How to Become a Freelance Digital Marketing Professional (Quick and easy to understand Guidelines for Beginners)

Do you want to be your own Boss?

Do you want to work from the comfort of your home?

Are you tired of a 9 to 5 job and want to earn as per your need and time?

Are you looking for a side hustle and pursue your passion through Digital Marketing?

If all the answers are ‘Yes, then you have landed on a perfect space. This article will guide you through your Freelance Digital Marketing journey with guaranteed success in the future.

What is Freelance Digital Marketing?

In simple words, Freelance Digital Marketing is a type of profession wherein one provides Digital Marketing services to the client.

Your job is to extend and expand the reach of your client towards his/her target audience by attracting the potential leads towards the clients landing page using the Digital platform & its tools and going further convert them into clientele, of course, the paying customers.

Here is a win-win situation for all. Happy Client, Happy Customer, and Happy You as a Digital Marketer.

In short, to upscale the Business of the client, your expertise in Digital Marketing comes into play.

Let’s first try to understand the merits and the downside of Freelance Digital Marketing as compared to a 9 to 5 job before diving into it.

Merits of Freelance Digital Marketing:

Boss: You are your own boss
Time and space flexibility: You can decide when & where aspects of your job. But given commitments and deadlines should be met diligently.
Job Diversity: Every project is different and so the approach and strategies may vary accordingly. Makes the job challenging and equally interesting. No space for mundaneness. If you are passionate about learning different things, this job is highly satisfying.
Side hustle: The job does not limit your willingness to venture into other pursuits.
Monetary aspect: You can decide the extent of money you wish to achieve every month provided the amount of hard work you are ready to put in. The good news is- there is no limit.
Holidays: You get to decide holidays which are very unlikely to happen in your 9 to 5 job without some request or persuasion. Much better, you can also work on your vacation trip. Nothing tied to each other.
High demand job: With almost all businesses trying to onboard online, the rising demand for Digital Marketers makes this domain lucrative. In the coming years, almost every brick and mortar business, small and large, will need a digital space to reach out to their customers. Can’t see the saturation level rising anytime soon.
Effect of Market Volatility: Since every Business in the Digital space needs to be active and running 24*7 for its survival, it needs continuous maintenance and updating. So any volatility in the market has a minimal negative effect on Digital Marketing Business.
Job as a Marketing Manager: After some experience, you may also grab the position as a Marketing Manager in a big Organisation.
Own Agency: You may take a big stride forward in the future and start your own Agency which is a great feat in itself.

The downside of Freelance Digital Marketing:

No constant work or cash flow: Unlike 9 to 5 jobs giving regular paychecks every month, Freelance Digital Marketing cannot guarantee the constant flow of income.
Rising Competition: Since the incubation of Digital Marketing in the 1990s and the perks/freedom coming along with it, there is a scramble for literally anyone from every nook and corner of the world trying to become a Digital Marketer. Today, when every Digital Marketer claims to be the best it’s like trying to find a needle from a haystack.
Juggling multiple clients: Imagine instead of one boss you had in a 9 to 5 job, now you need to handle multiple clients. While trying to meet the expectations of multiple clients at the same time, stress and anxiety are natural to kick in.
Hustling 24*7: Now and then new tools and gigs enter the market. It forces the Marketers to hustle round the clock.
Health Benefits/Paternity/Maternity leave: You may have to give away the benefits of paid leaves due to health issues and also the health insurance available in 9 to 5 jobs.

Skills required to be a successful Freelance Digital Marketer:

The two essential prerequisites that I can jot down to be a successful Freelance Digital Marketer or for that matter in any field/ job are

Correct Mindset: Correct mindset to deal with various challenges the job poses to be a Marketer.
Consistent Practice: Consistent Practice is required to maneuver the strategies according to the different clients and project needs.

The course of action to start Freelance Digital Marketing:

Create your own Blog:

Creating a Blog on the internet serves two purposes.

