Freelance Digital Marketer: Areas, Skills, and How to Get Started

Key takeaways

• Digital marketing can be an excellent area in which to freelance, providing you with greater flexibility to set your schedule, determine which clients to work with, and more.

• Freelance digital marketers help clients create, execute, and measure campaigns that promote their products or services.

• To begin a career in freelance digital marketing, you’ll need to follow several steps, including building an audience and connecting with brands.

Learn more about what it takes to be a freelance digital marketer. Afterward, build key skills with the Adobe Marketing Specialist Professional Certificate, where you'll learn about core marketing principles and how to apply them to build meaningful connections with audiences.

What is freelance digital marketing?

Freelance digital marketing refers to a self-employed professional who works with various clients to support their digital marketing needs. The time commitment varies. Some freelancers compile full-time hours from several clients, while others work part-time and only take on projects as needed. Freelancers are often paid on a per-project or hourly basis and are not considered full-time employees; therefore, they don't receive benefits from their clients. They often work remotely.

In this role, your responsibilities can include:

• Communicating with clients and setting up a plan for each project

• Creation of various content like videos, blogs, podcasts, or social media posts

• Social media marketing strategy and planning

• Email marketing campaigns

• Brand marketing

• Event marketing

• Maintenance of websites, blogs, and social channels

• Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and implementation

Freelance digital marketing salary and job outlook

According to Glassdoor, the average total US salary of a freelance digital marketer is $67,000 [1]. The field of marketing, advertising, and promotions is expected to experience a 6 percent job growth rate over the next 10 years, which is slightly faster than the average 5 percent growth rate [2].

Freelance digital marketing: skills and tools

You don't need an official degree to become a freelance digital marketer, but certain skills will help you succeed. Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of niches and typically involves managing a diverse portfolio of clients. With that in mind, here are the skills or knowledge you typically need:

• Organization

• Time management

• Communication

• Copywriting

• SEO

• Teamwork

• Willingness to learn new tools and platforms

Freelance digital marketing tools

Throughout your digital marketing career, you'll likely use a variety of tools. Clients may request that you use tools the company has in place, or you might deploy your own set of tools to manage your freelance business. Here's a look at some of the tools you'll likely come across:

• Communication tools: Google Workspace, Slack

• Scheduling tools: Calendly, MeetFox

• Project management tools: Trello, Asana, Airtable

• Finance software: Quickbooks, Wave

• Time management software: Toggl, Clockify

• Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms: Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho

• Writing tools: Grammarly, Hemingway App, Evernote

• SEO tools: Semrush, Ubersuggest

How to become a freelance digital marketer

Becoming a freelance digital marketer involves several key steps, including developing your skills, marketing yourself effectively, and securing clients. More specifically, if you're interested in a freelance digital marketing career, here are five steps to follow:

1. Select areas that align with your skills.

Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of niches. To succeed, consider narrowing your freelance services to one or two specific areas that correlate with your strongest skills. If, for example, you enjoy the strategy and creation of ads, you could specialize in social media advertising. 

Marketing needs include:  

• Content

• Social media

• Email

• Search engine optimization (SEO)

• Mobile 

• Affiliate marketing

• Pay-per-click (PPC)

• Marketing analytics

• Video

• Virtual reality

2. Build your online presence.

To become a freelance digital marketer, you need to market yourself. Ideally, you'll create a website that offers a biography, work examples, and a way for potential clients to reach out. 

In your "About Me" section, or biography, include a brief history of your work experience, mention degrees or certifications that are relevant, and describe your personality and hobbies. Keep it short, but make it professional and insightful. 

Freelancers typically display work samples in a portfolio. In your portfolio, highlight the type of work you do so clients know what they can hire you for. Keep it visually pleasing with clear formatting and up-to-date. 

Include a contact page that's visible from your home page. Include both an email and phone number and offer links to your professional social media channels, like LinkedIn. 

3. Set your pricing.

To become a self-employed digital marketer, you'll need to create a pricing structure, which can be either hourly, project-based, per day, by retainer, or a combination of more than one. Let's review what it looks like to set an hourly rate. To start, name the amount that you'd like to make annually, the number of hours you plan to work in a week, and the number of weeks you plan to work in a year:

1. Let's say you'd like to make $60,000 a year and plan to work 40 hours a week for 49 weeks of the year, giving you three weeks of vacation. 

2. Now, multiply the number of hours you plan to work by the number of weeks.

• 40 hours x 49 weeks = 1,960 working hours.

3. Next, divide your target income by the number of working hours to get your hourly rate.

• $60,000 / 1,960 hours  = $30.61/hour

Keep in mind that not every hour is billable, though. Approximately 60 to 85 percent [3] of your time is billable—the rest is allocated to non-billable tasks, such as responding to emails, marketing yourself, and invoicing. To make up for that loss, you have to adjust your hourly rate:

4. Remove 40 percent of your hours spent, which accounts for non-billable chores. 

• 1,960 hours x .40 = 784 non-billable hours

• 1,960 hours - 784 nonbillable hours = 1,176 billable hours

5. When you remove 40 percent of your hours spent, it brings your hours down to 1,176. Now, divide your target revenue by the new number of hours to get a more accurate hourly rate.

• $60,000 / 1,176 billable hours = $51.02/hour

4. Find clients.

To find new clients, consider searching on popular freelance websites such as FlexJobs and Upwork. On these sites, you can apply for specific jobs and use these experiences to build your portfolio. It may also be beneficial to reach out to local businesses and discuss their marketing needs. 

Add a lead magnet to your website too, like offering an ebook in exchange for an email address. As you collect contacts, reach out with a personalized email and start a conversation about marketing and your services. 

Research from Statista [4] also provides sources freelancers often use to find work: 

• Previous clients

• Friends and family

• Social media

• Professional contacts

• Online ads

• Online job boards

• Previous employers 

• Sharing economy (peer-to-peer) websites or apps

• Local newspapers

• Employment agencies

Understand marketing channels and how to execute campaigns with Unilever:

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