FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

WHEN I LOOK FOR MARKETING FREELANCERS IN SEARCH ENGINES, I GET A LOT OF STUFF ABOUT DIGITAL MARKETING.

SHOULD I GET A DIGITAL MARKETING FREELANCER?

Interestingly, if you search for marketing freelancers, almost all of the top results are for digital marketing freelancers.

It is important to remember that digital is not marketing, digital is a skillset within marketing.

It depends on what you need them to do. Digital is a set of tools used to execute actions, and digital marketing is the selection and usage of them, and the optimisation of their performance and outputs.

Digital is not research, strategy, or content creation skills like copywriting and design. Those skills existed before digital and the principles of doing them were well established before digital came along. Digital is part of the tactical phase that comes after strategy and research, answering questions about the tools for disseminating communications.

Beware any freelancer who calls themselves a digital marketer and offers these things. They either can't do them and use the words for clicks and SEO boosts, or they can do them and limit themselves to 'digital' to get clicks and SEO boosts.

If you have a digital-only communications project, then yes, they would be a good bet.

Hiring a digital marketer when your project goes beyond digital expertise is unwise.

Why is it a risk?

If they are a digital marketer, their expertise is limited to tactical questions. They don't know how to do the parts outside of it, so it is outside of their ability to deliver them to any decent standard. Approach with caution.

If they are a broader marketer who has decided to focus their offer on digital, why would they undersell themselves? It's most likely a way to get an initial project in the hope they can surprise you and leverage this to expand projects. And the invoice they can send you at the end of it.

If any of this comes into their approach, what does it say about the approaches they will use in the work they deliver for you?

WHY IS HIRING A FREELANCER WITH MARKETING TRAINING IMPORTANT?

The short answer is that training makes you better at the things you do.

Note: this question refers to training in the overall marketing discipline, not training in specialisms and sub-disciplines like digital marketing or PPC. That's a vital distinction, as competency in parts does not mean competency in the whole. Hiring a marketer trained in programmatic advertising is great if your project is for programmatic; if it covers positioning and pricing, they will do more damage than good.

Hiring untrained freelancers and consultants is different from having untrained people in-house. In-house staff have various safety nets, as working year-on-year means that mistakes can be corrected over time and learned from, drops in results can be recovered from, and their workloads and deadlines can be moved around to accommodate things.

When you are hiring somebody on a project basis, there are no safety nets. They need to deliver it well, first time, on time. If you go for experience-only and/or self-taught freelancers, you are gambling on the boundaries of their expertise being wide enough to do a good job for you.

Hiring a marketing freelancer or marketing consultant without marketing training is like hiring a solicitor who didn't go to law school. They can't reliably advise you on cases they haven't worked on, and they can guide you down dangerous paths with their misunderstandings, misconceptions, and misapplications of practices.

DOES HIRING
A FREELANCER TRAINED IN MARKETING REDUCE RISK?

Yes.

Yes, I can elaborate.

Training facilitates a few important skills. It gives a benchmark to evaluate sources of information against so they can be critically evaluated and assessed to determine their quality and potential efficacy. This enables best practices to be identified, and combined with an ability to identify how principles apply to different contexts, tailored solutions can be designed to solve the specific problems at hand.

As every business needs different solutions, working on experience only relies on them having been involved in enough similar situations and scenarios to yours, as their expertise and problem-solving abiliies are limited to what they have been exposed to. Being self-taught has a major drawback: how do they know if the sources they are learning from are any good? They can't evaluate them against any benchmark and don't know the right questions to ask. They could be accepting bullshido as brilliance, and applying it to your project.

In both instances you are relying on chance. Hiring somebody with good marketing training removes the gamble.

Does being trained in marketing automatically make you a great marketing freelancer? No.

Does it improve the chances your freelancer will do a better job? Definitely.

WHO DID
ALL THIS
COOL STUFF FOR YOU?

I don't have any accomplices.

It's (technically) based on 13 years of ethnographic research, observing the marketing industry, listening to praise and complaints, and comparing what very good and very average marketers and agencies do.

I created the strategy and I deliver all the tactical work. If you are interested, I'll happily tell you how I applied the process I use to the Lone Wanderer, and show you how I've practiced what I preach.

Ultimately it is the result of the variety, depth, and quality of my expertise. The Lone Wanderer actively demonstrates my skills and abilities, proof that I can do the things I say I can.

I did all the illustrations and artwork myself, as I've been using various Adobe and art programs for my entire marketing career.

I made the website (I have over 8 years of working on websites with very good website managers) and did the SEO (I managed the relationship with a very good SEO agency for nearly 5 years).

I write all the copy, having done high quality copywriting courses over the years, and getting a lot of practice from creating some very successful content marketing over the past decade.

I made all the assets, from promotional ads to invoices. I set up all the technical back-end things you don't see.

At the time of writing it's just been me. I am working on some promotional videos as and when I can, which means the music I use will be the one thing across the Lone Wanderer I didn't make or do myself.

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN'T OR DON'T DO AS A MARKETING FREELANCER?

Aw, shucks.

Yes, there are. Any marketer who claims they can do everything is either delusional or doesn't know the full scope of the discipline. Don't believe the hype.

I have a rule behind the services I offer. I don't do anything that I haven't had advanced training and at least four years of applied experience in, that I haven't done myself, or that I haven't done in the past few years.

That's why I don't offer services in qualitative research, for example. I've had some exposure to it, and I can help with top-level planning by virtue of training, but getting the best out of it requires skills outside of typical marketing roles.

There are also specialisms that I do have experience in, but I don't have advanced enough expertise to help with things that freelancers and consultants would typically be hired for. Let's take SEO: I was very involved in SEO for several years in my last in-house role, which is why I can help to optimise webpages and copy. I also know there is a level of technicality that is well beyond my skill set.

I've done product marketing for 13 years, I've been involved in pricing, and I've done communications my whole career. Distribution not so much. I've done it as part of the B2C element of roles I've had, but it has been a few years since I last touched it having worked on purely digital B2B recently. Previous experience and training means I can plan it, but the execution is dusty.

I won't take work in gambling or tobacco. Pharmaceutical and medical will depend on certain things. Anything that takes advantage of neurodiversity or compulsive behaviour to make money is out. Otherwise, I'm open to varied adventures.

DO YOU GUARANTEE EXCELLENT RESULTS?

No, and be wary of anybody who does.

Marketing deals with human beings, and the variety, diversity, and unpredictability that comes with them.

I can guarantee that I will use my expertise to deliver the best possible solution based on your brief, but I can't control how prospects or customers will react.

We know the game we play. The most meticulously crafted activity can fail while something put together at a day's notice can end up being one of the most successful things you do all year. The theory doesn't always go the way it is meant to in practice, which is why business book solutions rarely work well.

WHY IS YOUR DAY RATE QUITE LOW?

"£300 per day looks...strange".

If you look up freelancers and consultants with 10+ years of experience and postgraduate training, the price is usually stated at £300-500 per day and goes as high as thousands per day.

I'm priced a bit below that due to my motivation for going freelance: to make that expertise accessible. To deliver that, I have a price point that isn't too exclusionary.

I could price myself at double what I do, but that would contradict the motivation for going freelance.

Don't take it as a sign of an inferior product. It's a sign that the motivation is more important than the money - and that I can make consistent decisions and stick to them, which is good for a lot of projects.