One is to share your interest, passion, and expertise on a Digital platform.

The blog also acts as a sandbox to experiment with all the tools and strategies required to gain expertise before pitching for any prospective client in the future.

At a Beginner level, you must not delay in creating a Blog for the want of concluding the perfect name or logo or the subdomain you want to enter. Take action Right away. There is no way around it other than to learn and implement it while forging ahead.

Select your Niche:

For a Beginner, deciding your niche may be difficult but with a small research on your interests and expertise in any field to date, you may conclude with few niches. Further, you may start with anyone niche that might interest you the most.

You may also change your Niche in the future. But restrain yourself from delaying and juggling. It might cost you time and energy.

Once your Niche is confirmed, the journey to launch yourself on a Digital Marketing platform begins.

Content Creation:

Research: This plays an important part in content creation. There are a bunch of research tools available to decide the nature and demand of content. For example, Buzzsumo, Ahrefs, Google Trends, SEMrush, Ubersuggest. These tools give you insights to generate topics and ideas for your content. They also suggest popular search topics. Writing deep and detailed content on such topics might help your post to land on the first page of Google ranking.

Learn: Creating impressive content is an art that needs constant learning and practice. Few pointers to keep in mind while working on content creation are to understand your audience, to be updated, stay on topic, stay current, set a target of writing almost daily, find your own voice in writing, be original, and most important write with the intent of helping others through your content.

Brainstorming: For any topic when you try to search online there is a content overthrow. It’s very difficult for someone to separate the wheat from the chaff. Your content should be unique and engaging. So before publishing any content it’s recommended you should thoroughly brainstorm on the topics and try to make creative content in every possible way to hook your target audience. A word of caution here, to make the article creative, Don’t compromise on the quality of content. Quality Content is the unique selling proposition (USP) of your Website to compel the audience to return to the site time and again in the future.

Publish: There are a couple of things that you must keep in mind before publishing. Check for any grammatical and spelling errors. There are few Software like Grammarly which comes in handy. Grammarly assists you in improving your writing skills by giving suggestions. Use images and videos to make it more engaging. A video summarizing the content written will definitely create a good impression on your client/audience.

Build Your Personal Brand:

Though it takes time and energy to create your personal brand, few guidelines may help to create one that will make it sooner than never.

Number one is to know the purpose of your journey, whom are you going to address in this journey. Knowing this clearly will help you focus on your target audience. In a single word know your Niche.

Number two, Understand the need of your audience, know their pain points and help them as no other could think. It will create a long-lasting relationship.

Number three, Nurture them continuously. It can be a personal and unique way for every content writer. Which apparently depends on the type and nature of business and relationship. Giving recent updates, free newsletters, sending best wishes, etc to name some.

Number four and the most important one is to expand your network. Networking is coming together with like-minded people to share information/opinion, establish your tribe/community, create and develop business opportunities and search for potential clients. Various digital platforms like life/recorded webinars, podcasts, youtube, one-to-one/one-to-many zoom call sessions, etc make networking possible but easier said than done. Consistency is important. Here again, delivering quality content/service is the key. You should also try to exploit all the platforms to create your own tribe which will naturally help to establish your Personal Brand.

Choose your specialty/expertise:

Before deciding on your specialty, you must be aware of what do Digital Marketers do in general:

i) Website Marketing

ii) Content Marketing

iii) Video Marketing

iv) Email Marketing

v) Affiliate Marketing

vi) Social Media Marketing

vii) SEM(Search Engine Marketing)

As a Freelance Digital Marketer, you must have hands-on experience in every task listed above. But after gaining some experience in every task, you may choose your specialty as per your expertise.

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Concluding Comments

This article is written to help all the aspiring Freelance Digital Marketers out there.

To summarise, you should know that Freelance Digital Marketers have to wear many hats. So Never give up as it may take some time.

Remember this famous quote “Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”

Hope this article has helped you to kick-start your journey to become a successful Freelance Digital Marketer.

Best wishes.