Is the idea of being your own boss quite fascinating and rewarding? That’s what freelancing is all about. Freelancing makes you the rule breaker and rule maker. Freelancing can make you an entrepreneur, no doubt, but you should know how to take the call. The success of your freelance digital marketing skills is entirely upon you.
Even though a freelance profession gives a lot more than a regular job – freedom, work flexibility, unlimited opportunities and additional income, it would be a lie if we say that it is easy. No career path is easy, especially when you have zero experience.
But a freelance career in digital marketing is simply doable. Digital Marketing services are quite the talk of town, that’s the best thing.
So how should you take this forward? Let us share to you some useful tips on how to kick start your freelance digital marketing career with zero experience.
Starting A Freelance Digital Marketing Career With No Experience
Before you start your freelance digital marketing career, here are some things you must know.
1. Know This Is What You Want
Don’t get scared of those horror stories that tell about how freelancing can be a bad career choice. Ask any successful freelancer, he will tell you that it’s not a bad career, especially when you are a digital marketer.
The first step of success is to know and confirm that this is what you want. If it inspires you, connect with successful freelancers and know or read about their success stories.
If failure is whatscares you, then you might just as well become a stone. No entrepreneur built a business without facing challenges. Freelancing also comes with its own ups and downs; preparing for the difficult times will make your success road easier and enjoyable.
Marketing event and conferences are great places for finding motivation but more importantly they are the perfect gateways for connections and networking.
Use your social media skills to locate good events coming up around your place; find out its chief guest or speaker and short list one of the programs. Asking questions and reaching out at a personal level after the event give you necessary insights about digital marketing concept.
2. Read Everything That Is Digital Marketing
Scan books, read the net, go through articles, read everything and anything that spells Digital Marketing. It is easy to get overwhelmed as you figure out the work but reading meticulously will prevent you from getting bogged down.
You don’t necessarily always need to go for an added course or internship to acquire experience. Internet is your best source of information; learn an aspect of digital marketing each day.
Make sure you cover the minor topics and nuances of the chosen aspect before diving into the second one. Subscribe to newsletters, sign up to communities and read blogs and articles.
If this can help, some of the topics of Digital Marketing that you need to cover are;
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- PPC
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Growth Hacking
- Writing for the Web
- Web Analytics
- Affiliate Marketing
- PPA
- Conversion Rate Optimisation
- Marketing Funnel
- App and Mobile Marketing
3. Start Writing – Be A Blogger Or Content Writer
There are several ways to start your digital marketing career. You can get some first-hand experience in a company and see how things work out. But then again it entails a full time commitment. So what you can do is try your hand at starting a blog of your own or work as a freelance content writer.
No it’s not a crazy idea. Content writing is one of the important features of digital marketing and starting a blog has many benefits such as it acts a learning curve; you teach others what you have learned – one of the best ways to acquire more knowledge. It will help you build connections and eventually secure your first client.
Blogging here is not to earn money or gain a big audience; but it is for expanding the depth of knowledge and creating your service portfolio. By writing on several digital marketing services, you at some point of time will know the areas you are interested in and areas that match your skills.
You don’t have to be a creative blogger or don’t have to excel this skill either, but make sure your writings are legible and informative.
This list of content writing options will help you a bit;
- Writing guest articles
- Doing keyword research
- Creating sales copy
- Coding
- Designing mails
- Writing meta tags and descriptions
- Developing infographics and imagery
- Creating ad content for PPC
- Creating captions for Social Media Posts and Brochures
4. Or Get A Degree Course Or Internship
A degree course or real internship will just add bonus points to your existing career as a freelance digital marketer. Signing up with an economical online digital marketing course will help you clear the doubts that involve the intricacies of the subject.
There are several free courses available on the net. You can try one of them for exposure too. Internship will give you first-hand, in-house experience of the real world. It will guide you on how to work in projects as a team and also make you realise if this is the right path you want to pursue.
It’s kind of an open door opportunity that will be immensely beneficial for you – learn about the industrial requirements, the kinds of projects that come in, demands, numbers and values, essential tools for digital marketing and many other features.
Two places where you can look for Internship in Digital Marketing are Start-ups as they always have requirement for low budget employees, and good marketing agencies.
5. Finally, Build A Dynamic Portfolio
When you have done everything, the final step before plunging in to the digital marketing realm deeply is creating a stellar portfolio. Nothing more can impress a client than a professional portfolio. However, as a new entrant, your portfolio will mostly be empty; but you can fill it with offerings like free services, testimonials from satisfied clients, your written articles and blogs and other value added services you can come up with.
