Digital Marketing in 2021 — A guide for freelancers

Jameela Writes
6 min readApr 23, 2021

Digital Marketing is a highly demanding field to get into. Digital Marketing is a location-independent field, which means that you can work from the comfort of your home or even while traveling.

There are several jobs available under the Umbrella term “Digital Marketing,” such as SEO, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Management, Content Marketing, Data Analytics, and more.

Table of content:

  • Digital Marketing Skills
  • Freelancing jobs for Digital Marketers.
  • The Most Used Digital Marketing Tools
  • Thinking Like a Digital Marketer
  • Conclusion

Digital Marketing Skills

When it comes to digital marketing, people will always point out the technical skills that are required. That is important, but there are other skills too. By developing them, even non-technical people can become excellent digital marketers. The following are the skill sets that non-technical people can learn.

1. Community Management:

It’s all about managing a community or a group. For example, there is a camera manufacturing company, and it has a community of 2 million people. On their official Facebook page, there are 2 million likes, people follow the company’s page regularly, and they want to see new content daily. As a digital marketer, you need to manage that community, moderating and posting content aligned with the company’s marketing goals. Therefore, you must possess the skills required for community management.

2. Posting Skills:

Although posting on social media seems like an effortless task, it can be annoying to be confused with what to post and when to post it. It is also essential to know your audience and set a clear social media plan for them. Therefore, an organization is a key to your social media strategy.

3. Advertising Skills:

By advertising, we do not mean traditional TV commercials here. Running successful advertising campaigns on digital channels is even more challenging. A lot of planning & research is required before we can execute a proper online advertising campaign. Moreover, there is a significant difference among ad campaigns on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. You need to have skills in all these advertising platforms to run a decent campaign.

4. Acquisition:

Online acquisition means sales, and you should also have good selling skills. If you are a good salesperson in real life, you can effectively leverage your talents online to drive more meaningful conversions.

5. Performance measurement Skills:

Most digital marketers forget to measure their results effectively. Measurement is an integral part of life. Without proper measurement, we cannot know what’s working for us and what is not. Therefore, you must have the skills to do good performance measurement.

6. Client Dealing:

Client dealing is equally essential. If you know how to talk with your client and learn how to improve your work using your client’s feedback, you can become a good freelance digital marketer.

7. Ad Creation:

Very important in posting & advertising, Ad creation is a great skill to have. Great digital marketers are always great Ad creators as well.

9. Blog Creation:

Last but not least, blog writing is an essential aspect of digital marketing. Blogs are informally written web pages or websites that post content about similar ideas and topics. As a digital marker, you must have the skills to write valuable content in the form of blogs.

Top 9 Freelancing Jobs for Digital Marketers 2021

  1. Social Media Marketing(SMM)
  2. Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
  3. Search Engine Marketing(SEM)
  4. Content Marketing
  5. Email Marketing
  6. Community Management
  7. Online Selling
  8. Online Campaigning
  9. Mobile Apps

The Most Used Digital Marketing Tools

Think about a carpenter who is very skilled but hasn’t got access to all his essential tools. That’s right, and he won’t be able to build anything significant. Likewise, if you have excellent skills as a digital marketer, but you don’t know about the required tools, then all those skills will be useless. Here are some of the essential digital marketing tools.

Google:

Google has changed traditional marketing concepts with its search engine and its advertising platform, Google Ads. Google provides a wide range of tools to help you reach your target audience. Google Keyword Planner, Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Tags Manager are great examples of modern digital marketing tools.

Facebook:

The introduction of Facebook has led to a revolution in the social media world. Through the Facebook Insight tool, you can measure your post reach, likes, and shares. You can see all the stats about comments, likes, clicks, and shares. All this data is essential in optimizing your social media posts and strategy.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is also known as the Facebook of professionals, where people go for job searching, companies actively search for employees. It is indeed an essential platform for professionals.

Instagram:

It is a photo-sharing platform where you can share your pictures with hashtags. Instagram is the widely used social media platform with more than 1000 million active users in 2018 only. It means that Instagram is an opportunity to interact with a large audience around the world.

Twitter:

Twitter is considered the official channel for social media communication in many government and non-government institutions worldwide. It is a text-oriented platform to convey your message. It is a trendy platform among celebrities and public figures.

YouTube:

YouTube is considered as the Google of the future. It is the most extensive video browser, with more than 1.8 billion users every month. As a digital marketer, if you are not using YouTube to reach your audience, you miss it. With the help of YouTube analytics tools now, you can measure very detailed metrics about your audience.

Blogger.com:

It is Google’s free blogging platform. Here you can create excellent blogs for yourself or your client.

Taboola.com:

Taboola is a viral content ad network. It targets audiences based on their interests and the content they are actively looking for.

Mailchimp:

Mailchimp is one of the most used email marketing tools. It has all the tools to automate your email marketing campaigns, from professional email templates to contact management and bulk emails.

Thinking like a Digital Marketer

Suppose there is a war between two generals, and they are ready for battle with their respective armies. One of the generals has better weapons as compared to the other general. Do you think that the general with the better weapons will win? No, to win a war, it is essential to have a good strategy than better weapons. During the war, the general with the excellent system & mental strength will do better than good weapons.

Likewise, if you have skills and great tools for digital marketing, without a good strategy and positive mindset, you can’t be a good digital marketer. Here are some of the essential things to consider if you want to be an effective digital marketer:

  • Customer Behaviour
  • Creating Value
  • Problem Solving
  • Creativity
  • Adaptive
  • Challenge

Conclusion

The demand for freelance digital marketing has increased many folds in the market of 2020, and it is a growing industry all over the world. Set your freelance career path by availing of the resources in the market.

--

--

Jameela Writes

Content Writer and Digital Marketer. I believe that an investment in true learning is a better safeguard of a bright future.