start and track them regularly to identify areas for improvement. For example, you can track metrics such as:

• Organic traffic growth from SEO efforts
• Engagement rates on social media platforms
• Open rates and lead conversion rates from email campaigns

Use tools like HubSpot, Google Analytics, Semrush, and Flick to monitor performance. Based on these insights, optimize your campaigns by adjusting your digital marketing strategies, testing new ideas, and refining your approach.

A McKinsey study shows that companies that use data-driven marketing can improve ROI by 15-20%.

After every campaign, provide freelancers with insights on what worked well and what can be improved. Focus on building long-term relationships with your top-performing freelancers to maintain consistency and quality in your digital marketing strategy.

Along with tracking performance, you must stay updated on the latest digital marketing trends and technologies to optimize your campaigns better.

Work on driving continuous improvement in your results and expand your freelancer team as you scale your marketing project to support growth.

Important Considerations When Working with Freelancers

Here are a few points you should keep in mind while working with freelancers:

• Legal agreements: Ensure you have a written contract outlining the scope of work, payment terms, ownership rights, and confidentiality clauses.
• Intellectual property: Clarify who owns the content created by the freelancer.
• On-platform transactions: If you’re using a service like Fiverr to hire freelancers, always keep all your payments on the platform. Though these platforms charge a transaction or service fee, they’ll have your back if the freelancer doesn’t deliver as promised.
• Build trust and rapport: Foster a collaborative relationship with your freelancer to maximize results. Communicate effectively, pay on time, and they’ll become an integral part of your team over time.

Are You Ready to Boost Your Digital Marketing ROI with the Top Freelance Talent?

A winning digital marketing strategy doesn’t always require a large in-house team. By strategically incorporating freelancers into your marketing efforts, you can access a wealth of talent, maintain flexibility, and drive results faster.

However, to succeed, it’s essential to set clear goals, carefully vet potential freelancers based on their expertise and experience, communicate effectively, and continuously optimize your campaigns based on performance data.

You should foster a collaborative relationship built on trust and feedback loops.

By following these steps, you can effectively create a winning digital marketing strategy with freelancers. They’ll help you achieve your marketing goals and build a solid online presence.