If you are just now learning about digital marketing, then you will probably need to put in some more research and practice, because creating a a digital marketing job for yourself (and potentially a team one day) is pretty specialized.
These sort of digital marketer jobs are going to work best for those who have already held this job title or have direct user experience with digital marketing.
Maybe you’ve marketed a few of your own products. Maybe you’ve dabbled in some freelance work. Maybe you’ve helped a few local businesses with their email marketing, or have been really dedicated to learning as much as possible about the business for the past few months.
In any case, the best way to get started is to actually just get started.
Start Marketing Something
Get going because you'll NEED to:
- Start a blog.
- Start a YouTube channel.
- Start a podcast.
- Start a WordPress site.
If you have no experience marketing, get some experience. Get some results. Built a niche website and start driving traffic to it. Start a YouTube channel, and amass some views!
You don’t even have to monetize it...
This will do two very important things for you. It will…
- Give you much-needed, valuable experience that will help you to level up your skills as a digital marketer
- It will give you references that you can use when attempting to sell your services to potential new clients
The main idea here is to do get really good at SEO and overall - digital marketing. This way, marketing your digital marketing as jobs for service will get easier.
Know Your Stuff
In other words, sort of marketing is not for those who don’t know what they are doing yet. It is a business for those who know what they are doing, and are ready to get their feet wet with a deeper-dive into the industry and start their own profitable online business.
A digital marketing manager will need to see that you have skills. Skills to such as:
- The ability to create Email campaigns
- Management over websites
- Search rankings experience
- Responsible social media marketing practices
- Managing content and content creation
- General design knowledge
- And many other skills
You need not be good at ALL of the above... However, you'll need to be able to really perform in at least 2 or 3 of the above fields for most jobs in digital marketing.
Step 1: Figure Out Your Specialty/Niche
If you're going to spend countless hours providing digital marketing services for a client's business then you need to be certain you enjoy that type of business.
What Do You Love?
Choosing to focus on something that you love is awesome for a lot of reasons. It will…
- Help to keep you motivated
- Help you to enjoy your work more
- Give you a leg-up on the competition
- Make you better at marketing, because you will be marketing something that you legitimately care about, instead of something that you don’t feel is important
You will probably want to stay away from digital marketing companies when choosing your niche.
While you may be good at what you do, you'll quickly find it's VERY competitive and there's plenty of other businesses out there you can target.
Again, pick an area of life you have an interest or passion about...
If you have lots of experience in the wine industry then go with that! All in all, just be certain you deploy your digital marketing skills for an industry you enjoy.
Step 2: Start Looking For Your First Client
Once you have chosen your niche and are ready to get to work, it will be time to start looking for your first client.
This will require a bit of email marketing of your own and some Google search experience. Your end-product will be to create a marketing manager list to start pitching your skills.
Time to Get Started
You will start with your niche. Type it into Google, start creating a list of companies...
You'll want to:
- start on page 5
- then page 6
- then page 7
- page 8
- and so on...
Starting this low on google will give you a hand up because VERY few people are looking into this level of the market.
Here is What You Want to Look for
Look for a company that:
- Already has a working business
- Has a web presence
- Has at least some customers
- Has been in business for at least a year or two, preferably more
- Is putting a lot of work and effort into their content and marketing. Are they publishing blogs? Posting on YouTube? Facebook? Instagram? If so, then this is the type of company you want to work with
- Seems to have a vital need for someone to optimize their content
- Has a product (or products) that you feel could be useful and valuable to customers. In other words… you want to find a company who is offering products that you could believe in!
Really dig into the content on their website and social media platforms.
Prospect List
Now, here is the kicker. You are responsible for finding your own jobs. This means you'll need to dig through tons of content to create a massive prospect list.
If you are interested in more than one target niche, don’t be afraid to explore and start marketing your services to those either.
Think broad within a niche. If you are doing wine then also consider:
- Vineyards
- Local spirit distribution companies
- Tasting event companies
- Organizations and/or groups of wine makers
Go Nation Wide
Keep in mind you're not just looking in the local area for digital project or two. You'll search the entire country so you can work remotely with your digital marketing skills.
So now, you’ve figured out what type of business you want to work with, and you have also found potential businesses to pitch to.
Now, you need to pitch to them.
Step 3: Pitch Your Services
Before you pitch any certain business, take a moment to review their content, their mission, and what they are all about.
Research Time
Social media will be your best friend here. Learn everything you can about each business on your prospect list.
From Washington DC to Los Angeles you'll have a massive digital marketing manager list to market your skills to. Don't be shy! You've got to go into full-blown sales mode here.
