4 tips for building a team of reliable freelance marketers
Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels
When your business lacks the creative muscle it needs to attract and nurture customers, hiring freelancers might be an ideal way to build effective campaigns. This gives you the advantage of accessing the skills and experience you need for your efforts.
However, it’s not always the best strategy, especially if you haven’t hired freelancers before. There’s always a hit-or-miss element in hiring remote marketers. There’s always a good chance of onboarding someone who seems qualified on paper but falls short in practice. To help you build a team of marketers you can rely on, the guide below should be a good starting point.
1. Know your needs
Before you can even begin posting job ads on LinkedIn and Craigslist, you will need to have a clear purpose as to why you need to outsource your marketing efforts to a freelancer. Typically, companies opt to hire independent contractors to reduce the cost of onboarding and maintaining local talents. The lack of marketing resources and infrastructure is another factor, so you might want someone else to set up a sales funnel or handle social media activities. By setting clear goals and expectations, you can ultimately avoid wasting precious time and money on freelancers you don’t even need.
2. Hire based on experience
When drafting a job description to go along with your employment offer, don’t focus too much on credentials. They’re important but they’re not your only basis for figuring out if a freelancer will be worth your money. The one thing you should be looking at is a candidate’s prior work experience. With this in mind, opt to hire people who have experience with the type of campaign or channel you need help running. If you need someone to handle your email marketing activities, you may require applicants to possess experience in Omnisend or MailChimp.
3. Ask for samples and conduct tests
Especially if you’re hiring creatives for your remote marketing team, you will need to check if their style and creative approach match the needs of your business. For this, require candidates to provide you with samples of the content they produced before. Ask for an online portfolio and links to websites and social media pages they worked on. Have them work on a test piece to be submitted within a short timeframe. Make sure to use anti-plagiarism and AI content detection tools to make sure their samples are organic. After all, you are measuring their creative skills and not that of robots.
4. Orient them on your brand
The most critical mistake you would make when hiring freelancers is assuming they already know what to do. Since your brand has unique needs, it’s important to fill freelancers in on the values, principles, and personality it embodies. Share your brand story with them, along with how you want your business to project itself within the industry. Be specific with what you want them to create but leave space for them to share possible improvements that could bring in better results.
Endnote
If you’re building a team of freelancers, make sure you’re onboarding the right people. You can’t expect to do that 100% of the time, but applying the tips above will make scouting the best talents seem like a breeze!
