What you need to know before you hire your first freelance marketer 😱
I was recently asked advice around hiring a freelance marketer in a startup or side project. I created some notes for that person who was specifically asking around a first-hire: where to find them, what they can cost, reasonable set of milestones.
I put this together but would love the IH community to share their thoughts:
Where to find them
From your users(!) via your social channels and LinkedIn
Recommendation from marketers you worked with before
Workinstartups.com
Eventbrite marketing meetups
https://www.heymarketers.com/
https://unicornhunt.io/
LinkedIn
Slack groups like Tech London
https://angel.co/jobs
Price
- Depends on experience, skillset and availability
- Depends on if you pay for time, task or outcomes
- Depends if you want to frame objectives and tasks, or have the marketer guide you thought it
- For a freelance marketer, you'll likely pay anywhere from living wage, to £800 a day
- Of course that depends on whether you want a marketing support freelancer with little to no experience, or a marketing strategist with proven experience
Skillset
- You can choose to pick a digital marketer with skills across one source of acquisition (paid, social, content etc) or all (I usually call that a full stack marketer)
- My suggestion is to hire someone who can work across all, help you identify opportunities and then bring in experts over time
- How they work: normally entrepreneurial, able to execute and plan, and results driven
- Softer skills: copywriting, PR, image and video creation tools
Success
- You'll need to know your target per CAC and LTV
- You'll need to understand success metrics across each source of acquisition
- You'll need to know your monthly budgets for paid sources
*You'll need to setup a reporting cycle and tools
Milestones
- Setup: freelancer onboarding, user personas, platforms sign up, process, reporting and tracking implementation
- Budgets and KPIs
- Ecosystem / influencer CRM
- Cycle(s) of experimentation and reporting
- Marketing activity moved into business as usual or stopped
- First goals met