Most management won't fully understand exactly what they are doing wrong in the digital marketing space. Furthermore, they probably won't even understand the skills you bring to the table.
Drill down! Be specific!
Making a list of 5 to 10 actual, specific things that you could do to help is not just impressive… it also lets them know that you actually know what you are talking about. (You will learn more about this in the next step.)
Once you have a decent idea of what a company is trying to do (and where they seem to be going wrong), you can reach out to them in a number of ways. Be creative with finding contact info.
Check online for:
- A website "contact us" form
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Facebook DM
- Twitter DM
- Instagram DM
- Snapchat
- Even mail works!
But this isn’t where it stops, either.
Keep Going
Once you pitch a business, move on and pitch another. Then, pitch another.
Literally do this 50 times.
See how many messages you get back.
This is the lynch pin for creating your own outsourced jobs in this space. If you want clients you're going to have to do the leg work. Reaching out to local friends and family to do their digital marketing work won't cut it.
Do you want a day job?
Or do you want to create your own stream of jobs that you can pick from. If you have sales experience then you'll find this part easy. If not, then you'll be responsible building some sales experience.
Put in the Work
You are your own manager, responsible for your own fate. Keep pressing to give your would-be clients a user experience they won't forget. Email, call, DM, and create content daily that positions you as an expert in this field.
There are plenty of clients who need your marketing skills.
You just have to find them...
You may want to offer a trial-period to show them that you are a professional who can deliver on your promises. You should also make it a point to explain to them exactly what you can do to make their digital presence better.
Step 5: Figure Out Where Your Client Is Going Wrong
Once you pitch to a client and get a response back, it is time to do your due-diligence on following up.
This means that you need to figure out where they are going wrong, and how you can actually help them.
Focus on Where You Can Help
Here's a short list of things to check for:
- SEO (on page and off page)
- Email marketing follow up sequence (do they even have one?)
- Do they have a content strategy?
- Do they show up in local search?
- Are they providing a seamless user experience on their website?
- Do they have a free digital project giveaway to help them build an email list?
- Is the content they produce branded across all of their social media outlets?
Spend some time looking into all these things and you'll for SURE find a dozen things they could be doing better.
Here's a tip...
I'll let you know now, email marketing is 95% for sure to be on the list where most businesses need help.
And this should be built into your marketing pitch as you seek to close a deal for all the jobs you put in for. You should be open and up-front with them about what marketing aspects you see that could be improved, and show them that you are the person who could help them to close this gap and increase their sales.
Step 6: Get Your Client Back On Track And Start Making Sales
Once you close the deal, it’s time to get to work and show your client your experience.
First Thing's First
Jump on the biggest marketing problems first, and start working on getting your client’s SEO results, sales, opt-ins, social media followers, and traffic built up to bigger and better levels.
Once again, if you actually have experience with digital marketing, this won’t be much of a problem. You may have to niche down, figure out who their target market is, better the overall user experience, etc...
At the end of the day, you need to ramp up their online presence and fix their marketing woes so that they can start to get more leads, have better search results, gain more social media followers, and overall become a one-person management department for everything online marketing related.
Think Results
These results will speak for themselves.
You will obviously want to track data so that you can show them exactly how much your marketing efforts are helping.
You will also want to keep track of email marketing stats, increases in sales and opt-ins after you start, as this will help you to show them that your presence here is going to earn them more money and help them to build their business even more.
Of course, it does take time to see results with SEO. That is unavoidable. You cannot achieve groundbreaking marketing results overnight.
Don't boast too much with SEO at first. You can always get a few early "quick wins" with:
- A better email marketing campaign
- Increasing their following on social media.
- Overall content production
It Will Slowly Grow
The more experience you have as you bring on more and more clients the easier it will be to pitch your services to all levels of management within a company.
You want this client to love your marketing, the content you create, the SEO work, and in general all of your skills! This will only help you in getting more clients via referral down the road.
Conclusion
Finding quality digital marketing jobs may be one of the best things you ever do… especially if you love to create content, SEO, social media, and bringing your skills to life.
If you are a super-nerd for marketing and SEO content then this digital business was made for you.
But the biggest factor that often holds people back is not their lack of knowledge or skills. It's usually...
Fear
If you actually want to start this hustle, but are afraid to do it, I would challenge you to ask yourself why?
Why are you afraid? What could go so wrong?
If you can get past your fear, skill-up, get serious, and commit yourself to the long-term game, there is truly no limit to what you can make in the digital space.
Are you in the process of creating your own digital marketing hustle right now? If so, drop a line and let me know how you’re doing it!