Before You Hire a Freelance Marketer

Many are drawn to the idea of hiring a freelance marketer as a simple fix for growing problems, to take things off their plate, and get more out of what they’re doing.

So they head to Upwork, write a two-page job post (with the word "ELEPHANT" at the top), and start filtering applicants.

But this can often lead to deep, grinding frustration.

The freelancer doesn’t deliver what they expected. And I don’t mean the usual problems with dropkick freelancers, shoddy work, or bad comms.

I mean projects stall. Credit card gets melted. And you feeling like “Ugh, nothing works. What do I even have this person helping for?!”

As a freelancer who’s also hired a tonne of other freelancers, I’ve seen this happen countless times. And it’s happened to me too. But it can also be avoided by being ready for the freelancer, having the right one for the right engagement.

Here are some of the things that go wrong when these aren’t in place.

First, marketers aren’t product builders. So if your product isn’t finished yet, you’ll both just end up upset.

It’s hard to scale something unfinished.

• Running ads on a product with no product-market fit? Burn money.

• Driving SEO traffic to a business that can’t convert leads? Just frustrating.

• Booking outbound sales calls without scripts or follow-up? No one's closing deals.

Marketing freelancers deliver ROI if the foundation is in place. Otherwise, you’ll just spend money faster on a broken system.

Some problems are multi-faceted, meaning the person you’re engaging can’t solve everything with simply better promotion.

Wicked problems can be defined as those that have multiple dynamics of cause and effect, and are not simply solved linearly. While some marketers have great skill, solving wicked problems is more of a co-founder’s skillset than the remit of a freelance marketing guy/gal.

For example, a conversion rate problem on the home page is obviously a CRO job. But could it be a problem with your product? Or is it being put in front of the wrong market?

It’s worth considering that broader problems will require multiple sets of eyes to really crack, together with an open mind.

50% of the solution is cooperation, patience, and focus to see things through until momentum builds.

A freelancer being able to work independently should be expected. But it’s not realistic for them to work in a vacuum. Especially if the business can’t focus on either providing the necessary investment in the service, or the focus and patience to see programs and campaigns through.

You see entrepreneurs laugh about this all the time when giving each other advice:

“You sent 50 cold emails, and now you want to give up?”

“How much did you spend on ads? $150?!”.

Etc.

But it can happen to anybody.

Finally, if you want a generalist and to get things off your plate, get an employee.

Interestingly, one of the most common expectations I encounter is clients looking for generalists who can do it all. A very practical idea. But often, an impossible task for a freelancer who needs to specialise to earn a living against their peers in an open market.

Consider a regular marketing employee instead and task them with taking on multiple projects at multiple levels to see them through. While it’s not realistic they could write expertise-driven long form blog posts on aerospace technology for the company blog, they could coordinate the monthly blog process, scheduling time with you and a freelance copywriter, and editing the work.

A great in-house generalist is your quarterback. I don’t know anything about American football, but what I mean is that they replace your resource coordination, momentum-building, and review (or as much of it as possible).

Finding Problem-Person Fit

With that said, here are some thoughts on who and when you should hire freelance marketers for common problems at startups and SMEs:

• To offload a routine-ish specialist activity, like SEO, email marketing or CRO, pick a technical freelancer. Use track record as a reference for price. The better the track record, the higher the price will be. Make sure you have the processes that come before and after their part of the marketing funnel in place first. For example, having trained sales people ready for more leads.

• To build something defined, like an appointment booking process, website, email automation sequence, or brand identity, freelancers/consultants would be a good match on a project-based engagement. Example, a brand consultant, operations coach or web designer.

• To solve problems or improve performance, like conversion issues, brand positioning, look for specialist consultants. I think hourly consultations are the best value, versus a project engagement. Try to have relevant background information, clear goals and reference data ready to go and sent ahead of time before discussing the problem.

• To get things off your plate and to organise and run things without your input, consider a marketing employee. They are the human Zapier connector of your organsiation and a second brain to push things through. Find smart, organised and ambitious people. Bonus points if they have deepish skills in one technical discipline, so they can replace a freelancer in a key area.